Then there were a few girls who wanted to swing. A few were real dogs, middle-aged women with faces that would stop a calendar, let alone a clock. And of the rest, I would say that almost all of them had certain perversions that they had to have or they couldn’t enjoy sex. Some of them wanted to tie me up and whip me. I did try that once, and it just wasn’t my thing, not by any stretch of the imagination, so I decided the hell with it. And others, quite a few of them, wanted me to act out domination or spanking fantasies with them. One real sweet kid dressed up like a teenager and kept calling me Daddy, and the thing was that I was supposed to give her a spanking and then rape her. She told me her own father had done this when she was twelve years old, but whether it really happened or whether it was her pet fantasy, that I couldn’t say.
JWW: Did you go through with it?
JACK: Oh, yes. Not because it was my idea of fun, really, but more because—hell, this may sound a little crazy.
JWW: Go ahead.
JACK: Well, the thing was, I’d had a few years of hell with Ruth, and I had a pretty good idea of what it was like to have a sexual hang-up. It can be rough, and after you’ve gone through it yourself you become very tolerant of the same thing in other people, and you want to do what you can to make them happy sexually. Incidentally, this is one thing I’ve found that the vast majority of swingers have in common. I would say that they’re more concerned about making the person they’re with have a good time than in getting their own jollies. The average person thinks of everybody in the swinging society as out for his own brand of kicks and devil take the hindmost, and I’ll have to admit that was certainly my attitude when I first got involved, no question about it. Once you get going, though, you realize that if all you want to do is have an orgasm it’s easier to stay home and use your goddamned hand. If that’s all you’re after, hell, masturbation is quicker and cheaper. The real thrill of sex is giving. To find someone you like and provide her with sexual pleasure, that gives a better feeling than just getting your rocks off.
It’s like Christmas presents. When you’re a kid all you want to do is get, but when you grow up you find out that the real charge is buying the perfect gift for someone you care about. And with swingers, the bulk of them I would say develop the same kind of mature attitude. Maybe it’s just as selfish at the bottom—you do it because it makes you feel good—but that’s still the way it works.
JWW: So you would participate in your partners’ fetishes.
JACK: As long as they didn’t actually turn me off, that is. But this still wasn’t what I would call my ideal, and I gradually began to realize my mistake.
JWW: What was that?
JACK: First off, it was a mistake to pitch primarily to single girls. The single women who want to swing don’t have to answer ads. Unless they’re either very hung up or absolute dogs they’re a good bet to have all the sex they can handle. It’s married women with clods for husbands who are real candidates for swinging action.
JWW: In other words, women who were in the same position as you found yourself.
JACK: That’s exactly the point. Women who weren’t getting satisfaction from their husbands and who still didn’t want to break up their marriages, so they couldn’t go running around town picking up studs in bars. They had to be discreet and had to connect with a discreet man. I advertised to them in the swinger publications, but I also realized that a lot of women in this position, well, they just wouldn’t be apt to come into contact with these club magazines. I used some of the standard tabloids, and then I got the idea of running ads in what they call underground newspapers. These are papers published by the hippies and that element, and along with articles that I wouldn’t understand in a million years they also print a few columns of personal ads. Here, this is an example of the ad I run regularly, the one that gets far and away the best results:
NO WOMAN
should be left unsatisfied. Discreet French masseur offers to help you find the fulfillment that is every female’s birthright. Age, race, marital status not important. Confidence assured. No fee—your pleasure is my sole reward.
JWW: I gather you feel it’s necessary to stress that you don’t expect financial remuneration.
JACK: Yes, because there are some male prostitutes who advertise themselves as masseurs. I always mention French because I’ve found that a large number of the women who respond to the ads desire cunnilingus and don’t get it from their husbands. Some of them have told me that they had themselves eaten by other girls years ago and never got over wanting it, and either they haven’t let their husbands know about it or the husbands don’t like to do it, or are lousy at it. Can you imagine somebody being such a clod that he wouldn’t go down on his wife if that was the way she got her kicks? But it takes all kinds, I guess.
JWW: What sort of women are most apt to respond to the ad?
JACK: That’s hard to say. All kinds, really. The typical woman is in her late twenties or early thirties, married and with a couple of kids, and of course sexually frustrated. Some of the time it’s been a case of the marriage going stale, and afterwards I usually try to convince those gals to get their husbands interested in swinging.
