—♦♦♦—
No doubt the reader by this time gets the general idea. It may be charged that the author has presented a rather offensive barrage of perversion with neither rhyme nor reason, serving to do little other than stagger the mind if not disturb the digestion. Yet the above listing is not without purpose. The reader can readily gauge from it the literally boundless permutations of troilistic sexual activity and is enabled at the same time to appreciate the cross-cultural interest in such acts and their appeals to various cultures.
It has become common practice in certain schools of thought to justify or excuse almost any form of behavior by demonstrating that its existence is widespread, its influence far-flung, its appeal universal. This has always seemed a specious argument at best. Dogs masturbate, horses masturbate, monkeys masturbate—therefore, masturbation for humans is natural, normal, and desirable. Romans committed adultery, Parsees committed adultery, Sumerians committed adultery—therefore, adultery is natural, normal, and desirable. And, by extension, Caligula committed murders, Rasputin committed murders, Hitler committed murders—therefore, murder is natural, normal, and desirable.
This last sentence provides a glittering reductio ad absurdum. And yet precisely this formula was put to use by the Marquis de Sade in highly elaborate arguments justifying murder and similar outrages. That which exists is good, because that which exists is natural, which is to say normal, which is to say desirable.
If anything, one might well argue that an objectionable practice is evil in direct proportion to the dimensions of its existence, appeal, and influence. Malthus notwithstanding, one could convince few persons that the Black Death was a force for good in proportion to the number of victims it claimed. Such a perversion of existential morality is ridiculous. While one might argue a case for sexual excesses, and argue such a case on substantially more valid ground, the est ergo bonus argument—it exists; therefore, it is good—is scarcely the best tool at hand.
—♦♦♦—
As we have seen, the greater majority of sexual episodes involving more than three persons are essentially orgiastic. They are entered into in a search for thrills, as a general moral and sexual purge, in that endless hunt for something new in the way of sex, or for some comparable reason. They are rarely such as to involve interpersonal relationships in any genuine sense, and they are more inclined to be occasional than habitual. The larger share of troilistic activity is also orgiastic, but the genuine relationship is more possible among three partners, in terms of both duration and interpersonal feeling.
From the Roman Saturnalia, that annual slave festival which served as license to all for sexual excesses of every description, right up to the dolce vita and Mardi Gras aspects of contemporary society, the orgy has always been with us. Primitive tribes throughout the world have commonly incorporated sexual orgies into religious and tribal ceremonies. Medieval witches’ covens—when they existed in reality, not in the odd mind of an Inquisitor—were often if not always the setting for one sexual spree or another. Fundamentalist revival meetings throughout the American Bible Belt are apt to be orgiastic, although their participants do not recognize them as such. The rhythm of these meetings, the shared excitement, the chanting, the shouting, the gradual and unremitting build-up of fervor, resemble a Haitian voodoo dance or African religious gang-bang more than one might think, and spontaneous orgasm at such meetings is an eminently common occurrence.
If we concentrate on the purely physical aspects of the orgy, we can discern two specific forms they may take. The general orgy is one in which “everyone does everything to everybody,” to put the matter as directly as possible. In contrast, other forms of pluralistic activity have a single individual at their hub. This individual, male or female, receives the sexual attention of all the others, whether they be of the opposite sex, the same sex, or a mixed grouping of the two sexes.
What adolescents are apt to call a “gang-bang”—that is, a sexual spree in which a group of males take separate turns having coitus or some alternate form of sexual relations with one female—possesses distinct orgiastic or pluralistic elements that may play a greater or lesser role in the incident. When teenage boys band together to enjoy the favors of a neighborhood nymphomaniac, their motivation is more a simple desire for sex than a particular craving for the delights of pluralism. But when group elements are added, the episode may take on a distinctly pluralistic coloring. If, for example, the girl performs with each boy in turn while the others watch them, the pluralistic overtones are obvious.
Vatsyayana describes what we might be inclined to call a “simultaneous gang-bang” in the Kama Sutra.
In Gramaneri many young men enjoy a woman that may be married to one of them, either one after the other or at the same time. Thus one of them holds her, another enjoys her, at third uses her mouth, a fourth holds her middle part, and in this way they go on enjoying her several parts alternately.
The same things can be done when several men are sitting in company with one courtesan, or when one courtesan is alone with many men. In the same way this can be done by the woman of the King’s harem when they accidentally get hold of a man.
The same custom that Vatsyayana declares to be indigenous to Gramaneri exists in either fact or fantasy throughout the world. The special appeal in which a single individual serves as a common sexual target is evidently extraordinary if we judge upon the basis of its utility in erotic literature. It is not simply that this form of pluralism is featured prominently in such works, but that it serves as the climax of the entire work in so very many cases. The build-up of vicarious excitement characteristic of pornography almost always culminates in an orgiastic sequence of one sort or another to the point where not only is this type of denouement a cliché, but any other sort of climax scene seems oddly anticlimactic.
