Rule number one of threesomes: “Never, ever do it with your girlfriend,” said Garrick. “It’s always a disaster.”
Rule number two: “You can’t plan it. Something always goes wrong,” said Simon, who said he had been involved in six or seven threesomes. “It has to be spontaneous.”
Before we got to rule number three, the buzzer rang. Jim, a twenty-one–year-old magician, and Ian, a twenty-five-year-old television producer, arrived. Jim announced that he had been involved in a threesome the week before. “You get to tell your friends afterwards,” he said.
“It was kind of cheesy,” he said, “because the three of us had just seen the movie Threesome.”
But before he could continue, the buzzer rang again. We all looked at each other. “Who’s that?” All of the men who were supposed to be there had already arrived.
Peter looked up from his painting. “It’s another woman,” he said calmly.
I went upstairs to open the door. It was another woman, all right. We stared at each other in mutual surprise. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” I said. Then we did what women in New York always do, no matter how they really feel: We kissed each other on the cheek.
“Hello, Chloe,” I said.
She was wearing a leopard-print jacket and a pink scarf. She is a sort of well-known girl-around-town, one of those women who are gorgeous, but you never know how she will end.
The men watched us walk down the stairs. Jim leaned back in his chair. “Now we might see some action,” he said.
Chloe and I looked at each other. “I don’t think so,” we said.
Chloe surveyed the room. “This looks like an intervention,” she said. Someone fixed her a vodka. I told her what we were talking about.
“I think every girl’s least favorite thing is a threesome,” Chloe said. She said it like she was talking about hair accessories. “Girls like one-on-one,” she said. “They like the attention.”
She took a sip of vodka: “I’ve been put in that position so many fucking times where a man wants a threesome. I was just with this boyfriend. We were with this other couple. They all wanted to play some kind of S&M game. I was put in the bedroom with the other woman’s husband, whom I’d known for years. We looked at each other, and I said, ‘This is never going to work because we’re both submissives. It’s a joke. We cancel each other out.’”
I wanted to know what happened if the two women in a threesome ignored the man.
“I pray for it,” said Simon.
“That’s what we all want,” said Tad. “It’s the real thing. It’s like having a live movie in your bed. You do the work to get the two women together.”
Jonesie seemed to be convinced that it worked a little differently. He kept using the word “pro.” We weren’t sure if he meant an actual prostitute who specialized in threesomes or something else.
“Usually, these things happen because the pro really wants to sleep with the woman,” Jonesie said. “She’s actually a lesbian, but she’ll sleep with a man to get the woman. The pro is going to deal with you as best she can, and keep you going for as long as she can, so the other woman, whom she really wants, doesn’t get nervous that she’s been aggressively sold out by the guy. The pro will keep you going as long as she can until she finishes you off. Then she devours the other woman.”
“I reject that,” Simon said. “Jonesie’s had a narrow range of experience.”
“IMAGINE SAYING NO”
”One of the girls in my threesome; she loved to have sex,” Jim said. “She’d had sex with all the guys we know.”
“Wait a minute,” Chloe interrupted. “How do you know she actually had sex with them?”
“Because Ian had sex with her,” Jim said. “Ian had sex with her, and he said she loved to have sex with every guy.”
“But how does he know?” Chloe said, indignant. “Maybe she only liked having sex with him. That’s what’s wrong with you guys.”
“Her idea is that she can be like a guy,” explained Ian. “Her idea is: Why do women have to be different from men? If a man can have sex with every girl he wants, why can’t she have sex with every guy she wants?”
“Look at Simon,” Jonesie said. “He wants her name and phone number right now.”
Jim continued: “The other girl was the opposite of the first girl. She was kind of virginal. She’d had two boyfriends in her whole life. Anyway, these two girls had moved in together. And the crazy girl changed the life of the virginal girl, because a week later, the virginal girl was ready to sleep with everyone.
