Sex Without Strings: A Handbook for Consenting Adults (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior)

by Lawrence Block

  Now, all along I had been aware of the existence of swinging. Except I wasn’t aware of it by that name. I thought of it as wife-swapping, and that term gives you an idea of the mental fix I had on it. I’d read what I suppose is the usual number of magazine articles on the subject, and felt it was limited to married couples having sexual relations with other married couples. You know, trading wives for an evening. I thought it was a great idea, but I also knew it was not something my own wife would ever go for. In fact, I had mentioned it from time to time—just testing the water, so to speak, not even hinting that I thought it was a great idea—and she made it quite obvious that, as far as she was concerned, people who would do that sort of thing were sick and disgusting.

  But when I began fantasizing having sex with a couple, I dreamed up a lot of impossible plans to pass myself off as a couple, then turn up at the house explaining that my wife couldn’t make it, on the off-chance that something would turn up. I also thought of hiring a prostitute to pretend to be my wife. I gather a lot of men go through this sort of scheming, and I understand some of them even try both of those things, though I suspect the guys who say their wives got sick—well, I don’t suppose they get the warm welcome they’re hoping for, do they?

  In line with these fantasies I bought some of the correspondence magazines, and I was amazed to discover a couple of ads from couples where both parties were bisexual and were looking for single males to join in the fun. I really was terribly naïve and had missed the whole point of swinging, which is for people to do whatever they want if they can find people who want to do the same things . . .

  Naturally, in that first magazine the only ads I could find like that were on the other side of the country. But when a man is determined nothing can stop him, and of course I bought every swingers’ magazine on the market, and answered every ad in the New York area that was of that type, and before long I was making contacts.

  • • •

  The couples he met through the correspondence clubs turned out to be the answer to Alvin’s prayers. The presence of sex partners of either sex seemed to have a synergistic effect upon him. He got keener enjoyment out of relations with the man because of the presence of the woman, and vice versa. This seems to have been more than the thrill of being able to do several things at once; he had experienced group sex with other males and had not felt anything similar.

  I suspect this synergy is not uncommon among bisexuals. In a book unfortunately titled Women Who Swing Both Ways, I included an interview with a male bisexual who stated repeatedly that he always enjoyed sex with males more when a female was present. Perhaps the females presence does little more than mitigate the guilt of engaging in an exclusively homosexual performance. I’m not certain.

  • • •

  I can’t say I’ve never had a bad experience in swinging. I doubt that there’s a person around who could make that statement. Invariably you meet people who simply don’t appeal to you, in which case you have the choice of hurting them by saying so or going through with it even though you’d rather not. And invariably you meet people whom you enjoy well enough in a sexual way but with whom you have nothing else in common. I don’t mind that myself, as I try to keep all these relationships exclusively sexual. For friendship, well, I have my business friends, and I have several couples my wife and I are very close to on the Island. I would no more want to have close personal relationships with my swinging acquaintances than I would want to have sex with my personal friends.

  And I say that knowing that a lot of the more utopian swingers consider it the worst kind of hypocrisy. In fact, they would label me a closet swinger, as far as that goes, because they feel swinging shouldn’t be something you do just for sexual kicks but that it should be part of a total way of life, that you should fuck your friends, you might say. I personally think this looks very good on paper. Maybe it even works for some of the people who practice it. But I know myself well enough to know that it’s not for me. That may be a fault of mine, but that’s the way it goes. And I think they’re idiots for condemning the people they call closet swingers. That’s the greatest thing about swinging, the freedom in it; you can be any kind of swinger you want as long as you don’t screw up anybody else.

  As I was saying, I’ve had a share of experiences that weren’t perfect. But they were just a tiny minority of the swinging I’ve done, and the results have been . . . well, “beyond my wildest dreams” is the phrase that leaps to mind.

