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

by Lawrence Block

  I haven’t seen her since then. Or heard from her. After the breakup I moved from Brooklyn out to Jersey to be closer to the airport where I fly out of. So I lost track of people I had known before.

  I think Kate’s married. I’m not really sure one way or the other but think she’s married. Whether or not she is still swinging I don’t know. Knowing her I would suspect that she would be. Whether or not her husband was interested in it, she is the type of person who could get him to go along with it with no trouble.

  I think about her sometimes. Mostly because when I was with her I had access to sex that I cannot get regularly any more. Thus I would like someone similar to her in certain ways, but have no interest in seeing Kate herself again, as that whole situation is over and done with.

  • • •

  The break with Kate marked the end of a stage in Eddie’s sex life. He was now a male swinger without a swinging partner, a difficult role at best in today’s sexual underground. His present situation in a small town in New Jersey does not help matters, as it is quite isolated from the swinging scene. While there may well be swingers in considerable numbers in his area, there is no way for him to find out who they are and initiate contacts with them.

  • • •

  Since the break I’ve had experiences with both men and women. But I haven’t had the one thing I really want, which is relations with both men and women at the same time. I can enjoy either men or women alone, but as far as men are concerned, I can’t really let go and enjoy myself completely without the presence of a woman.

  I don’t know exactly why this is. Maybe it’s that I can accept being bisexual but cannot accept being homosexual, and thus need a woman around to ease my mind. But I don’t think that’s it exactly. Maybe it plays a part but there is something more. I just find sex with a man so much more exciting with a woman present. It adds something to the experience for me. It makes it fuller, more complete.

  I’ll pick up women in bars, that sort of thing. Sometimes it leads to sex and sometimes not. Sometimes it’s a one-night thing. Once in a while we see each other for a longer period of time. But I haven’t gotten into a long-term relationship with anyone since Kate.

  A couple of times I’ve tried to get girls interested in threesomes or foursomes. If you have a girl as a partner it’s simple to set things up. There’s nothing to it if you have a partner. I tried to interest various girls that I thought might go for it. But none of I them has ever been interested. Or if they were interested they were afraid to admit it. So nothing ever came of it.

  I’ll have fantasies about group sex. Either as a result of something I read or something I imagine in my mind. Sexually I have a fantastic imagination. I’ll dream something up and picture it and masturbate while imagining that it is actually happening. Sometimes this is more satisfying in certain ways than actual contact by itself with either a man or a woman, but it is nowhere near what actually engaging in group sex would be.

  Your book, Three Is Not A Crowd, I found very exciting in this respect. But I would have enjoyed it more if there had been male bisexuality as well. A threesome with two men and a girl, that would be ideal for me. Threesomes, foursomes, mob scenes, this is what I want but it is so difficult for me to arrange it without a bi-girl as a partner.

  My dream is to meet the right woman. I think about this all the time. That is what I am really looking for. My ideal would be a bisexual gal in her forties, someone I could really respond to sexually and also someone I could care for. Someone I would ultimately marry and settle down with, and we would pursue the swinging scene together.

  I’ll tell you something. It is a hell of a lonely life when you are alone. Not sharing anything with another person, not having a person that’s important to you and who cares about you and what happens to you. So much of the time I’m such a terribly lonely guy.

  As far as women are concerned, I have the ones I pick up in bars. Also I’ll have sex with men now and then, but it’s impossible where I live. I have to come into the city or go to some larger town in Jersey. I meet fellows now and then in gay bars and go to a hotel room, or I’ll go to one of the public bath houses. I always enjoy this but not as I would if a woman were present. When it comes to men, I like a guy who is a regular man. Not the effeminate type. They just put me off. I like a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. Very swishy men and very butchy gals I just plain don’t dig at all. I don’t know why. Just not my type.

  I wrote you about answering an ad in Screw. The guy wanted me to whip him. Told me over the phone just how he wanted me to take a belt and beat the hell out of him. I damn near puked listening to him. Just not my scene at all. No way I could enjoy anything like that. I can’t even think about it without getting upset. Straight sex, any kind of straight sex—beautiful. But kinky stuff like that just turns me off completely.

  Here’s something interesting. I’m sharing a house now with a guy out in Jersey. A nice fellow about my own age, a little younger. I don’t really know him too well other than to share a house with. He’s waiting right now for a divorce to go through and there’s a girl that he’s going with. She’s over at the house all the time. I more or less take it for granted that they’re sleeping together although she doesn’t live with him. And nothing has ever been said about it, but I more or less take it for granted that they’re having sex. Whether or not he plans to marry her after the divorce is final I don’t know.

  Now the thing is I have absolutely no interest in having sex with this couple. Not that there is any reason in the world for me to think they would be interested. I doubt that they would be interested, although you can never know about these things. But I doubt it. And even if they were, I would have no interest in it. They are both very attractive people. I don’t know what it is about them but they are not my type, either of them. I think if I ever did get involved in a trio with them it would make me physically ill. I would get nauseous in a situation like that.