Just bringing the subject up conversationally could turn the trick, because I’m sure there are plenty of cases where both the husband and the wife would go for it and they’re each of them afraid to mention it to the other. I’m positive that happens more often than anybody realizes . . .
Other times, though, it’s a case of a woman who hasn’t really gotten any pleasure out of sex in her life, and now she’s heard people talking and she’s read books and she’s beginning to get some idea of what she’s been missing. It may be that her husband ejaculates prematurely and doesn’t do anything to arouse her first—just on and off and roll over and go to bed. Or else the woman would like to experiment sexually. Oral sex is the most common thing that they want. Cunnilingus especially, and a lot of them have a great urge to perform fellatio. This again is something that most people don’t realize, and that’s that so many women have a great desire to suck and are scared to admit it to their husbands.
JWW: So you would say that most of these women are married?
JACK: Did I say that? Because although it may be true, there are certainly a great many who are single. The thing is, by running ads outside of the club magazines I reach a lot of women who’ve never before been involved in swinging. You could say that I’m their introduction to the whole world of it. And so I get all kinds. I’ve had lesbians who want to learn to make it with men but who are scared they won’t like it, and in order to try it they want someone who they know will be gentle with them and who will let them beg off if they change their minds. You may not believe it, but I’ve had virgins. So I would say that the frustrated married women are the bulk of them, but that’s not the whole story by any means.
JWW: I get the impression that you think of yourself as performing an almost holy service for these women.
JACK: Well, that’s a little way-out, isn’t it?
JWW: Perhaps, but—
JACK: Still, I get what you mean. Let me put it this way. I don’t kid myself. I know I go with these girls because I can have one hell of a fine sex life this way. No question about it. But even so I have to admit that I am doing them a favor. I’m turning them on to sex, and if I say so myself I’ve become a master at knowing how to excite a woman and bring her to orgasm. In addition to the techniques I have certain special equipment, everything from French ticklers and special powders that increase excitement to some electrical massage equipment. There’s this motorized thing that you strap onto your hand and when you switch it on your whole hand vibrates like crazy. When I use that and give a gal a finger wave, it almost always gets results. It’s a physical thing—even if she isn’t in the mood emotionally, even if she’s got all the psychological blocks in the world against getting aroused, even if she’s colder than Kelsey’s nuts, it is just about certain to get her hot. And once you can get her
going and carry her through all the way to a climax, it’s easy for her to learn to respond in the future.
JWW: Do the women always reciprocate?
JACK: I don’t get you.
JWW: Do they always make certain that you are sexually satisfied?
JACK: I get it now. I was going to say that they always do, but now that I think about it I would have to qualify that. Now and then a girl will want to be eaten, that’s her kick, but she’ll stipulate that she doesn’t want to do anything in return. Nothing at all, just go down and go home. Once when this happened I told the girl that I didn’t like to eat and run. Still, if that’s what they want, it’s all right with me. If I can have a sexual experience with a woman that makes her happy, that’s more important to me than having an orgasm. Frankly, the way things have been lately I have more action than I can handle, and it doesn’t really hurt me to pass up an occasional lay.
Still, here we’re talking about only a small percentage of the women. For the most part what they want is to have a good time themselves and to please me. Remember, a woman who thinks she is frigid feels inadequate, and so it’s as important to her to please a lover as it is to be satisfied herself.
• • •
While the particular niche which Jack Gebhardt has found for himself in the swinging society is certainly an unusual one, there are more than a few men who have found it a way of getting a foot in the door. Ads much like Jack’s appear in quite a few underground newspapers. If his own story is a good indication, these advertisers draw a sufficient response to assure them a satisfactory number of sexual partners.
One does not require too much insight in order to understand the appeal which his particular role holds for Jack. Although he has taken the position that his wife is solely at fault for the decline in their own sexual relationship, it is fairly obvious that her lack of interest in sex left him with serious doubts regarding his own capacity as a lover. He thus found it necessary to prove himself, to demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt that he could provide women with full satisfaction.