  It’s better than having affairs because even when the affair is obviously not going to lead anywhere, even when the girl knows the score completely, there’s always a certain amount of involvement on one or both sides, and there’s always the threat of starting an affair that isn’t going to lead somewhere. You can be very sure of yourself, very sure you’re not going to make the mistake of confusing an erection with true love, and before you know it you’ve fallen into the shit. I know so many guys who’ve had that happen. Very cynical bastards, guys who like to have something going on the side but positive they won’t make fools out of themselves, and the first thing you know, they’re convinced they’re in love. They may not break up their families over it, although that does happen some of the time, but in any case they put themselves through a lot of pain and aggravation.

  It’s also better than that round of the baths, all that guilt, all that hit-and-run sex under what are, now that I think about it, the worst possible conditions. Sweaty rooms with sex going on all around you, and even if you’re in a private room you know what’s going on next door, and the next door after that, and so on, a whole building full of men fucking and sucking one another.

  No, this means going to a private home or an apartment and having some drinks and hearing some music, possibly smoking a little marijuana, and then some perfectly natural sex. Balling the guy, balling the gal, watching them together—it’s nice. It’s right for me.

  I frankly can’t imagine myself living any other way.

  “Dear Mr. Wells . . .”

  This book was supposed to end with the last chapter, which I finished very late last night. Then I checked the morning mail and found the following letter. It seemed a nice way to round things off.

  Dear Mr. Wells,

  I decided to take you up on your offer in Beyond Group Sex, which I am currently enjoying, to write—although I feel sure you are swamped with other “helpful” people!

  I’m 20 years old, a psychology major, and obsessed with sex, although Masters and Johnson say there are no biological differences predisposing certain people to greater sexual needs. Whatever my motivation, which personally I feel is my motivation and high drive level—I love sex, period.

  It is so upsetting to see people strung out against anything even remotely sexual that I am seriously considering devoting my life to the eradication of ignorance and whatever else makes people so inhibited. As is oft quoted, they just don’t know what they’re missing! Plus, I’m tired of people ostracizing me and calling me perverted, a nympho, you know the scene.

  I personally think I entered the field of psychology to see if I was indeed sick, amoral, etc., and in my younger years went so far as to become a Catholic convert to help alleviate my guilt feelings, which were enormous!! Anyway, I just finished a Human Sexuality course—I just wish that more people could have that opportunity!

  About myself, I’m currently experimenting with different sexual experiences. Now that I have accepted myself as completely normal and healthy, I am enjoying myself much much more. At 13, I lost my highly-valued virginity to a boy I was in love with and a terrific instructor, as I will always remember him. Since then I have had sex with fifty-four men (I’m obsessive-compulsive to keep a list, huh?), one chick, a group of men, and two guys who had previously slept with each other—and I hope to further extend my list!

  I have had all the advantages I could have wanted—upper class, great parents, a college I enjoy . . . but I do have a lot of trouble now in that others are generally put
off by how open and sexual my talk always is. I love it, I love it, and I just wish there were more uninhibited warm people on my list of acquaintances, as I am sure it would be all I would need to further enjoy life, as an ultimate of sorts.

  Anyway, I am sure you are overwhelmed by many many letters from others who are interested for whatever reasons—but if you ever do find the time, I would certainly enjoy a letter, conversation, whatever. As do many, I consider myself quite full of all the joys, the sorrows, that I’ve known subjectively from being sexually liberal, but I also have a good store of the psychology, the statistics, etc.—the intellectual side. I merely study my favorite subject! If you can’t find time to answer, then just take this as another letter from someone pleased at what you’re doing.

  Sincerely,

  Annette

  Ah, yes. I suspect I can find time to answer, Annette. And you don’t live terribly far from here, do you?

  There are far worse ways, dear Reader, to earn one’s bread . . .

  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

  Versatile Ladies:

  Women Who Swing Both Ways

  John Warren Wells

  Lawrence Block

  * * *

  copyright © 1971, 2012, Lawrence Block

  All Rights Reserved

  ONE:

  Dimension Of Female Bi-Sexuality

  “When we first began to get into swinging, our whole orientation was rather innocent. By this I mean that our concept of swinging was limited to the one fundamental idea of mate-swapping. That was what we thought swinging was about—you met with another couple or with a group of couples, you paired off and went to separate houses or rooms, and you had sex.

