Versatile Ladies: the bisexual option (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  Actually, we don’t concentrate all that much on meeting new people. I would say that’s a big difference between a lot of people in straight swinging and people in B-and-D. When your main interest is in getting into bed with someone new, you have to keep finding new people. Certainly there are some bondage people who are like that, but there are many more who are more interested in the acts than in looking for new partners. In fact it’s more fun to swing with someone you’ve swung with before because everybody is comfortable together and everybody knows what everybody else likes to do, and it makes for a more relaxed evening.

  • • •

  Shortly after the two began swinging, George began having bisexual experiences fairly regularly. The first time this happened was when George was bound and Pauline urged the other husband to “make him suck your cock.” The man complied, with George offering only token resistance. George enjoyed his role in the act, although he seriously doubts that he would enjoy it in a non-bondage situation, and says that he finds the thought of sexual relations with another man unthinkable without women present. For her part, Pauline found that she took great delight in watching her husband perform in this role, delight which she had by no means anticipated.

  It seems evident that the bondage scene in swinging involves a large amount of doublethink and the purposeful acting out of what the participants themselves recognize as sheer fantasy. Obviously two couples who see each other regularly and engage in various sexual acts regularly know what to expect from each other, and know that no one is being “forced” to do anything, that all acts are not only voluntary but are desired at least as much by the forced person as by those doing the forcing. A voluntary suspension of reality is called for and quite readily achieved. A variety of little psychodramas are commonly enacted—that one person is guilty of something and has to be punished, that one is inferior and must serve one’s betters, that one is dirty and foul and has to be humiliated, that one is pure and is to be defiled. All of this is very much a game, and the players have to be able to take it seriously while not losing sight of the fact that it’s very much a game. And, interestingly, the same persons will often pursue one variation of the game one night and another one the next night. Yesterday’s serving wench is tonight’s virgin; tomorrow she’ll be a slut.

  In many cases, the games seem to be an excitement in and of themselves, whether or not the particular fantasy being acted out is one which has particular charm to all of its participants. George told me about one couple with whom they had swung several times. The man was quite a few years older than the woman, and the two had devised a father-daughter fantasy. They would pretend to be father and daughter, she dressing in children’s clothes and speaking in a child’s voice. The pattern of the night’s entertainment was always the same—the “daughter” would do something presumably bad, either spilling her glass of milk or literally wetting her pants, and the father and his friends (ie., the guest couple) would join in to punish her, first with a spanking and then by abusing her sexually. The “father” and “daughter” would stay completely in character throughout the evening, with the woman never slipping out of the little-girl voice. George said he suspected they played the same roles whether company was present or not, and that they are totally involved in their particular fantasy trip.

  I felt George and Pauline were unusually objective and self-analytical, and rather more able to recognize the way they used bondage situations than the average B-and-D fan. Often a bondage enthusiast will keep up a very strong pretense of not enjoying sex, of going to sex sessions assuming they will be purely social, and of being overwhelmed by surprise when, as always, the evening ends with him or her tied up and sexually exploited. It is interesting to speculate how much of this pose is purposeful fantasy reinforcement and how much is neurotic self-deception.

  George and Pauline are not locked to any particular fantasy. Indeed, they are sexual varietists, but their desire for variety manifests itself not in a desire for a constant supply of new partners or even for an endless array of new sexual acts; instead, it operates as a desire for new fantasies, new variations on the bondage theme.

  • • •

  We like imaginative people. I think that’s the most important thing we look for in swinging partners, that they are bright and imaginative people. And that they’re able to get into game situations in a complete way. Not to the point where you literally believe it, but playing it as seriously and completely as an actor playing a role. The worst thing in the world is being at a scene with somebody who doesn’t take bondage seriously, who thinks it’s funny. We’ve had that happen occasionally at group parties, where there will be say half a dozen couples and one of them is just there for laughs. Of course they don’t enjoy themselves, which is their business, but they manage in the process to bring everybody else down and spoil everyone’s fun for the entire evening, and that’s a shame.

  Besides imagination and general sanity and decency, we aren’t very hard to please. I always thought that looks would be terribly important to swingers. That everyone would be tremendously concerned about physical appearance. I was a little worried, for instance, that I might not turn men on because I’m not exactly gorgeous, and also because my breasts are small. I had heard that so many men have this extreme breast thing and if a girl isn’t well endowed in that respect they’re not interested. And the male swingers are even more anxious at the beginning. Will they be able to get it up? Will they be able to screw long enough? Will the other wife be upset because they have smaller cocks than she’s used to? All of those worries, and then you get into swinging and find out you were worrying about nothing at all.

  Of course there are people with certain hangups like that in any avenue of swinging. I know of a woman who has an incredible age thing—she absolutely will not swing with any couple unless the man is at least her age. If he’s two months or twenty years older than she is, fine. If he’s a day younger, she’s completely turned off. I think of that as a weird hangup, but that’s her business.

