Doing It! - Going Beyond the Sexual Revolution (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 13)

by Lawrence Block

  Perhaps you can answer some questions for us. We have several of the swingers’ correspondence club magazines and have read ads avidly for some time. We are familiar with most of the usual terms such as French culture, Greek culture, versatile, etc., but there are some we are not sure of. I assume “Loves TV” is a reference to transvestism? But what about “Water sports,” “Leather fancier,” and “Fond of rubber goods?” I suppose the last has something to do with contraceptives, or would it relate to sexual aids such as dildos and French ticklers and the like?

  If you can answer these questions I would appreciate it. Meanwhile, best wishes with your column.

  Leonard

  Yes, loves TV is a reference to transvestism. This turns up often in ads placed by a couple seeking the companionship of a single female, and signifies a willingness to swing with single male transvestites.

  Rubber goods has nothing to do with either contraceptives or sex aids, but expresses an enthusiasm for tight fitting rubber garments to be worn before and during sex. Leather fancier expresses a similar enthusiasm for leather articles of wear. Both of these fetishes frequently but not invariably accompany some form of sadomasochism.

  Water sports is apt to be a bit ambiguous. It usually indicates the enjoyment of giving and/or receiving enemas, but is sometimes used to indicate a desire to urinate upon someone, or to be urinated upon.

  I would be very pleased to receive letters from people who practice any of these particular forms of sexual behavior, as I have had very little in the way of correspondence and interviews on these subjects, and have a bit of trouble, for example, in genuinely understanding what’s so thrilling about rubber clothing, or getting an enema. Can someone out there enlighten us all?

  Your wife’s concern about her breasts is not at all unusual. Reams have been written about the American male’s obsessive interest in breasts. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s nothing compared to the American female’s obsessive interest in the same subject. Women look at photos of pneumatic young mammals in men’s magazines and worry that their own breasts aren’t similarly oversized and don’t similarly defy gravity. Since no woman alive really looks like those airbrushed bits of plastic, all women wind up feeling a little bit inferior.

  I wouldn’t dream of denying that American men are interested in breasts. I think most of us, though, are interested in breasts in general, be they large or small. We just like them.

  Of course there are some men for whom large breasts are a sine qua non for sexual interest. Simple honesty in correspondence and a straightforward description of your wife as small-breasted should eliminate the possibility of swinging with that sort of man.

  I wonder if your wife’s “breast hang-up” isn’t part of a general fear that she will be inadequate, that she will fail either to excite or to satisfy her sex partner. This is a common and certainly understandable concern. It usually works itself out, although some swingers have reported that it was not until their third or fourth “date” that they were able to relax completely and perform at their best sexually.

  Dear Jack,

  I read the introductory column of Group Grope and thought I would write you a letter. Let me begin by wishing you plenty of luck with the column. I think it’s very important to have a forum on swinging and allied topics available to the general public. The swinger magazines have correspondence sections, but there is a sameness about them that is boring in the extreme. Endless letters about the problems of single male swingers, gripes about unanswered letters, and, very rarely, the expression of a half-formed idea.

  I speak as a former swinger, former in the sense of getting together with other couples on a regular basis. My wife and I were a part of that scene for four years before gradually drifting out of it. While most of our experiences with swinging were generally good ones, we found that after the novelty wore off it was quite boring. The majority of the people we swung with were boring to us, and those who might have been interesting were less so because of the circumstances of our meeting. The idea of having everything more or less cut-and-dried, of meeting another couple with the understanding that we would switch partners and tumble into bed, was exciting at first because it was so novel, so very different. It was also rather shocking to us at the beginning, and I’m sure that was part of its appeal for us.

  We did not stop swinging abruptly but gradually found ourselves swinging less and less. During this period, I had a brief affair with a girl in my office and subsequently confessed it to my wife. She was astonished, having thought that the sexual variety of swinging would make such back street adultery unattractive to me. An extended dialogue on the subject led to the mutual realization that swinging failed to supply the most important aspect of sex, and the one ingredient impossible to sustain in a wholly monogamous marital relationship. This ingredient is what I would call the thrill of seduction.

  Perhaps this is a bad term as it carries overtones of seducing someone against his or her will, which is quite unattractive to both of us. But the pleasure of meeting someone, of doing a certain amount of role-playing, of getting to know the person and ultimately taking the person to bed, is not a part of swinging as it usually functions. Also one cannot come out of certain habitual behavior patterns when one’s wife is along on the date. While it was thrilling for some time to watch my wife in the arms of another man, or to make love to another woman with her looking on, it is also thrilling to operate on one’s own hook, and this was a missing ingredient in swinging.

  Since then we have adopted a system which seems to work very well for us. For all I know it may be more common than we realize, but we have never heard of anyone else doing it. Perhaps it will not be new to you . . .

  A couple of times a year my wife and I will spend anywhere from a weekend to a week at one of the resorts catering to singles, such as those in the Catskills and Poconos. We register separately as singles and take separate rooms. My wife uses her maiden name while I use my own name. For the entire vacation we are on our own, free to meet people as we choose and have sex or not have sex depending on our desires and how things turn out. We will get together frequently in the course of the weekend for a drink and compare notes, and if we should both “strike out” on any particular night, we are apt to get together and have sex with each other.

