Sex Without Strings: A Handbook for Consenting Adults (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  I guess you may be having trouble believing I’m as heterosexual as I say I am, and maybe it’s silly to split hairs anyway, but I really and truly think this was a special case. I think what I got off on was the novelty, and also the challenge of the whole thing.

  In other instances when the wife is bi I usually don’t get much at all out of what I do with the wife. The thing is, it’s usually three people just playing all at the same time, and the presence of another woman certainly doesn’t interfere too much, although I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that two people who really enjoy each other is the best combination of all. A lot of the time, incidentally, when a couple answers and the wife is described as bi, she isn’t really bisexual at all; she can tolerate it, and she’s going along with the whole threesome notion either to make her husband happy or because the addition of an extra person into her bed appeals to her for voyeuristic or exhibitionistic reasons or whatever it is in her particular case.

  Lately I haven’t been doing much of this, anyway. I think it’s all something I wanted to run through for the sake of the experience, but down deep I don’t think it’s me. I get much more satisfaction out of my relationships with men.

  Obviously, by any standard I ever heard of, I’m promiscuous. I don’t find it difficult to maintain my self-respect. I can imagine several forms promiscuity might take that would interfere with my self-respect, but the way I live does not. I’m not a whore. I don’t take money, and while someone occasionally gives me a present, I’d just as soon they didn’t. I’m a good mother. I keep a good home for the children, and I do it on my salary and what I get from Stan. I don’t have sex with whoever asks me. I’m very choosy, and especially choosy about the men I see more than once. What I do is completely opposed to the beliefs of the church I grew up in, but that church still thinks masturbation is a sin and the Vietnam war is moral, so I don’t really give a shit about the beliefs of the church. I’m only concerned with my own beliefs, and I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong.

  Lately I’ve found myself thinking about the possibility of remarrying. There was a man who was seeing me fairly frequently, and he fell in love with me and wanted to leave his wife and marry me, and instead I insisted we break things off. He was difficult for a day or two but then called to say he knew I was right and it was best all around if we stopped seeing each other. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry him, not under any circumstances, but it’s not impossible that I’ll want to get married again. The way I live is all right at my age, but in ten years I’ll be forty-five and I won’t want the life any more than the life will want me. The thought of growing old alone does not terrify me, but it doesn’t appeal tremendously either.

  I feel I would have to marry a man who has had a lot of the experiences I have had. I certainly would not marry anyone who had not been married before. And I doubt that I would want to marry someone who hadn’t been involved at least to some extent with swinging. As to whether or not I would want us to swing after marriage, that’s not really something I could decide at this point.

  Concerning the life I live now, it suits me for the time being, but I’m not sure I would recommend it to the average woman. I’ve always been very fortunate in that things don’t bother me an awful lot. I’m not moody the way so many people are. I don’t get depressed. I’ve never been to a psychiatrist, and have never felt the slightest urge to go to one. Even in the worst parts of my marriage, I always had the feeling that I could handle anything that came along. For someone who gets into bad depressions, or who isn’t generally stable, I could imagine this life being very hectic.

  Christie and Vernon

  She is a tall blonde with a bountiful figure, full breasts, round hips and belly and buttocks. She is attractive, her attraction vested less in beauty than in her abundant sensuality. Our few meetings were exclusively conversational, but every now and then she would indicate with a glance that she would not mind sharing a bed with me. I don’t think she did this because she found me irresistible; women often find me eminently resistible, and Christie’s own tastes seem to favor younger and frailer types over bearded alcoholic writers. I think her performance was more of a reflex. She’s used to coming on strong.

  Vern is about the same height as his wife, fairly slender, his face unremarkable except for his guileless pale blue eyes. He’s about thirty-five, and I gather Christie’s a couple of years older than he is. She was reticent about discussing her age.

  They live in a small industrial city in Ohio. They own a two-family duplex a couple of blocks from the gas station Vernon owns and operates. They live in the bottom flat and rent out the top one. Their home is modestly furnished, they dress becomingly enough but at no evident great expense, they drive a five-year-old car, and they have no children; unless Vern’s a secret horseplayer, I’d guess they’re banking a lot of money each year.

  When I saw them, Christie did most of the talking. The obvious conclusion is that she dominates him, taking care of all the small decisions and leaving him the big ones. I’m not sure just how valid this impression is. The particular pattern which their sex life takes suggests it, but it is fairly clear that this is the pattern Vern wants and that he in fact initiated it—although with no resistance and considerable encouragement from his wife.

  But, as I said, she definitely did the bulk of the talking, so let’s let her explain it.

  • • •

  We’ve been married altogether twelve years now. From early on Vern was always interested in what I did before I was married and who with and like that. I didn’t have too much what you’d call experience, but I got around a little, I’ll say that much, and he wanted to know about it. Well, I never pretended to be a virgin, but first off I’m a little shy about laying all my cards on the table.

