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

by Lawrence Block

  Two of these favorable replies were from couples and two from single girls. The couples enjoyed swinging with single men. One lived only twenty miles from here, the other a hundred and forty miles, both of them certainly within easy driving distance for me. They included photos, and both of the wives were very attractive and shapely. I was, to put it mildly, very interested indeed.

  Of the two single girls, I should add to that by saying one was single and the other married but with her husband’s permission to swing. The single one was quite plump, in fact I would have to say she is fat. I am not the sort to be turned on by fat women, but even so her letter was sexy and I thought I ought to see her, fat or not. I certainly made the right decision in that case.

  Incidentally, of those three couples where the husband was bisexual, I would like to say that I wrote back to them and explained my own position as to why I did not think it would be a good idea to get together with them. Unlike those thirty-three advertisers, I believe anyone who writes to me is entitled to the courtesy of a reply.

  Well, I visited the two couples and the two single girls. First the one who had her husband’s permission, then the fat girl, and then the two couples. In every single case I had a very good time!

  I can’t say I didn’t know what I was missing before, because I did know. But in all four cases I got more than I expected. Now I know how much I am missing in this loveless, sexless marriage. No, not loveless, because I love my wife in many ways and know she loves me in her own way. But since the first time I met with one of those girls and went to bed with her, I have not had relations with my wife. Why should I force myself upon a woman who does not want or need sex when the world is full of women who desire it and appreciate it? There is no point. It may interest you to know that my wife has not even mentioned the fact that I have had nothing to do with her in a sexual way for some months. I doubt she even notices the difference. She can enjoy sex when I bring it up but it does not look as though it bothers her at all to go without it. Well, as far as I am concerned she can go without it for the rest of her natural life and I don’t guess she will ever notice the difference anyway.

  My own life is changed now. I am doing things I had dreamed before. I am having a good time and living from one day to the next with interest and excitement. I have seen one of the couples two times and the other couple three times. I have seen the fat girl five times, as she lives nearby and it is easy for us to get together. She seems to like me very much. Not to be bragging, but it is the truth, and I must say I like her. There is one particular advantage to fat girls which I could tell you if you are interested. Also, I have seen the married girl with her husband’s permission two times and will be seeing her again soon. There is a difficulty there because of her living quite a distance away, and also because her husband’s permission is not all it should be. He is willing but she still has to sneak around anyhow.

  Jack, the point of this is first of all to say thanks for helping me get up the nerve to do this, and also to give you some statistical information which you might want to use in your future writings; but also there is the point of giving you some information you may feel free to pass on to other fellows in my position by way of advising them.

  Most important is this: If I hadn’t answered a great many letters, I might not have gotten any replies at all! My first plan was to send out five letters and see what would happen. Well, if I had done that, and then no replies, I am sure that would have been the end of it as far as I am concerned. By sending out fifty letters I got the seventeen replies, and four of them panned out really fine. I am sure couples or single girls have a better batting average than that. But single men are not in that good a position. Just too many of us guys and not enough people looking for us! So the thing to do is write as many letters as you can afford and send them all out at the same time.

  I’m not saying every man who sends out fifty letters is going to get seventeen replies, or that four of them will be favorable ones. It’s possible a man could get zero replies. It’s possible he could get twenty or thirty. But I would say that by sending out fifty or a hundred letters you’ll get an idea where you stand, but if you sent out just a few, you might strike out completely and that’s the end of it.

  You might say, why not save all the expense and run an ad yourself for a couple of dollars? Take it from me, Jack, there is no point to it. For a couple, yes. For a single girl, also yes. But not for a single guy!!!

  The reason is not hard to see if you think about it. Again, it’s like a business, supply and demand. Why should a couple or a girl spend money enclosing dollars to answer ads from single men? There is no percentage in it for them to spend a dollar for each letter when they can receive a flood of letters just by running their ad.

  Well, I guess I’ve wasted enough of your time, Jack. Maybe too much!!! You don’t have to answer this letter, as you have done enough for me already, but I did want to keep you posted on my experiences. If any more details would be of interest you just have to say the word.

  Your friend,

  Marv

  I did reply to Marv, advising him that I would be glad to hear a more detailed account of his experiences should he care to write. I also told him I rather agreed that few ads placed by single males were likely to be productive, and largely for the reason he specified. I know of one man in Missouri, for example, who ran an ad for several months and received only one reply, and that from a prostitute. But I wondered if his reasoning on the matter was purely a matter of conjecture or if he had had any direct experience of his own.

  Shortly thereafter I received this letter:

  Dear Jack,

  I was surprised and pleased hearing from you so soon. I know you are busy and am glad you found the time to write.

  Yes, things are going very well for me. I am still seeing the two couples and two girls I told you about, as well as a third couple I met through one of the couples I have been seeing all along. I have been giving thought to sending out another mailing but for the time being will wait and see, as I think it likely I will continue to meet new people through my present friends.

