I’m not knocking it when I say that, not by any means. But they weren’t as totally different as having sexual relations with another girl. That was utterly different, and it was even... oh, let’s say it was kinky in a different way.
As an example, although I don’t know if this is a particularly good example or not, we could take the photographs. We weren’t as queer for pictures as some swingers are — my God, Paul and I have met people who literally get more of a thrill out of looking at pictures of what they’ve done than they do of the actual balling. We’ve had people say as much to us — and you’re left with the feeling that they only swing so that they can look at the pictures afterward. We weren’t any of us like that, but the Polaroid camera was a sort of fun toy and we did get a kick out of looking at pictures of ourselves in the act. Until you get used to it, it’s kind of bizarre to see yourself having sex. It takes a lot of getting used to.
But it was one thing to see a picture of myself making love with Jeff or Paul, or even in a threesome, and it was another thing entirely to see a photograph of myself with Jan. Even if we weren’t doing anything all that wild. Even if it was just a picture, say, of one of us petting the other’s breasts or something.
And this special excitement I felt with Jan scared the daylights out of me. I never said as much to Paul, and while I don’t keep it from him now, I would probably avoid stressing it so heavily if he were here now. Because he has always made light of this. He always turns it into a joke or asks me why I always want to do it with girls nowadays if I’m so scared of it. He simplifies the entire subject, and that’s not like him, he’s not by any means a simplistic person. I could probably figure out the reason for this, for his acting in an atypical way on this one subject. I could suggest that it’s a latent thing on his part, or a virility anxiety thing, I don’t know what, but to tell you the truth I’d just as soon not go into it. During the bad times, when not only our marriage but our whole lives and psyches seemed as though they were about to come apart at the seams, both Paul and I found ourselves looking perhaps too deeply into what made us tick. A little of this goes along way. I’m sure to a certain extent this sort of self-analysis is valuable, but I think after a point it becomes destructive and self-defeating. You can always find a dirty and unpleasant motivation for every human act, and it may be perfectly valid, but why dig out the unpleasant all the time? It’s not pollyannaish to avoid that kind of probing. It’s a simple matter of self-preservation. Look too closely at the way you are and you can very easily go insane or kill yourself or just fall apart. I may tend to exaggerate the dangers involved because of my own experiences, which God knows are enough to make me turn green at the thought of a psychiatrist’s couch. Remember, though, I did try to kill myself. Not once but twice, and they say three times is the charm, and it was really terrifying...
To return to the situation with Jan, though, I think in retrospect that what was really scary about that relationship was the extent of it. How involved we were.
Paul and I have never tried to become as close with another couple as we were with them, with Jeff and Jan. Partly, as I think we said, or Paul said, because that negated the idea of seeking variety, which is an integral part of swinging. But also because there is such a thing as getting too close, too involved. It’s hard enough to stand close, intimate involvement with one person in the framework of a marriage — that’s why so many people get divorces. It’s harder to be married to another couple as well.
Yet the thing that makes me, personally, most anxious to avoid getting that close with another couple is the idea of the female relationship, like I had with Jan.
JWW: I’m not sure I understand. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it was my impression that your current swinging includes Lesbian relations almost as a matter of course.
SHEILA: That’s right.
JWW: Then I don’t—
SHEILA: Not as a matter of course. Only if both of us are in the mood, and if there’s a mutual attraction. But I would say that more often than not the conditions are right and it happens. Either as a part of some general scene or as a two-shot.
JWW: Then what sort of female relations are you anxious to avoid?
SHEILA: Oh, maybe I didn’t express myself clearly. I want to avoid — I have to avoid — not relations but a relationship. The closeness, the intimacy, the long-term nature of it.
Jan and I were really too close before she made love to me. I suspect there was an undercurrent of homosexuality in our friendship from the beginning, don’t you think? Since she had had experience in this area before, and was drawn to me and knew enough, was experienced enough, to recognize this in herself. And of course swapping is supposed to have homosexual components. The idea of sharing your mate with another girl, you know, with your mate as a surrogate-self...
Finally, with the original friendship and then the swapping and finally our becoming lovers, we were just involved with each other in too many different ways. And the simple proximity element — she was always around, you see. Men go out of the house, they go to the office and see different people all the time, and there are loads of strangers around, and thus they get away from things. Women don’t. Women stay home with housework and children, and children may be a joy but they aren’t the best conversational companions, especially when they’re small. And housework doesn’t take all that much time unless you’re a fanatic, and as you can see I’m not a fanatic.
So it got so that she was always in my kitchen or I was in her kitchen. Coffee and conversation every afternoon, five afternoons a week. And sometimes love. And this was just too many ways to know a girl, and too much of a good thing. She was a girlfriend and a mother and a daughter and a sister and a lover and a co-wife and my husband’s mistress and my lover’s wife — it was confusing.
JWW: I see.
SHEILA: I really don’t like the idea of making love on a weekday afternoon, just the two of us together without the men around. It felt like cheating, like adultery, which is a feeling swinging should not have. It bothered me.
JWW: Then why do it?
SHEILA: It felt good.
JWW: Really?
SHEILA: No, of course, that wasn’t the motivation. Of course not. I’m not like that. I suppose that would be hard for a civilian to understand. Hard for anyone to understand, perhaps. That a person can be an all-out swinger without being motivated primarily by a desire for physical pleasure as such.
You want it, of course. That sweet, happy little tickle, you never outgrow wanting it, thank heavens. But if that was the main thing you wouldn’t need different people or different ways or anything. As far as that goes, you could use a candle in the bathroom.
Of course it was the closeness that I needed, that we both needed. The woman-woman closeness which you can never have with a man, not as completely, not really. There is a very real qualitative difference.
When I talk about this with Paul — I used to, I don’t any more — he seems not to understand. I don’t think he wants to understand.
Sometimes I don’t think I understand it myself.
Reassurance — we gave each other a lot of that, Jan and I. We learned to use each other’s bodies as antidepressants. Headache, take aspirin; tension, take that gentle little blue pill; depressed, play sixty-nine with the girl next door. And it worked, but it also set up a nice guilt pattern that leaves you more depressed a few days later, with an obvious method of curing that depression, until you’re involved in the sort of vicious circle that makes you start wondering seriously if maybe deep down inside you’re basically a Lesbian.