“We’re all good friends,” Jim said. “I had slept with the crazy girl, and the virginal girl was a girl I’d been pursuing for a year. We went to see a movie, and afterwards we got a bottle of wine and went to their apartment. We drank the whole bottle of wine.”
“But that’s only three and a half glasses,” Chloe objected.
“There was a time when you, too, Chloe, could get drunk off of three and a half glasses of wine,” Tad said.
“Okay,” Jim said. “So we went back to their apartment and drank the teeny, tiny, little bit of wine that we had, and afterward, me and the crazy girl went into the bedroom—it was one of those bedrooms where the bed takes up the whole space so the only place to hang out is on the bed. So me and the crazy girl started fooling around. She wanted the other girl. And I wanted the other girl. We were both looking at her. She was walking around the apartment, trying to do her own thing. Walking into the bathroom and then the kitchen. Back and forth.”
“What did she have on?” Simon asked.
“I don’t remember,” Jim said. “But we finally grabbed her hand and pulled her into the bedroom.”
“And then you raped her,” Simon said.
Jim shook his head. “Nooooo. We sat her down on the bed and just started touching her. Rubbing her back. Then we pulled her down onto the bed. The two girls were apart, so I just started putting one girl’s hand on the other one’s chest. And then the girls got into it. I was still involved, but I was trying to creep away, just to watch. After that, they went around and did it with everyone in New York. They probably did it with twenty guys from Buddha Bar.”
Ian also had a story. “One time, I was having sex with a girl and there was another girl in the bed,” he said. “At one point, I looked at this other girl and our eyes locked. And for the next five minutes, we were just staring at each other. That was the kicker. That’s when it was great. That was intimate.”
Peter Beard, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, suddenly spoke up. “Imagine saying no to a threesome,” he said. “What an asshole you’d have to be.”
“IT’S SPORT”
“But you don’t really want to do it with a girl you care about,” said Tad.
“The best is when you do it with a girl who’s a great friend and a player,” said Ian.
“And that’s the reason why men want to have a threesome with you,” Tad said to Chloe. “You’re a great friend.”
Chloe glared.
And then, pretty much out of the blue, Ian made an announcement. “I’ve been in more situations when it’s two guys and one girl.” He quickly added: “And I haven’t participated in having sex with the other guy.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. I wasn’t quite sure that I’d heard correctly.
“It’s the easiest way to do it,” Ian shrugged. “It’s sport. You don’t care for that girl; otherwise, you wouldn’t let your buddy have sex with her. It’s not like she means anything to you.”
“And it’s a lot cheaper,” Sam, the investment banker, piped in.
I thought of a few female friends of mine who had confessed to me the occasional fantasy of being with two men. I decided to tell them it’s best to leave it a fantasy.
Chloe was still skeptical. “I’ve never had two men try to do that,” she said. “Besides, men are so fucking competitive with each other, you’d think
they wouldn’t be able to deal with it.”
“I wouldn’t want to have sex with a woman after another man had been with her,” said Peter.
Tad disagreed. “If it’s my best friend, anything goes.”
“Totally,” Ian said.
“I could care who goes first, or what happens,” Tad said.
“It’s a conspiracy between the two guys,” said Ian. “It’s a one-on-one thing with your buddy. You’re wondering with your buddy if you’re going to be able to pull it off. And when you pull it off you’re like—yeah!”
Jim was shaking his head violently. “I disagree.”
“Jim, how can you say you disagree?” Ian asked.
“Yeah,” Tad said. “You did it once with Ian.”
“It’s the idea of it that I don’t like,” Jim said.
Ian pointed at Jim. “But he was pushing me up to the girl,” Ian said.
“A BAD VIBE”
Garrick spoke up. He said he had had about ten threesomes—“Hey, I’m thirty-five, a lot of shit has happened to me”—and several were with another guy. “It was always with my best friend, Bill,” he said.
Bill was a model, and Garrick and Bill met at a gym downtown when Bill asked Garrick to spot him on the bench press. “Most of the guys who worked out there were gay,” said Garrick. “So after that, it was like we were going out of our way to prove we weren’t gay. The three-way was almost a validation of our heterosexuality. You’re validating your masculinity to another guy.
