WANDA: When I returned home that day Peter was out and Grace was starting dinner. She came out from the kitchen to make a pair of drinks. We went over to the window to study the view, and she quietly told me what Peter had told her. I knew he was going to tell her but I didn’t know when.
I turned to her and my eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Grace, you must hate me very much,” I said. “But Peter loves you. His love for me doesn’t affect his love for you.”
She said she knew, and that everything was going to be all right.
We hugged each other, and it came to me that I wanted to kiss her.
We kissed.
I had had relations with girls at school and in mental institutions, and I think I may have said earlier that I was able to enjoy this. In fact for a long period of time I could relax more in sex with a girl than with a boy, any boy except Peter. But I had never felt comfortable kissing other girls. Somehow that seemed abnormally intimate, while a nice lazy sixty-nine was purely physical fun.
But I enjoyed kissing Grace. It started out as a warm sisterly embrace, and before either of us knew quite what the hell was happening it turned sexy. She put her tongue in my mouth.
GRACE: I didn’t plan it. It just happened.
WANDA: And I remember having the thought, This completes it, this closes the circle.
Of course I knew Grace had been with girls before. After all, I had seen those pictures. I suppose they must have put the idea of making love to her into my head, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time.
We went into her bedroom and got into the bed she shared with Peter. We rolled around in each other’s arms like a couple of giggling schoolgirls. I couldn’t get over how beautiful she was and how smooth her skin was. At one point we both said, “No wonder Peter loves you.” We both said it at precisely the same time and became hysterical about it.
It was so nice. When Grace comes she tastes like raw egg white.
GRACE: Oh, stop.
WANDA: Well, you do.
PETER: When I got home they were sitting together on the couch. I hadn’t known just what to expect, just how the confrontation would go, although I was hoping for the best. But I was immensely relieved to see them so much at peace with one another.
I said something like, “Well, you girls must have had a lot to talk about.”
And Wanda said, “We talked a little. But mostly we just balled each other.”
JWW: Since then the St. Johns have slept three in a bed, with no holds barred sexually. Grace and Wanda seem to complement one another well and Peter is devoted to both of them.
Swinging continues to play a part in their lives. The frequency of their sexual encounters with others is lower now and seems to have leveled off at one such meeting a month, with another single, couple, or group. Their participation in group sex is far more recreational than compulsive, and all three said they could get along without it easily enough but see no reason to deny themselves something they all find pleasurable. Peter mentioned that he would especially like to swing some time with a brother and sister combination. They have heard of a mother-daughter team with something of a reputation in East Coast swinging circles but have not yet been able to arrange a meeting with them.
All are very happy with the situation as it stands, and expect to continue in this fashion for the rest of their lives. Peter insists not only that it is natural for a brother and sister to have sex, but that it is unnatural for them not to. “If they had only left us alone to do as we wanted,” he says, “we could have been spared no end of grief. But I can’t feel too badly about it. At least it all worked out for us, for all of us.”
Bob & Carol & Whoever’s Handy
JWW: Bob and Carol Fessenden live in a split-level suburban house on the outskirts of Atlanta. Bob is a successful salesman of life insurance and mutual funds and an avid golfer. Carol paints in oils and acrylics, large geometrical abstractions characterized by a bold use of color. She has won prizes in shows throughout the Southeast and has sold several canvases through a local gallery.
At thirty-four, Bob looks like a former college football player who has managed to stay in better than average shape over the years. He has broad shoulders, a firm grip, and a salesman’s open face and easy smile. His hair is beginning to thin on top. He wears his sideburns fashionably long and dresses very well; like his wife, he buys his clothes in New York.
Carol is three years younger than her husband. She is small and dark, with strong features and bright brown eyes. While she too is a stylish dresser, her standard at-home garb consists of a peasant blouse with a scoop neckline and a pair of skintight paint-spattered blue jeans. She enjoys going barefoot around the house, and announced that she likes to do her housework in the nude.
The Fessendens have been married for ten years. In the second year of their marriage Carol gave birth to a Mongoloid idiot with other congenital defects as well. The child was placed in an institution and they have had no contact with it. Although they were assured that their chances of having additional normal children were as good as those of any other couple, the two decided the risk was too great to be undertaken, and Carol had her fallopian tubes tied shortly thereafter.
The Fessendens differ from other couples studied in the foregoing pages in several respects. At the time that I was able to see them, they had not formed a permanent troilistic relationship, although it was their hope to do so eventually. The other threesomes all came about through the interplay of personalities which ultimately led to a triangular relationship. With Bob and Carol, experiences with swinging led them to a preference for threesomes; thus the third party is chosen to fit the role rather than the role being designed to ft the person.
At one point I was prompted by these differences to omit Bob and Carol’s story from this book and confine it to the three threesomes already discussed. Further reflection convinced me that these very differences might serve to give the reader greater perspective on the topic of troilism.
A final argument clinched it — after all, the advertisements which the Fessendens run regularly in several swingers’ club bulletins invariably contain the phrase which serves as this volume’s title.
BOB: I guess we got into swinging in pretty much the same way most couples do. This was about three years ago, so we had been married seven years. That’s standard, isn’t it? The seven-year itch and all that.
CAROL: Except that it didn’t take you seven years to get the itch.
BOB: I don’t suppose it usually does. The average American male simply isn’t built for a steady diet of monogamy. Look at the animal kingdom. In most species, the male’s object is to knock up as many females as he possibly can. If you were a farmer and you had a bull that would only cover one particular cow, that bull would be hamburger overnight. Man is just another animal with an overdeveloped brain, and more often than not that brain gets in his way. It lets him think up rules for himself that go against his own basic animal nature.
CAROL: And if my husband’s got one thing, it’s a healthy animal nature.
BOB: Well, I’m proud of it. But the trouble is that we can’t go and live on desert islands. We’re all creatures of society. And the way society is structured, a man and a woman get married and live happily ever after. I guess it’s not hard to see that more people get married than live happily ever after. But for all its faults, marriage is necessary to our society. It’s the way things are. Sometimes I find myself sympathizing with these kids who want to tear the whole social order apart and build it over again. I’m not too crazy about the drugs they use or the way they wear their hair, but I find myself agreeing with them more than the average person in my position would probably do.