ARNOLD: In spite of this, Bill Foster still wanted to report those bastards. Even if it meant losing his job and having to move to another city, he felt it was worth it. What scared him was the possibility that the group would take revenge. He said he had the feeling they wouldn’t draw the line at murder, and he didn’t want to risk his life or Peg’s. And he got nightmares at the thought of what those criminals would do if they got their hands on their children—
Well, that’s outside of our own experience, thank God. But the point is that we were very wary of what we were getting into. But after we had exchanged several letters with George and Ethel Lemm, we felt we had a good idea of what their group was like and that it was what we were looking for. We arranged a meeting with them, not to have sex but just so that we could get acquainted with them and learn some more about the group, and also so they could look us over and decide whether we were the type of people they wanted to add to the group. We met them and hit it off marvelously, sat and talked with them for hours. It was interesting how closely their own experience prior to joining the group paralleled ours. We felt that if this had worked so well for them it would probably be worth trying, and the upshot was that they invited us to the next meeting of the group and we accepted the invitation.
MONA: There were just five other couples at that first meeting, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt the way I did that night, nervous and excited all at once. One thing I discovered was that I didn’t even think about the sexual acts that might happen. They didn’t come to my mind, and if I tried to think about them in advance my mind just wandered off to something else. I suppose this was what you would call a defense.
ARNOLD: It was much the same for me. We all had a few drinks to break the ice, and during this time everybody was very friendly and relaxed. They were anxious to get to know us and put us at ease, and this helped a great deal. Then we all went downstairs to the basement recreation room where the actual club activities were going to take place. George Lemm announced that since we were going to be initiated, we would be the subjects for the evening. He told us we would both have to strip immediately. I took off my clothes at once, but Mona refused.
MONA: I didn’t want to. I just couldn’t help it.
ARNOLD: All I could think was that they would send us home. All this planning and everything and for nothing. But I think they sensed what they had to do. A couple of the men took hold of me and tied me up. They had me bend over a piano stool and tied my wrists to the legs of the stool, and then they tied my ankles together. While I was like that, they took hold of Mona and immobilized her so that they could strip all her clothes from her. We learned later that if she had really put up a fuss they would have released her immediately with an apology. That’s the tricky part of the whole bondage scene, of course. A lot of people—Mona is a perfect example—will always resist, but in the hope that they’ll be forced to obey. So you have to be able to tell when a person is acting out a desire and when the resistance is real. It’s not always easy to make that distinction.
MONA: It was really very strange for me. I put up a struggle, but at the same time a part of my mind knew damn well that I would be heartbroken if they didn’t force me to go through with it.
ARNOLD: Fortunately everything worked out perfectly. They tied Mona up and explained the initiation procedure. We were the slaves and would have to perform whatever sex acts they told us to, and if we refused we would be punished. Mona was to be initiated first and I had to watch throughout, and if I didn’t keep my eyes on her I would be punished, too. Then it would be my turn, and Mona would watch.
MONA: After they explained this, they all took turns examining us and touching our bodies. I really felt like a slave on the auction block as they handled me and either praised or insulted my features. Then they told me what I had to do. I was to have oral relations with every one of them, men and women both. Of course I refused.
JWW: Then what happened?
MONA: First of all, they all stripped completely, except that some of the women wore their high-heeled shoes. A lot of the men find that exciting. Then George Lemm came over to me and ordered me to take his penis in my mouth. I refused again, and his wife immediately called me a filthy slut and slapped me three times on my bare bottom. She’s a big women and she can really hit hard. I knew that I would have to do what was asked, and I did.
JWW: Had you ever performed the act before?
MONA: Of course not. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do exactly. George told me exactly what to do, and whenever I failed to please him he would tell Ethel and I would get walloped again. I must have been pretty poor at fellatio because I got spanked a lot, but even so I was good enough at it to make it good for George.
When he ejaculated I had an orgasm and also got sick to my stomach. I thought I was going to throw up and I was afraid that if I did they would be horribly insulted and would probably beat me terribly. Fortunately I didn’t vomit.
Then I did the rest of the men, and I guess my performance improved as I went along, because I didn’t get slapped nearly as much. Each time it would be the wife of the man I was servicing who would give me the spankings. Also, each time I had a quiver of orgasm the instant the man ejaculated. Then they made me do the women, and the husbands were the spankers. I knew it was awful and unnatural to have relations with women but I was tied up and had no choice and so I was able to go through with it. I was able to bring every one of them to orgasm that way, and I had it with them, although it was not as strong for me as it was with the men.
