The Taboo Breakers: Shock Troops of the Sexual Revolution (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  JUNE: I stood there and felt myself blushing. Here I was making small talk with this woman and I knew what she looked like with no clothes on. I wanted to say something, but at least I had the brains to keep my mouth shut.

  LEE: For once.

  JUNE: You’re the one to talk, all right.

  LEE: Anyway, to make a long story short, I wrote them a very frank letter. I couldn’t see what we had to lose. I bought this Polaroid years ago to take pictures of the kids, so I hauled it out of the drawer and we took pictures of each other. Not full-length nudes, I was still a little leery of that, but me in a bathing suit and June in a pair of shorts and no halter. We shot a whole roll of film before we were happy with the results. Then I wrote this frank letter explaining that I had written earlier under another name because this was our first time and we were a little nervous about it. I told him about us and that he could check us out if he wanted and that we’d like to get together.

  JUNE: They never did bother to check. Two days later I’m ironing and the phone rings. A gal says, “This is Miriam. Cliff and I were really impressed with your letter and we’d like to get together with you.” At first I couldn’t think who the hell Miriam was, and then I remembered and I started to blush, as if she could see me blushing over the telephone. I said we’d love to meet them and how about Saturday night? She said that was a long time and why didn’t we come up to their house that very evening? I said something about getting a sitter on a week night, and she said they didn’t have kids and could come to our place if that was more convenient. I was very nervous at the idea of doing anything with the kids in the house. I said I’d leave the kids with my mother or get her to come over and watch them, and we set a time and I hung up and called my mother and made the arrangements, and then I quickly called Lee at the store and told him, and then I spent the rest of the day watching the clock and wondering what to wear and was my hair all right and would I be able to go through with it and would the guy, Cliff, like me.

  LEE: She didn’t have any worries on that score. They had a cute little bungalow just around the block from his drugstore and when we got there they were ready with drinks and soft music on the hi-fi, Miriam recognized June from at the store and we all got a laugh out of that and it helped break the ice. I was seeing Miriam for the first time aside from the picture. She looked much better than the picture. I was ready for her ten seconds after I walked in the door, and it was obvious Cliff felt the same about June.

  JUNE: When I saw the bulge in his crotch it was obvious, all right. I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. Knowing he wanted me made me very excited and a lot less nervous.

  LEE: First we sat around and talked. There was no small talk, we got right down to business and talked about swinging. We had a million questions and they gave us a lot of information. Mostly they just said the same things we had gathered from the books, but we did pick up some fresh slants on the whole thing. Then Miriam came over and sat next to me on the couch. She kept telling me how attractive I was and her eyes were centered on my crotch, and I had a rod you could have hung out a week’s wash on. Cliff was in the other room adjusting the volume on the hi-fi or something. I didn’t know what the hell to do, whether I was supposed to kiss her or grab hold of those tits of hers or what, and with June just a few yards away it made it even more confusing. I’m a guy who usually can make up his mind in a hurry, right or wrong, but for once in my life I was really stumped. Then Miriam told June maybe she could help Cliff with the hi-fi, and fortunately June got the message.

  JUNE: I almost went in there before she told me to. But any idiot would of gotten the message.

  LEE: And before June was even out of the room Miriam took her blouse off. No bra, she didn’t need one. I already saw them before in the picture but this was 3-D and life-size and living color, and I guess my eyes must have gone out on stalks. Miriam got a kick out of the way I reacted. She said she guessed I was a tit man like Cliff and that hers were all for me and why didn’t I enjoy myself. I was still pretty slow on the uptake but I didn’t wait for a second invitation. I was all over her in a minute.

  We kept feeling each other and undressing each other as we went along. I just couldn’t keep away from her boobs, and it really drove her wild to have them touched. By the time all our clothes were off I got rattled again. I didn’t know whether we were supposed to find a bedroom or just go to it or what. And on the one hand I didn’t mind just playing with her for the next fifteen years, and on the other hand I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out before the gun went off.

