Love at a Tender Age (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  I have not directly confessed my desire to my wife, but I have begun giving her hints of my feelings. For example, I have told her at length of my experiences with Jane; previously she knew that I had had an extended affair with an older woman but had not known the details. I have even described particular sex acts and so on in extensive detail, usually doing so prefatory to our having sexual relations together. This has spurred excitement for both of us, but I don’t know whether to take this as a sign that the idea of sex between older women and younger men holds particular appeal for her or that it merely means she finds erotic reminiscences a stimulating preparation for sex.

  I have also given her your books to read, and lately have begun making general comments to the effect that such relationships are of value for both parties, the woman and the boy. I have joked with her to the effect that she is very highly sexed and that, as I get on in years, it would be to her interest to take a young lover. These comments do not seem to annoy or distress her in any way, but neither do they seem to be taken seriously by her. I have not yet had the nerve to propose the matter seriously.

  It is impossible for me to be sure of my motivations in wanting her to have an affair of this sort. At times I tell myself that my motivation is entirely unselfish—that I think the experience would be a positive one for both her and the boy involved, whoever he might be, and that it is just my desire for her personal happiness and satisfaction that motivates me.

  But this cannot be the case and I realize it. This is something of an obsession with me and obsessions of this sort do not have selfless motivations, from what I know of them.

  But what personal satisfaction would I get out of this?

  I can see possible motives but don’t believe they apply. For example, the idea of latent homosexuality. That I have strong homosexual urges which would be satisfied by proxy were my wife to have relations in my stead with a boy I find desirable myself.

  This worries me, because I have never recognized any element of homosexual desire within myself, find the thought of sexual relations with another male utterly repugnant, and, without being able to say precisely why, dislike to think that I could be so oriented, consciously or unconsciously.

  I can also conceive that I might be wanting to identify with the boy and thus recapture a particular element of my youth. Or that there is a fetishistic thing about it, namely the whole concept of woman-boy sex “turns me on,” and thus I want to participate in such a situation the only way possible for me, namely through the medium of my wife.

  Well, that’s already more than I intended to write, Mr. Wells. So I’ve wasted a little of your time and saved myself twenty-five dollars I might have spent on a headshrinker. I would be interested in any comments you might care to make, also any suggestions you might have as to how I might best get my wife to participate. (Whatever my motives, it is true that I honestly believe it would be a good experience for her!) Do not think, though, that I expect a reply from you; it is gracious enough of you to read this—assuming you didn’t throw it in the wastebasket halfway through!

  Sincerely,

  Peter

  I did reply to Peter’s letter, though not immediately; I was out of town when it arrived. I told him I wouldn’t worry too much about the latent-homosexuality interpretation of his desire as I didn’t think that explanation held water in his case. I said I was more inclined to go along with his third explanation—that he found woman/boy sex exciting in concept and thus sought vicarious participation in it.

  As far as getting his wife to go along with it, I offered no suggestions but a couple of cautions—first, that he be sure of his own mind on the subject to the point where he could be certain that his desire for vicarious pleasure did not mask a hidden feeling that his wife would be sullied by the experience, and, second, that he make haste slowly and not lay any trips on her that she was not ready for.

  I also expressed the hope that he would let me know how things turned out for him, but never heard further from him.

  A Letter from Peggy

  Dear Mr. Wells,

  I read your book Beyond Group Sex and enjoyed it. In the introduction you said that people could write to you if they wished, so here I am . . .

  Perhaps I should say that I do not often read books on the subject of sex and all its variations. No, I’m not putting down books on this subject! But I usually am not interested in reading them.

  I happened to pick up your book at the drugstore and to look through it, and I came across a chapter about a brother and sister who were married to each other. I’m sure you know the chapter I mean. Your title for it was “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.”

  Well, hold your horses, because I’m not going to marry my brother. I don’t even have a brother! A dog and a goldfish and a mother and a step-father and a little sister, but no brother.

  I also have a cousin. Well, several cousins, actually, but there’s this one cousin in particular who is why I’m writing to you. He’s the problem.

  Let me tell you something about myself. I am 16, 5’ 3½”, 107 lbs, brown hair, brown eyes, considered fairly good-looking. I have what is supposed to be a pretty good figure . . .

