[Ads-l] "Key party" [1957]

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

A little something to spice up the new year.

After rewatching Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm" the other day, I went looking
for early appearances of "key party."

Neither OED nor Merriam-Webster have entries for "key party," but in a 2018
article SF Weekly's Joe Kukura reported a 1965 appearance of the term.

https://www.sfweekly.com/archives/did-key-parties-ever-really-happen/article_7cdda389-9c58-59d7-b46b-92f5cc51da93.html

Although I did finally stumble on an early "'Key' party," I gave up looking
for "key party" itself after getting mired in so many mentions of "key
party officials" and similar. (Some patient person here may well find
earlier uses of "key party.") But the wife-swapping "key parties" wasn't
that difficult to find.

And although "key party" is the designation that seems to have survived, I
see that "key game" was a popular synonym, at least in 1959. I've included
a usage of that term far below.

Kukura also cited something contending that "the original spouse-sharers
were none other than World War II fighter pilots [...] It was the pilots
and their wives who invented the term 'key club,' which was unknown in the
'40s, [and] became widely known in the '50s and '60s."

Unfortunately, I was unable to find references, subtle or otherwise, to
wife-swapping "key clubs" except for "Key Club Wives," the name of an adult
film that came out in the late '60s.

But I did find descriptions of these diversions that go back to 1955 and
1956, though these popular-press articles lack the specific terms "key
party," "key game," and "key club." (I'll tweet those out.)

-- Bonnie

----------------------------------

We hear rumors going around in one of the nicer sections of Greater
Pittston that is rather shocking. The report is that some of the
not-so-young and not-so-old married couples have a "Key" party every now
and then. At the end of the party, the wives throw the keys to their home
on the floor, and whoever picks up the keys, goes that night with the owner
of the key, while her husband is tagging along to another home with someone
else's key. Hard to believe. We'd have to see it to believe it, although
sources in the area swear to the authenticity of the rumor. [In "Our Town,"
Sunday Dispatch (Pittston, Pennsylvania), 21 July 1957, p. 4.]

For information about sexual activities in the suburbs, you must go to
indirect sources. There is plenty of gossip. You can get information about
"key parties" in Westchester County [New York] from people who've never
been to one and can't pinpoint where they took place. [Earl Ubell,
"Suburban Women Seem More Satisfied With Their Husbands," Burlington (North
Carolina) Daily Times-News, 22 January 1959, p. 3A.]

Soon they were seeking more variety and excitement and started having what
they called "key parties." The women would throw their house keys in the
middle of the room and the men would each take a key plus the woman to whom
the key belonged. [From a letter to Ione Quinby Griggs, "One Mate Swapper
Now in Death Cell," The Milwaukee Journal, 13 March 1959, p. 4.]

Questioned as to details, Patrick said that "seven or eight couples
actually swapped mates for the evening by drawing keys from a bowl while
blindfolded, or in a darkened room, and the owner of the key "paired off"
for the night with the person who had drawn tthe [sic] key. Further
information, the prosecutor stated, indicated that at least one of the
couples regularly hired a babysitter to look after their children while
they attended the key parties. ["Prosecutor bares wife-swapping in Oak
Harbor 'Key Game!'," Island County Times (Coupeville, Washington), 13
August 1959, p. 1.]

DURBAN, South Africa -- (Reuters) -- Strip poker and "key parties" are now
out of date in Durban. The craze now tickling the fancy of Durban's gay
young social set is the "feather game" -- so called because feathers figure
prominently in the game, which ends with most of the women players stripped
to their underwear. ["Feathering for strips," The Houston (Texas) Post, 26
May 1963, Section 7, p. 2.]

Then she described another social aberration, called "key parties," in
which she and her husband had participated. In this type of social life, a
group of couples go off to a motel and register. Then they all get together
in the lounge and after getting pretty well tanked they toss their room
keys onto the floor. Then they draw lots and in turn each woman picks up a
key and goes off with the man it belongs to. [Norman Vincent Peale, "Moral
Structure Hits Skids," Staten Island Advance, 15 August 1964, p. 3.]

---------------

The ultimate solution was the key game. Into a hat the men tossed their
flat, brass, remarkably similar house keys. A brisk shaking, and then into
the hat groped the wives at a given signal. To whatever master of the house
the key belonged, so belonged for the night the woman who had drawn it. [In
George Scullin's short story, "The Sordid End to the Swap-Mate Scandal,"
Cosmopolitan, March 1959, p. 32.]

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org