  Then she said, “We thought you’d like separate rooms for the first time, but it’s up to you. They’re in the bedroom, Lee, so we can join them or stay right here. Do you have anything against fucking on couches?” Well, that did it. Except for whores I never heard a woman use the word before. The way June talks now that may be hard to believe, but it’s true. And it really got to me. It snapped me out of this fog I was in. I took one of her jugs in each hand, and I said, “Honey, I could fuck you on a Ferris wheel,” and I put her on that couch and showed her what I meant.

  JUNE: Meanwhile I was with Cliff, and he was giving me the opposite treatment, all slow and sentimental. When I joined him in the other room he put his arms around my waist. Very innocent, but I just about jumped out of my skin. He said I hadn’t seen the rest of the house yet, and cool as could be he led me straight to the bedroom, all the time telling me how beautiful I was and how much he liked me and how he was going to make beautiful love to me.

  Seeing the bed rattled me. There it was, a king-size bed with the covers turned down, and it sort of let you know what you were there for. But Cliff didn’t give me a chance to get too shook up. He kept talking nice and gentle. I didn’t even listen to the words, just the tone of his voice. He had me stand still while he stripped me very slowly, complimenting me on my body and petting me as he undressed me. I had my eyes closed, but he must have been undressing himself at the same time because when I was naked he took me in his arms and kissed me and he was naked against me and his thing was hard as a rock and pressing against me all the way up my belly.

  I was suddenly as hot as a stove but at the same time I was frozen, not frozen cold but frozen stiff, solid. I had to keep my eyes closed, for instance. Cliff knew just the right way to handle me. He made me lie down on the bed and he dimmed the lights way down, they had one of those gadgets on the switch

  LEE: She means a rheostat, I put ’em in here too, I stock ’em at the store—

  JUNE: Oh, for Christ’s sake, who gives a shit what the name of it is? just shut up and let me tell it, will you? I didn’t interrupt when you started singing hymns about Miriam and her big firm titties, did I? Where the hell was I, anyway?

  JWW: Uh, he dimmed the light.

  JUNE: You interrupt me and I lose the thread, Lee. Cliff dimmed the light so that there was just enough light so we could see each other but if I closed my eyes it was like a perfectly dark room, which I did. Then he spent a solid half hour just preparing me for it. He wouldn’t let me do a thing. He told me to lie perfectly still, that he would do everything, and he certainly did. Everything.

  I don’t want to give the impression that Lee wasn’t always a good lover. He was, but swingers are different from other people when it comes to pleasing a person with sex. Like me, for example; I didn’t know anything at all. How can you really expect to be good at sex and to be versatile when you’ve only made love with one man in your whole life? Because I wouldn’t even count the two men before I started with Lee, because that was just on and off, just doing it rather than learning what to do. Even that salesman, he satisfied me, but all he really wanted to do was get his rocks off before I changed my mind. Swingers learn new techniques all the time and really train themselves to give a good performance. Some of them even develop special muscular control.

  Anyway, I’m not knocking Lee when I say that Cliff made me feel really wildly passionate like never before in my life. I never knew
it was possible to feel this way.

  Even on our honeymoon, hot as we both were, at each other every minute of the time, I didn’t get this kind of a thrill. It was like every cell in my body was throbbing. Like cells that were normally sleeping were being turned on every time Cliff threw another switch.

  But I wasn’t in a rush the way I always got before when I was excited. I would of let it go on forever. Then Cliff drew away from me, and I thought he was going to climb on top, and then I felt something brand new, something different from anything else in the world, and I opened my eyes and looked down and there he was going down on me.

