Editor’s Note: Dr.Date is on hiatus. The folowing column previously ran in the Daily:

Dear Dr. Date,
A friend of mine once described a contraption used in sex where a woman is suspended in a swiveling harness above a man, then sort of wound up and released to spin while the two copulated. Does such a device exist? Wouldn’t some injury be likely in use of such a tool?
— Suspicious

Good news! Your friend was not the only person to come up with the idea. I found a bit about this device in a short erotic story called “Apparatus” by Michael Chosen, about a couple who stumble across an old sexual gymnasium in a Tudor castle.
“… and she skipped to the next tableau, a large basket suspended by a chain from a wooden beam of the ceiling fifteen feet overhead. The basket dangled above another raised, contoured platform, and she leaned far over the edge and gave it a slight twirl, and it wound up on the chain slowly, then unwound and wound again in the other direction while we contemplated.
“She sits in there …” I began,
“And he lies below her on the pad …” she continued.
“… and there’s a hole in the bottom of the basket …” we chorused imperfectly but exuberantly and broke into laughter and giggles again.”
The couple moves on and nothing more is said of our device. I then visited one of the kinkier regions of the Net, the Dungeon, where people on computers ‘meet’ with others to have not just Netsex, but kinky Netsex. There are no limits.
I quickly found a willing pioneer (supposedly a stripper named Tiffany) and we attempted to ‘use’ this device. Tiffany was game until I told her about the basket. She lobbed a veiled accusation that I resembled Gollum from “The Hobbit,” then *poof* she disappeared. The needle of rejection piercing just as easily over the computer, I decided to do no further research in this direction.
I then found a man named Kinky Joe in Brooklyn who calls himself the King of Erotic Furniture. He creates custom sex devices with an artistic flair. The closest thing he offered was the Love Swing for $249, which is just two swings at the appropriate height.
I asked a Chicago furniture maker how much it would cost to fashion such a device and he thought that it could be done for about $2000. (Personally, I think I could do it for about $250.)
I doubt any injury would result if the participants used proven ergonomical design, lubricants and good sturdy building materials.