Table of Contents
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Introduction
God Has Truly Blessed Such Free Children of His
This Is a Watchbird Watching You
Thirteen??? I Am Not Superstitious
Families That Play Together
He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother
I Often Wonder What the Harlots Buy
Odds and Ends
About the Author
Excerpt: Taboo Breakers
Beyond Group Sex:
The New Sexual Life Styles
John Warren Wells
Lawrence Block
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copyright © 1972, 2012, Lawrence Block
All Rights Reserved
Introduction
In the following pages, you will make the acquaintance of a rather unusual assortment of men and women. You will meet and listen to:
A young woman with a passion for personal privacy who enjoys watching other people have sex, and who runs an ad to that effect in underground newspapers . . .
A small-town minister who has discovered bisexual group sex . . .
A man who seduced an eleven-year-old girl and maintained a monogamous relationship with her for seven years . . .
A brother and sister who went through a marriage ceremony, live together as man and wife, and participate in group sex with strangers . . .
A man who has spent the past thirty years having sexual relations with his mother, his father, his brother, his sister, his wife, his sons, and his daughter . . .
An executive who spends a substantial portion of his income on prostitutes . . .
And a few other persons whose sex lives are similarly at variance with “normal” standards of behavior.
What you are reading now is at once an introduction to a book and to a group of individuals. Indeed, these individuals are the book. It is their words that comprise the greater portion of the text, either through the re-creation of interviews or the verbatim transcription of their letters. I have tried to keep my own comments to a minimum, butting in when necessary to summarize or interpret.
These introductory remarks, too, ought to be kept to a minimum. Let me just say a few words on how this book came about, how it was written, and what point I like to think it serves. Then I’ll get off the stage.
• • •
For quite a few years now I have been writing books on various aspects of human sexual behavior and what is called variously the sexual revolution and the new morality. In the course of this I have interviewed innumerable persons at greater or lesser length and have engaged in a good deal of correspondence, some of it brief, some of it quite extensive. Not surprisingly, I possess an insatiable curiosity about the manner in which different persons come to terms with their sexual desires; without this curiosity I would be well advised to get into some other line of work.
Only a small portion of these interviews and correspondence leads to anything that winds up in print. I consider an interview sufficiently productive if it does no more than enlarge my own understanding. A while ago I realized that I was closely familiar with several case histories that would make excellent chapters—the only trouble was that they didn’t much fit into books. They didn’t come under any of the usual headings.
I suppose a similar state of affairs once prompted the invention of succotash.
Thus I decided to put these various bits and pieces together. As I outlined the project, I realized that there was a common factor uniting these chapters. Each concerned an individual who, for one reason or another, had come to possess (or be possessed by) urges and desires that he himself readily recognized as abnormal. Each ultimately elected to do his own thing, to march to the beat of that different drummer. And each has come to terms with his conflict, some with more success than others, but all in a way that ought to be relevant to the overall topic of today’s sexual mores.
The chapters are complete in themselves and can be considered by themselves. But I would hope that the reader would tend to regard them not only individually but also in terms of one another—i.e., as different views of men wrestling with demons.
• • •
A discussion of method may be useful. Material is presented in each subject’s own words, but it is by no means a verbatim transcript—except in those chapters where letters are quoted. Over the years I have grown out of the habit of using a tape recorder. I have found not only that it puts some subjects off—although most people get used to it after a while—but that it gets in the way of conversation because one has to stop periodically and change reels. Furthermore, the process of having a tape-recorded interview typed is both difficult and expensive, and leaves one with a massive sheaf of typescript, much given over to trivia, and very hard to put in order.
I have found it more useful to remember what is said to me, and then to re-create the conversation at the typewriter, reproducing both the factual matter and the tone and style of the subject’s speech. With that reservation, and with the presumably obvious fact that I have carefully changed the names of all people and places and any data which might render any person identifiable, all of what follows is precisely what was said to me.
• • •
Introductions are curious things. The reader hits them at the beginning of the book and then goes on to the book itself. The writer gets the whole business backward, first writing the text, then walking out front and introducing it. You’ve just now sat down with this book; I’ve been sitting with it long enough to hatch an ostrich egg. There’s one point where I trust we’re in agreement, however; we’d both like to get this introduction over with as soon as possible, so that you can listen to the voices of some very fascinating men and women, and so that I can go around the corner for a beer.
So be it. You may be charmed or disgusted with the people you are about to meet. You may think that some of them ought to be locked up. But I don’t think you’ll forget them very quickly.
I know I won’t.
New York City
January 1972
God Has Truly Blessed
Such Free Children Of His!
