by Amy Hatvany
“Not awful,” Jake said, softly. “I’d say pretty much the exact opposite of awful.”
I felt a flood of relief. “Really?”
“Really.” Jake leaned forward, cupped his hand behind my head and pulled me closer so he could kiss me. “I love you, Jess. I want you to be happy. And if this...works for you...for us...if it might make our sex life better, then I think we should talk about it.”
I kissed him again, sat back, and took a deep breath before telling him about the story I had read, the one that I kept coming back to. It was strange, but exciting to be sharing something I’d kept private for so long. It made me feel closer to him.
When I was done, he scooted over and put his hand on my thigh. “That’s the kind of porn I like. Two men, one woman.”
“You’re just saying that,” I said, not quite believing him.
“No, I’m not. It’s what I like.”
“You never told me that.”
“You never told me, either.”
He was right. That fantasy was something I’d been afraid to share with anyone, even Jake, because I never thought it was something I would ever actually do. I also worried if I had told him how much the idea of having sex with two men at the same time turned me on, he would feel like having sex with him alone wasn’t enough. I was afraid it would hurt him.
“There would have to be rules,” I said, quickly. “If we decide to do this. Lots of them. To make sure nothing bad happened between us. Because people try this open marriage shit and it fucks things up, every time, right? We have to be careful. And smart. And safe.”
“Yes,” Jake replied. “But I don’t think this would be an open marriage, exactly.”
“Why not?” My heart was pounding inside my chest as we spoke. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. I couldn’t believe Jake was turned on by the idea of having another man join us in bed.
“Because I’m not interested in having sex with other women. I’m interested in watching you have sex with another man. Both of us having sex with you. Together.”
Something about hearing him speak the words out loud made me need to close my eyes. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. The possibility that this might actually happen was equally thrilling and terrifying. “It’s not exactly fair that you don’t get to have sex with someone else, too,” I said, I opened my eyes and looked into his, searching for any hint of uncertainty. There was none. That was something I loved about Jake—his face almost always clearly expressed what he was feeling, so I never had to wonder if he was hiding something from me. Unlike Peter, who had been, and still was, difficult to read, with Jake, what you saw was what you got.
“It’s not about that. The idea of being with another woman doesn’t turn me on half as much as the idea of seeing you with Will.”
“Are you sure? You wouldn’t resent it? You wouldn’t be jealous?” I asked, fearful that Jake hadn’t yet considered this possibility. “Because there’s no way I could watch you touch another woman the way Will touched me. I’d want to scratch her goddamn eyes out. I’d want to kill her. It’s a total double standard.”
He gave me a meaningful look. “Did I seem jealous last night?”
I remembered the sheer lust on my husband’s face inside the club. The way he took me against our car moments later, and then again, when we got home. No, jealous was not the word I’d use.
“It’s still not fair,” I said. “Why can’t I give you the same freedom you’re willing to give me? And why are you okay with that?” It felt selfish, and I was worried that regardless of what Jake said now, if we actually followed through, he might freak out or demand a quid pro quo arrangement. And I just couldn’t stomach the thought of another woman in our bed.
“I think it has something to do with the fact that what turns me on most is when you’re turned on,” Jake said, after a minute. “Nothing gets me hotter than knowing you’re excited. Seeing the look on your face last night when Will touched you....” He trailed off for a second before continuing, as though he were picturing exactly that. “I guess that since I know seeing me with another woman wouldn’t turn you on—that it would hurt you—there’s nothing hot about it.” He grinned. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I haven’t thought about what it would be like to have another woman join us—I am a guy—but honestly, I think it would be way too much work, trying to satisfy two women at once. Someone would always be waiting around, tapping her foot.” I laughed, and he cocked his head. “But hey, I’d be fine if you’re into the idea of having sex with a woman on your own. I’d be more than willing to sit back and watch.”
“How generous!” I said, with a wry smile.
“What can I say? I’m a giver.” He grinned again.
I shook my head, smiling. “Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not my thing.”
“You’ve never fantasized about it?”
“Nope.” I’d never been sexually attracted to women, even when I read the lesbian or bisexual scenes in my brother’s magazines. The idea didn’t turn me on. But having Jake ask me about it ignited another question in my mind, so I looked at him, a little fearful to verbalize it. “Are you into the idea of being with another man?” I held my breath, waiting for his answer, not sure how I would feel if he said yes. It hadn’t crossed my mind that part of the reason he might want to bring another man into our bed was because of a desire to explore that specific part of his own sexuality. I felt a twinge of discomfort, not because I had a problem with bisexuality, but because what if he did want to have sex with Will, too, and ended up liking it better than being with me? Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea.
But Jake didn’t hesitate. “No, I’m not. The thought of it is kind of kinky, and if it was something you wanted to watch, I would probably give it a try—again, only because it would turn you on, which would turn me on, etc., etc. But I don’t feel any need to do it.”
I nodded, a little relieved that we could avoid this possible complication, and then was quiet a moment before continuing. “We would have to be really honest with each other. We can’t hold anything back about how it makes us feel.”