  And you do get a certain number of people with physical things. Fat turns a lot of people off. But we’ve found that we really don’t care much about appearance, and it’s been our experience that the longer people have been swinging, the less any of that matters. As long as a person isn’t grotesque, it doesn’t make too much difference what they look like. If a man or woman is gorgeous, that’s an added turn-on, but if they’re not it doesn’t much matter.

  In our particular scene, sexual ability isn’t absolutely vital either. We know of several couples where the husband is sexually impotent, for instance. Absolutely cannot get an erection no matter what. It doesn’t matter. You just structure things so that he does something else.

  But imagination and sincerity are so important.

  Of course the whole thing is a game, you know, but games are important. You could really say that our hobby is sex, that it is swinging. There are other things we’re interested in but not nearly so interested as we are in swinging. For awhile this worried me. I was more concerned about it than George. I liked what we were doing and I didn’t feel badly about any of the things we did, but it seemed to me that it all played too prominent a role in our lives. Again, the puritan in me coming to the surface. We were swinging three nights a week, sometimes more, and I thought it was too much.

  How much is too much? That’s a good question, isn’t it? I honestly don’t know the answer, or if there is an answer in the first place. But I managed to sell myself on the idea that swinging once a week was all right but that swinging any time you felt like it was perverted. So George went along with me, and we cut down to one night a week, and one day I looked at myself in the mirror and told myself I was an idiot, because if there’s something you like and it’s not doing you any harm you might as well go ahead and do it as often as you want. It wasn’t as if there was any conflict between us, one of us having the desire to swing more often than the other. Our appetites are pretty much the same in that respec
t.

  I don’t want to give the impression that we operate on any kind of a schedule. Sometimes we’ll go a couple of weeks without swinging, although that’s not usual. Sometimes we’ll swing three or four nights running, although that’s not usual either. I guess it averages out to a little more than twice a week.

  • • •

  Whether or not Pauline and George are to be classified as perverted is a matter the reader may decide for himself, depending on his own definition of the word and his particular inclination to apply it. My own feelings on the subject range from (a) there is no such thing as a pervert to (b) we are all perverts. All in all, I’m happiest when the word doesn’t come up.

  The definition of perversion which seems to make the most sense holds that any form of bizarre sexual behavior constitutes a perversion when it is the sine qua non of sexual satisfaction—i.e., when sexual pleasure is impossible without it. By this line of reasoning, a man is not a pervert because he enjoys fucking a loaf of bread, so long as he also enjoys fucking his wife some of the time instead.

  If we apply this standard, I would have to say that Pauline and George would be considered perverted in that bondage is invariably a part of their sexual behavior, whether with another couple or couples or alone in their marital bed. It is physically possible for them to make love without the presence of the bondage component. Similarly, it is possible for them to make love with their clothes on. Because they find it more enjoyable, they do use bondage and do make love in the nude. Is this preference, indeed insistence upon nude lovemaking, a perversion?

  Obviously not. And yet it would have been considered as such in most American circles less than a century ago. I am not convinced that we gain anything by labeling any act or preference perverted. One man’s fish is another man’s poison, after all.

  Speaking of perverts (or not speaking of perversions) one recalls that this is a book about female bisexuality, and we thus ought to pay particular attention to the importance of bisexual relations in Pauline’s sexual life style. How central is it?

  Quite central, I think, although not to the extent that she participates in swinging in order to have opportunities for bisexual relations. It is more that, for her and for her husband as well, bisexuality is an intrinsic component of group sex to the point where group scenes in which it is prohibited seem artificial and relaxation becomes difficult.

  • • •

  “When you swing,” she says, “you want to be able to touch anybody who attracts you. If you have to make an effort not to touch or be touched by certain persons in a crowd scene, you can’t help being nervous about it. I can enjoy myself in a swing if I’m the only woman in the room. That’s all right. But I can’t enjoy myself fully if there is another woman in the room, and the two of us have to be very careful not to do anything with each other.”

  • • •

  At the same time, Pauline’s bisexuality is very much a function of her bondage orientation. Her style of bondage involves not pain or punishment so much as violation and the forced performance of forbidden acts. That a certain act is taboo makes it particularly pleasing in these circumstances. Thus Pauline’s desire for lesbian relations only in a bondage situation. Thus, too, her urging another man to “force” George to fellate him.

  For several months now, Pauline and George have belonged to a small group that meets regularly on the second Saturday of every month. There are five couples in all, all of them living within fifty miles of one another. Pauline and George had previously swung several times with all of the member couples, but had never been informed of the circle’s existence until they were asked to join. Previously the group had existed for a period of about three years, starting as a three-couple union, adding a fourth couple after a few months, and finally enlarging to its present size with the addition of Pauline and George.

