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

by Lawrence Block

  In the case of the blonde and the redhead, the easiest thing is to tell you just what happened. The redhead is a stenographer at a company in, well, it doesn’t matter what city, does it? But she’s in her early twenties, beautiful body and nice face, and still lives at home with her parents, but she’s independent enough to go out when she wants to and stay out overnight if she feels like it. She was engaged for about a year but did not get married. She likes sex and manages to get a lot of it.

  I met her a couple of months ago, took her out drinking, then back to my room, where we got along fine. I looked her up again the next time I was in her town and the sex was even better, as she was more at ease with me. This most recent time we began talking about fantasies. I told her some of the group things I’d been in, and encouraged her to talk about her own fantasies. My intuition is fairly good, and although she didn’t say it directly, I had the feeling she had the fantasy of having sex with another woman. Well, one thing I’ve developed in the course of my experiences with group sex is a lot of enthusiasm for being around while a couple of good-looking women are getting it together. It’s a turn-on for me, as it seems to be for the majority of men. And there was a girl in this town whom I had taken to swinging parties on a couple of occasions, and whom I knew to be completely bisexual.

  So while we were cuddling there and talking about fantasies, I told her there was something about her that reminded me very much of another girl I knew, and that this girl had an interesting fantasy. Of course she wanted to know what it was. (There was no specific other girl that she reminded me of, naturally, but it was a great way to bring the subject up without scaring her.)

  I said this other girl had always wanted to know what it was like to make it with another girl, and when I saw her reaction I knew my intuition had been right on the mark. Then I told her I had managed to arrange things for the mythical girl in question and how great it had been for all of us, and she couldn’t hide the interest she felt.

  From that point it was just a matter of calling the blonde. She was busy that particular night but said she would be glad to get together with the two of us the following night. I told my little redhead everything was set, and we spent the rest of the night speculating on what would happen the following night, and it turned her on more than anyone would believe. Then the next night we met the blonde and had a perfectly delightful threesome. If there’s anything more enjoyable than fucking one beautiful girl while she in turn is going down on another beautiful girl, I don’t know what it is . . .

  In this particular case, Jack, it was especially great because her fantasy happened to be one I like very much myself. Even if this is not the case, I’ve found nothing more rewarding than encouraging a woman to act out her own fantasy, whatever it might be. The special excitement it brings her, and the feeling of being involved in a broadening of her sexual horizons, is very much a turn-on for me all by itself.

  Let me give you an example or two. There was a girl I met, a little on the heavy side but still quite attractive, and I gave her the usual approach after we had already made love once. After much hesitation she admitted that what she had always wanted was to pretend to be asleep while a man pretended to sneak into her room and make love to her. I suppose there are all sorts of psychological explanations for a fantasy of this sort, but I am no expert on that subject.

  Now, on the surface it doesn’t sound like the kind of fantasy that would be brimful of excitement for the man who helped her act it out. Making love to a woman who just lies there and pretends to be asleep is a great deal like marriage! (Just kidding, as my own wife is a most enthusiastic sexual partner, as I’m sure I’ve told you before. In fact, she is my favorite sexual partner, and the fact that I seek variety is no reflection on her performance; I would chase around no matter who I might be married to.)

  I determined to act out this fantasy, however, if only for the girl’s enjoyment. Accordingly, we turned off the lights and I sat in the chair across the room from her while she pretended to fall asleep. After about five minutes or so I quietly moved over to the side of the bed and drew the sheet down from her body. She did not react. I studied her nude form for a while, then got in bed with her and began to pet her. I sucked her breasts for a long time, then brought her to orgasm with my finger. She lay quite still during all this, although I could watch her become more and more passionate until she finally climaxed with an almost inaudible moan.

  Then I spread her legs wide and gave her a really intense fucking. By this time I was very much excited myself. Her complete passivity was very stimulating to myself. It was like rape in some ways, like necrophilia in some ways, and it’s interesting to note that neither rape nor necrophilia could possibly appeal to me in actuality, but became appealing in the context of acting out this girl’s personal fantasy. I fucked her hard and strong, and on an impulse withdrew at the last moment and scurried forward so that I could shoot all over her “sleeping” face. This came as quite a surprise to her, and she found it very exciting. Again, I’m sure a psychiatrist could explain why I did this and why she enjoyed it, but the point is that it made for a great experience for both of us. She tried something she had always wanted to try but had never had the courage to ask for, and I got sexual enjoyment out of something it would never have occurred to me to try in the first place.

  I’ll save some other thoughts for my next letter—assuming, that is, that you’re interested in hearing more from me.

  Sincerely,

  Paul

  I replied that I was indeed interested in hearing further from him, and was especially interested in knowing more about haw he managed to participate in swinging as a single male. I conjectured that perhaps, in discussing fantasies with women, he suggested swinging to them and took them along to parties if they expressed interest.

