The New Sexual Underground: Crossing the Last Boundaries (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 10)

by Lawrence Block

  TONI: I must admit that the thought of that really got to me.

  AL: If you didn’t there would have to be something wrong with you. They had invited us to swing with them if we ever came to Cleveland, and said they would take us to a party if we were there at the right time and if we were interested. We didn’t talk about it much, but sort of felt that if we did get to that part of the country we might give it a try once just to see what it was like. But a trip of that distance seemed pretty remote.

  TONI: And then, as luck would have it, Al got transferred to Indianapolis.

  • • •

  After the move to Indianapolis, the Grants lost little time in meeting their pen-pals, and soon had their first experience with group sex. Since then they have continued to have such contacts on an occasional basis, either at parties or with individual couples. These group contacts, however, do not play as large a part in their lives as they do with most members of the sexual underground. Al estimated that their sexual relations with other couples and groups averaged twelve per year, and Toni said that even this low estimate seemed a little high to her.

  For the Grants, the major excitement of group sex lies not in the variety of partners but in the special acts which are outside the province of two people. They had described themselves as pure sensualists, and this label fits in the strictest sense of the word. Their interest in any sex act is based upon its sensory impact. It is this sexual orientation which makes swinging moderately attractive to them, just as it makes them more responsive than most persons to mechanical aids.

  One might theorize that Al and Toni have an attitude toward sex which has not much transcended the masturbatory level. This is certainly true insofar as their own approach to sex has not changed much since the time when masturbation was their sole sexual outlet. In this sense, it could be argued that, in their own lovemaking, each really sees the other as a highly sophisticated machine designed to facilitate particularly pleasurable masturbation. Thus Toni’s vagina (among other orifices) is to Al no more than an improvement on his own hand, while she in turn regards his penis as a more effective substitute for the candle which claimed her maidenhead almost twenty years ago.

  While theories of this nature are always tempting, they may have little real importance. It has been said that the individual’s basic sexual nature rarely changes to any significant degree, and that all lovemaking is essentially a dualistic version of the particular individual’s prior autoerotic experience.

  As far as Al and Toni are concerned, their marital relationship is ideal in every respect. They still have relations almost every night after a decade of marriage. With the exception of their participation in group sex, neither has ever had any extramarital contacts; if they are to be believed, neither has had any desire for such contacts. While mechanical gadgets play a significant role in their sex lives—especially the original massage unit—they are by no means a sine qua non of their relationship and are employed more for special excitement than as a general rule. They have also trained themselves to develop particular muscular control and are indeed “bedroom athletes.”

  In their experiences with other couples and with sex groups, Al and Toni have consciously sought out persons as much like themselves as possible. They have never run an advertisement; I heard of them through a couple they had swung with, who described Al as the mechanical genius of the swinging world. Instead, they answer ads or contact persons recommended to them by other couples. Almost invariably their sexual partners share their enthusiasm for gadgetry.

  While the Grants are not as responsive to visual stimuli as most swingers, they reported that an interest in pictures and films often goes hand in hand with an interest in gadgets. Most evenings at other couples’ homes featured the viewing of pornographic films as a prelude to active sexual relations. In most instances these were commercial films, but occasionally one of the husbands will have a source for developing movie film privately and will show pictures he has taken of earlier parties.

  • • •

  AL: But the big item these days is the home television unit that a Japanese manufacturer put on the market a couple of years ago. Instead of film it uses regular television tape, so you can use the thing the same way you would use a stereo tape recorder for sound. There’s no developing involved and you record sound and picture simultaneously and can play the thing back immediately. The tapes can be erased and reused or stored and shown again. Naturally this thing is the hottest item going among swingers who like to see themselves. Right now the price tag is up over a thousand dollars, which makes it a pretty expensive toy for the average person. But the swingers are buying them.

  TONI: I wouldn’t be surprised if the swingers are the only persons buying them. Can you imagine the average person paying that kind of money to tape his kid’s birthday party?

  AL: I can’t, frankly, and I’m as devoted a father as the next guy. But for swingers this is natural. In a few years the price will come down to a much more reasonable level, and when that happens I’d be willing to predict that it will do the same sort of thing for swinging that the Polaroid camera has done. Before the Polaroid you couldn’t take sex pictures without your own darkroom. Even so, a lot of people set up darkrooms and learned how to do their own developing and printing. That’s virtually impossible with movie film as far as most people are concerned. With the tape, you’ll have people sending reels all over the country. And it won’t be limited to swingers. Before we got anywhere near swinging, we took stills of ourselves. I’ll bet a hell of lot of ordinary married couples will set up those cameras so that they can watch themselves screwing. Sound makes a big difference, too, Already there are lot of people who get their kicks exchanging tapes of them talking dirty, the same way they write each other dirty letters. With the usual silent sex film, I’ve always found myself very conscious of the fact that there’s no sound. It makes it obviously artificial. The one time we saw a TV tape at fellow’s house, it was far more exciting than any movie.

