3 is Not a Crowd (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  WANDA: You grew up a lot. Marriage to Grace had quite an effect on you.

  PETER: There’s no question about it. The detached view didn’t make the yen go away, however. I couldn’t put it out of my mind. Every time I saw Wanda I wanted her. I wondered whether part of this might not be habit—I had been in the habit of wanting her, and we hadn’t been with each other sexually in so long.

  GRACE: I had this feeling that something was building up with the two of them. But I wasn’t sure if maybe it wasn’t all in my mind. Anyway, I liked having Wanda around. I felt almost like a sister to her. When I was a kid I used to imagine what it would be like to have a big sister.

  WANDA: I wonder if I would have eventually made a move of my own. I had decided definitely not to, but a few more days of frustration might have made me change my mind. Because I definitely wanted Peter and there was no way to avoid realizing as much. The bill of goods I had half-managed to sell myself—that somewhere out there was a man for me—I didn’t believe this any more. I had tried enough men to convince me it just wouldn’t work that way. There was a man for me, but he happened to be my brother.

  I slept late one morning, and when I woke up Grace had left. Peter told me over breakfast that she had gone to pose for some pictures. I knew vaguely that she was a model but had no idea just what sort of work she did, fashion or what, and I said something to this effect. Peter got up from the table and came back with a small stack of photographs. He flipped them onto the table and told me to have a look.

  I was genuinely shocked. They were all deliciously pornographic. Grace with a man, Grace with a man and another girl, Grace with two men, Grace with a girl, with, as they say, nothing left to the imagination.

  I looked up at Peter and he was grinning. “You let her do this?”

  “Why not?” he said. “She enjoys it. Easy work, good pay, no withholding taxes.” But didn’t he mind?

  He said he didn’t, and then he began to explain that he and Grace were in the habit of swinging with other couples. I was shocked all over again. Swinging was not a wholly new idea to me, I had been to fairly freewheeling parties myself, but I wasn’t prepared for such a revelation concerning my little brother and his wife. It stunned me and I didn’t know how to react.

  PETER: You were remarkably cool about it.

  WANDA: I didn’t feel remarkably cool. I felt very strange. And confused. I didn’t know whether or not this meant that Peter and I could be lovers again.

  I excused myself and went into the bathroom to take a shower. I was standing under the hot water spray still a little shaky from what I had learned when the shower door opened and Peter stepped in beside me.

  He said, “Do you remember when we used to take baths together, Sis? I always enjoyed that.”

  I said, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Sure,” he said. He took a bar of soap and rubbed it over my breasts. “I’m washing my sister,” he said. “I’m soaping you up.”

  I stood there and he worked the soap over my breasts and down across my belly. He lathered my pubic hair. I was trembling from head to foot. I wanted him so intensely I couldn’t bear it. He kept soaping me all over.

  We got out of the shower. We didn’t even dry ourselves off. We went straight into my bedroom, all wet and slippery, not giving a damn about anything but our need for each other.

  I came the instant he entered me. And when it was finally over and I lay gasping for breath with his head pillowed on my breast, I felt the most overwhelming relief. We had needed each other for so long, so very long.

  And no other man ever made me feel this way. I had always thought that this was so, but it had been so long since I had been with Peter that I sometimes wondered if I wasn’t remembering it as having been better than it really was. But no, we were something special together.

  PETER: It was her reaction to the pictures that made me go into the shower with her. I knew we both wanted each other and that we were going to have each other sooner or later, and this seemed as good a time as any.

  WANDA: I asked if he would tell Grace. He said he didn’t know. I told him I couldn’t come between them.

  “No one can come between Grace and me,” he said. “And no one can come between us, either.”

  PETER: I knew I would have to tell Grace sooner or later. But I found myself putting it off. I was afraid she might not be able to handle it.

  This might seem strange, in view of the fact that we both embraced swinging wholeheartedly and with no feelings of jealousy on either side. But this was different. Swinging, after all, is essentially loveless sex, variety for its own sake, an occasional romp that has no emotional implications. Wanda and I were not only balling. We were also in love, and I was afraid Grace would feel threatened.

  So for longer than I had intended Wanda and I would get together when Grace was out of the apartment. You know, thinking back on it, I wonder if the idea of having each other on the sly didn’t hold some nostalgic appeal of its own. We had had to sneak around when we were kids, and maybe we were recapturing some of that special excitement. It was our secret and we were having fun with it.

  After about a month I told Grace.

  GRACE: I was just numb. Peter and I were alone when he told me. I just stood there and listened to him say that he had started sleeping with his sister again. I felt as though the bottom was falling out of my life. The floor was falling and I was in the middle of the air.

  I said that I guessed he wouldn’t want me around any more and I would leave whenever he wanted.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’ll never let you go. I told you that the night I met you, that I wanted to take you home and never let you go.”

  “But you love her,” I said. “You always loved her, and you married me because you couldn’t have her anymore, and now you have her back again and you don’t need me.”

  “Of course I need you,” he said. “I need you now more than ever.”