“Agreed,” Jake said, solemnly. “We talk about everything. Totally honesty. If one of us wants to stop, we stop. No questions asked.”
“Are we really going to do this?” I asked. I was excited and scared out of my mind.
Jake smiled. “Grab his card,” he said. “And my laptop.”
And just like that, it began.
Four
It turned out that talking about having a threesome with your husband was a lot easier than actually making it happen.
“What if we read him totally wrong?” I asked Jake, after we sent Will a note and he didn’t get back to us right away. We chose email—creating an anonymous account—instead of texting or calling him because we weren’t sure we felt comfortable having him know our phone numbers. For all we knew, he could have been a psycho. Or married. The last thing we wanted to do was mess with someone else’s marriage—that, along with honesty about how we were feeling about the experience and always using condoms, was one of the most important rules we discussed. “What if it was just a dance and we’re out of our minds to even consider that he would want to do something like this?”
“We won’t know until we ask,” Jake said. We had just said good night to the kids, who both had been up until ten doing homework. Now, we were nestled into our king size bed—“plenty of room for three,” Jake joked the other day—in the dark as he curled up behind me.
“Back that shit up, woman,” he growled, pulling my hips tighter against his.
I laughed, basking in the warmth and strength of my husband’s body, thrilled that once again, he had reached out for me. We’d had sex every day—nine times!—since our conversation on the couch, each encounter fueled by the memory of my dancing with Will at the club, and what it had led to in the parking garage. What it might lead to, now. I felt like a lust-crazed teenager, constantl
y thinking about when we could do it next.
Sex hadn’t really been on my radar until I found the stash of magazines in my brother’s drawer. I swiped one of them, hoping he wouldn’t notice, and took it to my own bedroom, slipping it under my mattress. I brought it out at night, after I was sure my parents had gone to bed. My body responded to the blatant sexual descriptions; my face flushed and the spot between my legs ached with a strange, but pleasurable feeling. At first I confused it with having to use the bathroom—the pressure was similar—but when I squeezed my thighs together, rubbing them back and forth, it took on a whole other level of intensity and instinctually, my hand slipped downward and began to move. My flesh throbbed and my breathing changed. The tension I felt built up and up and then suddenly—surprisingly—released. Waves of bliss coursed through me. I immediately wanted to do it again.
Still, questions sprinted through my mind. Am I normal? Do other girls do this? And then, a horrifying thought—does my mother do it? I thought about asking Scott, since he was the one who had the magazines in the first place, but I couldn’t handle the idea of confessing something so intimate to my older brother. What if he laughed at me? Or worse, what if he told his best friend, Mike, who sometimes smiled at me in a way that made my heart race?
I shoved the magazine under my mattress that night, only to think about it constantly the next day. At school, I looked at Ryan Miller, the boy who sat across from me in AP algebra, and instantly flashed on an image of him naked, with an erection, touching me the way the men in the magazine had touched the woman. My face got hot, and I must have made some kind of sound, or Ryan felt my eyes on him, because he turned his head and frowned.
“What?” he asked, and I shook my head, quickly averting my gaze, grateful that other people couldn’t see inside my head.
Later that day, I came home to find my mother in the kitchen, standing next to the counter while she chopped celery, carrots, potatoes, and onions. My mother had about ten recipes she made on regular rotation; it was a Tuesday, so I knew roasted chicken and vegetables was on the menu. She had gone back to her position as professor at the college as soon as she could after I was born, working her way up to her current position as dean, only teaching morning classes so she could be home in the early afternoon to greet us and to make dinner. But then she would usually hole up in her office in the basement, writing lectures, grading papers, or researching complicated physics theory for her next journal article.
“If you bother me,” she often reminded us, “one or both of you had better be on fire.” Scott didn’t seem to mind being kept at a proverbial arm’s length; in fact, he thrived on being left to his own devices. But I often envied the kind of mothers some of my friends had—the baking-cookies, snuggling-on-the-couch, going-shopping-at-the-mall-for-no-reason variety. I was pretty certain if my mother had to describe her version of hell, those three activities would be it.
She made it a point to cook our dinner not as a family bonding tactic, but to please my father, a man who thrived on routine. For him, it was always a bowl of oatmeal with flaxseed for breakfast, tuna salad or a BLT for lunch, fish, chicken, or steak with vegetables for dinner—if he was home from the hospital to eat with us—and almonds and apples for any snacks. He rarely ate anything sweet, other than fruit, insisting that processed sugar was the root of all medical-problem evil. “That’ll put you in an early grave,” he said, sternly, any time he caught me or Scott eating candy.
“I’d rather die younger and happy, eating what I want,” my brother usually replied, flippantly, and my dad would laugh. Again, Scott seemed naturally better-equipped to shrug off the pressure to abide by our father’s regimented lifestyle choices. Then there was me, who, when faced with the condemnation shooting from my dad’s dark eyes, would shuffle obediently to the garbage and throw away whatever treat I had been eating, waiting for him to praise me. My dad worked long hours at Boise General—when a patient of his was in crisis, he might not come home for days at a time—so when he was around, I felt anxious to win his approval. He seemed like a god to me, out there devising treatment plans and performing procedures that saved peoples’ lives. The least I could do was not commit the sin of eating a Snicker’s bar in front of him.