  This seems to satisfy our urge for variety and excitement far better than our earlier experiences with swinging ever did. I suppose the average couple would have a certain amount of difficulty getting past jealousy, as it is very much the reverse of swinging in this respect—in swinging there is a great deal of emphasis placed upon being completely uninvolved emotionally with other people, while for us emotional involvement definitely exists, but we drop it when we leave the resort and return home. In other words, we feel perfectly free to fall in love with whomever we happen to meet, feeling that love in these circumstances can be quite real and worthwhile without impinging upon our love for each other in any significant way.

  Needless to say most of our conquests are a far cry from love of any sort, but even so we find them fulfilling and enjoyable. Nor is it an earthshaking thing if one of us has a successful vacation while the other does not.

  For these reasons I suspect people in general would find our system unrewarding. But for those who have been through swinging and have found it as we did, and who have banished their monogamous hang-ups to the point where jealousy is no longer a factor, it might prove worthwhile . . .

  I will close with one of the more amusing incidents of our experience. This occurred when each of us had picked up a real swinging single for a partner and we all managed to meet in the cocktail lounge after having had steady sex for a period of a couple days. With my wife and I steering things, we double-dated, having dinner together and watching a floorshow together, then going to one of the rooms for drinks and conversation. The drinks loosened things up and the conversation got sexy, and ultimately I had sex with my girl on the bed while my wife enjoyed her boyfriend on the
sofa. This was the first time either of the others had had sex in front of other people, and we pretended it was a similar experience for us as well. We sat around talking about it, and my wife suddenly said, “Well, since we’re breaking down all the barriers, why not try changing partners?” And so saying she joined me on the bed and we began making love. The other two didn’t know what to make of this and of course had no idea that we were actually husband and wife, and after watching us for a few moments wound up having sex together on the sofa.

  The only problem with something like this is that we have to keep the joke to ourselves forever—there’s no one we can tell. But at least through Group Grope perhaps we can share the fun with you and your readers . . .

  Vincent

  I have heard of a couple of cases like this, but they involved swingers who played this game now and then for a lark, unlike Vincent and his wife who have made it their general method of swinging. I can certainly see the appeal.

  I wonder, though, about the ethics of it all. A large part of the thrill seems to derive from the fact that sexual liaisons are established under distinctly false pretenses and that one’s partners are fooled and exploited. Vincent qualifies his use of the term seduction. Perhaps he shouldn’t bother—it sure as hell sounds like seduction to me. And doesn’t it make for a sticky wicket if one runs into a weekend lover back in the city? It has to happen sooner or later.

  • • •

  In last month’s column I cited a few examples of sexual apocrypha, those true stories that always are supposed to have happened to a friend of a friend of a friend, and that everyone in the country has heard, and that of course never happened in the first place.

  Here’s another one that comes to mind. Two high school couples went out on a double date, see, and after parking on a lonely road they discovered they only had one condom between them. So the couple in the backseat used it and turned it inside-out and gave it to the couple in the front seat, who used it themselves.

  With the result that the girl in the front seat got pregnant from the boy in the back seat, while the boy in the front seat got the clap from the girl in the back seat. If you know any more of those, send ’em along . . .

  • • •

  THINGS WORTH READING:

  I just happened on The Trembling of a Leaf, a paperback novel by John Colleston that came out a couple of months ago. About a proper youth in Charleston who has an affair with his aunt. Deft, articulate, amusing, and quite brilliantly written, with a couple of surprises at the end . . . and The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, by Isaac Asimov, who is quite incapable of being dull whatever he writes about, and is far from dull on the subject of sex . . .

  See you next month. And keep groping!

  Chapter Five

  It was rather unsettling writing the first few installments. Given the rigors of publishing schedules, I had to put the third column together before the first one was on the stands. Without some sort of feedback, you begin wondering if there’s anyone out there.

  I had something similar a few years back during a brief stint as a late-night disc jockey on a tiny FM station. The perfect job for a speed freak, incidentally, which I incidentally wasn’t. You have to talk constantly, and even with an ego as big as all outdoors you begin to have doubts that anyone’s listening, much less cares. The management took a survey, and as far as they could tell no one was listening. They couldn’t turn up a single person who listened to the show. Which added up to one more job down the toilet.

  But you people are listening, aren’t you? Thank you one and all for the letters, the ones that have found their way into this column and the others as well. Thanks especially to those of you who took the trouble to write just to say you liked the column and wished it well. God bless you, and may all your pleasures be harmless to your health.

  Shall we begin?

  Dear J.W.W.,

  Discovered your column this A.M. and found it most interesting. As I read it I was contemplating writing of my “problem”—but second thoughts negated the idea. I was surprised to note that I’d read and enjoyed a few of your books, so I made a mental note to make Swank a regular reading habit.

  I then discovered Vaughn Bode’s “Purple Pictography” and its suggestion as to the sensuousness of the voluptuous gal clad in rubber—and there I was, very conscious of my “problem” again and wondering if any good could possibly come to my “layin’ it on ya.” So what’s to lose?