  I was delayed somewhat in replying, and my letter reached Paul when he was on another road trip. Thus, it was a while before I heard from him. He began by apologizing for his delay, then recounted at considerable length an experience from his most recent road trip. It consisted largely of a description of a sex party he attended, and he described in overwhelming detail everything he did and most of what he witnessed. There’s no need to reproduce it here.

  He continued:

  Yes, you are right in guessing that the easiest way to find a swinging partner is to find a girl, take her to bed, and then encourage her to give group sex a try. It won’t be news to you that this doesn’t always work out. Girls who will do absolutely everything in bed with a man will draw the line at attending parties. However, you might be surprised how many of them will give it a try, especially if you have taken trouble to know their sexual interests and have made them feel encouraged to express their fantasies. By inducing a mood of experimentation and showing yourself to be open-minded and permissive, a great deal can be accomplished.

  It also should be pointed out, Jack, that it’s a different matter getting a girl to try swinging when you’re having a casual sexual affair with her, and when she’s basically a sexual liberal in her own life, accustomed to pickups and hit-and-run sex, compared to inducing a standard suburban housewife to take the plunge . . .

  As a matter of fact, though, this is not how I had my own first group sex experience. I had already contemplated doing this and had gotten one girl to the point where she thought she might be willing to swing with another couple if I set it all up, but that was as far as I had proceeded. Frankly, I didn’t know just how to go about it, whether to answer correspondence ads or what. I am sure I would have put the ball in motion sooner or later, but in the meantime I met a girl in another town, and in the course of becoming fully acquainted with each other on a sexual basis, she felt comfortable enough with me to confide that she had attended a couple of group sex parties. This excited me very much, as you can surely guess. I told her of my interest in attending such a party and she was able to arrange that I go to one with her in the near future. I went, and it is fair to say that my life has
not been the same since.

  Personally, I have never had to resort to correspondence ads. I am sure, from what I have heard from other people, as well as from what I have read in your books, that they are very useful for a great many of the people who do make use of them, and that they can be handled in such a way as to be completely safe, or as safe as anything else. However, I have been lucky in being able to build up contacts, so that I have an address book full of the names of people in the cities I most frequently visit. If I have a partner for the evening, all I have to do is make a phone call or two and be virtually certain of finding some swinging action. And, needless to say, in most of these cities I can be fairly certain of finding a partner on reasonably short notice. This at least is how things have developed over the past few years. It was not always this easy, but I have never had to place or answer an advertisement.

  If you asked the average girl to attend a group sex party, you would surely get no for an answer. But if you set the stage right, your odds improve tremendously. This is especially so in the last few years as group sex has gotten more and more publicity. Girls who had barely heard of such things, or else assumed they only took place in New York and Hollywood, are now at least familiar with the idea of group sex. And, when you’ve let them come to see that you respect a woman more if she is sexually adventurous, and that you have done just about everything yourself at one time or another, the climate for her getting into group sex is more and more favorable.

  Jack, almost all of the girls I get together with want to try it. That’s not saying that they all will, but that they all have some curiosity on the subject. Even those who go to great lengths to insist that it is not for them will ask a lot of questions about just what it’s like, what sort of people go there, what goes on, etc. Occasionally I have told a girl that one of her girlfriends was at a sex party I recently attended. Of course she had to know which one, and of course I never tell—sometimes because the original statement is a lie, other times because that sort of thing is something you keep confidential.

  As I see it, virtually everybody is interested because of awareness of group sex and natural curiosity. Swinging serves a lot of functions besides giving you a wide range of sexual partners. It satisfies the desire to watch other people fucking, and even if you are not in the least bit a voyeur, people still wonder what it’s like to watch other people fucking. It satisfies the urge to have other people watching you, an urge that women seem to feel more intensely than men. So all this interest exists and it’s just a matter of exploiting it. Maybe exploiting is the wrong word, since all I try to do is encourage people to do what they wanted to do in the first place but shied away from for fear of what other people might think of them.

  Well, friend Jack, that’s about it, I guess. I could tell you more about specific experiences, people I have met, etc., if you want, but what I’ve written should tell you something about my own sexual lifestyle, as you put it. I get a kick out of writing these letters, as I guess I mentioned. I can’t say it’s my favorite pastime—you know what my favorite pastime is, don’t you? But it’s enjoyable or I wouldn’t waste my time (and your time) on it.

  Also, it is a pleasure to be able to tell someone all of this. Most of the girls I see know I am married, that’s no hang-up, but there’s no one on the outside I can really confide in at great length. To tell you the truth, the one drawback to my “double life” is that keeping a secret from my wife gives us that much less in the way of common experience. It would be better if I did not have to keep things a secret from her for this reason. Often, in a particularly exotic situation, I imagine how enjoyable it would be to be able to discuss it all with her afterwards.

  But of course that is out of the question. Unless, of course, I should introduce her to swinging. I have been thinking of this more and more lately and cannot say for certain whether I will attempt to do so or not. It is possible that I will and possible that I will not. On the plus side, there is the fact that I think swinging is a good experience, and since I love her I would want her to have this good experience for herself. On the other hand, there is a special feeling which I have for her, and I am not sure I would continue to have it if she was to be with other men in my presence. I feel foolish admitting this, with all the swinging I have done, but I am not sure I could accept it from her. This is the old double standard again, sure as hell but realizing it’s the double standard doesn’t make it go out of your mind!

