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

by Lawrence Block

  Oh, I’ll tell you something funny, in line with what Vern was saying about the service station being the best for contacts. There was this one fellow we had a little trouble with, on account of he turned out to live right here in Sandusky. He had these Georgia plates on his car but that was because he hadn’t got around to changing over his registration to Ohio. He had just moved up here, and it turns out he lives only two blocks from us! So when he’s ready to leave he tells me he’d sure like to see me again, and that’s when we find out he lives close by, and we didn’t know what to do.

  Now, one thing we agreed was we didn’t ever want to see anybody more than once. Occasionally a man would pass through that we had seen once and stop at the station, and Vern would say like I had moved away or something to get rid of him. But we couldn’t do that with this fellow, and sure enough, a couple of days later he came over to the house while Vern was at the station.

  Not knowing what to do, I went to bed with him. I didn’t really want to, but I didn’t know how to get out of it without being nasty or acting dumb. Later I told Vern, and he agreed we had a problem. What we did, the next time the fellow came over I called Vern and he came back to the house, and we both explained the situation to the fellow, about being married and all. I have to say he was stunned, but then he said of course he understood why I wouldn’t want to see him alone under the circumstances, but why couldn’t the three of us get together for a threesome now and then.

  We tried that, and we were seeing him once a week for about a month, but then we called and told him we wanted to stop it, and fortunately he was good about it. I think by then the novelty was wearing off for him too. I was just uncomfortable and so was Vern, and that was the end of that, and ever since then Vern makes a little small talk first to make sure the man is really from out of the state before he brings up the entire subject.

  Just seeing a man one time only is more exciting, and there’s no hassle or anything that way.

  • • •

  A rather unusual couple. You can draw your own conclusions about Vernon’s motivations for desiring this sort of troilistic arrangement. I won’t bother foisting my own ideas upon you, but I will say that the two of them happen to have what looks to be a good thing going. The frequency of their own sexual relations, related so casually by Vernon, is such that their occasional trios are not really much more than icing on the cake. While what works for them would probably work for relatively few other couples, there’s no denying that it does indeed work for them.

  Frank

  A writer friend of mine, who has been into swinging for several years, a while ago began telling me about Frank and Mike and Dena. “I could introduce you to them,” he offered. “They’d be good material.”

  I agreed that they would be good material, and felt they could fit well enough into this particular volume. “But I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “You’ve known them for a long time, and certainly know them better than I ever would. And you’re a writer yourself. So write.” I thought for a moment. “I’ll even pay you,” I said, and no words ever came harder to me. “I get a pittance myself, so I’ll give you a fraction of a pittance.”

  Here’s what he wrote:

  Dear Jack,

  Swinging makes strange bedfellows. I think your readers would be intrigued by the story of the oddest situation my wife and I have encountered in our six years of sexual exploration. The reader must be warned that this story (as of Spring ’73) is unfinished, and the possible endings more complex than those of “The Lady or the Tiger?”

  The strangest side of this unequilateral triangle is a drop-out doctor, who I’ll call “Frank.” There are no statistics available on drop-outs in the vocations, but I’d assume that the percentage in the medical profession is near to the lower end of the scale.

  Questioning Frank about his motives for quitting is a frustrating experience. His reasons sound plausible, but they don’t mount high enough, and they don’t satisfy. He doesn’t like his fellow doctors and he doesn’t care for the majority of patients it was his DUTY to treat. He hates regular hours. Getting out of bed is traumatic (particularly if the company is good). All these things are true for many doctors, but they don’t drop their bankbooks and run.

  You know SOMETHING has been omitted. He didn’t tell you THE reason. Frank’s personality compounds the feeling of something missing. There’s a curious sense of hollowness. He’s there, but not quite. And it’s caused by more than the realization that he’s not listening to what you’re saying, and perhaps not even listening to what HE’s saying.

  Through experimentation, you learn that there are a few magnetic words that cause a few moments of attention: Baroque music, chess, bridge. You can guarantee his wholehearted attention if the subject is sex.