  Rubber turns me on! And has been doing so since my very earliest recollections. For years I was positive I was absolutely unique in this respect, and at a very early age I learned that my “stash” of rubber gloves, baby pants, rubber aprons and rainwear, etc., etc., had to be secreted from my parents and older brothers as they just couldn’t imagine or understand what the hell I wanted all that junk for!

  Naturally my first orgasm came about as I caressed my recently discovered rigid middle leg with a rubber-gloved hand. Scared the hell out of me and I ran crying to my mother. Fortunately she’d gone out to the market and by the time she returned I’d calmed down and somehow understood that I’d “jacked off” just like the big kids talked about. Then it was “off to the races!”

  I had hundreds of rubber balloons. I’d get in the tub and fill as many as possible with water, and then—ecstasy!! Naturally I’d have the door locked, but occasionally one of my parents would want in. Wow! I’d grab a pin I kept handy and in almost nothing flat the balloons would be gone, along with my erection. And I let them in and catch hell for the water splashed all over!

  I suppose it was fortunate that rubber was not the only thing that could turn me on. Little (and big) girls affected me as they should have, especially busty ones. Even little (and big) boys could reach me, and the fantasy that invariably accompanied my “sinful” bouts of “self-abuse” usually had a known woman, girl, or boy, garbed in luscious rubber. One of the best and most-repeated dreams involved a huge muscular man completely garbed in shiny black rubber (something like Batman) who would steal into my room and kidnap me, taking me to his lair for unimagined sensuous delights.

  Fortunately, too, sadomasochism never entered the picture.

  I’d wear latex baby pants under my clothes, or have a balloon over my cock and balls, and while walking or hitch-hiking I’d daydream of being picked up by a man clad in rubber with a huge cock—this before I had any idea of what could be done in such a situation!

  I could go on with this for thirty-five or forty pages I’m sure, but I don’t have the time. Summarizing it: I feared anyone discovering my vice, even after I was having affairs and I wanted to suggest doing it on rubber sheets or somethin’ but never could. I was well into my twenties before I learned that I had a “fetish” and that there were others similarly afflicted.

  I even went to a psychiatrist and he was able to explain how it all came about.

  I was an asthmatic from age two, so restless nights were commonplace. The crib sheet would be pulled out, exposing the rubber sheet, and about that time I’d be exhausted, or else the asthmatic attack would have subsided and I’d practically collapse into a restorative rest with my face on the smooth rubber—Voila!

  I’m now 48. In recent years I’ve rid myself of the stigma of religion which made so much of my life a bout with guilt. I’ve had lovers who would cater to my desires by accepting my rubber, and it’s been sensational. Others have not understood or could not be natural with the rubber so that I felt they were submitting, and so I’d eliminate the rubber from our sexual relations.

  I’ve been married twice. Neither wife adjusted to the rubber, so that even when we’d be having sex almost daily, I’d still arrange to have solitary soirees with my rubber paraphernalia.

  I know there’s a club in New York with an international membership all devoted to “SBR”—Shiny Black Rubber . . . Of course for me almost any rubber, latex, even some plastics like vinyl and neoprene, is suitable.

  To get to my “problem” before terminal writer’s cramp se
ts in. I’ve only met two other rubber lovers and corresponded with two others in all these years, which is very unsatisfactory. There must be others in the Midwest. How can I contact them?

  More “problem.” The most satisfying rubber garments I’ve ever been fortunate enough to find were made from about 1940 ’til maybe 1955 by the company that currently makes “Totes,” the latex slip-on boots. They made skin-diving suits under the same name. Also apron-type wading boots, stocking footed, and hooded ponchos, all made or molded of heavy supple latex, either bright yellow or coffee brown. I’ve found a few of these marvelous (to me!) garments almost buried on back shelves of sporting goods stores, and as they were so old and a discontinued item I was able to get them for practically nothing.

  Another most desired and almost impossible-to-find item that I’d love to have closets full of is the “dry suits” (back entry or two-piece) made of pure gum rubber. The Navy frogmen used them in World War II. I know there are probably thousands of such garments rotting away in garages and boat houses, unwanted and unused because of the popularity of the neoprene nylon-lined “wet suits”—but how in hell could I ever find them? Unless a few lines in Group Grope by my now intimate friend J.W.W. would do the trick. I’d be forever in your debt . . .

  Dean

  Well, you’re now forever in my debt. And I’m in yours, as far as that goes, for an interesting insight into rubber fetishism. Most material fetishes (rubber, fur, leather, etc.) are hard to understand and harder to explain. Unless they happen to turn you on, it’s almost impossible to see why they would turn anybody else on.

  As far as obtaining rubber garments goes, I know there are firms that offer them through the mails. Their ads appear in a lot of the underground sex publications. Dean’s from a large city and should find such magazines available in downtown adult bookstores. One called “Latent Image” is particularly fetish-oriented. No doubt there are other sources that I don’t know about. If any of you rubber freaks out there have any suggestions, let me know about them; I’ll pass them onto Dean or print them if they’re of particular interest.