As a sort of sexual angel of mercy ministering to neglected wives and frigid misses, Jack has found the perfect means of proving his manly prowess. I have no doubt that he is the skilled lover he says he is, not only because of his great interest in sexual technique but also because he has become something of an amateur psychologist—only an aversion to punning prevents me from describing him as a lay analyst. He knows how to put his women at ease, knows how to determine the elements which prevent them from finding satisfaction, and knows finally what remedy to employ. Most of all, he is certain to be a good lover because he wants so much to do just that. He is quite sincere when he says the woman’s climax is of greater importance to him than his own. Whether his motive is personal ego-gratification or sheer generosity scarcely matters; the effect is unchanged.
Further discussion also led me to the conclusion that his present sexual adjustment, while quite satisfactory for him for the time being, will not suit him indefinitely. Jack described an occasion that revealed a desire to participate more extensively in some of the more orgiastic aspects of swinging. One of his partners, a housewife in her middle thirties, enjoyed herself with him and expressed a desire for pluralistic sexual relations with another couple. He arranged such a meeting by corresponding with another couple and presenting the woman in the role of his wife.
• • •
JACK: I had a pretty good idea what it was that she wanted. With me, her main thrill was cunnilingus, and I suspected she wanted to have this with another girl but didn’t want to admit she was a lesbian. Still, I had been anxious all along to get in on a couple scene, and she was anxious to play. Her husband traveled a lot, so we picked a time when he would be out of town and had this other couple over to her house. It was crazy in that I was pretending to be the husband and here I was in another guy’s house, but I don’t think they ever caught on to the whole bit. Fortunately the kids never woke up, which would have ruined things but good.
We swung all night, all of us in the same room, and I’ll tell you it was wild. When you come right down to it there’s only so many things that you can do when you’re limited to two people, but get four together and it’s a different story. My “wife” was wild stuff herself, a bottle blonde with jugs like pillows, and the other wife was a slender little thing and a perfect contrast. We all had a wild time, and of course the two girls 69ed themselves into a coma, and if I’d had any doubts before that cleared them up, because my blonde went absolutely into orbit the minute she got her mouth on the other doll’s snatch.
I’ve got some more correspondence going with other couples, and her husband has a business trip coming up again in a month or so, and if everything goes right we should be able to make the scene again. I’ve heard of guys so anxious to swing that they hire prostitutes to pose as their wives, which when you come to think of it is pretty goddamned ridiculous. But I’ve never before heard of using somebody else’s wife. You’ve got to admit it’s pretty wild—
• • •
You’ve got to admit it’s pretty wild.
As I look back on the months I spent with the swingers, the few whose stories have appeared in the foregoing chapters and the many whom I spoke to and interviewed but could not include in this present volume, I have to admit just that it is pretty wild—and despite all the convenient comparisons with other sexual customs which prevailed at other points in history, today’s swinging society comports itself in a manner which has no real precedent in the annals of human sexual behavior.
Whether all of this is good or bad, right or wrong, sane or sick, are questions which I would not propose to answer for the reader; he may ponder them himself. I am somewhat more interested in guessing at the probable future for the world of the swingers.
They themselves are inclined to regard their sexual subculture as the wave of the future, and more than a few of them will wax grandiloquent on the subject, visualizing themselves as the advance men of a brave new world. In an opposite vein, those who hold swinging in low regard take it for granted that the practice is a phenomenon deriving primarily from the moral chaos which predominates in contemporary society; from their viewpoint, swinging will fade away completely when social change leads to a more stable society with clearly defined values and standards.
I would be hard put to guess who will be proved correct. One may make a good case for either side. It is hard to believe that the basic principles of sexual relations as a function of marriage, a constant tenet of Western thought since the beginnings of recorded time, should be permanently relegated to the dustbin of history. And yet, to be sure, it is every bit as hard to deny that a variety of permanent changes, not only technological advances in contraception and the like but also improved knowledge of the nature of sex, can fail to leave a permanent mark on our sexual nature.
One may only speculate on the ultimate result. Students of sexual behavior centuries from now will either be astounded to learn that there was a time when married couples traded partners to indulge in group sex—or else they will be equally astonished to learn that there was a time when people did not do so.
In the meantime, the swinging life continues to wax in popularity like a snowball rolling downhill. Like all trends, it gives every appearance of being likely to continue forever. Whether this will be so, or whether a reversal will set in soon, only time will tell.
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 clas
sic 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.
The Taboo Breakers: Shock Troops of the Sexual Revolution (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior) Page 18