When it was all over they untied me and were very gentle with me. Ethel Lemm took me to the powder room and I had a shower and freshened up, and when I returned to the room all of the men and women took turns hugging me and kissing me on the lips to welcome me to the club, and to show that the initiation ceremony was over and that their real feelings toward me were friendly and not harsh or sadistic at all. Then it was Arnold’s turn, and I found it very exciting to watch this. And because my initiation was over and I was a regular member he had to service me along with the others, and I thus had cunnilingus performed on me for the first time while one of the men whacked Arnold on the behind with a paddle, and this was very exciting for me and I had a fantastic climax—
• • •
Arnold’s initiation was essentially the same as Mona’s. He too was required to perform orally upon all of the members, both male and female. It is not unusual for bondage clubs to give male homosexuality a prominent role, and Arnold, who had a strong bias against such acts, participated readily; he found it wholly compatible with the role of slave in which he had been cast.
Indeed, the desire to perform forbidden homosexual acts is very commonly a strong motivator for participation in bondage activities. While this was more notably the case with Mona than with Arnold, he admitted that he derived definite pleasure from certain homosexual practices which would have revolted him in any other set of circumstances.
Once initiated, the Carters were immediately accepted as full members of the group and became enthusiastic participants at all group functions. It so perfectly satisfied their sexual needs that they were never tempted to make contact with any other swingers, nor did they ever have private sessions with other group couples. The regular meetings of the group, held two or three times a month, constituted their sole extramarital sexual outlet and fulfilled all their requirements in this regard.
ARNOLD: The meetings were just what we needed, tremendously exciting and satisfying for us. But we found that the group activity had a very positive effect on our own life at home.
MONA: But don’t get the impression that we’ve let our private sex life together become unnatural.
ARNOLD: We haven’t. But it’s true that we’ve changed some of our attitudes to a degree. There are acts we perform that we didn’t used to do, like oral sex. And once in awhile one of us will tie the other up and we’ll have relations in that way, perhaps with some spanking as a sort of love play.
But we only do that on rare occasions for a special treat.
MONA: The important change is just that we’re sexier together. I guess the memories of group activity play a role, and also as we’ve come to realize our own sexual potential we can respond more completely to obvious normal stimulation. It’s as though the group teaches us how to become excited, and our bodies learn at the meetings and remember how to get with it when we’re home together.
JWW: I see. And as far as the meetings themselves are concerned, is the program generally the same as it was that first night?
ARNOLD: The general idea is the same, but that first night was special because it was an initiation. In the course of the usual evening, several men and women will have a turn as victims, and they’ll be restrained one way or another and disciplined and forced to perform various acts. Or once in awhile a man and woman are selected as master and mistress for the night, and then all of the rest of us are slaves and have to do their bidding.
MONA: Just last month we played a version of Spin-The-Bottle. A person would spin it, and whoever it pointed to had to perform whatever act the spinner demanded. Then after the victim paid his forfeit it was his turn to spin.
ARNOLD: Other times, too, the focus is more on punishment than on forcing the victim to perform sexually. Almost all of the club members are capable of reaching a climax just by being spanked. It has to be done just right or it won’t work, but we’re all good at administering the proper sort of spanking. You have to start slow and gradually increase the speed and the violence of the spanking, and this has to be done without inflicting excessive pain or that takes away from the pleasure. This is hard for some spankers to control, because they get excited themselves in the course of administering a spanking and they tend to get carried away. But no one has ever been badly injured, and for the most part things work out perfectly.
MONA: Just for the record, there will be times at the meetings when people have sexual relations without any Sadie Mae element at all.
ARNOLD: That’s absolutely correct. Of course the atmosphere is always there, but not the acts themselves. I think this is a good effect that the group has had on us, too, because before we started I don’t think we could have had sex in a normal way among a group of people and found it satisfying. So although the natural reaction would be to say that our activities in the bondage group have turned us into a couple of roaring perverts, committing all sorts of acts that the average person would never do, I think that you could honestly argue that it’s helped us adjust to sex in a more normal way than before, because originally we were repressing so many impulses that we couldn’t loosen up and enjoy any sort of sex to the fullest extent, and now we’ve learned to overcome a lot of that.
MONA: From what I know about psychology and psychiatry and all the rest, which admittedly isn’t too very much, I understand that one method of therapy is to find a way to act out the problems and hang-ups that are bothering you, that once you get them out in the open you’re much better off, and with luck you can even reach the point where they no longer influence you. I know I’m getting all the words wrong, but isn’t that a principle of some kinds of therapy?
JWW: Yes, it is, and when a less realistic sort of acting out is desired much the same thing applies verbally—the patient is encouraged to talk out fantasies and wishes in order to get them out of his unconscious mind. The theories vary tremendously, of course. There are so many different schools of thought. But I can appreciate your point, that this sort of activity has a therapeutic function.
ARNOLD: I don’t think there’s any question about it.
JWW: Speaking of questions, here’s one. I gather you feel quite strongly that the group is right for the two of you—
ARNOLD: There’s no question about that, either.
JWW: —and yet at the same time I get the impression that you hope the group serves a therapeutic purpose to the point where you won’t need it any longer. Is that the case?
MONA: Yes and no.
ARNOLD: We’re certainly not counting on it, or even expecting it, but we have considered the possibility.
JWW: So how would you sum up your feelings about the particular sexual adjustment you’ve made?