  I have always been sexy. Meaning I get passionate. Like I really dig it! But for most of my life it all added up to a big nothing. The boys I liked didn’t like me, and the boys who liked me were yucky. I would make out and like that, and I would get passionate even if the boy was yucky, esp. the ones who knew how to kiss, but it never added up to much. I fucked for the first time two months after my fourteenth birthday. The boy was from out-of-town and my girlfriend fixed me up with him. I didn’t like him too much, but he wanted to fuck and I was curious about getting it over with once and for all. Truthfully I dug a charge out of it, but didn’t have a climax. I fucked once or twice after that—well, twice, but the same boy both times, not exactly yucky but no doll either, if you know what I mean. Both of those times I also dug it but didn’t come, but he would fingerfuck me after and I can almost always come that way.

  Now about my cousin. Well, there is nothing much to say except that his mother is my mother’s sister. He and I always liked each other as kids but that was all there was to it. Then a few months ago it happened.

  He is a year and two months younger than me, which is sort of weird, because I have always gone out with boys my age or a little older, and always had the idea that the boy should be older in love affairs. Also I am more experienced and he never had fucked before. He is tall, 5’ 7” and still growing, and as both his parents are tall he will probably be well over six feet when fully grown. He has blue eyes and brown hair and is very attractive, and when he kisses me everything melts all inside of me, and when we have sexual relations it is dynamite, and I come almost every time we fuck.

  The thing is that he is my cousin. Of course we cannot go out on dates or anything like that. How it got started is we were listening to records and talking about sex, and we started kissing and fooling around, and all of a sudden we were both turned on. We didn’t fuck that first time, just fooled around and got terribly frustrated. Then a few days later we messed around some more and jerked each other off, and within a week we were fucking and it was heaven.

  He talks all the time about how we will get married when we grow up. I want this very much but I am terribly uncertain. In your book the brother and sister moved away and changed their names and everything. I suppose we could do this. Maybe we will. I don’t know.

  What about children? Is it all right for cousins to have children? I want to have about a dozen babies when I grow up but would hate myself for bringing defective children into the world. Also there is a population problem, blah blah blah, so maybe we should adopt children instead of having any of our own.

  Is it legal to marry your cousin? Is it a bad idea if the wife is a year and two months older than the husband? Also some other questions: Is The Pill—which I am taking—absolutely safe? Also, this may be a stupid question but I have heard it
both ways, if you suck a boy off and he comes in your mouth and you swallow it, can you get pregnant that way? (Please don’t laugh!) Also, if you can get pregnant that way, does the Pill protect you, or is it just protection for fucking? I know these are dumb questions but I don’t know the answers and who else can I ask?????

  Please write back soon. I know you are busy but this is important. If my aunt or mother knew about this they would die.

  Peggy

  An Epilogue . . . with Love and Squalor

  4 January 73

  Mr. William R. Gross

  Dell Publishing Company, Inc.

  Dear Bill,

  I’m glad you liked the manuscript of Love at a Tender Age. I can’t take a hell of a lot of credit for it. Any fool with a pair of scissors and a paste pot could have done as well. It was the kids who wrote the book. I’m perfectly willing to let them have the credit, just so I get the cash . . .

  Your one criticism, that the book just seems to come to an end, strikes me as perfectly valid. Matter of fact, it doesn’t even come to an end—it just stops going on. That’s a problem with a book consisting of letters from continuing correspondence. Since I turned in the manuscript, I’ve heard further from some of the kids.

  One letter in particular arrived just the day before yesterday, and perhaps you’ll think of a way to use it in the book. It’s from the gal I call “Grace” in the “Three Little Maids from School” chapter. It’s confused and confusing, and kind of off-handedly poignant, and it goes like this . . .

  Dear Jack,

  Hi! How are you? I’m doing fine so far. Working now, nothing but that. There’s at least three guys who want to take me out. Already wrote two off my list. One I don’t particularly like, and I found out the other one is married. So that’s it.

  Ellen’s doing okay so far. She was in a hospital for trying to commit suicide. She’s out now and goes to a school for emotionally disturbed people. She almost lost my close friendship. Lots of things have been happening!! She still thinks that she is “bisexual.” She’s been making it with men 100% of the time. I think it might be the relationship between me and her. The way she feels toward me, I mean . . . I don’t know what I am. All I know is that I am a “woman”!! I haven’t been hearing from Louise.