  I didn’t know whether I should believe him or not. I thought maybe he was saying this because he didn’t want to hurt me. I started to cry and Peter began making love to me. It went through my mind that this would be the last time we would ever make love.

  PETER: It wasn’t, was it?

  GRACE: But I thought it would be. And then afterward while I was lying there feeling all warm and together, Peter explained how he felt about me and about Wanda. I tried to think out how I felt about it. I didn’t mind if he was with other girls when we swung, and he didn’t mind if I was with other men. And I knew how deeply he and Wanda loved each other, and I was glad for this because it is beautiful to love someone that deeply.

  It also came to me that it would be good for us all to be all three living together. Because Wanda gives Peter something that I can’t give him. The two of them, the way their minds work together, the conversations they have. I’m not putting myself down, honestly, but it would have to be boring for Peter to have nobody brighter than me to talk to for the rest of his life. I know you enjoy talking to me, Peter, but you know you can have a different kind of conversation with Wanda and that you have a need for it.

  WANDA: When I returned home that day Peter was out and Grace was starting dinner. She came out from the kitchen to make a pair of drinks. We went over to the window to study the view, and she quietly told me what Peter had told her. I knew he was going to tell her but I didn’t know when.

  I turned to her and my eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Grace, you must hate me very much,” I said. “But Peter loves you. His love for me doesn’t affect his love for you.”

  She said she knew, and that everything was going to be all right.

  We hugged each other, and it came to me that I wanted to kiss her.

  We kissed.

  I had had relations with girls at school and in mental institutions, and I think I may have said earlier that I was able to enjoy this. In fact for a long period of time I could relax more in sex with a girl than with a boy, any boy exce
pt Peter. But I had never felt comfortable kissing other girls. Somehow that seemed abnormally intimate, while a nice lazy sixty-nine was purely physical fun.

  But I enjoyed kissing Grace. It started out as a warm sisterly embrace, and before either of us knew quite what the hell was happening it turned sexy. She put her tongue in my mouth.

  GRACE: I didn’t plan it. It just happened.

  WANDA: And I remember having the thought, This completes it, this closes the circle.

  Of course I knew Grace had been with girls before. After all, I had seen those pictures. I suppose they must have put the idea of making love to her into my head, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time.

  We went into her bedroom and got into the bed she shared with Peter. We rolled around in each other’s arms like a couple of giggling schoolgirls. I couldn’t get over how beautiful she was and how smooth her skin was. At one point we both said, “No wonder Peter loves you.” We both said it at precisely the same time and became hysterical about it.

  It was so nice. When Grace comes she tastes like raw egg white.

  GRACE: Oh, stop.

  WANDA: Well, you do.

  PETER: When I got home they were sitting together on the couch. I hadn’t known just what to expect, just how the confrontation would go, although I was hoping for the best. But I was immensely relieved to see them so much at peace with one another.

  I said something like, “Well, you girls must have had a lot to talk about.”

  And Wanda said, “We talked a little. But mostly we just balled each other.”

  • • •

  JWW: Since then the St. Johns have slept three in a bed, with no holds barred sexually. Grace and Wanda seem to complement one another well and Peter is devoted to both of them.

  Swinging continues to play a part in their lives. The frequency of their sexual encounters with others is lower now and seems to have leveled off at one such meeting a month, with another single, couple, or group. Their participation in group sex is far more recreational than compulsive, and all three said they could get along without it easily enough but see no reason to deny themselves something they all find pleasurable. Peter mentioned that he would especially like to swing some time with a brother and sister combination. They have heard of a mother-daughter team with something of a reputation in East Coast swinging circles but have not yet been able to arrange a meeting with them.

  All are very happy with the situation as it stands, and expect to continue in this fashion for the rest of their lives. Peter insists not only that it is natural for a brother and sister to have sex, but that it is unnatural for them not to. “If they had only left us alone to do as we wanted,” he says, “we could have been spared no end of grief. But I can’t feel too badly about it. At least it all worked out for us, for all of us.”

  Bob & Carol & Whoever’s Handy

  JWW: Bob and Carol Fessenden live in a split-level suburban house on the outskirts of Atlanta. Bob is a successful salesman of life insurance and mutual funds and an avid golfer. Carol paints in oils and acrylics, large geometrical abstractions characterized by a bold use of color. She has won prizes in shows throughout the Southeast and has sold several canvases through a local gallery.

  At thirty-four, Bob looks like a former college football player who has managed to stay in better than average shape over the years. He has broad shoulders, a firm grip, and a salesman’s open face and easy smile. His hair is beginning to thin on top. He wears his sideburns fashionably long and dresses very well; like his wife, he buys his clothes in New York.

  Carol is three years younger than her husband. She is small and dark, with strong features and bright brown eyes. While she too is a stylish dresser, her standard at-home garb consists of a peasant blouse with a scoop neckline and a pair of skintight paint-spattered blue jeans. She enjoys going barefoot around the house, and announced that she likes to do her housework in the nude.