“How was school?” my mom asked, now, as the lifted the cutting board and carefully scraped the veggies into the roasting pan on the stove. She wore her standard, weekday work outfit: a pair of black slacks and a button-down shirt, not unlike the ones in my father’s closet. She sometimes took on a softer look by throwing on a cardigan, but she never strayed from the colors brown, black, and navy blue. Her sandy blond hair was cut in a sensible, chin-length bob, and as usual, the only makeup she had on was a little mascara. When I was sick and couldn’t go to school, she took me to work with her, instead of the two of us staying home. I remember those days vividly, because she set me up with blankets and a book on the small, brown leather loveseat in her tiny, book-and-paper-filled office, along with a huge mug of hot tea. One time, when she came back from teaching class, three of the professors she oversaw in her department—all men—entered the room with her. Each of them had on a similar variation of the brown tweed or black pantsuit my mother often wore. With her straight-hipped build and smaller chest, the only difference I saw between her and the men who worked under her was the lack of a tie around her neck. She was unconcerned with the extraneous, as was, it would seem, my father.
“Your mother has the finest mind of anyone I’ve ever met,” he sometimes proclaimed, especially after my mother would talk with him about complicated theories she was exploring in her work. My mother’s face would light up at those words, and the look between them was the closest I ever saw to affection being expressed in their marriage. They were sensible people, and rarely argued. When they did, they were reasonable about it, weighing the pros and cons for whatever issue was at hand, never raising their voices or calling each other names, as I had witnessed some of my friends’ parents doing. Their discussions seemed more like two lawyers debating two sides of a case until they were able to find common ground and reach a practical resolution. In general, our home was a peaceful one; histrionics were discouraged.
When my best friend, Kara, stopped sitting with me at lunch in fifth grade—when she stuck out her tongue and told her new best friend that I wet the bed until I was six—I came home crying, and that night, my mother came into my bedroom after I’d refused to come downstairs for dinner.
“That’s enough, Jessica,” she said, sitting on the edge of my bed. “You’re over-reacting.”
I sniffled into my pillow and rolled over to look at her through swollen eyes. “I am not!”
“Tell me the facts,” my mom said, curtly.
“Kara’s a bitch,” I said, relishing the sharp edges of the curse word in my mouth. Neither of my parents swore often, but they didn’t discourage us from doing it. “Words are tools,” they said. “If you have reason to cuss, then fine. Do it. But only if the occasion truly calls for it.”
“That’s a judgment,” my mom said, correcting me. “The facts are that she didn’t sit next to you at lunch and she told someone else one of your secrets. That’s it. What she did hurt your feelings, but there’s nothing you can do about it, now. The best reaction is no reaction. Don’t let her know that she hurt you. Don’t stoop to her level by telling one of her secrets. Be the bigger person, Jessica. That’s the best revenge.”
This was how my mother insisted on helping me or Scott through any type of problem: Identify the facts. Determine if you can change anything about them. If not, move on as if nothing had happened. How we felt about something was usually irrelevant.
A couple of years later, I thought about how to tell her the facts of what had happened after reading one of my brother’s magazines as I hung my backpack on the hook by the back door. “School was fine,” I said, in response to her inquiry. My stomach was in knots as I tried to come up with a way to broach the subject of what I’d done in my bed last night
without ratting on my brother for having the magazines in his room, or admitting that I’d taken one for myself.
“Do you have homework?” my mom asked as she opened the oven.
“Just some reading for English.”
She frowned. “They’re not doing enough for you in math and science, if you don’t have assignments to bring home. I should talk to the principal about upping the curriculum.”
I bobbed my head as my leg jiggled up and down under the table. In seventh grade, I was already in AP algebra, but even that didn’t seem like enough for my mom. I took a deep breath, unsure how to articulate the facts of what was on my mind without actually having to talk with her about sex. Hearing how babies were made had been painful enough; my parents had revealed the specifics to me when I had asked several years before, in third grade, after I told them what I’d heard from other kids—that a man had to pee inside a woman in order to get her pregnant.
“That’s not how it works,” my mom said. Her posture changed, and a strange expression took over her face. She looked to my dad, who was sitting with us at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. His short brown hair had recently been cut, and he sported a well-groomed mustache, as well. Scott had already left for early morning swimming practice, driven there by one of his teammates’ parents.
My dad leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table linking his fingers lightly together over his plate. His brow furrowed, and I felt a pit form in my stomach, like I was about to be punished for doing something wrong.
“Babies are made when a man’s penis gets hard and he puts it inside a woman’s vagina,” he said, in the same monotone manner that I’d heard him use on the phone when he gave instructions to the nurses at the hospital on what to do with a patient. “A fluid called semen comes out of the man’s penis, and sometimes reaches an egg that a woman has in her uterus, and that egg, fertilized by the sperm, is what grows into a baby.”