  I have convinced myself that I don’t want to get married or have children. I’m thinking of getting lots of money up to get my tubes fused. Going sterile. I have learned from my last pregnancy. I hate the idea of the having-to-get-married bit because the woman didn’t say no. I should of, man. Now I’m going to, from this point on. If I start on the pill, I wouldn’t have to say no. I’d have a reason to say yes. But I’m going on the pill and I’m still going to say no.

  Ellen and a couple of guys went to see Boys in the Band. They said it was fantastic. I was out of town so I didn’t get to see it. Shoot!

  Trying to quit smoking. Tonight it didn’t work. I was mad, and I lit up a cigarette. Calms my nerves, something to do with my hands. I quit dope! Getting into the Lord. It’s really a hard subject to get into. Reading the New Testament. Trying to get educated. I’ll say one thing, my head’s been messed up and it still is. Hard work trying to straighten it out. I’ll do it some time. Gotta be patient.

  And tonight’s a night not to try it. Mom’s in a rotten mood. I take my headaches out on my younger sister, cause she wants to watch what she wants to watch on TV. Now Mom’s back-talking, and I am too. Dad’s the same way as Mom. I’m hating myself for this whole night. Getting terrible vibes from every moving object. I feel just terrible. Mainly of finding out one of the guys who wants to date me is married. I like him a lot. I might be in love, but I shouldn’t be and I’m not going to be! He’s just a friend! He’s all right. One of the other guys, he’s terrific! (Yum, Yum) (No no!! Shouldn’t be thinking like that!!)

  Well, I’ll split now, so—

  Love,

  Grace

  So it goes. If it’s not too late, I think this letter ought to be in the book. And, since Grace appears in the first extended chapter of the book, perhaps you would want to use this last letter as a sort of epilogue, conveniently rounding things off and bringing us all back to Step One.

  I’m sure you’ll think of something.

  Rgds,

  Jack

  The End

  About the Authors

  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 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: lawbloc@gmail.com

  Blog: LB’s Blog

  Facebook: LB's Facebook Fan Page

  Website: www.lawrenceblock.com

  Twitter: @LawrenceBlock

  * * *

  John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior Ebooks

  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

  Sex Without Strings

  The New Sexual Underground

  The Taboo Breakers

  Tricks of the Trade: A Hooker’s Handbook of Sexual Technique

  Versatile Ladies: Women Who Swing Both Ways

  Wide Open: The New Marriage

  The Wife-Swap Report

  Older Women and Younger Men:

  The Mrs. Robinson Syndrome

  John Warren Wells

  Lawrence Block

  * * *

  copyright © 1969, 2012, Lawrence Block

  All Rights Reserved

  Introduction:

  What's The Opposite Of Lolita?

  Not too long ago, I was interviewing a married woman with extensive experience in sexually permissive circles all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Our conversa
tion had moved from her own experiences to some of the more outré predilections of various acquaintances of hers, several of which were particularly bizarre. Ultimately she began commenting upon a friend of hers, a woman in her late thirties who drifted from one lover to another, with her sexual partners an average of twenty years younger than herself.

  “Her entire sex life is a regular parade of these young studs,” my informant said, a hint of envy in her tone. One after another of these . . . of these—” She looked at me, frowning. “Help me out—what’s the opposite of Lolita?”

  It is hardly insignificant that there is no readily agreed upon opposite for Lolita, i.e., no generic label to fix upon adolescent males who consort with older women. While the heroine of Vladimir Nabokov’s penetrating novel saw her name at once absorbed into the world’s several languages, fiction has yet to supply us with her male equivalent. The significance of this, of course, is not merely that we have no name for him: it is rather that we are far less cognizant of his existence. And yet, as I have gradually discovered in recent months, the sexual enthusiasm of mature women for adolescent males is by no means unusual in our society. This particular sort of liaison is well established throughout all strata of society, not only on the barricades of the sexual revolution but considerably behind them as well.

  When I first began to encounter an impressive quantity of such cases, I made an error which is scarcely uncommon in the behavioral sciences: I thought that I was discovering a new trend. I shortly found myself spinning elaborate theories to explain this trend in light of diverse changes in the sexual atmosphere of modern culture. But further examination revealed that if there is indeed anything new under the sun, this was not it.