  “Variety was a big appeal, but it was all the idea of a variety of partners. You could enjoy sex with different partners without sneaking around or cheating. In fact the whole thing became a part of the marriage instead of an extramarital thing, in that you went into it together and discussed it and all . . .

  “But neither of us ever thought in terms of a variety of acts. Of course we expected to learn new things with different partners, that was only to be expected, but that was as far as our minds went. Essentially we expected to do basically the same things with these other partners that we did with each other. Group sex was something we had not really contemplated. Our image of group sex was simply that a group got together and paired off. The first time we switched partners and made it all in the same room together, I remember it was something of a shock. It was tremendously exciting, naturally. It added a whole new dimension to the experience. Nevertheless, it was a shock.

  “More than that, neither of us ever considered the possibility that there would be any homosexual relations involved. This may be hard to believe when you realize that we had read quite a few books on swapping. And in these books absolutely everything happened—group sex, homosexual relations, intercourse with animals, absolutely everything anyone could imagine. But the thing was that these books were obviously nothing but fantasy. They were novels, and there would be long drawn-out descriptions of sexual relations that couldn’t have been more detailed, and absolutely mindless character motivation and unbelievable dialogue, and we just thought of these books as the pornography they obviously were and didn’t take them seriously as a description of the swinging scene. They occasionally turned us on and I suppose in certain ways they made us more amenable to swinging, but neither my husband nor I thought that, just because these cardboard characters in these tacky books did thus and so with each other, that actual people in real life would behave that way.

  “Well, you live and you learn. Just because the books rendered the whole thing so implausibly didn’t mean that people didn’t perform all of the acts that the books so elaborately described. And just because the people in the books were nothing like us didn’t mean that we didn’t find ourselves duplicating their behavior to a surprising degree. To make a long story short, we found out we liked group sex, and I found out I liked making love to another woman. In fact I can hardly envision swinging nowadays without lesbian relationships. The one is part and parcel of the other.

  “I suppose it’s possible to be a swinger, to be really into it, and to avoid this. But it’s damned rare. It really is. I don’t know what the statistics would be. There’s a new book out that I haven’t read yet, a hardcover book on swinging by some professor, and in the advertisements there’s something to the effect that ninety-two percent of the wives who get into swinging also get into homosexuality. Or bisexuality, whatever you want to call it.

  “Ninety-two percent is as reasonable a figure as any other, I guess. As far as I’m concerned, what it means is this—ninety-two percent of the wives are into swinging with other women, and the other eight percent haven’t gotten around to it yet. That’s what it really
means, because when we meet a girl who isn’t ready for it it’s almost invariably a case of her and her husband being new to swinging. In fact what a girl will say in those circumstances isn’t that she doesn’t dig making love with other women but that she’s not ready for it yet. As if she already accepts the fact that sooner or later it’s going to be an okay scene for her.

  “The way I’ve come to see it, and a couple of years ago I never would have believed I’d be saying anything like this, is that all women are bisexual. All of them. One hundred percent of women are bisexual, in swinging or out of it. The only thing is that not all of them realize it . . .”

  • • •

  All women are bisexual.

  If this is so, they are rather like Orwell’s creatures in Animal Farm, where all animals were equal but some were more equal than others. All women are bisexual, but some are more bisexual than others. Some are aware of it and acting on it; others are not.

  Every day, more women are finding out.

  For the past decade, I have spent a major portion of my time as a close observer of the American sexual underground. Occasionally I have suspected that a close long-term association with mate-swappers, swingers, or what have you, gives one a somewhat unrealistic perspective of contemporary sexual behavior. In a sense, generalizations on this theme based on observations of the sexual underground are like generalizations about the American social structure based on observations of life in Southern California. But a continuation of the analogy is instructive. Southern California, however one feels about it (and one can hardly avoid having ambivalent feelings about the place), does show us in a great many ways what the rest of America is going to look like in ten or twenty or thirty years time. And the sexual underground, the swingers, very definitely represent a direction which is being and will be taken by an ever increasing number of Americans . . . however one feels about it, and however ambivalent one’s feelings are likely to be.