Sunday, March 16, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Pretty and Profitable

Couple tries to bring beautiful people together for `Plush Party'

Virginia and David Cooper started their own swingers parties meant for attractive people only; couples get in for $200 a night. Photo by Craig L. Moran. Swingers seeking attractive swingers, from left, are Virginia Cooper, Tovi Helman and David Cooper. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

David and Virginia Cooper enjoy the swinging lifestyle so much that they have started accepting "donations" from couples to join their weekly "Plush Party" for swingers. Fifteen to 25 couples pay $200 per couple to attend a Friday or a Saturday night. Or they pay $300 per couple to attend both Friday and Saturday nights.

Plush carves a niche. It is billed as exclusive, not to rich people, but to pretty people with the cash to attend, and who are willing to submit photos beforehand through the couple's Web site, Plushparty.com.

"An out-of-shape guy can't bring a trophy wife," says David, 33, adding people who don't qualify often become angry.

On a certain Saturday night, guests represent a variety of races of the cross section of Las Vegas; they range in age from 20s to 50s. Almost everyone is in shape and is dressed stylishly enough.

The Coopers have been in Las Vegas for about seven months. In Texas, they ran strip clubs, a saturated business in Las Vegas. They say they're not running Plush Party to profit, but that the "donations" pay the high rent -- pretty people want to have sex in pretty places -- and living expenses.

The Coopers say good things about the long-established Red Rooster club, while promoting their own nook.

"The Red Rooster is great for what it is. They cater to the general lifestyle," David says. "But when you get right down to it, the better-looking people" have few outlets to find each other.

The gated house seems like a small mansion, at the end of a small street in a neighborhood near Jones Boulevard and Interstate 215. Guests park behind the gate, so neighbors may be kept unaware.

The interior is outfitted in animal-print couches, naked-people art and mood lighting. Bowls of condoms and other forms of protection are stationed around the house. An upstairs room is walled with couches, and a glass wall overlooks the lights of Las Vegas, as well as a glamorous pool in the back yard, landscaped with green islands.

When people arrive, they don't just jump into a pile of bodies. They mingle, clothed, and get an idea pretty quickly whether they want to ask another couple to join them in a closed bedroom, on a couch or on an orgy bed. Conversations can be smart or shallow, brief and to the point.

"I'm, like, `I don't care about your depth or substance,' " says Tovi Helman, 24, a friend of the Coopers.

Virginia Cooper, 36, who grew up with the sexual boundaries of a Christian Science upbringing, thinks of swinging as giving her the freedom to experience a full life.

"You think about being in a room all the time, and looking at the same window. And then you walk outside, and you open other doors, and see the sunshine. It's like that," Virginia says.

Helman compares swinging to a varied diet.

"Snickers may be your favorite candy bar, but do you want to eat it every day of your life?"