  I don’t know why.

  I have something going now that might turn out to be just what I’ve been looking for. I don’t know, though. I try to keep from getting my hopes up too high. You search and search for the right woman and never find her.

  I met a girl named Toni in a bar. I was with another girl and she was with another guy but somehow or other we clicked and got to talking. She came right out and said she wanted to take nude pictures of me. And she more or less hinted that she knew another couple who might be interested in getting together. It’s hard to know just what we told each other because there was all this talking around the subject, but the impression I got is that she’s a girl who wants to swing, and that she digs me in that way. A good-looking girl. I would say she’s in her late thirties. I would also guess that she’s bi, but I don’t know that for sure.

  So we exchanged phone numbers. She gave me the number of her office in Manhattan. That’s the part that’s inconvenient, me living way the hell out of town and her living in Manhattan. But maybe something will come of it. I’m supposed to call her Friday and we’ll see what happens.

  • • •

  I told Eddie I’d be very interested in knowing what might develop between him and this girl, and would be interested in being kept informed on any further developments in his sex life or any additional thoughts he might care to communicate. He assured me he would keep in touch, dropping me a letter from time to time and letting me know how things turned out.

  As we left the café, he turned to me and said, “Man, I’m really horny today. Where’s a good place to make out in this neighborhood?”

  I asked if he was looking for male or female companionship.

  He grinned. “To tell you the truth, it doesn’t matter a damn to me the way I feel now. Male or female, it doesn’t matter one way or the other.”

  It was the middle of a weekday afternoon, and the only available female talent was likely to be devoutly commercial in nature. I thus recommended a health club a few blocks away which has the reputatio
n of swinging enthusiastically twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Eddie loped off toward the club while I returned to my apartment to type up a set of notes of the conversation.

  When a few weeks passed without word from him, I dropped him a short note in which I asked how things went at the health club and if there had been any developments with the girl who wanted to take nude pictures of him.

  I received the following reply by return mail:

  May 15, 1971

  Dear Jack:

  Received your note. Many thanks. Sorry to say that Toni didn’t show. Called several times but she was not in. She has my phone number.

  The bath house was okay. Wish there was a girl present tho. Everything here is the same. Still looking for that one gal. Guess that’s about it. If I can help in any way let me know.

  Eddie

  In a sense, no case history is complete as long as the subject is alive. But some case histories are more complete than others. Of those in this present volume, the reader will note that several persons have made what seem likely to prove to be final adjustments—they have gone through periods of conflict and uncertainty and have settled into a pattern which seems to suit them enough to be essentially permanent life styles. This may turn out to be illusory; today’s stability may lead in short order to tomorrow’s chaos. But at least their lives at present have leveled off and their case histories have a finished quality to them, to a greater or lesser degree.

  Eddie’s certainly does not. He is in the highly lamentable position of knowing precisely what sort of life he wants, of being able to accept the ostensible abnormality and immorality of that life with no difficulty. In this respect he appears quite well-adjusted.

  But, though he can describe the life he wants, he has not been able to achieve it.

  Obviously a certain shyness on his part has been holding him back. As to the future, I find predictions extremely difficult. He may find the girl of his dreams and live happily ever after. He may find a girl who falls short of his ideal but who will serve as a swinging partner, giving him entry to the sort of sexual arrangements he so definitely craves. Or he may as easily continue as he has done for the past four or five years, having isolated contacts with both men and women, and limiting his group sex activities to masturbatory fantasies.

  One may decide for oneself whether Eddie is better off for having met Kate and having awakened to his capacity for bisexual enjoyment. On the one hand, her influence opened up a world of far more intense sexual pleasures than he had ever experienced, or indeed even envisioned. On the other hand, given the dimensions of his present situation, one could maintain that he is like a person permitted a glimpse of paradise and then returned to earth. None of his current earthly pleasures can approach that quick peek at Heaven, and the result is frustration.

  • • •

  Some versatile ladies—and here a versatile gentleman. Persons involved in various facets of group sex, of swinging, of the New Morality, of Sexual Freedom. People who still must hide their sexual preferences from society, but who are now far more likely to be aware of these preferences, and far more capable of satisfying them, than ever before. People whose lives have been very much shaped by the sexual revolution and who in turn shape it themselves.

  Are all women bisexual? I suspect they are, and all men too. The old Freudian theory of homosexuality as a stage of adolescent sexual development—and thus, in an adult, a sign of arrested development—has been pretty much written off lately. Will we shortly come to regard both exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality as neurotic, indeed as twin aspects of the same neurosis? Perhaps we will. And perhaps the question is academic.