  The meetings are very specialized and highly ritualistic. All meetings are held at the same home, that of a childless attorney and his wife who have fitted out their basement recreation room as a bondage fan’s dream. At each monthly meeting, one of the wives takes her turn as the victim. She is stripped and bound, subjected to mild and largely symbolic tortures, and possessed sexually in a variety of ways by the five men and four women. Sex acts are performed solely upon her, the others do not have relations with one another, and the meeting is over when they are through with her.

  Pauline had recently played the Victim role and related the evening’s experiences to me in considerable detail. I had initially thought to present this material in summary form rather than include it verbatim. I thought to do this chiefly because her account reads like the scenario for a pornographic film, and I like to think I write these books out of a higher purpose than the vicarious stimulation of the reader.

  It is of course impossible to write candidly about sexual behavior without producing something that a greater or lesser number of readers will respond to. I am beginning to grow used to remarks like, “I really enjoyed your last book. I thought it was very interesting and well written, and I jerked off three times reading it.” I suppose, after all, that any writer should be complimented to learn that his books made people masturbate; personally I’m gratified to learn that they don’t make people throw up.

  I am concluding this chapter with Pauline’s account of the meeting of the club. I feel it is valuable in understanding not only Pauline but a whole type of bondage enthusiast, and far more valuable in her words than in mine. The reader ought to keep firmly in mind, however, that the club meeting is very much a special event for its members, that their lives the other thirty days of each month do not approach this level of drama and artifice.

  • • •

  For at least a week before the meeting, I walked around tingling. You know in advance when it’s going to be your turn, and every five months your turn comes up again. One reason we’ll probably never enlarge to six couples is that it would mean waiting an extra month between turns.

  We didn’t do any swinging during that week. We did make love, though, and had relations almost every night. Some couples abstain for a week to make things more intense. We haven’t found that necessary. We were so turned on by the anticipation that we absolutely had to have each other.

  We arrived at the meeting at eight-thirty. The other couples had already been there for half an hour getting things ready. George went inside first. I waited in the car for ten minutes. I was wondering what was going to happen. It’s never exactly the same. The ritual always changes so that it won’t be predictable for the Victim.

  I was both excited and frightened. It’s very frightening not knowing what’s going to happen. You can’t help thinking that it will be something you don’t want. It never is, it’s always good for everybody, but you can’t get the possibility out of your head.

  I went to the door when it was time and knocked. The hostess opened the door. She is a good friend and we have made love often but we both acted as though we had not met before. She had her red hair piled up on top of her head. She was wearing high tight boots with spike heels and a black body stocking. She said, “Enter, Victim” and led me inside and down a flight of stairs to the basement. Then I was forced to strip to the buff.

  Before I went into the room she came up behind me and slipped a black silk hood over my head, tying it around my neck. Then hands grabbed me by the arms and led me into the room.

  “I caught this whore sneaking around outside,” she announced. “She’ll have to be punished.”

  Someone said, “Why not just kill her?”

  “Let’s amuse ourselves first,” someone else said.

  I stood there swaying while they all came up to me and touched me, making comments on my appearance. They talked about my legs and breasts and bottom and mentioned the things they would like to do to me. Then the talking stopped completely. My arms were still held. Others took hold of my ankles and I was lifted silently into the air and turned around several times until I didn’t know which direction
was up.

  Then they made me ride the horn. It is one of those buckboards that are used in gymnasiums, a raised leather cylinder which they modified by mounting an oversized dildo on it at the appropriate angle. I was placed on it with the dildo inserted in my vagina. My hands were tied together beneath the buckboard and so were my ankles. I couldn’t move at all, and the dildo was large enough to be painful stuck all the way up me. My head hung over the end of the buckboard. My breasts were squashed flat against the smooth leather.

  I was still wearing the hood and couldn’t see anything. I was able to breathe through it, but in that situation you tend to re-breathe a lot of the same air, which gives you a slight feeling of dizziness.

  For awhile they played with me. Hands touched me all over. Someone worked a finger into my asshole and poked at me. After a few minutes of this the whipping began. They used a birch switch which marks the skin but doesn’t break it. It stings fiercely but the pain goes away completely after a few hours and the marks are usually gone within a day.

  Just before the birching began, one of the women said, “I want to hear that whore scream.” This was said partly to remind me that the room was soundproofed and I could scream if I wanted. This is good because in a situation like this you want to be able to scream and beg.

  The birching was fantastically exciting, especially because of riding the horn. I was comfortable in that position but completely helpless and couldn’t move at all. And of course the dildo was deep inside me and when I writhed from the birching it drove that much deeper. They whipped me expertly, building me up just right and then stopping just when I was on the brink of coming and letting me down abruptly and then starting in again. The pain was just excruciating. Normally I do not like pain at that intense a level, which was part of the point of the whole thing, that I would be getting a little more than I wanted and that this would make it more real for me.