This is true in almost all hardcore pornography, written or otherwise. It is true by implication in other forms of erotica that, although not designed to inflame the reader, give him to understand that pluralism provides the ultimate in sexual enjoyment. Many Oriental sex manuals make the same point, especially if they are the sort that places primary emphasis on achieving the greatest sensual excitement rather than the attainment of a Western-style “ideal” sex life within the framework of a monogamous sexual relationship.
Thus the author of The Sultan’s Wives tells with approval of one fortunate male who
…lay on his back upon a cushion and enjoyed twelve nubile ladies all at once. And this is how it was done: the first sat upon his thighs, taking his weapon in her sheath; the second squatted over his face, offering up her privates to his kisses; the third and fourth sat at either side, providing a sweet task for his hands; the fifth and the sixth found similar employment for his feet; the seventh and eighth rubbed themselves against various parts of his body; and the ninth and tenth and eleventh and twelfth sought every part of his body with eager hands and yearning mouths. Six times he spent, each more glorious than the last; until the water spilled from his skin (ie., he broke out in a sweat) and slept like a dead man.
Praised be Allah! that women can do so much for a man…
A bit of American pornography called The Green Door, a rather ubiquitous specimen of contemporary trash that has circulated in mimeographed form for several years and under several titles, has a similar scene for its climax in which a young woman serves as the focal point of a pluralistic episode. The scene is substantially different in style from the extract quoted above—deliberately pornographic, with its object the pure and simple vicarious stimulation of the reader. Yet the scene recalls Vatsyayana’s description of Gramaneri sexual practices to a striking degree.
In The Green Door, the young lady (a virgin at the onset of the pamphlet some five or ten thousand words earlier) stands up in front of a roomful of voyeurs while one man has vaginal coitus with her from the front, a second buggers her from the rear, and two other suck her breasts, while she in turn performs fe
llatio on a fifth man (he stands on a chair to make this possible) and masturbates two others, one with each hand. At the climax, the third and fourth man leave off stimulating her breasts orally and press their penises against her breasts, presumably by levitating, whereupon the seven men and a girl reach an exhilarating simultaneous climax in which “she got it everywhere at once, jets of it oozing and spurting into her (vagina), up her (anus), all over both plump titties, on her hands, and best of all in her mouth…”
Its calculated obscenity notwithstanding, this would appear patently absurd were it not so startlingly similar to the well-documented sexological reports of the Orient and to enough incidents recorded in the sexological literature of our own culture to assure us that fiction and fact are not so far apart as we might think.
—♦♦♦—
The Modern American Orgy
Early in the present chapter, it was mentioned that a special form of pluralistic sexual activity has of late experienced what can only be called a wave of popularity in America. The name of the game is mate switching, wife swapping, or what you will.
It does not seem either necessary or pertinent to spend too much time here surveying the general superstructure of the wife-swapping syndrome. In essence, the practice constitutes a sort of systematized adultery by means of which one couple shares or exchanges sexual favors with another. In some instances the couples know each other socially. In other cases they seek out strangers through correspondence, often traveling halfway across the country for a meeting.
The author has made a rather intensive investigation of this phenomenon by placing and answering suggestive advertisements that are a popular feature in several Canadian tabloid newspapers. The number of advertisements placed every week, and the number of responses his own very typical ad drew, render utterly worthless the common charge that the wife-swapping ritual has been blown out of proportion by sensationalistic journalists and that it hardly exists to any significant degree in real life. The charge is without merit; if anything, wife swapping has not received a tenth of the public attention that so widespread and so extraordinary a practice deserves.
The exposure wife swapping most often gets is sensationalistic, and probably fictional as well. The glut of mindless articles in cheap magazines purportedly written by men and women who are enthusiastic devotees of the sport, full of assurance that wife swapping will cure an ailing marriage, intensify conjugal love, put hair on your chest, and reduce cavities twenty-two percent—few of these hackneyed scraps of rubbish have the ring of truth to them, and the majority are no doubt written by freelance writers looking for an easy dollar. Although it is true that the wife swappers with whom this author has corresponded do exhibit an almost missionary zeal, the rich store of general misinformation in the bulk of these articles renders them dubious at best.
Of the material that has been legitimately written about wife swapping, very little reference is made to pluralistic sex as an incentive for the practice or as a common ingredient. This is a rather grievous fault, for pluralism is a chief motivator for a huge proportion of the couples turning to this practice and an almost universal component of their sexual practices. Letter after letter mentions the “special things you need more than two people to bring off” or assures that “if you put two girls together, they can dream up plenty of games for all four of us to play” or, from a persuasive (albeit crude) woman who thought she was writing to a reluctant wife whose husband was having trouble convincing her to play the game, this immortal question: “I know that just plain (having coitus) is kicks, but can you imagine what a gas it is to have one good stiff (male organ) in your (vagina) and another one in your mouth?”