  Frank is approaching sixty, but he has the constitution (in this case, euphemism for COCK) of a far younger man. That is to say, he has the CONCENTRATION of a younger man. He LOOKS his age, even unto a slight paunch and gray hair. But, to the everlasting gratitude of uncounted women, his lower half belies his upper half.

  However, there’s an element more important than ability to keep man’s core perfectly parallel to the ground women worship. Frank is a wizard at the psychic turn-on. In spite of his appalling lack of insight in the social sphere, in the sexual sphere his mental flashlight pierces tangled Freudian undergrowths as if they were mere will-’o-the-wisps.

  Frank fucks not just the body, but the psyche. His body fucks the body while his mind fucks the mind. Although socially and diplomatically inept (if he were in our State Department we’d be at war with Luxembourg and New Zealand within hours), on the way to and in bed he is superb, playing almost errorless ball. His words, his attitudes, are tailored to the specific fantasies of the to-be-bedded.

  It took my wife several years before she landed in bed with Frank. But that was because Glynn had seen Frank only in a social setting, and had been put off by his eagerness to impress, sweating to appear knowledgeable in areas of dim or nonexistent knowledge. It took two years’ worth of Frank’s phone calls before her curiosity reached the level of her antipathy.

  You’re thinking that WE were the trio I was leading to? No. We three were A trio, but not THE trio. I’m only explaining the relationship of my wife and myself to the leading angle of THAT triangle. Glynn and I are unconventional swingers. We don’t follow the standard rules (which are so rigid that the dullest cocktail parties, by comparison, are examples of spontaneity). For one thing, I don’t MUST have HIS wife, too. We don’t MUST have separate rooms (Closet Swinger Rule 1). We don’t MUST be together (Non-closet Swinger Rule 1). They don’t MUST be married. If we swing with just a single man (frowned upon, though swinging with a single woman is permissible), I don’t MUST NOT come into contact with him in any manner, means, way, shape, or form.

  Swingers who scream SEXUAL FREEDOM the loudest are the uptightest, most narrow-minded hypocrites you’d ever not want to meet.

  But we were talking about Frank. He fucked my wife and I watched. Which makes it appear that I’m a voyeur. Appearances are more often accurate than deceiving, and this is an example. When I wasn’t watching, I was participating, and not just with my wife. So it would also appear that I’m bisexual. Again, appearances are accurate.

  Which makes it appear that Frank also is bisexual. Score one more for the accuracy of appearances. His homosexuality, though, is two one-way streets with NO U-TURNS. That is, he’s always the male, even with a fellow male. I think of Frank as primarily a heterosexual to whom an orifice is an orifice is an orifice. Logically, then, two orifices would be better than one, three better than two, etc. The mathematically perceptive have by now determined that to Frank, my wife and I were preferable to one woman alone, but that the two of us were not as desirable as two women. The best of all possible worlds for Frank, it therefore follows, is the orgy, specifically the bisexual orgy.

  All the intelligence and energy Frank had once put into the practice of medicine
(friends most critical of his dropping out vouch for his skill and reputation as a doctor) was invested into some of New York’s grandest orgies. He couldn’t throw the parties in his own nest (which was rumored to be uninhabitable, except by Frank). He arranged and hosted the parties at the apartments of cooperative friends (or lustful enemies).

  The parties varied in both quality and quantity. What Frank described as “an intimate little party” meant about twelve. A big party meant there’d be no room on the floor. In his wisdom, Frank broke the rule of even distribution. “Men wear out faster than women,” he said, in a patronizing tone that excluded himself from the generalization. Thus, each woman would average approximately one and a half men, which kept both the women and the bisexual men happy, and the straights on their toes, waiting their turns.