ARNOLD: Well, that’s kind of tough to put into words. The thing is, all anyone can ever do is just do the best he can, and we’ve done that, and things have been working out pretty well for us. But even so, well, if you remember earlier we both got pretty defensive on the whole topic of perversion. First we denied that we did perverted things and then we denied that the things we did were really perverted and then we said that the bondage and discipline weren’t that important to us, and all in all we were evading things, weren’t we?
JWW: It’s perfectly understandable.
ARNOLD: Well, my point is that I think almost anyone who recognizes that his sexual drive is out of the normal channels, especially if he begins to understand how it got that way and all, would rather have things be normal. I’ll say this now and put it out of my mind later on, but I’ll still say it—we both know that by all rules we’re perverted. And given the choice we’d rather have it different.
MONA: The children.
JWW: You wouldn’t want your children to know—
MONA: Oh, that goes without saying, but that’s not what I was getting at. What I mean is that a person may insist that a certain way of life is normal or healthy or whatever, and the test of how you really feel about it is whether or not you would want your children to grow up the same way. Once you look at it that way there’s no question.
ARNOLD: We have never spanked our children and never will.
MONA: They get away with murder some of the time, but that’s one rule we made for ourselves that will never be broken. Not that it’s so much a matter of spanking but of the whole sexual attitudes they develop in every respect. We want to raise our children so that they grow up with a healthy feeling about sex. They say that no matter what you do a kid will have some sexual hang-ups, that there’s no such thing as a perfectly adjusted human being, and I guess that’s so, but we’re doing what we can to make it as easy for them as possible. I don’t want any child of mine growing up scared of sex or insatiable or sadomasochistic or anything else, and we feel an open attitude and a really loving stable environment is the best guarantee that they’ll grow up sane. And do you want to know something? That’s where the group has done us the most good. Because it brought our own problems into the open and let us face them thoroughly, and because we did that we’ve been able to understand our attitudes and know just how kids get twisted up sexually, so that we can keep that from happening to our kids. If we got nothing more than that out of the group, it would still be worth every moment we’ve given it.
The Secret Swinger
In an earlier chapter we saw how Marcia Duffy found it no problem at all to function in the swinging society as an unattached female. Her male counterpart, the single man, has a much harder time of it in almost every respect.
For one thing, he is far too abundant. The sexual revolution notwithstanding, the fact remains that the average American male is considerably more likely to accept free-wheeling sex as desirable and legitimate than is the average American female. For any number of reasons, it has been a truism since the dawn of human civilization that virtually any woman, whatever her appearance or manner, can readily find a man who is willing, even anxious, to make love to her, while men cannot locate sexual partners with anything approaching the same degree of certainty. It is quite possible that this is a universal biological law—throughout the animal kingdom, it is males who compete for females, with every physically healthy female certain of sexual attention. A single ram will service every female in a flock or die in the attempt, while if there are two rams, the weaker will have to settle for seconds if indeed he gets any sexual succor at all.
The evolutionary advantages of this state of affairs in terms of species survival are fairly obvious, but they do little to comfort the unattached
man who wants to join the swinging society and finds himself frustrated in the attempt.
A glance at any of the correspondence club magazines tells the story vividly enough. It is standard procedure for clubs to run advertisements with names and addresses omitted, and to charge those replying to ads a fee, usually one dollar, for each letter forwarded to an advertiser. Indeed this is the major source of income for most clubs, and often the ads themselves are run at no charge in the hope of forwarding revenue.
However, many club publications contain a section in which advertisers may give their names and addresses so that correspondents may contact them directly and save forwarding fees. The advertisers in this section are almost invariably single males who desire to meet single girls, couples, groups, or whatever, and who express their willingness to participate in any act that their correspondent may have in mind.
It is rare for many of these men to receive any bona fide replies at all. In contrast, advertisements placed by single women—usually placed by women seeking lesbian contacts, and occasionally run by postal inspectors playing the happy game of entrapment—draw very heavy reader response.
In order to be accepted in the swinging society, the single man usually tries to find a steady partner with whom he can attend parties and orgies or meet with other couples. Once he manages to make such a connection he ceases to be a single man for all practical purposes and manages essentially to engage in extramarital sexual relations without the burden of marriage.
As a matter of fact, more than a few marriages have grown up out of such swinging relationships. This is most often the case with second marriages. Swingers, like everyone else, are apt to get divorced, though it is hard to say whether the divorce rate in their ranks is higher or lower than the national average. Some swingers, too, find themselves widowed. When this happens the newly-unmarried swingers most often wish to remain in the life and are quick to choose a partner from the available swingers of the opposite sex. Remarriage is often the ultimate result, and in at least one case the happy couple demonstrated their wholehearted commitment to the cause of extramarital sex by taking along a half-dozen friends on their honeymoon. The unblushing bride was treated to a highly unusual wedding night, to be sure.
The Taboo Breakers: Shock Troops of the Sexual Revolution (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior) Page 16