  TONI: And you can also set it up to tape television programs if you’re not home to watch them.

  AL: Somehow that doesn’t excite me as much. The idea of paying a thou to tape your kid’s birthday part is crazy enough, but can you imagine some moron shelling out that kind of dough just so he won’t miss a single installment of The Flying Nun?

  • • •

  While the Grants provide an excellent illustration of the role of gadgets in the sex lives of swinging couples, they only reveal one aspect of the way in which our technology has contributed to the shaping of the sexual underground. Other aids are available not so much to heighten sexual pleasure as to compensate for sexual inadequacies.

  These include a variety of preparations designed to enlarge the male organ or the female breasts, either through mechanical stretching of the organ in question or by rubbing some ointment into it. This type of item has been offered on the underground market for centuries, and to the best of my knowledge all such products are wholly useless, the ultimate in sexual quackery.

  The male who is concerned about the size of his penis may also purchase a variety of devices to be attached over his penis and compensate for his inadequacy. If his problem is impotence, he may purchase pills to pep him up. These are likely to be vitamin pills (which won’t hurt him, but will only cure his impotence if it’s caused by scurvy) or amphetamines (which will keep him up, but not in the way he had in mind). Or he may buy any of number of devices designed to keep his member rigid. On the other hand, if a man suffers from premature ejaculation he is offered cream which is supposed to deaden the nerves in the glans and thus delay climax. Certain local anesthetics can do this, but not very effectively.

  One company which has recently entered the mail-order business in a big way offers two fascinating products, the artificial penis and the artificial vagina. The first is an extremely realistic plastic phallus, the second sort of a plastic pancake with a vaginal opening in it which is to be strapped onto the lower abdomen.
Both are advertised by the manufacturer as prosthetic devices to be used by individuals whose original equipment is either temporarily or permanently out of service.

  The scope of the direct mail campaign for these items (the penis, interestingly, is available in a choice of three sizes) suggests that a much wider market must exist than for men who have had their phalli shot off in the war and women who are similarly incapacitated by accident or illness. It will probably come as no great surprise to the reader that the penises are used largely in female homosexual relationships while the plastic vaginas permit the male homosexual to carry transvestism to its logical conclusion. One can scarcely avoid pondering the possibility of a homosexual queen and a butch lesbian, each taken in by the other’s appearance, finally having relations in which her plastic penis copulates gaily with his plastic vagina. The mind boggles . . .

  Yet another major beneficiary of modern technology is the individual whose major sexual interests are autoerotic. We will look more closely in a later chapter at the particular role of the solitary swinger in the current sexual underground, but a brief look at the role of technology in his life might be instructive in the present context. Masturbators, both male and female, exist in greater numbers than one might at first suppose, and include not only the unattached but the married as well. One need only consider the huge market for pornography in order to appreciate the scope of that segment of the adult population which finds masturbation enjoyable, at least on an occasional basis.

  Obviously, a great many of the inventions of the twentieth century employed by heterosexual couples also lend themselves to autoerotic pursuits. Dildos, battery-powered or otherwise, satisfy not only female masturbators but also homosexually-inclined males who wish to suck them or penetrate themselves anally. All manner of massage devices are available and lend themselves to use by members of either sex.

  For the male, an enterprising mail-order advertiser offers a product which he calls “Instant Pussy.” Presumably when water is added this product forms a gel which has a tactile resemblance to the interior of the vagina. I have only met one person who ever tried this product, and he said it was disappointing.

  Another item also used by heterosexual females as an accompaniment to coitus is the age-old Japanese invention usually called the rim-no-tan. This consists of a large hollow ball containing a smaller heavier ball. The gadget is inserted into the vagina, whereupon any movement of the pelvis causes the balls to shift around with, hopefully, an extremely pleasurable sensation resulting.

  Finally, a variety of sources are presently offering what would seem to be the last word in do-it-yourself sex: the artificial girl. She is available in a great variety of qualities, ranging from deluxe models with lifelike rubber skin and Dynel hair and all features quite realistically detailed (some even equipped with electrical wiring so that true body temperature may be maintained), all the way down the line to inflatable plastic balloons shaped like girls. The high-quality models cost as much as several hundred dollars, while the girl balloons are offered for a dollar or so each.

  At the time of the present writing, no one has yet duplicated the feat of the hero of the age-old limerick:

  There was a young man from Racine,

  Who invented a frigging machine.

  Concave or convex,

  It would suit either sex,

  And jerk off itself in between.

  But the time for such an invention cannot be too far off. While I prefer to avoid prophecy, I would not hesitate to predict that before the end of this century, both male and female sexual robots will be offered for sale on the open market. I suspect our present technology could already produce such a non-being which could perform basic sexual movements as well as most human beings do. A simple mechanism such as that which gives voice to the “Chatty Cathy” doll could permit the android to give its owner as much meaningful companionship as the average person gets from his or her spouse. The possibilities are endless, and I am by no means certain that some enterprising engineer like Al Grant is not already at work upon just such a boon to mankind.