  My wife and I eventually had our fill of Frank’s parties because we discovered an almost infallible rule. Place more than a half-dozen people in a room, and either Glynn, me, or both of us will find at least one of them intolerable. Although this isn’t disastrous at an old-fashioned party, it’s calamitous at a sex party. If you have to keep heading off the giggling thing with the vibrator that’s after your wife, or having to be polite to a fat lady who’s devouring everything in sight, it can be a total turn-off.

  Some time after our departure from party life, Frank called to tell us he had met a couple “you and Glynn would be crazy about.” I shrugged, because shrugs don’t show over the phone. In the past Frank had often spoken in glowing terms of people we were to meet at his parties, and seldom was the glow for us better than a dying ten-watt bulb.

  For months we put off Frank’s application for a sexual pentagon, before finally giving in to his persistence.

  One evening he brought his couple to meet us. Glynn and I were startled. It wasn’t that we were expecting the worst, but that we expected the mediocre. And what we got was the best, or certainly the best we had ever seen within a hundred yards of Frank.

  Dena was the youngest-looking thirty I had ever seen. Delicate skin, wide-eyed, long, lovely dark hair. Adding to the illusion, she was dressed in an old-fashioned skirt which looked as if it had been borrowed from her mother. She could have passed for sixteen.

  Her husband, Mike, was one of those rare presences that is comfortable to have around from the moment of meeting. An intelligent, quiet, gentle man. Hippie-like without self-consciousness.

  Frank basked in our reactions to them. Among his less pleasant habits is his manner of running I-told-you-so’s into the ground and under. He is a gloater without peer.

  The vibrations were so positive that it would have been unnatural if the five of us had not linked sexually.

  I have heard it complained that the finite possibilities of variety in sex make it, inevitably, a bore. I can agree, but only if it’s the possible variations between TWO people that are under discussion. Granted, there are more possible arrangements between two people than between two books on a shelf. But compare possible two-book arrangements with five-book arrangements. Then compare the comparatively limited arrangements of five books with the possibilities of five PEOPLE! The potential for variation increases more than arithmetically with each person added to the original two. Listing all the possibilities in a group of five would be a task taking days. LIVING them might take years. And by the time you’ve gone through all of them, the ones tried years ago would again seem fresh and novel.

  That night each of us experienced things we had never experienced before. Whoever says there’s nothing new under the sun forgets to add a footnote that makes the statement ridiculous. There are constant new COMBINATIONS OF EVENTS under the sun.

  Has a person of YOUR exact temperament ever read these words, placed in THIS order before? Has anyone ever led YOUR EXACT LIFE before? Met exactly the same people? Said the same things in the same order in the same tone of voice in the same places? If you really think so, it’s grounds for suicide. Anyway, the five of us shared an experience that no one else has ever had. Of course, there have been other fivesomes, and they have done the same exact things. But it would be miraculous if any member of those fivesomes responded emotionally in exactly the way any of the five of us did. They weren’t US. Whatever they felt, it meant something ELSE to THEM.

  Although the possibilities of variation in an orgy is infinitely greater than in our small group, to me that advantage is not worth the accompanying loss of the PERSONAL (a quality that some orgiasts secretly find terrifying). We weren’t bodies to use and be used, we were still OURSELVES. This takes some courage. There is a feeling hanging over orgies of people fleeing from themselves.

  The most vividly recalled moments of that evening were those of total connection. At one point we WERE a pentagon, connected by mouths. I suspect none of us will ever forget it.

  Our groupings were fluid, changing constantly. Dena and I took turns withdrawing from connection to concentrate on watching. In Dena I had met my match in voyeurism. In both of us the desire to experience warred with the desire to watch. This was conveniently balanced by the exhibitionistic tendencies in Frank and Glynn. Mike didn’t upset the balance. He sat in the middle.

  Except for those unhappy people so repressed that they must constantly stand guard even over their thoughts, everyone has sexual fantasies. Many go through life without an opportunity to convert fantasy into reality. That may be what is regretted most at the moment of death.

  Glynn, Frank, Dena, Mike, and myself will not die as regretfully as others. The memory of that evening and subsequent evenings we spent together will subtract from regrets. Perhaps what we’ll experience at our final moments will be nostalgia.