Benjamin Morse, M.D., has been one of relatively few authorities to recognize the relevance of pluralism to the whole wife-swapping phenomenon. His chapter in The Sexual Deviate does a rather good job of surveying the practice, although this author cannot help feeling he might have gone into various aspects a little more intensively. At any rate, the following passage from that work is instructive.
When the Palmers became involved in a ten-couple wife-swapping club, Sharon found herself able to reach heights of sexual pleasure which she had not previously conceived of. At the same time, she felt that what she and her husband were doing was the ultimate in immoral behavior.
In her sexual activity, Sharon strove to perform forbidden acts and to create in all her actions an aura of immorality and aberration. She particularly enjoyed pluralistic sexual activity with more than two persons involved in the performance of the sex act. She told me in graphic detail of various activity along these lines, explaining that on one occasion she and her husband had met with another couple, not to trade partners but to “Just all get together and have a ball.” On that occasion she gave oral gratification to her own husband while the other man had coitus interrectum with her and while, at the same time, the man’s wife performed cunnilingus upon her. She reported that the whole episode made her feel “deliciously dirty.”
Although wife swapping has come to constitute a generic term for this whole way of life, there are other instances of pluralism—and particularly of troilistic practices—that follow the same pattern of solicitation through advertisements and correspondence. The most common solicitation of all is that of a heterosexual couple looking for a bisexual woman—or, in the precious cryptography of the tabloid advertisements, “Modern, Liberal Couple Wishes to Meet Woman Who Enjoys the Company of Both Men and Women.”
The varied appeal of this type of troilism derives from such multiple factors as female homosexuality; latent male homosexuality; the male’s desire to have extramarital sex while his wife, confining herself to lesbianism, does not commit real adultery; his desire to watch Lesbian sexual relations (a very common male impulse); her desire to exhibit herself in sexual combat, with him as a voyeuristic participant, or to watch him with another woman—or, indeed, other less common reasons too numerous to mention. The extent of its influence suggests more than a little about the warp and woof of our sexual desires and standards, as woofed and warped as they surely are.
The charge that wife swapping in general represents the spread of sexual psychopathy does not seem well founded, however. It is true that the practice attracts those individuals with an absolute lack of a sense of right and wrong in respect to sex. But the structure of wife swapping is such that what Dr. Morse calls the principle of “shared guilt” can operate most efficiently,
Much the same applies to the ménage à trois pleasure seekers discussed above. Obviously, our feelings have changed substantially in respect to female homosexuality; otherwise, so many married women would not desire Lesbian partners and so many married men would not approve of their doing so. Further conclusions may also be drawn from the popularity of this sort of troilism. No doubt the reader can figure them out for himself.
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block has been writing best-selling mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. A multiple recipient of the Edgar and Shamus awards, he has been designated a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, and received the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the UK’s Crime Writers Association. His most recent novels are A Drop Of The Hard Stuff, featuring Matthew Scudder, and Getting Off, starring a very naughty young woman. Several of his books have been filmed, although not terribly well. He's well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit, and The Liar's Bible. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television: (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.
John Warren Wells:
John Warren Wells emerged in the mid-1960s as a writer of sexological nonfiction, and produced twenty books in the ensuing decade. His works, in the main, consist of compilations of case histories selected to illuminate a particular theme, and topics range from female bisexuality (Women Who Swing Both
Ways) and troilism (Three is Not a Crowd) to the evolving lifestyles of a decade of sexual liberation (The New Sexual Underground and Wide Open: The New Marriage). His groundbreaking work, Tricks of the Trade: A Hooker’s Handbook of Sexual Technique, was especially successful, and may have inspired Xaviera Hollander to write The Happy Hooker.
One particularly noteworthy book, Different Strokes, consists of his screenplay and production diary for the pornographic feature film of that name, which he seems to have written and directed, in addition to playing a key role. His column, “Letters to John Warren Wells,” was a popular feature in Swank Magazine. The dedications of several books would seem to indicate that Wells carried on an extensive on-again, off-again relationship with Jill Emerson, herself the author of Threesome, A Week as Andrea Benstock, and, more recently, Getting Off. All of JWW’s books have been out of print for thirty-five years; that they are now available to a new generation of readers may be attributed to the technological miracle of eBooks and the apparently limitless ego and avarice of their author.
Contact Lawrence Block:
Email: [email protected]
Blog: LB’s Blog
Facebook: LB's Facebook Fan Page
Website: www.lawrenceblock.com
Twitter: @LawrenceBlock
John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Ebooks
Available, Summer 2012
3 Is Not A Crowd
Beyond Group Sex: The New Sexual Life Styles
Come Fly With Us
Different Strokes: Or, How I (Gulp) Wrote, Directed & Starred in an X-Rated Movie
Doing It!
Eros and Capricorn
The Male Hustler
Older Women and Younger Men: The Mrs. Robinson Syndrome
Sex and the Stewardess
The Sex Therapists
Eros & Capricorn: A Cross-Cultural Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Techniques (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Book 1) Page 16