  The Fessendens have been married for ten years. In the second year of their marriage Carol gave birth to a Mongoloid idiot with other congenital defects as well. The child was placed in an institution and they have had no contact with it. Although they were assured that their chances of having additional normal children were as good as those of any other couple, the two decided the risk was too great to be undertaken, and Carol had her fallopian tubes tied shortly thereafter.

  The Fessendens differ from other couples studied in the foregoing pages in several respects. At the time that I was able to see them, they had not formed a permanent troilistic relationship, although it was their hope to do so eventually. The other threesomes all came about through the interplay of personalities which ultimately led to a triangular relationship. With Bob and Carol, experiences with swinging led them to a preference for threesomes; thus the third party is chosen to fit the role rather than the role being designed to ft the person.

  At one point I was prompted by these differences to omit Bob and Carol’s story from this book and confine it to the three threesomes already discussed. Further reflection convinced me that these very differences might serve to give the reader greater perspective on the topic of troilism.

  A final argument clinched it—after all, the advertisements which the Fessendens run regularly in several swingers’ club bulletins invariably contain the phrase which serves as this volume’s title.

  • • •

  BOB: I guess we got into swinging in pretty much the same way most couples do. This was about three years ago, so we had been married seven years. That’s standard, isn’t it? The seven-year itch and all that.

  CAROL: Except that it didn’t take you seven years to get the itch.

  BOB: I don’t suppose it usually does. The average American male simply isn’t built for a steady diet of monogamy. Look at the animal kingdom. In most species, the male’s object is to knock up as many females as he possibly can. If you were a farmer and you had a bull that would only cover one particular cow, that bull would be hamburger overnight. Man is just another animal with an overdeveloped brain, and more often than not that brain gets in his way. It lets him think up rules for himself that go against his own basic animal nature.

  CAROL: And if my husband’s got one thing, it’s a healthy animal nature.

  BOB: Well, I’m proud of it. But the trouble is that we can’t go and live on desert islands. We’re all creatures of society. And the way society is structured, a man and a woman get married and live happily ever after. I guess it’s not hard to see that more people get married than live happily ever after. But for all its faults, marriage is necessary to our society. It’s the way things are. Sometimes I find myself sympathizing with these kids who want to tear the whole social order apart and build it over again. I’m not too crazy about the drugs they use or the way they wear their hair, but I find myself agreeing with them more than the average person in my position would probably do.

  CAROL: I think swingers are generally more liberal that way. Not that their politics tend to be extreme, but that they are readier to appreciate someone else’s point of view than the run-of-the-mill civilian.

  BOB: But when all is said and done, I don’t believe anybody’s going to tear down our social order. It’s changing, God how it’s changing, but certain things remain constant. And one of them is marriage. I know that, given the way things are, I wouldn’t be happy if I weren’t married.

  Well, all of this is a roundabout way of getting to the point, which is that I did have a couple of affairs not too long after we were married. We were both very depressed after the baby was born and things turned out as they did, and Carol and I weren’t getting along as well as we had been, and I found myself on the prowl. I had a fling with a secretary in my regional office, and a brief affair with a policy-holder, and I spent one night with a high-class hooker at a convention in Miami Beach.

  CAROL: I more or less knew he was catting around and I almost decided to have it out with him once or twice, but I swallowed my pride and kept it to myself. I knew it w
as common enough for men to cheat on their wives. My own parents were divorced because my father had another woman and my mother found out and made him give her a divorce. And several times after that my father told me privately that he had never wanted the divorce, that he loved Mother and wanted to stay with her and the other woman in his life never meant anything to him. He did subsequently remarry, but what he had always wanted was to stay with my mother. She never did marry again, so what did she get out of the whole thing? Just a life of loneliness, and that wasn’t what I wanted. It hurt me that Bob had to have somebody else, but I was determined that I wasn’t going to be a fool and ruin my life over it. I just waited for him to get it out of his system, and after awhile, just as I had known he was catting around, I also knew when he had stopped.

  Then he started to get interested in swinging.

  He was very cute about it. He brought home books and magazines on the subject and just happened to leave them around. Early in our life together he had brought home a cheap novel and just happened to leave it open to a page with an oral sex scene on it, and of course I read the scene. I had never done that to him before, but I was bright enough to take the hint and although we never mentioned the book I knew that he had left it for me with just that in mind, and he knew that the book had been where I got the idea.

  So when these swinger magazines began turning up around the house, it wasn’t hard to guess what he had in mind.

  I was terribly shocked. I knew the bare minimum about swinging, or wife-swapping as it was generally called in the magazine articles. I had read a little about it in women’s magazines, nothing very detailed or accurate, and then there were the standard nightclub jokes, usually some variation of the idea of a suburban party where the husbands draw keys from a hat or something like that.

  None of this had ever seemed real to me. I could just imagine a group of our friends at the country club swapping wives and going to each other’s homes that way. It was so completely impossible. I never took it seriously. I supposed there were people who would do this, but certainly not nice people, not normal people.