3 is Not a Crowd (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  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.

  CAROL: No, not with her.

  BOB: You would have to have absolutely the perfect girl. And it couldn’t be the sort of thing in the case you were talking about, where both the women are the man’s wives. Not that he’s married to both of them, but that it’s the same as if he were. I’ve got one wife and that’s Carol and she’s all the wife I need.

  CAROL: I don’t mind sharing Bob, but I wouldn’t want to feel like part of a harem. I like it the way it is, with me being his wife and something special to him.

  BOB: It’s more that we would want a girl we could both love. That she would be more or less the center of the triangle, if that’s the word for it.

  CAROL: The apex.

  BOB: That’s the word I was trying for. The apex of the triangle.

  CAROL: You know, there’s a game swingers play called Center of Attraction. You choose by drawing lots or spinning a bottle or something like that, and the person chosen is the center of attraction, and lies passive while everybody else in the game makes love to her at once.

  BOB: Or to him, as the case may be.

  CAROL: Well, at large parties I understand it’s usually a woman that gets chosen, because all the women will be bi, whereas most of the men will not be. But anyway that’s how the game works.

  We will play it at threesomes, not bothering to spin a bottle but taking turns. When it’s Bob’s turn the other girl and I will love him up for fifteen minutes or a half hour or however long we decide, and then it’s my turn and so forth. But what we found, we enjoy it most when it’s the girl’s turn, and Bob and I more or less make love to her as a team. Each sucking one of her breasts and so forth.

  And I think that fits in with what Bob said about the extra girl being the apex of the triangle.

  BOB: We’ve talked about what the perfect girl would be like. It would be best if she were a good deal younger than we are, and the less experience she has the better. We would want to take over her whole life and shape it so that she would be able to fit in perfectly with us. When a girl is older or has experience it’s harder to make her fit in.

  CAROL: We had the idea of getting some younger girl as household help and seeing how she might work out. It would have to be a case of seducing her gradually and we would probably go through a lot of maids before we found the right one, but we think it might work sooner or later.

  BOB: We had it in mind to hire a young colored girl, but that would be taking a big chance.

  CAROL: Not that we consider ourselves prejudiced that way. We may be Southerners, but some people are a lot more open-minded down here than the average Yankee suspects. We do have certain prejudices which are more a case of being old-fashioned in some ways than anything else, but we don’t have prejudices where sex is concerned. For example, we have swung with colored several times and never found anything to object to on those occasions.

  BOB: We never swung with a colored couple.

  CAROL: Well, I beg your pardon, but we did.

  BOB: They were interracial. She was colored but he wasn’t.

  CAROL: Yes, that’s true. Never when the man was colored, although if it had come up I think we would have.

  BOB: I don’t know if that’s so. But with colored girls, we certainly have no objection. And I think it would be easy to get one who would go along with it. They have a freer attitude that way, and getting a girl from some back-country town, that wouldn’t be hard to do.

  CAROL: But if anyone found out—

  BOB: Yes, that’s where the problem lies. It would have to be kept absolutely secret, and if anyone found out it would be the end of my career and the end of living anywhere in this area. As far as that goes it’s important to keep swinging a secret anyway, but you could have people suspect a great deal or even know for sure and they would tend to shrug it off. For the ones who never spoke to you after they heard about it, you would have others who were swingers themselves or thought it was a good idea.

  Once it’s a question of race, though, down here that’s like waving a red flag at a bull. We consider ourselves flaming liberals on racial matters, but even so I have to admit that I would not want Carol to make love to a colored man. I might have gone through with it anyway when we were swinging with couples. Or I might not. But I know I wouldn’t have liked it at all.

  Our neighbors, though. The people of the community. Now if I were seeing some colored gal on the sly that would be one thing, and most of them, the men that is, would be inclined to wink at it. But for the two of us to have a colored girl in our house and be having sex with her, no, they wouldn’t care for that. Maybe you could get by with it in New York, but Atlanta isn’t New York.

  CAROL: We also have been thinking about getting a European girl as a domestic. They have employment agencies in New York that specialize in that, either from Ireland or Scandinavia, mostly. The Scandinavians are supposed to be very liberal on sex and we will probably get around to making inquiries one of these days. Again, you couldn’t expect to hit the jackpot on the first nickel, and we might have some disappointments, but with a Scandinavian girl, a young one, I think it just might work out.

  BOB: Of course you’ve got to bear in mind, John, that we think about no end of things and make plans and all, and nothing ever comes of it. We enjoy the planning but we don’t actually do everything we have in mind, not by any means. I think we might up and get started on this, but we’ve been talking about it for a long while and haven’t done a thing about it up to now.

  CAROL: I think we will, though.

  BOB: Maybe.

  CAROL: I think I’ll write a letter tomorrow. I wonder if you get to look at a photograph of the girl or you just take what they send you?

  BOB: What I was getting at, about how we like to plan a number of things, some of which we know there’s hardly a chance in the world that we’ll do—

  CAROL: You’re not going to tell him?

  BOB: Why not?

  CAROL: I don’t know.

  BOB: We’re telling everything else. And this isn’t even something we’ve done yet, and probably never will, so what’s the point in keeping shut about it?

  CAROL: I don’t know.

  BOB: Don’t you want me to say anything?

  CAROL: Well, you already said enough so that John here will only suspect worse than anything you could possibly say, so why don’t you go ahead? You might as well tell him what it is.

  BOB: Well, there is this charity in New York where you can adopt a foster child in another country. You pay them $192 a year and they take care of the child, pay for food and clothing and put a roof on their hut and all the other things that the child needs. And from time to time they send you reports on how the child is doing, and pictures of her, and you can write her a letter once a month and she writes letters to you once a month which they translate and send to you.