  For another thing, the fat girl and I have been considering the idea of placing an ad as a couple to meet other couples. I know this would greatly increase the number of people we would hear from. Just now Shirley (that is her name) is a little concerned about publishing her photograph. Not that she is afraid someone will recognize her but because of her weight problem. She feels she is fat and this will turn men off. I have to agree in part, as it turned me off at first, but I care for her a good deal and consider her a super sex partner. One thing about fat girls is that they are really crazy about putting things in their mouths, if you understand my meaning. At the present time Shirley is on a diet. She has attempted diets many times in the past, losing the weight and gaining it back again. This time I am giving her encouragement and she says it makes a difference. Well, time will tell. Even if she does not lose weight I can tell you that I think the world of her and enjoy spending time with her.

  I have also written to you about Pat, the married girl who has her husband’s permission to swing. Hers is a sad story. You could say that it is a tragic story. What it amounts to is that her husband is a homo. Not the kind of homo who can adjust, because his “thing” is young boys and he has twice been arrested for making advances to boys ten or eleven years old. His family has plenty of money or else he would have been sent to prison by now. He has had medical help but it does not change the desire, just helps him keep it under control. He married Pat some years ago hoping her love would make a normal man of him but no such luck. He does not make love to her more than two-three times a year if that much. He has to have a lot to drink first and then has to have her suck him for a long time, and then he enters her and comes right away. She has had two children by him and then had a sterilization operation.

  She is not really a swinger, having no interest in more than one person at a time. All she wants is regular sex. I do
n’t mean she doesn’t want to do the full variety of things but that she wants to be able to have sex regularly. She loves to fuck and the harder the better. The problem is this. Her husband knows he cannot satisfy her needs and knows she must look elsewhere but is still wildly jealous. He has told her to get what she can and still she must sneak around, as he opens her mail, races her to the phone, etc. This is a complication, but as she is very attractive and only 29 yrs. old and wonderful in bed it is worth it to me even though it is a two-hour drive to where she lives.

  Of the two couples that I have been swinging with from the beginning, one is a pharmacist and his wife who live nearby, the other an industrial chemist and his wife, who is a schoolteacher. The chemist and schoolteacher like to swing mostly with couples, in fact I am the only single male they swing with at present, and in fact they were the ones to introduce me to the third couple. They are very warm and open people, and as a matter of fact with them it is not the idea of having a wild sex scene as much as the idea of having a close friendship which is made even closer and more intimate by sharing sex openly together. I have twice brought Shirley along to meet the chemist and his wife for foursome activity, and the four of us get along in every possible way. Rita, the schoolteacher, is bisexual as well, and is attracted to Shirley, but only time will tell as to whether or not Shirley will want to participate in this sort of thing. It is my opinion that she will sooner or later, Jack, but this is just an opinion and nothing more.

  The pharmacist and his wife are less interesting as people, that is, as far as I am concerned. But they are very interesting sexually. The pharmacist is a voyeur and likes to watch the sex acts of others. I guess this is nothing new to you, Jack. He can function normally and sometimes has sex with his wife while I am there, but mostly prefers to spend such times watching me have sex with her in every imaginable way. Especially he likes to tell us what positions to do and gives us directions as if he were a movie director. This is enjoyable for me because she is such an attractive woman, beautiful body, and very good in bed, but I do not think I will be seeing too much of them in the future. I think this feeling is mutual. I think they like to have a lot of different people, single men or couples as the case may be, because this variety is the spice of life to them and they are not so much interested in forming close relationships with their swinging friends, as is the case with Jerry and Rita, the chemist and his schoolteacher wife.

  As for the third couple, I have so far only seen them once, and that was with Jerry and Rita present, so will not write about them now. She is certainly pretty and I enjoyed making love to her, also enjoyed the fivesome we got into. It is my guess that the husband is homo to a degree. This is just a guess and it is probably not fair for me to leap to that conclusion . . .

  Now about placing an ad as a single man. Yes, I am basing my opinion on experience. I did not mention this before because of the lack of results, but at the same time that I answered those fifty ads I placed an ad of my own. It was published the following month and to this day I have not received a single response! Perhaps it proves nothing, but for my money if an ad goes out to all those subscribers and does not draw a single response, I would not place an ad again. Also, I mentioned this to the various people I have met through answering ads, and they have all said that they would not answer an ad placed by a single man because they would not find it necessary to do so.

  You also ask how my relationship with my wife has been affected lately. I could say, What relationship? We still have not had sexual relations and it does not seem to bother her at all, and she has still not said anything about it. However, I have a hunch she suspects I am getting sex somewhere else. This is just a hunch and I could not say for sure what prompts it, just her attitude in ways I cannot describe.