  Actually, there were four guys I went all the way with before I met up with Vern, and one of these was a guy I was engaged to for four months, so I wasn’t running around all that much. Plus, I had a lot of experience without going all the way, which I guess is par for the course. There were a lot of guys who put a finger up me and lots of guys I gave hand jobs to and one guy who taught me to blow him, which I did twice with him but never with anybody else until Vern and I were married. I was never thought of as a fast girl. I was a virgin until a couple of years after graduating high school, which nowadays is probably something that not many girls can say.

  Anyway, bit by bit he gets me to tell him all of this, first because he lets me know that’s in the past and nothing I say is going to shock him, and second because I can see that it gets him worked up and we always have better sex after I’ve told him something. Eventually it gets to the point where it’s a kind of a game with us at bedtime. He might say, “Tell me about the time you jerked off that guy in the drive-in while So-and-so was in the front seat,” and I would tell him the whole thing in great detail, even making up things a little, because who remembers everything? I’d tell him the whole bit all jazzed up, talking about the guy’s penis and how I rubbed it and everything and how much come he shot, all the gory details, and he would get very excited and I’d say, “Look, I’ll show you what I did to him,” and do what I’d just told him about, and we would have a really thrilling session.

  At first I thought this was maybe a little weird, but then I figured what the hell, it’s not hurting anything, and if it makes sex better for us, why not? Also, to tell you the truth, it was exciting for me too. Not just the sex with Vern, but telling the stories and sharing those old experiences with him.

  The next thing that began to develop was that Vern was sort of pushing me in the direction of having sex with other men. He would ask me if I didn’t have the desire to experience other men, and I would always say I didn’t. And at the time this was the absolute truth. I had no regrets about having slept with other men before Vern, but now we were married and he was plenty for me, or so I thought at the time. His mentioning it so many times did begin to put the idea in my head, though. I can’t say I never
would have thought of it anyhow, but his saying so kept it on my mind a lot.

  He would say I should feel free to have somebody on the side if the right guy came along. I asked if this meant he was trying to tell me he was having other women, and he said he had enough to do trying to keep me happy and he had no interest in other women, but that didn’t mean I should go without other men. And there was a time—we were married four or five years at the time—when he had to make a little trip on family business. A cousin of his mother’s in Missouri died and there were some things that had to be straightened out, which would mean he’d be away for a week. I was staying here and he kept telling me I ought to find somebody to go to bed with while he was gone. He said a week is a long time for me to go without sex, and there was no way to make his thing stretch from Missouri to Ohio, so I should go ahead and enjoy myself.

  When he came back he asks me, did I go to bed with anybody, and I say no, and he’s disappointed. I can tell he’s disappointed, and we talk about it, and it comes out that he wants me to have sex with other men. Not that he’s willing, but that he actually wants it.

  Well, at first this was very tough for me to figure out. To be honest, I’d never heard of any such thing. Lately I’ve seen some books on the subject, including something in one of yours, which is why I happened to write to you. So now I know it’s not all that unheard of for a man to want his wife to have sex with another man. But at the time it was completely new to me and I thought it was a little crazy. As a matter of fact, it occurred to me that it might be a test, a way Vern had to find out if I would be unfaithful, and then if I was he would leave me.

  Then, thinking about it some more, I saw how it ties up with him always wanting to hear about what I did before we were married. So I could see then how it would get him excited in about the same way. We had some frank talks on the subject, like we would be out walking or out for a drive and he would point out various men and ask, was I attracted to this one or that one or what. His doing this made me more aware of other men, made me take more notice of them. I would find myself glancing at men’s crotches, for example, which is something I had never done before. And by answering his questions as to which men did or didn’t turn me on, I was taking notice myself of which men did, and being turned on by the thought of making it with them.

  I guess this must have changed me, because all of a sudden I was noticing that men were giving me the eye, or making passes at me. Part of this was me noticing what I never noticed before, but also there were men who would say things, and this had not happened before. I think what it was, was that they sensed I was aware of them sexually and that I was more open to the idea of doing something sexual, and that’s what made them take an interest.

  One time, for example, I had this man over to the house to look at the furnace, and when he was done I asked him if he’d like a cup of coffee. “Okay,” he says, “but why don’t we go and drink it in the bedroom?” I got rid of him, but fast, all full of righteous indignation and giving him no encouragement at all, but I have to tell you that him saying those words got me so hot you wouldn’t believe it. My panties were soaking.

  When I told Vern about it that night he got real excited. He told me I should have gone to bed with the guy, and he made us pretend that he was the guy, and we went through the whole thing, him saying, “Okay, but why don’t we drink it in the bedroom?” and me saying that sounded like a good idea, and making a little playlet out of it, and then we went into the bedroom and had a fantastic session. I never saw him so excited before.

  He began talking more and more about this idea of me making it with another man, and also the idea of him watching. At first he said he would like to be there in case some guy got violent or something, or I needed to be protected in one way or the other, but then he admitted that what it was was that he would get a tremendous thrill out of watching. He said that he had always had the urge to have me experience sex with another man with him watching and then joining in. I don’t know why this is, and Vern says he doesn’t know either.