  I almost died. The thing is I sort of took it for granted that this would happen because of the books, and in their letter Cliff and Miriam had written that they went in for French culture and from the books we knew what that meant. So I had thought about this, but I wasn’t ready for it. I mean in my mind. I was sure ready for it every other way. Even with the reading and deciding to swap and trying new techniques, Lee and I hadn’t tried this yet. We couldn’t even discuss it with each other, and now Cliff was doing it, and why the hell we were married so many years without trying it I’ll never know, because it drove me out of my skull.

  I didn’t know a woman could come from just that, which shows what I knew. I thought you just did it first, like petting. I changed my mind about that, though. I came like a volcano.

  Then we made love in three different positions and I came each time. Cliff was able to hold off orgasm as long as he wanted. It’s a control you can develop, Lee can do it too now, and Cliff waited until the third time before he let himself go. When he did, he timed it so that we went off together, and he really let the neighbors know. He’s the kind who roars like a bull when he pops.

  LEE: Meanwhile, I’m down there with—

  JUNE: Just one more thing and then it’s your turn. All the time he’s having coitus with me I’m thinking that I ought to go down on him later on. Partly because turnabout is fair play and also because I want to do it. I wasn’t really sure I would like it but I thought why not find out at least, and even if I didn’t like it, it was the least I could do. But the thing was I didn’t know how.

  They didn’t teach it to me in school and maybe it just comes naturally to some girls, but from what I’ve learned from other swingers it’s something you really have to be taught. So when he asked me how I felt and if I was happy I said there was just one thing wrong, and he was anxious to find out what it was, as if he had done something wrong himself, and I told him. Not in so many words. I took hold of him with one hand and put my other hand to my mouth and he got the message. And I said, “I’d really like to return the favor. But the thing of it is that I’ve never done it and I don’t really know what to do.” I was afraid what I said might turn him off, but it had the opposite effect. He talked about the thrill of taking my oral virginity. He showed me just what to do and explained things to me and assured me that he would give me warning when he was getting close so I wouldn’t get a mouthful. I had been worried about that. It’s hard to believe now that it would bother me, but it did, and I understand that’s true with most girls. I did it to him and though I can’t say I enjoyed it then I was glad I was able to do it and that it excited him. A couple of times I almost gagged but not quite. And he gave me plenty of warning and had me finish him off by hand.

  That night without saying a word I did it to Lee. You never saw a more surprised man in your life!

  LEE: You done now? It’s about time. Well, while Queen June here is getting the royal treatment back in the bedroom, I’m on the couch with Miriam, and it’s fantastic—(Here Lee supplied a lengthy account of the various forms of sex he engaged in with Miriam. While it was interesting to note how vividly he remembered the minutest details of the experience, we need not endure them verbatim but might merely note that the regimen included mutual oralism a la soixante-neuf, which Lee had always wanted to try, and anal copulation, which he found physically enjoyable but, at the time, quite distasteful. Miriam was one of a minority of female swingers who enjoyed this form of sex. The majority, with the exception of the Sadie Mae crowd, are like June, who finds the act both degrading and painful and will not permit it under any circumstances.)

  LEE: —so finally we all got together and had drinks. We didn’t bother putting on clothes. I hadn’t stood around in the nude in front of another guy since the Army, but it’s hard to be embarrassed in front of another guy when the two of you have been making it with each other’s wives not fifty yards away. It did rattle me when they started comparing notes right there in front of us. I don’t know why, if you can do it you ought to be able to talk about it, but it takes a while for the average guy to adjust to new ways of thinking about things. The upshot was that they wanted us to stay the night and all stay together in their bed. It sounded great to me but June wanted to be home when the kids woke up, or if her mother should happen to call in the middle of the night, so we left, and later she told me she wasn’t too sure about the idea of all of us together, not until she had some time to think about it first. We went home and decided to write letters to other couples and maybe put in an ad of our own, and then right while I’m in the middle of a sentence June did what she said earlier, she popped it into her mouth like a piece of candy. I couldn’t believe it. I did the same for her later on that night and the sun was up before we were done with each other.

