3 is not a Crowd

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.