Quite a few of my interviews arise out of correspondence related to an earlier book of mine. I try to answer all the mail I receive, although my failure to do as well at this chore as possible provides me each January with an impeccable New Year’s resolution, albeit the same one year after year. Quite often this exchange of letters leads to a face-to-face interview. Often it does not, sometimes because not everyone who is willing to write a letter is also agreeable to a meeting, sometimes because it’s hard for me to get to correspondents in out-of-the-way places.
The author of the letters that follow lives in a smallish town in western Pennsylvania, and it shouldn’t be particularly difficult for me to interview him. Over the years I have several times made plans to visit him, and time after time something came up to rearrange my schedule. The one time I did find myself within a few miles of his home I tried to reach him, only to discover that he and his family were on their annual vacation. In New York, no doubt—and perhaps trying to reach me!
A recent review of Grant Burdon’s letters, however leads me to feel that they can stand alone, and the material presented is already sufficiently important to warrant publication.
September 28, 1968
Dear Mr. Wells:
I have just read your new book, The New Sexual Underground, with much interest, both objectively from my professional point of view as one concerne
d with social morality, and subjectively, as a normal, red-blooded male for whom sex is terrific fun. Your reporting is excellent, and I am sure that the picture you present is a true and unexaggerated one.
Your invitation on page 27 for readers to share attitudes and experiences is one I should like to accept, but only with your assurance that my letters would be read only by you, not by your publisher’s secretaries and clerks. I should prefer sending letters to you at a private address; and I should prefer an interview over correspondence, if that might be possible, if you should find yourself in western Pennsylvania.
My personal sexual history is not unusual, except for a couple of Sexual Freedom League parties I attended last May. What may be unusual is my position as a clergyman. If you were to use any of my revelations, you would have to promise not to divulge the name of my denomination or enough of my geographical location to identify me to those who know me.
Yours very truly,
The Rev. Grant J. Burdon
In my reply, I assured Grant that I would of course respect all confidences and that my publishers never opened my mail. I told him his experiences and views would indeed be valuable, and suggested that he feel free to write at greater length, with a view toward a personal interview when our two schedules permitted.
March 5, 1969
Dear Mr. Wells:
This is the first opportunity I have had to answer your letter of January 28 and to give sufficient time to recording some of my experiences and thoughts on sex for you. I respect your confidence sufficiently that I shall be completely frank; I trust you to keep my identity secret and to change names and places as necessary to protect me. In fact, the names I shall use will already have been changed. As a courtesy, I should like to see a copy of any published use you will make of this.
I was brought up very strictly in a tiny New England hamlet by a most puritanical mother and father. For my first eleven years I was an only child. The church was the center of all social life in the village, and in those days (I am now forty-seven) it was considered a sin even to smoke, dance, or play cards. When I escaped this stifling environment by going a hundred miles away to college, it’s a wonder that I didn’t rebel totally. But actually, although I experienced the typical sophomore sampling of agnosticism, I retained my deep-seated belief in God. I simply discarded the fundamentalist images of God as a vengeful keeper of a morality ledger book. And finally I became a convert to a more liberal denomination, and, after a period of teaching the humanities in college, went to seminary, was ordained, and have been a clergyman of that denomination for sixteen years.
My mother tried to teach me that any kind of sex was sinful. She gave me the impression that this was so even between husband and wife, but that the Lord permitted it for the sole reason of perpetuating the human race. The only time I ever suspected my mother of criticizing God was when sex was mentioned, and then she wondered why He had made us with such wicked sexual desires.
My earliest recollection of anything sexual is not until I was about five, when I was playing “bus” with a five-year-old neighbor girl. We realistically stopped the little red cart in which she was my passenger, announced a rest stop, and she proceeded to take down her panties, spread her legs, and urinate. I simply watched, innocently and curiously; when suddenly the window of the upstairs bedroom was raised, and Mother, who had happened to be looking out, shouted the most terrifying threats of punishment to both of us for our wickedness! It was traumatic, I now realize, and for years afterward I avoided anything to do with the subject of boys’ and girls’ genitals, urination, etc.
Our eight-grade school consisted of two four-grade rooms, one on each side of a hallway, with the girls’ basement under one and the boys’ under the other. Strangely enough for such a community, the “basements” were on ground level, and the windows, outside of which we played at recess time, were clear, unfrosted. It was entirely possible to see children going to the toilet. Although the girls were hidden once they closed the toilet doors, the boys who used the long trough-type urinal could actually be seen by anyone outside who wanted to hold his (or her) face close enough to one side of one of the windows. Furthermore, the janitor, who had to tend the furnace in the boys’ basement, was a woman, and sometimes she passed through while the trough urinal was in use. Mother’s lectures had only made the thought of genitalia and urination more exciting to me than I suppose it would otherwise have been at the elementary-school age. I secretly wanted to see as much as I could, and would have loved being seen; but I had to repress these desires. Actually, I never used the urinal during recess times with other boys; instead, I would use the closed-door toilet. Occasionally, for the thrill of using the urinal, I would raise my hand during class periods, to go safely in private, when I would then always use the urinal.