  Also, the nature of my job is such that I am on the road a great deal. Now she could not possibly come with me on those trips. So I would continue to swing alone on those trips, and if we were both swinging at home, she would be aware of this and would probably disapprove. Which would be a great source of friction in our relationship.

  Also, my travel is sexually important to me not just for the thrill of group sex—I don’t devote that much of my time to sex parties—but for the opportunity to meet new girls and become sexually intimate with them. I don’t mean I’m the textbook example of the satyr or male nymphomaniac whose sole interest is in screwing as many girls as possible, and once he’s had them he doesn’t want to see them again. On the contrary, I want to know a girl as deeply as possible in a sexual way, want to go to bed with her several times, and occasionally want to maintain a casual relationship with her for a long period of time. Yet there’s no denying that, to a great extent, variety is the spice of life for me and sexual variety is the spice of my sex life.

  And this whole side of my life is not something I can share with my wife, Jack. No way!

  So I am not sure what I will do, but I’ll certainly keep you posted. If there’s anything you’d like to know more about, just drop me a line and I’ll do the best I can to fill you in.

  Sincerely,

  Paul

  I answered this letter rather briefly and did not have any questions, just advised Paul to let me hear from him from time to time. A long time passed before I received the following letter:

  Dear Jack:

  Well, it’s been awhile, but something came up that prompts me to write to you . . .

  You may recall I wrote you that I was thinking of introducing my wife to swinging. Well, after writing to you and thinking about it for a while, I decided against it. Things were going well and I saw no need to rock the boat.

  Then, not too long ago, I happened to be leafing through one of the swingers’ correspondence magazines. I have never used these magazines but swingers have them around all the time and I often look at the ads and pictures. I was astonished to find a photograph of a woman I recognized—not a woman I knew through swinging, but a neighbor of ours back home. I thought I was mistaken but the city was right and the likeness was unmistakable, and from the ad the woman and her husband looked to be hard-core swingers.

  My wife and I did not know this couple well, but we did know them through PTA, the neighborhood, etc. This gave me the idea of introducing my wife to swinging with this couple. I realized it could be done in such a way that she would not know anything specific about my activities out of town. There were still other arguments against it, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it was something I wanted to do, whether it made perfect sense or not . . .

  It was not difficult at all for me to get her to go for it. After all, look at all the experience I’ve had talking other girls into it! Also, my wife is a very open person sexually, always anxious to try anything either she or I might think of, and is highly sexed.

  I asked her if she didn’t ever get a yen for other men. She replied quite frankly that when I was away from home for long periods of time she frequently got horny, and that on more than a few occasions she had a yen to take a lover. But she had never done so (she said, and I believe her) because she was afraid of ruining our relationship and afraid that, in a town like ours, she could easily be found out.

  I asked her next if, even when I was around, she didn’t wonder what it would be like to experience sex with someone else. She admitte
d she’d had such thoughts but had never entertained them seriously. Then I began to discuss swinging and group sex and she admitted it had a certain appeal for her but said she had strong reservations about it. She was concerned that I would cease to love her if she went with another man. I reassured her on this point. Then she said she knew a little about the subject from television programs and magazine articles and it seemed awfully shoddy to her to meet strangers at bars or through ads. I agreed with her completely.

  Then I told her I had found this swinger magazine in a hotel room. (The only things I’ve found in hotel rooms are Gideon Bibles and telephone directories, Jack.) I opened it to the ad, and she was really stunned to recognize our little pixie of a neighbor, smiling like mad and showing her tits to the world. She couldn’t believe it.

  Well, that certainly simplified things. It wasn’t a case of having sex with strangers because these were people like us, people she knew. We could just invite them over to the house for drinks and see what developed. (In the ad, the gal was described as versatile, meaning bisexual, but I saw no point in translating that little terminology for my wife, thinking, Why throw too much at her all at once?)

  To make a long story short, we got together with them and everything went off perfectly. It turns out that there is a large group of swingers in the area—I had always figured as much, but this came as a surprise to my wife. So we now swing about once a week when I’m home, and things are going very well. One of my concerns did come to pass, namely that she now takes it for granted that I screw around when I am on the road. We have talked very briefly about the subject. She says she always took it for granted more or less that I was untrue to her when away from home and that she didn’t mind, but would rather not know about it specifically. Then, on another occasion she mentioned after I returned home from a road trip that some of our swinging friends called her to invite us to a party, and that when she said I was out of town they asked her if she’d like to come on her own. I asked her if she did. “What do you think?” she said. I said she didn’t want to know what I did on the road, and I didn’t want to know what she did in my absence, and we decided that was a good enough policy. I think we will probably outgrow this mutual secrecy in a short time when we are more completely adjusted to the whole idea of each other playing around, but for the time being I think it serves a purpose.