  Jack, sometimes I wonder why I stay married to this woman. She is a good housekeeper and in many ways a good mother to the children, but that is all there is. She is loyal to me, but what is the good of this type of loyalty? Why do I stay with her when all the pleasure of my life is found outside of our marriage and nothing but boredom is in the marriage itself?

  If I were not married, I suppose I would marry Shirley. At least, that is my feeling at the present time being. We have not talked about this at all. Or if not marry her, then live with her. It amounts to much the same, as we are not people for whom marriage is important, just feeling.

  Oh well, time will tell. I will keep in touch if there is anything to report and will answer any additional questions you may have, Jack.

  Your friend,

  Marv

  I replied briefly to this letter, perhaps more briefly than I would ordinarily have done, because of the pressure of other work. Some time passed, and I did not much expect to hear from Marv again. Just recently, after this volume was already in preparation, I received the following letters.

  Dear Jack,

  Haven’t written to you in some months, but maybe you remember me . . . Had the urge to write you because things have changed around much for me and wanted to keep you informed about my life and how things are going. I see you have been busy since I was last in touch with you. I have been keeping up with your books and especially liked your latest one and so did Shirley.

  I don’t remember just how much I wrote about Shirley in my last letter. The fact of the matter is that the two of us became very important to each other as time went by. Two weeks ago Friday I could not take it anymore and “took the plunge.” Meaning that I moved out on my wife and am now living with Shirley.

  I will tell you something, Jack. It is hell to live two lives at the same time and try to be two different men at the same time. The man I pretended to be, husband and father, was a mask. It was not the real me. I found I could only be the real me when I was with Shirley and the rest of the time was just a shambles. It was a terrible situation and I stuck it out as long as I could, thinking it my duty to my wife and my children. More and more I came to the light that I had other duties too. Namely, my duty to Shirley and, most important of all, my duty to myself. I don’t like putting myself first but in the world we live in that is what you have to do and Jack, believe me, that’s the only world we’ve got for all of its faults and we only have one life to live.

  How about that, old Marvin the Philosopher, but it is the truth as I see it just the same.

  What I told my wife was that I had fallen in love with another woman and could not live with her anymore. I did not say anything about the swinging, seeing no need to bring it up. I kept putting off doing this for fear of hurting her, my wife that is, and lo and behold there was nothing to fear but fear itself, as she did not take it as hard as I thought she would. No, to tell the truth, I don’t think it bothered her much at all. She said, did I want a divorce, and I said, no, not for the present time being, but I would not be living with her anymore. Well, she said, I will expect you to be sending money just the same as I need thus and so many dollars a week to run this house and care for your children, and I said, of course I will send the money, and outside of that it is just a matter of packing my clothes, which I did, and moving out, which I did, and that was all there was to it.

  Shirley says she doesn’t care about being married and I believe her but only time will tell if she continues to think that way, as women have a great desire to be married for the sake of security and I can understand it if that turns out to be what she wants. By then my wife will be used to me not being around at all, and who knows, she might find somebody herself. It is possible, and then she won’t stand in the way of a divorce, and everything will be however it turns out to be, but for the time being I am very happy about how things are turning out.

  One of the things that brought this on was Shirley and I started swinging as a couple. I don’t know if I wrote you about this or not. I think I did. We put an ad in Select and got several replies and began meeting some of the people who answered. Shirley when I first met her she was on the heavy side, and while she is still plump has slimmed down quite a
bit so that I would not want her to lose more weight than she already has. She is the perfect woman for me and says I am just right for her. I don’t know what she sees in me but whatever it is, I’m glad I got it, Jack! Shirley is the woman I have wanted all my life.

  She is almost eight years younger than myself but is quite mature so it is like there was no age difference at all. She has never been married and in fact had little sexual experience before she met me. In spite of having put an ad in Select, which she did. She had sex with quite a few men before meeting me but never a long relationship. She did not get too many answers to her ad in Select on account of not having her picture printed. You see, Jack, she had this complex about being heavy which made her nervous about putting her picture in the paper.

  But she is the sensuous woman all by herself. She loves sex as much as I do and she loves it in all its forms. Her skin is as soft and as smooth as a child and there is nothing she does not like for me to do with her. Also, she is bisexual, as we have found out. I should say that she is bisexual under certain conditions, being that she has to feel a closeness to the other woman or else is not interested. And she is not at all jealous but loves to see me make love to other women, as I am not jealous and enjoy watching her with other men or with other women as the case may be.

  Well, Jack, that’s about it for now. Just wanted to keep you up on what was happening with me and to tell you that Shirley and I think the world of you and hope we will get a chance to meet you some day. Shirley says she would like to go to bed with you! But of course, Jack, the main thing is, we would both like to see you in person some day if your travels ever take you to this neck of the woods. Just drop a line and let us know if you are coming and you will get a warm welcome. It’s the boondocks out here but there is plenty going on in the boondocks, Jack, as I am sure you well know.