My avoidance of urinating with others eventually was noticed, and I earned the reputation of being a goody-goody. On a few memorable occasions other children would force me to watch them go, in the fields or woods; and once, playing in a large barn, a girl urinated from the loft, her urine splashing to the floor below, while the other boys and girls teased me, saying, “Look, Grant, it’s raining!” Another time, in the woods, a group of boys held me and took down my pants, saying, “See, he does, too, have a thing!” I secretly enjoyed these occasions, but demonstrated fiercely against them.
In high school I was too much of a grind to get involved with girls. One night, after a play rehearsal, the car full of kids I was with stopped off at a deserted seacoast bathhouse, where, in the dark, I was aware of a little hanky-panky, but I simply tagged along, repressing all desire to join in the fun. My only sexual outlets were in masturbation, which I discovered rather late, at about fourteen. My masturbatory fantasies were based on the bathhouse incident, in which, this time, I would always be a participant. Not knowing much about intercourse, I would get kicks just from showing my penis to a girl and having her show me her vagina, then to touch and fondle, in these fantasies.
My freshman year of high school I had at least broken the ice—by urinating in the company of other boys. And during summer holidays, with two cousins, I enjoyed stopping during our treks through the woods to relieve myself without seeking privacy. In fact, privacy came to be something I avoided. I would save up my urine until I could go while at least one other boy was with me. One summer, in another deserted beach house, the three of us had “peeing contests,” seeing which of us could shoot the farthest, or for the longest time. However, although such exhibitionism was very enjoyable, we did not develop any homosexual activities. I now think, however, that I was repressing a desire to touch the other boys’ penises and to have them touch mine.
It was not until the summer of my sophomore college year that I ever kissed a girl on her lips, and on that occasion I shared her favors with my college roommate. Later that summer I dated that girl several times, but never got beyond the lip-kissing stage, although I was fond of her.
Three years in the Army during World War II (I was drafted during my senior year) led to no significant sexual experiences, except for one of passive homosexuality. One night in a hotel room, my best buddy, married and just acknowledged to me to be bisexual, masturbated me to the point of ejaculation. I let my hand just brush over his penis, but still, being repressed, would not allow myself to become an active partner.
I met my wife shortly before the war ended. Mary and I were married seven months after we met. She was the only girl I had ever known well enough to dare to pet. I sometimes wonder whether we would have married if I had had petting experiences with other girls. Naturally, I found petting to be heavenly, and thought that it was Mary, not the petting, that made it so. After our engagement five months after we had met, we felt morally justified to pet to just short of intercourse. We entered marriage as technical virgins, and Mary, also brought up in a puritanical manner, was my exact equivalent in experience and attitudes of sexuality at that time.
The unfortunate thing in our marriage, se
xually, has been that whereas both of us developed in techniques and experience with each other, my attitude has grown extremely liberal, and Mary’s has remained unchanged. We became good sexual partners, and she accepted my requests to experiment with oral-genital acts (which she continues to enjoy with me as often as I do), varied positions, etc. But a few years ago she realized that I needed some form of exhibitionism, which she could not agree to.
After one year of marriage I spent a summer of graduate study alone in London, and there learned about nudism. I returned to Mary with an appeal that we become nudists. This she resisted, to the point of many quarrels, until after seven years of marriage, she gave in reluctantly, and we then went to a nudist camp. I would have gone alone, but most camps require husbands to attend with their wives. I enjoyed the experience greatly, but Mary was uncomfortable. She agreed that it was not immoral, but she felt that it was breaking a social taboo, and would lead to trouble.
Over the years we have been able to attend nudist camps only rarely; always I am the one who enjoys it, and Mary gives in to it.
Eight years ago, while I was pastor of a small church, one of my female parishioners, who enjoyed nude sunbathing on a screened patio in her country home, discovered my interest in nudism, and she invited me to sunbathe there, in privacy, over occasional noon hours. My wife consented. The lady, Jackie, would remain out of sight and read to me. It was exciting to be nude almost in her presence, with her soothing voice.
Eventually she confessed that she was in love with me. She loved her husband, too, but he was impotent and would not disapprove. (This turned out to be true.) She told me that she knew how much I needed relaxation and sexual variety; and before too long I succumbed. I had tried many times to share sexual stories and to discuss sexual interests with Mary, but she was always revolted. Jackie seemed to understand all of my needs and desired to satisfy them. For several months the sunbathing sessions became petting sessions; but always I set myself the limit of stopping short of intercourse, thus technically avoiding adultery.
Beyond Group Sex: Doing Their Own Thing (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior) Page 1