“With me and Bill, it was about the thrill of the freak show,” Garrick said. “Sometimes both of us had intercourse with the girl at the same time. Once a woman’s submitted to that role of being with two guys, she’s pretty much open to anything.”
Garrick leaned forward in his chair and took a drag of his cigarette. “Bill once did it with another guy,” he said. He laughed. “I always kid him about it. There was interaction between them. I don’t know. To me, that constitutes latent homosexual yearnings. Do I have those yearnings? I don’t know. Maybe Bill wasn’t my type.”
The younger men got kind of quiet.
Instead, Peter spoke. “I’m not a homophobe—I did happen to be in a situation with my best friend once and another woman. They were sleeping in a queen-sized bed in the same room. And I remember the vibes of sex. And when it was over, his hand was burned. Even though he was my best friend, I saw that he was an extra man on the scene, and it was such a bad vibe. I just remember pushing his burned hand away. It was such a bad vibe.”
We all sat back for a moment. It was getting late. Almost time to go for dinner.
“Aw, I don’t know,” Garrick said. “I’m convinced three-somes are good for your psyche emotionally. It’s such an atypical sexual experience, it’s almost like it doesn’t count. As soon as it’s over, you don’t think about it. If you cheat on your wife or girlfriend, you usually feel guilt afterwards. With this, there’s no way you’re going to have an ongoing relationship, so it’s no threat.
“Besides,” Garrick continued, “it brings you closer to the guy. Cements the relationship. What else can you do that even comes close? You’re sharing the most intimate experience.”
And what about afterward? The next morning?
“Oh, no problem. I remember, once, we all went to breakfast,” Garrick said. “I remember it, because I paid.”
9
What Has Two Wheels, Wears Seersucker, and Makes a Sucker of Me? A Bicycle Boy
A few weeks back, I had an encounter with a Bicycle Boy. It happened at a book party that was held in a great marble hall on a tree-lined street. While I was surreptitiously stuffing my face with smoked salmon, a writer friend, a guy, rushed up and said, “I’ve just been talking to the most interesting man.”
“Oh yeah? Where?” I asked, glancing around the room with suspicion.
“He used to be an archaeologist, and now he writes science books . . . fascinating.”
“Say no more,” I said. I had already spotted the man in question—he was dressed in what I imagined was the city version of a safari suit: khaki trousers, a cream-checked shirt, and a slightly shabby tweed jacket. His gray-blond hair was raked back from his forehead, exposing a handsome chipped profile. So I was motoring, as much as you can motor in strappy high-heeled sandals, across the room. He was in deep conversation with a middle-aged man, but I quickly took care of the situation. “You,” I said. “Someone just told me you were fascinating. I hope you won’t disappoint me.” I bore him off to an open window, where I plied him with cigarettes and cheap red wine. After twenty minutes, I left him to go meet some friends for dinner.
The next morning, he called me while I was still in bed with a hangover. Let’s call him Horace Eccles. He talked about romance. It was nice to lie in bed with my head throbbing and a handsome man cooing into my ear. We arranged to meet for dinner.
The trouble began almost immediately. First he called to say he was going to be an hour early. Then he called back to say he wasn’t. Then he called to say he was going to be half an hour late. Then he called and said he was just around the corner. Then he really was forty-five minutes late.
And then he turned up on his bicycle.
I didn’t realize this at first. All I noticed was a more than normal dishevelment (for a writer) and a slight breathiness, which I attributed to the fact that he was in my presence. “Where do you want to have dinner?” he asked.
“I’ve already arranged it,” I said. “Elaine’s.”
His face twisted. “But I thought we’d just have dinner at some neighborhood place around the corner.”
I gave him one of my looks and said, “I don’t have dinner at neighborhood places around the corner.” For a moment, it looked like it was going to be a standoff. Finally, he blurted out, “But I came on my bicycle, you see.”