  From that night on there was just no question, this was it for us. I told June the thing that really hurt was all the damn years we did without it. I told her if we only had it all to do over again I wished we could start in swinging the day we got back from our honeymoon, or at least the day it first started to be a routine for us, and she agreed with me on that a hundred percent.

  • • •

  From that point on, Lee and June jumped into the swinging society with all four feet. Through a combination of luck and careful selection of swap-mates they built up a long list of contacts before their first unpleasant experience with an older couple from Philadelphia. “Real creeps,” Lee remembered. “They sent us a picture with the heads cut off, which a lot of people do for safety’s sake, but their bodies really looked great and they wrote a good letter so we took a chance and invited them down.” This was a mistake—with the other couple actually at their house, there was no easy way to call off the show. And, as it turned out, the other couple was unsatisfactory in sexual taste and in appearance as well.

  “Those weren’t their pictures. They sent us a couple of ringers, but with the heads off who could tell until they stripped down? And once they did, what could we do about it without looking like a couple of stiffs? The old guy was skinny as a rail and the woman, well, when she took her dress off she took her tits off along with it. He wanted to go Greek with June and she said no, absolutely not, because we tried it once and she said never again no matter what. So then he wanted to do it to me that way and he just about insisted. Well, by that time I was burning, I had already had his wife once and I certainly didn’t want to have her again, not on a platter. And I know some guys dig the faggot scene, although he was the first one I’d met, and I had enough sense not to get mad when he suggested it. I’ve found that the average guy, if he wants that kind of action, he’ll either come right out and ask or maybe he’ll hint at it, but when you say no that’s the end of it and the subject isn’t brought up again. But this clown was something else. I told him to put on his clothes and that he and his titless wonder of a wife had better get out of our house in a hurry or I’d kiss his ass till his teeth fell out. He got nasty and said something about June and that did it, I really belted him. I suppose I should have controlled myself, but I figured the son of a bitch had it coming.”

  If this couple had served as the Kreinhauser’s introduction to the swinging world it is doubtful that they would have had anything more to do with it. But by the time this incident occurred they had rolled up a long string of successful swaps and were deeply committed to the life. I asked se
veral times if they had had any feelings of jealousy during those early days, or if moral questions troubled them. I found their attitude quite interesting, especially when contrasted to that of a couple like Roy and Barbara Halliday. Unlike the Hallidays, Lee and June both stressed not that wife-swapping drew them closer together and enabled them to share greater intimacies but that it brought each of them individual pleasure without injuring the other and kept their marriage together without specifically enhancing it.

  While this distinct selfishness is by no means uncommon, the Kreinhausers serve as a particularly good example of it in its most undiluted form. In a sense each regards the other as a ticket of admission into the bedrooms of other couples. Lee treasures his wife if for no other reason than that he would be less able to swing if he couldn’t trade her for other women.

  As far as the morality of their actions, both Lee and June professed never to have felt troubled from the beginning. I found this rather hard to believe. Their recital of the traditional justifications for the systematic adultery of swinging had the ring of parrot-talk; it could as easily have been taken word for word from the pages of one of the books they had read. Perhaps they believed it and perhaps they did not. I could only conclude that they had used it as a rationalization for so long that it made deeper thought unnecessary.

  In the same vein, I suspect that they are genuinely amoral in a special sense—i.e., the whole concept of a personal subjective standard of moral behavior is foreign to them. An act or attitude is morally acceptable to the Kreinhauser’s insofar as they feel it to be “normal.” If it is the sort of thing regular folks might do, if it jibes with their image of themselves as plain ordinary Americans, then they do not find it morally reprehensible.

  This is not to say that they are blind to the fact that swinging is socially unacceptable to the great mass of non-swingers, nor do they even condemn as hypocritical society’s condemnation of their way of life. On the contrary, they are acutely aware of the fact that their friends and neighbors would ostracize them if their activities come to light, and they therefore take great pains to hide their actions from the world.