  CAROL: And we
adopted one a year ago. A daughter, obviously.

  BOB: We didn’t have anything in mind but to do a good deed for someone. We believe in charity, but just giving money to some big organization, you don’t feel you’re making a real contribution. All you’re doing is throwing one drop into a big bucket, and you keep feeling that if the government really wanted to cure cancer they would do better taking the money out of taxes than having all these charities. But something like this, you participate, and you see the results of what you’re doing. When you send a check to the cancer society you don’t know if it does any good or not, but here we know that one particular child won’t go hungry and will have clothes to wear.

  CAROL: She’s eleven years old. She lives in Colombia, in South America—

  BOB: Oh, Christ, he knows where Colombia is. He wasn’t going to think you meant Colombia, Missouri.

  CAROL: Her name is Estrellita, which means Little Star. She’s part Indian and has the most beautiful face. Black shoe-button eyes and straight hair and the most beautiful innocent face you ever saw.

  BOB: And now and then Carol and I will talk about seeing if we can’t bring her up here to live with us. Not right away but when she’s a little older. You know, the advantages of living in America, and of being able to have a decent life—

  CAROL: Of course you can imagine what would happen if we had her here.

  BOB: Well, when you stop and think, what would be so bad about that?

  CAROL: I didn’t say anything would be bad about it.

  BOB: The chances are strong that we’ll never go through with it. That we won’t ever take it past the stage of something to talk about. But if we ever did, I think it would be ideal. For her and for us. I think it would work out to be a perfect relationship, if we ever did anything about it.

  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

  The Sex Therapists

  John Warren Wells

  Lawrence Block

  * * *

  copyright © 1972, 2012, Lawrence Block

  All Rights Reserved

  Introduction

  In the following pages you will make the acquaintance of:

  A prostitute who accepts referrals from psychiatrists and thinks of herself as more like a nurse than a hooker . . .

  A psychiatrist who helps homosexuals function as heterosexuals . . .

  A couple who engage in group sex to learn how to be better lovers . . .

  A couple of psychotherapists who seduce their female patients . . .

  A self-appointed guru who runs orgies and calls them encounter groups . . .

  A clinical psychologist who pairs off patients for sexual experimentation . . .

  And a woman who found her way to sexual fulfillment with an electric toothbrush.

  And you just might wonder what in the hell they’ve got in common.

  Well, I certainly wouldn’t blame you for wondering. What puts all of these people between the covers of the same book is that their experiences all illustrate various facets of the topic of sexual therapy.

  Sexual therapy is a relatively recent phenomenon. In one sense it’s been around forever—or at least as long as there have been some people whose sex lives have been less than ideal, which I would certainly presume dates from the expulsion from Eden. But until fairly recently, the methods of dealing with various forms of sexual dysfunction seemed to be more concerned with causes than treatment. Conventional psychotherapy operated more or less on the premise that some aspect of a personality was responsible for a person’s inability to function in the sexual sphere. Through various forms of talk-therapy, the patient was encouraged to understand how previous experiences had created inhibitions of one sort or another, with the idea in mind that understanding would lead to resolution of the underlying problems, and hence to amelioration of the sexual difficulty. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t.

  In recent years, many responsible persons have come to the conclusion that, whatever the underlying causes of emotional discontent, the first step toward improvement lies in dealing with precisely those problems which beset the patient here and now. According to this school of thought, if a man has a morbid fear of raincoats, the first thing to do is cure his fear of raincoats. With that out of the way, one may inquire into the origin of the fear. Or one may not bother inquiring into the origin of the fear, simply contenting oneself with the knowledge that the poor fellow no longer goes into an anxiety attack every time he sees a yellow slicker.

  The value of this orientation is especially apparent in the area of sexual problems. If a man is sexually impotent because he hates his mother, his feelings toward her are not his main problem; his main problem, and the thing most likely to interfere with his enjoyment of his life, is that he cannot get an erection. Investigate the origins of his hatred for his
mother and he may still remain impotent. Cure his impotence, render him sexually adequate, and he very well may go on hating his mother—a sentiment which may be unfortunate, but which is a hell of a lot easier to live with than impotence.

  The major breakthrough in dealing directly with human sexual problems was achieved by the Masters and Johnson clinic in St. Louis. After an extraordinary investigation of human sexual response, Masters and Johnson turned their attention to the problems of sexual dysfunction and acted on the premise that it was possible to cure sexual problems simply by curing them, that specific techniques could be applied to specific problems and that successful results could be achieved in this manner.

  We won’t examine Masters and Johnson at length here if only because there are several books available which cover the subject far better than I could. The interested reader would be well advised to consult the second Masters and Johnson book, Human Sexual Inadequacy. If it proves difficult reading (as it does for most people) there are several books available which, in essence, translate M and J into basic English. In addition, the reader might wish to familiarize himself with The Couple, by an anonymous husband and wife who took their sexual problems to Masters and Johnson; the program is explained very intelligibly, and if one can get past the mild nauseating style in which the book is written, it can be valuable. Also revealing is Surrogate Wife, by Valerie X. Scott as told to Herbert d’H Lee, the former a pseudonym for a sexual surrogate employed by Masters and Johnson, the latter a pseudonym for a successful novelist. I’m not sure how strictly accurate the book is, but it’s very much worth reading for its insight into M and J methodology, and it’s well written.

  This book concerns itself with various ways other therapists have adapted M and J techniques to suit their own therapeutic practices. It deals, too, with approaches of other professionals to the idea of sexual therapy, and with ways in which individuals have attempted by themselves to deal with their sexual problems.