  Earlier this month a lesbian journalist participated in a Women’s Lib forum in Town Hall and climaxed her speech with a bit of theater—two girlfriends joined her on the stage and the three rolled around making love. In last week’s Village Voice, a male homosexual accused her of lesbian chauvinism, pointing out that heterosexuals of the most bigoted sort find lesbianism glamorous, while straight intellectuals are still put off by male homosexuality. “Lesbianism is perverse, while faggotry is perverted; lesbianism serves as an appetizer at suburban orgies, while faggotry would be beneath contempt at these same orgies; lesbianism is exotic, or at worst, good for a laugh, while faggotry is viciously punishable or, at best, good for a laugh.” Thus a male doing as this woman had done would “set the cause back ten years,” while lesbians “get away with murder.”

  Hmmmm.

  I mused on this while reading a book review in this week’s Village Voice. Faubion Bowers was discussing half a dozen new books on homosexuality, and came up with this observation:

  “Two things have always been true of sex in any form. One, it’s the only interesting thing boring people do, and two, everyone, literally everyone, not only has an opinion but is an expert in one way or another.”

  Hear, hear!

  The End

  About the Authors

  Lawrence Block has been writing best-selling mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. A multiple recipient of the Edgar and Shamus awards, he has been designated a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and received the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the UK’s Crime Writers Association. His most recent novels are A Drop Of The Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, and Getting Off, starring a very naughty young woman. Several of his books have been filmed, although not terribly well. He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit, and The Liar's Bible. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television: Tilt! and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

  John Warren Wells emerged in the mid-1960s as a writer of sexological nonfiction, and produced twenty books in the ensuing decade. His works, in the main, consist of compilations of case histories selected to illuminate a particular theme, and topics range from female bisexuality (Women Who Swing Both Ways) and troilism (Three is Not a Crowd) to the evolving lifestyles of a decade of sexual liberation (The New Sexual Underground and Wide Open: The New Marriage). His groundbreaking work, Tricks of the Trade: A Hooker’s Handbook of Sexual Technique, was especially successful, and may have inspired Xaviera Hollander to write The Happy Hooker.

  One particularly noteworthy book, Different Strokes, consists of his screenplay and production diary for the pornographic feature film of that name, which he seems to have written and directed, in addition to playing a key role. His column, “Letters to John Warren Wells,” was a popular feature in Swank Magazine. The dedications of several books would seem to indicate that Wells carried on an extensive on-again, off-again relationship with Jill Emerson, herself the author of Threesome, A Week as Andrea Benstock, and, more recently, Getting Off. All of JWW’s books have been out of print for thirty-five years; that they are now available to a new generation of readers may be attributed to the technological miracle of eBooks and the apparently limitless ego and avarice of their author.

  Contact Lawrence Block:

  Email: lawbloc@gmail.com

  Blog: LB’s Blog

  Facebook: LB's Facebook Fan Page

  Website: www.lawrenceblock.com

  Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

  * * *

  John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Ebooks

  3 Is Not A Crowd

  Beyond Group Sex: The New Sexual Life Styles

  Come Fly With Us

  Different Strokes: Or, How I (Gulp) Wrote, Directed & Starred in an X-Rated Movie

  Doing It!

  Eros and Capricorn

  The Male Hustler

  Older Women and Younger Men: The Mrs. Robinson Syndrome

  Sex and the Stewardess

  The Sex Therapists

  Sex Without Strings

  The New Sexual Underground

  The Taboo Breakers

  Tricks of the Trade: A Hooker’s Handbook of Sex
ual Technique

  Versatile Ladies: Women Who Swing Both Ways

  Wide Open: The New Marriage

  The Wife-Swap Report

  Sex Without Strings

  John Warren Wells, Lawrence Block

  * * *

  Excerpt, copyright © 2012, Lawrence Block

  All Rights Reserved

  But First This Word From Our Author

  In the following pages you will make the acquaintance of the following people:

  Evelyn, a divorcée, whose husband introduced her to swinging, and who is still swinging although she’s shed her husband . . .

  Christie and Vernon, who like to bring home an extra man now and then . . .

  Frank, a retired doctor who has made a permanent house call upon a young married couple . . .

  Marv, a man who has managed to swing even though his wife isn’t interested . . .

  Kate and Bob, who arrange threesomes with other couples in a most unorthodox way . . .

  Jean-Paul, a model husband at home, but a practicing sadist away from it . . .

  Lew, a uniquely gifted sexual con man . . .

  Erica, a bisexual who swings on a never-ending pendulum from man to woman and back again . . .

  Paul, who has found paradise by encouraging women to divulge their favorite fantasies . . .

  And a couple more.

  • • •

  What do all these people have in common? (Aside from the fact that they’re all in the same book, that is.)

  All of them touch in one way or another upon a subject I had the devil’s own time finding a title for. They are swingers, involved in casual sexual relationships for recreational purposes, and yet they are not in the traditional mold of couples meeting with other couples. They are people without mates, or people swinging without mates, or are sexually involved with such people, or—