  • • •

  The standard explanation for this not uncommon desire to share one’s wife with another male, or observe her having sex with another male, has been one of latent homosexuality; one is supposedly gratifying unconscious homosexual desires by sharing one’s wife and thus possessing the other male through the medium of the wife. I suspect there’s occasionally some validity in this, but it simply does not adequately explain any number of cases with which I have had some familiarity.

  I can advance several alternate proposals. For example, this sexual sharing very often provides a husband with reassurance that his wife is sexually desirable; that he himself finds her desirable is not enough proof for him, and he is reassured when another man displays similar enthusiasm for her charms.

  Then, too, one could argue that observing one’s wife having sex with another man echoes the primal taboo of watching one’s parents copulate, with the wife cast as the mother and an outsider as the father. (This theory might be particularly apt in explaining Mike’s acquiescence in the next chapter.)

  • • •

  It got to the point where he was saying, “Look, suppose I brought a guy home with me. Would you go for it?”

  Well, I wanted to and I didn’t want to if you know what I mean. By this time, I have to admit, I was very hot for the idea myself. Of course, I came up with a lot of conditions. It would have to be with a clean-cut young guy, the kind of person who’s going to be clean and healthy and all. And it would have to be someone from out of town, because I wouldn’t want anybody we know to find out about this or anything.

  So I agreed with those conditions, and two nights later, lo and behold but he comes home with this guy, nice-looking guy about twenty-eight years old. They both had a couple of drinks but they’re not drunk or anything, and Vern says he brought this guy Ed along for a drink, and then he checks the fridge and says we’re almost out of beer and he goes out for beer, leaving me alone with this Ed.

  Now this was all set up beforehand with Ed. What he told Ed was that his wife needed more sex than he could give her, and he’d introduce us and get out of the house and then Ed could have a good time with me. We had already discussed that he would give the guy this story. After he left, though, you could see that Ed still didn’t believe the whole thing was on the up and up. I think he thought it was some kind of a joke or something, or maybe a badger game thing, I don’t know, with Vern coming in with a gun and trying to get money out of him. I don’t know.

  Anyway, I was real nervous at first, but when Vern left something came over me and I felt real sexy. I put on a record and asked Ed, would he like to dance, and all I had to do was rub against him for a minute or two and he was hard as a rock. Normally I’d be shy, but that night I was really something, and I put my hand right on his cock and started giving him a nice rub, and we were kissing and rocking back and forth and he had his hands all over me, and I was really hot.

  I’ll tell you something. I’m getting hot just thinking about it and telling you about it. I don’t know if you can tell with this dress, but my nipples are hard.

  I took him into the bedroom and we kissed a lot and got our clothes off and got in bed. He had a nice slim body with very little body hair, and he had a very nice cock. I took his cock in one hand and started rubbing my breasts against it, which is something Vern always likes, and I thought he was going to go off just from that, so I stopped and he got on top of me and we started going at it. The first time he came like a jackrabbit, but that was all right because I came the minute he got inside of me. We lay there and necked a little and I sucked him and he got hard right away again, and we screwed a second time. This time he was able to last for a very long time and I had a whole chain of orgasms, which I do when I’m very excited.

  Afterwards I felt funny, and I guess he felt funny too. It wasn’t a question of being unfaithful to Vern, because I didn’t really think of it as being unfaithful on account of it wa
s his idea in the first place and he arranged the whole thing. But I felt strange because this whole setup was unusual and I never before thought of myself as a person who goes in for unusual things, like having her husband bring strange men over and getting into bed with them.

  What the guy wanted to do was get out of here, but he left his car over at the service station. Which is where Vern found him, and knowing he was from out of state by the license plates and all.

  So he had to wait for Vern. Well, Vern came in as soon as we were dressed and back in the living room. What he did was, he sat out front in the car, and when he saw the bedroom lights go off when we came back into the living room, he knew it was all right to come in. What he really wanted to do was go around the house and watch through the bedroom window, but he said all he could think of was a cop coming and figuring him for a Peeping Tom, and then go try to explain to a cop that you own the house and you’re just peeping on your own wife, so he decided the hell with that and he stayed in the car.

  Not a word was said until he drops this guy at his car and comes back, and then we went to bed and he asked me to tell him everything, and I did, and the time we had together was beyond belief.

  I had to admit to him that I enjoyed it. I’d rather make love with Vern than any other man in the world, but being with another man and having that excitement, and then having Vern, that’s just the best possible thing. And as far as guilt is concerned, well, that was never something I really worried about. The way I looked at it, there was me and there was Vern, and if it was something we both wanted to do, that was all that was important. I can’t have children, so there’s no question of the kids finding out. My parents are dead and Vern’s mother lives in Missouri, where most of his family is, so it wouldn’t be the end of the world if somebody in this town did find out about it, although we try to keep that from happening by staying with out-of-towners. And Vern doesn’t have a job to get fired from. He owns the station. A lot of them, the company owns the station and you manage it for them, but Vern owns the station outright. Not that your average oil company cares if the manager’s wife goes to bed with another man, but the point is, it’s not like being a schoolteacher or something where you have to worry so much about exposure.