BOB: They usually collect pictures, too. One couple told us they had a regular filing system, pictures and diary entries of every couple they swung with. You can imagine what would happen if some puritanical cop happened to raid them. But they didn’t seem at all worried.
But to get back to Linda—
CAROL: Yes, we really ought to get back to Linda.
BOB: The point of it is that we were more than willing to agree to her conditions, and we assured her of this, and met her in her apartment. She said that she had to be very careful in arranging dates because some men seemed to take her virginity as a personal challenge. Either they would try to wear her down with arguments, which just spoiled her whole scene, or else they would try to force her.
CAROL: There was a time when we suspected this was what she wanted — someone to hold her down and rape her.
BOB: It’s possible that she does want that unconsciously, but that’s not our scene.
CAROL: Thank heavens.
BOB: We met with her, and she was really very sweet. She greeted us by giving us each a warm kiss at the door. She was fully bisexual in this respect. Some girls will want to do sexual things with other girls, but they draw the line at kissing.
CAROL: I had a hard time at first until I learned to relate to other girls that way. But I can’t imagine two men kissing that way unless they were out-and-out homos. It’s interesting how there is a definite double-standard this way. And how among swinging couples there are so many more bisexual wives than there are husbands.
BOB: Linda was bi all the way. We talked for awhile and then got in the mood, had a couple of drinks, and all got out of our clothes. She had a beautiful figure and my first impulse was that I certainly would enjoy screwing her, and then I remembered that I couldn’t do this. It was a very strange feeling.
CAROL: I got this sensation of purity, that she was a virgin and had never been really possessed by a man, and I found this exciting.
BOB: It was a sort of a test of ingenuity to see just how many ways there were to make it with her without putting it inside her. Between the thighs and under the arms and between the breasts and everyway in the world, I guess.
CAROL: And of course her mouth.
BOB: God, what a mouth—
JWW: After considerably more details concerning Linda and several other female partners of theirs, the conversation turned to the subject of permanent troilistic relationships. I discussed several of these with which I had become familiar to varying degrees. Both Bob and Carol were extremely interested and questioned me at great length.
While they had not yet established a troilistic relationship of any permanence, they had been thinking along such lines for quite some time and hoped to establish a more or less stable ménage à trois when the right person came along.
BOB: What I would like is to find a girl who would really become a part of the family. Not just someone to party with regularly but to be a part of the household and live here regularly. I have seen advertisements trying to set something up along those lines but we haven’t gone so far as to place an ad of our own, and I don’t know if we will take that step or wait for something to turn up by itself. I don’t think advertising would be good because the person would have to be just right or the whole thing would not be good.
CAROL: The closest we came to anything of the sort was with this girl I mentioned before whom we would swing with every so often. We were planning this trip to the Virgin Islands — you know, come to think of it we should have taken Linda, the Virgin Islands and all. We had two weeks, and we mentioned it to this other girl and she said she would really love to come along. She offered to pay her own way but Bob wouldn’t hear of it and insisted on picking up the whole tab.
BOB: It didn’t cost that much more for three than for two, and she didn’t have money to throw away.
CAROL: Those were two good weeks. It was interesting, because when you swing with someone just for a night it’s really all sex. You may get to know each other fairly well or you may not, but either way there’s no time when sex isn’t the whole reason the three of you are together. But with two weeks at our disposal we couldn’t be in bed every minute of the time.
BOB: We did pretty well, though.
CAROL: Oh, we did every damn thing, but we also spent time on the beach or I would take her shopping or we would be at a restaurant or a nightclub, and it was a case of living together more than just having sex for the three of us. And we had thought about a permanent threesome before this, but now it really seemed attractive to us.
BOB: It wouldn’t have been right with this girl, though. She was fine to swing with and even fine for two weeks, but by the end of the two weeks we were beginning to feel the strain. We still see her, and would take a vacation with her again as far as that goes. But as far as making it permanent, I don’t think it would ever work out.
CAROL: No, not with her.
BOB: You would have to have absolutely the perfect girl. And it couldn’t be the sort of thing in the case you were talking about, where both the women are the man’s wives. Not that he’s married to both of them, but that it’s the same as if he were. I’ve got one wife and that’s Carol and she’s all the wife I need.
CAROL: I don’t mind sharing Bob, but I wouldn’t want to feel like part of a harem. I like it the way it is, with me being his wife and something special to him.
BOB: It’s more that we would want a girl we could both love. That she would be more or less the center of the triangle, if that’s the word for it.
CAROL: The apex.
BOB: That’s the word I was trying for. The apex of the triangle.
CAROL: You know, there’s a game swingers play called Center of Attraction. You choose by drawing lots or spinning a bottle or something like that, and the person chosen is the center of attraction, and lies passive while everybody else in the game makes love to her at once.
BOB: Or to him, as the case may be.
CAROL: Well, at large parties I understand it’s usually a woman that gets chosen, because all the women will be bi, whereas most of the men will not be. But anyway that’s how the game works.
We will play it at threesomes, not bothering to spin a bottle but taking turns. When it’s Bob’s turn the other girl and I will love him up for fifteen minutes or a half hour or however long we decide, and then it’s my turn and so forth. But what we found, we enjoy it most when it’s the girl’s turn, and Bob and I more or less make love to her as a team. Each sucking one of her breasts and so forth.
And I think that fits in with what Bob said about the extra girl being the apex of the triangle.
BOB: We’ve talked about what the perfect girl would be like. It would be best if she were a good deal younger than we are, and the less experience she has the better. We would want to take over her whole life and shape it so that she would be able to fit in perfectly with us. When a girl is older or has experience it’s harder to make her fit in.
CAROL: We had the idea of getting some younger girl as household help and seeing how she might work out. It would have to be a case of seducing her gradually and we would probably go through a lot of maids before we found the right one, but we think it might work sooner or later.
BOB: We had it in mind to hire a young colored girl, but that would be taking a big chance.
CAROL: Not that we consider ourselves prejudiced that way. We may be Southerners, but some people are a lot more open-minded down here than the average Yankee suspects. We do have certain prejudices which are more a case of being old-fashioned in some ways than anything else, but we don’t have prejudices where sex is concerned. For example, we have swung with colored several times and never found anything to object to on those occasions.