  • • •

  An additional gift to the auto-eroticist in the electronic age, and indeed to the voyeur in general, are the highly sophisticated devices which furnish him with the material for his fantasies. The many hair-raising articles and public pronouncements on the dangers of electronic espionage have not yet spotlighted the fact that, in this Great Society of ours, one must worry about being spied on electronically not only by business rivals, jealous spouses, police and governmental snoops, but also by those who find this snooping a handy path to orgasm. The advertising of wiretapping and other snooping and peeping gear in swinger-oriented publications makes it quite obvious that some equipment is used in just this fashion.

  The more elaborate listening devices have been sufficiently dealt with in the general media and need not concern us here. Two rather inexpensive gadgets might merit mention, however. One is the “Big Ear,” a large cone on a tripod which will pick up conversations over great distances. While I understand this gimmick will not do all the ads claim for it—its directional pickup has only limited accuracy and no exclusivity—it certainly enables a person to listen through walls far more effectively than with the old glass-against-the-wall trick. Another item the size of small pencil permits one to see through walls. One bores a quarter-inch hole in the wall and inserts the thing, and an arrangement of prisms provide a 180 degree view of whatever is on the other side of the wall. Equipped with both of these articles, an ardent voyeur can spend Friday night at a busy motel and have more fun than a rabbit in a carrot patch.

  The average person who frequents motels for sexual purposes must now either convince himself that this sort of voyeurism is rare, decide that he doesn’t care if someone’s watching, or else turn off the lights and perform his lovemaking in relative silence.

  The exhibitionist, on the other hand, can heighten his pleasure in such roadside grappling by convincing himself that someone is indeed watching, and masturbating furiously at the spectacle. No scientific progress, one thus can see, is entirely detrimental or entirely advantageous to one and all.

  Five:

  Incest Is A Family Affair

  Sexual contacts between persons so related as to render such contacts incestuous are no special fruit of the sexual revolution: incest was already an old story when Lot’s daughters carried filial piety to its logical conclusion in a desperate attempt to provide their father with a male heir. Some cultures have always accepted certain sexual relationships which other societies regard as incestuous, while they in turn label other contacts taboo. If the reader is interested in pursuing the subject, a brief glance at a representative selection of anthropological studies will demonstrate conclusively that there is no natural line between incestuous relationships and permissible ones. There often seems no rhyme or reason in a culture’s attitude in this regard. Many social orders, for example, prohibit mother-son sexual relations while having no injunction whatsoever against father-daughter dalliance.

  It has frequently been maintained that the prohibition of incest is aimed at preventing deterioration of the race through the fixation of undesirable recessive traits. This is a charming explanation, but it would seem to attribute to primitive man an understanding of genetics which he seems unlikely to have had. A more logical explanation lies in the theory that incestuous unions lead to a confusion of role relationships. If one screws one’s mother, one is at once her son—a particular, well-defined role—and her lover—another, very different role. Simultaneously one is one’s father’s son and rival all at once. The old humorous song, I’m My Own Grandpaw, is an excellent statement of the confusion which results when incest taboos are violated. But we are presently concerned not with the derivation of incest taboos or the changing definition of incest down through the ages, but with the equally interesting topic of incest as a factor in the contemporary sexual underground. Is it factor? Is incest on the rise?

  The an
swer is not too easy to come by; one can hardly attempt to offer statistical evidence of any sort. A small percentage of the population has always violated society’s restrictions on incest, and I would tend to doubt that this percentage has varied significantly in either direction in recent years. One can make a strong case to the effect that incest will eventually become a more common component of the sexual underground, especially among those hardcore swingers who have already violated every other sexual taboo and who are searching for new forbidden worlds to conquer. Given present trends, I strongly suspect that this will occur, but that is not to say that the sexual revolution has already moved in that direction.

  When I first began to plan the contents of this present work, I considered and subsequently rejected the inclusion of material on incest. At the time I had no personal knowledge of swingers who made a regular thing of incest, and had merely speculated on the value of a brief chapter showing several cases in which incestuous relations during childhood served to shape the sexuality of several swingers I had interviewed. Since one chapter in The Taboo Breakers had already covered rather similar ground, I decided against doing so.

  But while I was engaged in researching this book, I coincidentally came across several instances of incest as a significant function of members of the sexual underground. Two girls advertising in two different correspondence club magazines advised prospective contacts that their brothers were available to join on dates, and further investigation proved that they did indeed mean their biological brothers and were not employing an arcane euphemism. A family group on the West Coast advertised their desire to swing with other family groups, describing themselves as father and mother in their forties and two girls and a boy ranging from eleven to sixteen. This particular advertiser was kind enough to write back to assure me that his ad was legitimate, but refused my request for an interview unequivocally and did not give his name or mailing address. I wrote to him again through the correspondence club, suggesting that he might protect his anonymity by handling the interview through correspondence, but this letter went unanswered.