  “The Unholy Five” (an uncopyrighted title in case you wish to form your own) continue to meet about once a month. Why so seldom if it is that good? First, the psychic energy expended in that intense an experience leaves myself and my wife content for weeks. There isn’t any temptation to glut ourselves. Secondly, there are logistical problems. The visiting team must travel a distance to see us, and Mike and Dena must find a baby-sitter for their young boy and girl. Thirdly, all of us have other interests and must leave space to pursue them. Glynn has boyfriends, I have girlfriends, WE have trios. (All requiring less “psychic expenditure” than our intense fivesome.) In addition, we’re fond of theater, ballet, and concerts. And somewhere, amidst all this, we must even find time for our work.

  Compared to us, Mike, Dena, and Frank are one-tracked. They DO enjoy monumental parties, and haven’t much time or energy left for anything else. In spite of pleasant distractions our Unholy Five continues to thrive. Why five? Must Frank always be there? Yes. He is the soul, the prime mover, the motor, the devil of our parties. We other four enjoy having a generator. We can function without Frank, but on a more sedate level. There are few things more depressing than sedate sex.

  Frank is a sexual glutton, the Sexual Appetite incarnate. He starts us, heats us, fascinates us. In return for this (as men forgive sensual women ANYTHING), we forgive his pretentiousness and his unwitty witticisms. He sets us off and indulges our sexual fantasies, playing Dominant Man, playing Stud, playing Daddy.

  Glynn and I can break the spell when we choose. But Dena (and perhaps Mike in his own way) cannot. To Dena this unextraordinary-looking, post-middle-aged man is Svengali, Rasputin. (Freud and I prefer the term “Daddy.”)

  He turns her on as no man (except, in the subway of her mind, the original Daddy) ever has. At the time Dena and Mike met Frank, they had had a sexually bland, emotionally passable, occasionally shaky marriage. They went to a swinging party in an attempt to climb out, and there was Frank, who had always been looking for a daughter.

  But his new-found daughter is a difficult woman to live with. “Girl” describes her better than “woman,” and THAT’s the difficulty. She behaves as young as she looks. She’s self-absorbed. Like Frank, she is only half aware of the people about her, and over-aware of herself. Without warning she turns cranky. The slightest frustration can cause h
ysteria. I have seen her do everything but lie on the floor kicking and screaming because Frank criticized her for mispronouncing a word. It took him one hour and two sedatives to calm her.

  She can’t bear criticism from Frank. But not being fucked by Frank is a deeper hell. Sex was of no great significance to her during her first ten years of marriage. It lay dormant. She laid dormantly. As for oral sex, it was something to be tolerated. Anal sex? What’s that?

  Frank opened all the portals. With a relish. They will never close now. At least, not if Frank’s knocking.

  Frank has also opened a fourth portal. The one of their house. He has moved in with them. While Mike works, Frank and Dena fuck . . . among other things.

  The two children? UNCLE Frank!

  And what of the un-outraged husband? The nagging wife, whose prime target was once Mike, now has another target (armed with tranquilizers to fire back). More important, the sleeping sexual volcano has erupted, with enough extra lava for Mike to wade in. Frank and Mike often go wading together. I’ve seen erotic waves break upon the floor of my living room as they enter Dena from opposite directions.

  Once, in an experiment more sociological than sexual, I introduced two close friends to the Unholy Five. I wasn’t concerned with body-adding. I was curious about their response to the Frank-Dena-Mike trio. Their reactions were startlingly similar, considering the disparity in their personalities. Linda and Charles are as unlike in temperament and philosophy as they are in sex.

  Both were chilled. Both were repelled. Both thought the three were dangerously unaware of the game they played. Both disliked Frank totally. (They never used the word “vampire” but I felt it in their voices.) Both thought Dena a lovely but irritating child. Both liked Mike, but found his part in the drama difficult to understand. Both felt there was a frightening storm brewing.