I’m getting away from the point. Well. I went to this set, got there a little late, and I walked into the room and looked around. Things were in the undressed-but-not-balling stage. People were sitting around talking, and on one couch I saw Grace talking to a guy with a beard. She was playing with him in a sort of casual way.
It was love at first sight.
There is no other way to explain it. I took one look at her and it was absolute magic. I fell completely in love with her. I didn’t know the first thing about her and it couldn’t have mattered less to me. I wanted her. Not just to take to bed, but to take home and keep. She could have had a husband and ten children and it wouldn’t have mattered to me, I would have taken her away from all of them and kept her for myself. It was an immediate intense attraction wholly unlike anything I had ever experienced.
I had never believed in this sort of thing. Not for a moment. But when it happens to you it doesn’t help much to tell yourself you don’t believe in it. It’s like not believing in the principle of the internal combustion engine and getting hit by a truck. You become a believer in a hurry.
I went straight over to her. I paid absolutely no attention to the guy she was handling. I looked at her, and she turned from him and looked up at me, and our eyes locked together.
GRACE: He owned me. One look, and Peter owned me.
PETER: She let go of the bearded one and stood up. She said the bedrooms were in back. I said, “No, get your clothes on, we’ll go to my place.”
GRACE: I had come with a fellow but I didn’t even bother to tell him I was leaving. I was like hypnotized. If Peter had told me to walk out the window I think I would have done it. Absolutely. I never felt anything like this before.
His apartment, I had never seen anything like it. It was this place. I couldn’t believe he lived here all by himself. It’s big enough for the three of us now and he was all alone in it. And the furnishings, and the way everything went together so perfectly. And the view across the river.
But that was just part of the setting, the magic, the whole feeling that something new was happening. It was nothing compared to Peter himself.
I was really a person to him.
I can’t explain this very well. I’m not good with words, sometimes I know what I mean and can’t get the words right. Other times I even have trouble figuring out what I mean, never mind finding words for it.
PETER: We couldn’t get enough of each other. I had trouble believing what was happening, and couldn’t possibly believe it would last. I figured that I would have to screw this marvelous girl as much as I could before the thrill wore off, because I might never experience anything like this again. We fucked incessantly. After two days it became obvious that the glow was not wearing off, and I told her she was never going to leave. She said something about going back for her things. I didn’t want her to go back. I gave her money and sent her out to buy new things, then stopped her and insisted on going out with her to pick out her clothes.
GRACE: Peter picks out all my clothes.
PETER: For two weeks we were together constantly. I was in the habit of doing most of my work at home, so they didn’t miss me at the office, but I wasn’t doing any work during those weeks. It wasn’t just bed. We talked for hours, hours on end, talked on and on about everything.
GRACE: No one had ever bothered to talk to me before. People would talk at me, but no one ever talked to me. I was just this stupid cunt and it never occurred to anybody that I would have anything to say worth listening to. In fact I never thought I had anything to say.
Peter was the first person ever to take me seriously, and because of him I finally was able to take myself seriously. I really had always believed I was stupid and shallow, and during all those years I was. Peter changed me.
PETER: Like a butterfly from its chrysalis.
GRACE: I am by no means an intelligent person. I’m not. Peter and Wanda are both brilliant, and I can’t help feeling slightly dumb in comparison to them. But I am not as stupid as I always thought I was.
I can’t believe it was all there inside me just waiting. It’s so hard to believe. And if I hadn’t met Peter it would have never come out.
PETER: I hadn’t ever really talked to anyone but Wanda.
GRACE: I never even talked to myself. Never let myself have any real thoughts. Until I met Peter.
PETER: I married her a month after I met her. We could have gotten married sooner than that but there was never time, we were always either talking or making love. Finally we got around to getting married. A month doesn’t seem like an unduly long courtship, but in our case it seemed more like a year than a month because we were interacting so intensely in every way.
Before we were married we talked about swinging, about whether or not we ought to continue to do this. At first we thought no, we didn’t need it. We had such a complete thing ourselves that it didn’t seem necessary.
That’s the goddamned Protestant ethic operating, of course. No matter how liberated you think you are, old habits of thought die hard. Necessary, for Christ’s sake. None of the best things in life are really necessary. Who the hell cares if something is a necessity or not? The fact remained that swinging was something we had both always enjoyed intensely, and why on earth should we force ourselves to give up something we both enjoyed?
GRACE: I was afraid at one point that you would want me less if you went with other girls. Or that you wouldn’t want me if I went with other men. But that was just stupid. And when we realized that what we had been thinking was stupid we made a date to party with another couple that Peter knew.
PETER: This was before the wedding. I felt it would be worthwhile to find out how it went before going any further. It seemed obvious that we were going to resume swinging to one extent or another sooner or later, and if it was going to change our feelings about each other in any way, it seemed sensible to find this out before we were married, not after. I was confident that it wouldn’t change anything but it was only common sense to check it out.
GRACE: It didn’t change a thing. It got us over being anxious about the subject, that’s all. We had a good time with the other couple and then we came home and had a good time with ourselves, and nothing was changed.
PETER: I didn’t call Wanda until after we were married. We flew down to San Juan for a week-long honeymoon, and after we were back I called Wanda in Chicago. I had been putting this off longer than I should have. Obviously I was apprehensive as to how she would take it. We had been in touch from time to time since I returned to the States, mostly over the phone because neither of us has ever been much at writing letters.
I called her finally and told her.
WANDA: I was very happy for him. That was my immediate reaction. Also I was happy that he had been able to find someone with whom he could have a complete relationship, not only for his sake but for my own. It seemed to mean that I had the same thing to look forward to. In other words, if he could love someone other than me, I could perhaps love someone other than him.
I wished them well and spoke briefly with Grace and went out shopping for a wedding present. And then about ten days later a strange thing happened. I became desperately depressed. I started crying hysterically in the middle of the afternoon and had to go home from my job and take to my bed like a Victorian lady with the vapors. And for the next week I was in an amazing state. Enormous anxieties — I couldn’t cross a street without being firmly convinced that a car would careen wildly around the comer and mash me to the pavement. I worried about everything. Earthquakes, for God’s sake. I was in Chicago and I was afraid there was going to be an earthquake. This might make sense in California — everybody knows the whole place is falling into the ocean, but Chicago?