I turned around and stared at the offending piece of machinery, which was tethered to a lamppost.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
MR. NEW YORKER AND HIS THREE-SPEED
This was not my first encounter with a Manhattan literary-romantic subspecies I’ve come to call the Bicycle Boys. A while back, I was at a dinner with one of the most famous Bicycle Boys, whom we’ll just call Mr. New Yorker. Mr. New Yorker, an editor at that publication, looks like he’s thirty-five (even though he’s quite a bit older), with floppy brown hair and a devastating smile. When he goes out, he usually has his pick of single women, and not just because these women want to get something published in the New Yorker. He’s smooth and a little sloppy. He sits down next to you and talks to you about politics and asks your opinion. He makes you feel smart. And then, before you know it, he’s gone. “Hey, where’s Mr. New Yorker?” everyone was asking at eleven o’clock. “He made a phone call,” one woman said, “and then he took off on his bike. He was going to meet someone.”
The image of Mr. New Yorker, stealing through the night in his tweedy jacket, pumping like mad on his three-speed bike (with fenders to keep his pants from getting dirty), haunted me. I pictured him pulling up to an Upper East Side walkup—or maybe a loft building in SoHo—leaning against the buzzer, and then, panting slightly, wheeling his bike up the stairs. A door would open, and he and his inamorata would be giggling as they tried to figure out where to put the bike. Then they’d fall into a sweaty embrace, no doubt ending up on some futon on the floor.
The Bicycle Boy actually has a long literary-social tradition in New York. The patron saints of Bicycle Boys are white-haired writer George Plimpton, whose bike used to hang upside down above his employees’ heads at the Paris Review offices, and white-haired Newsday columnist Murray Kempton. They’ve been riding for years and are the inspiration for the next generation of Bicycle Boys, like the aforementioned Mr. New Yorker and scores of young book, magazine, and newspaper editors and writers who insist on traversing Manhattan’s physical and romantic landscape as solitary pedalers. Bicycle Boys are a particular breed of New York bachelor: Smart, funny, romantic, lean,
quite attractive, they are the stuff that grownup coed dreams are made of. There’s something incredibly, er, charming about a tweedy guy on a bike—especially if he’s wearing goofy glasses.
Women tend to feel a mixture of passion and motherly affection. But there’s a dark side: Most Bicycle Boys are not married and probably never will be, at least not until they give up their bikes.
WHY JOHN F. KENNEDY JR. IS NOT A BICYCLE BOY
“Riding a bike is not necessarily a power move,” said Mr. Eccles. “It’s best done by power people like George Plimpton. Otherwise, you have to hide your bike around the corner and surreptitiously take your trousers out of your socks.” Bicycle Boys don’t ride their bikes for sport, like those silly guys you see riding around and around the park. They ride partly for transportation and, more important, to preserve a literary boyhood. Think of twilight at Oxford, riding over the cobblestones while a woman waits down by the Cherwell River, wearing a flowing dress, clasping a volume of Yeats. That’s how Bicycle Boys think of themselves as they pedal Manhattan, dodging cabbies and potholes. While John F. Kennedy Jr. is certainly New York’s most famous and sought-after bike-riding bachelor, his rippled athleticism disqualifies him for Bicycle Boydom. Because a Bicycle Boy would rather bike through midtown in a seersucker suit than in shorts and a chest-hugging tee. And Bicycle Boys spurn those skintight bike pants that have cushy foam padding sewn into the butt. Bicycle Boys are not averse to the chastising pain of a hard bike seat—it helps the literature. “I don’t own any spandex pants,” said Mr. New Yorker, who added that he wears long johns in the winter to keep warm.
Which may be one reason Bicycle Boys, more than their athletic cousins, tend to get physically attacked. The other reason is that they ride at any hour (the later the better—more romantic), in any physical condition, anywhere.
“Drunks roar out of their windows at night to send you into a tailspin,” said Mr. Eccles. And worse.
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