“At which point I blurted out the whole thing. He didn’t believe me at first, and then he started saying how great it was that I’d told him, or he might have made a fool of himself by marrying her, and that it was good he knew about her, and I wound up defending her, and then he cried and said he loved her, and it just went on like this for hours. We were both pretty smashed, drinking booze on top of the beer.
“The next day, he had a big scene with Alicia, at her apartment, and then they both came over, and we all talked it out. She said she loved us both and didn’t know what to do, and maybe she should just move out of town and never see either of us again. I said I would move out, get out of their lives. Fritz said maybe I was better for her than he was, and he would move out.
“It was Alicia who suggested that we could both be her lovers. She had to say it a couple of times before either of us took her seriously. The more we talked about it, the more sense it seemed to make. God knows why.
“She would come over and cook dinner for us every night, and then one of us would take her to bed, depending on whose turn it was. Then she moved her stuff in and would sleep one night in my bed and the next night in Fritz’s. One night I went to sleep alone and woke up with her playing with my penis. She said Fritz had made love to her and had fallen asleep, and she still felt like doing it some more. We knocked off a quick one, and then she went back to his bed to sleep. He never knew she’d left.
“All this time, no one knew about what was going on. No one ever did. As far as anyone outside was concerned, she was Fritz’s girl.
“One night, when it was my turn to sleep with her, Fritz came into the room. He said he thought it might be fun to watch us together. I learned later that Alicia had suggested he do this. I was going to suggest he leave, but his presence excited her tremendously, and I went along with it. As soon as I finished, he took my place. I was uncomfortable watching them. I didn’t find it exciting that time, but that may have been because I had just finished making love. Later on I did find it exciting to watch.
“I never realized at the time just how completely she dominated the relationship. She really initiated all the developments. It was her suggestion that we all sleep together, with her in the middle. It was also her idea that we both make love to her at once. She would take one of us in her mouth while the other one fucked her.
“As time went by, this very weird love-hate thing began to develop. Fritz and I both came to despise her. We found her amoral and disgusting. I was also disgusted with myself. I began to wonder what was next. With the three of us having sex all together, there was invariably a certain amount of Fritz’s and my bodies touching. I never got over being uncomfortable about this. I was worried that he would want to have sex with me, or that my distaste for it stemmed from subconsciously wanting to have sex with him. It also seemed to me that sharing a woman with another man was a way of having a homosexual relationship with him, and this was a source of deep concern to me. I don’t know how much Fritz thought about any of this, or how he may have felt about it.
“I went through a period of impotence, which is a very scary thing. I picked up a prostitute — I had never done this before — and was able to perform with her. Then the next day I tried again with Alicia, and I couldn’t. This made it even more obvious to me that I was involved in a sick situation and I had to get out. Then my potency with Alicia returned, but I still wanted to end the situation, and we ultimately got it out in the open and I announced I was moving out. Ostensibly I was simply taking a place of my own that would be more convenient as far as getting to and from work was concerned, and we would still have this sexual thing together. But we all knew it was over. Fritz and Alicia pretended to be unhappy. That is, Fritz pretended — I know he was secretly relieved. Alicia really was unhappy.
“It took me a long time to get over all of that. I did a lot of serious drinking, and when I got drunk I would either curse myself for separating from them or curse them for the mess they had made of my life. I had fantasies of killing one or both of them. That scared me enough to get me into psychotherapy, which I stayed in for almost two years. The therapy seemed to help a great deal.
“I’m able to understand Alicia better now. She and Fritz got married about a year after I left. The marriage lasted a little over a year. Fritz remarried and lives in Connecticut. I haven’t seen him in years. I’d like to see him sometime, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever try to get in touch with him. Someone told me that Alicia is living with a lesbian. That was a couple of years ago, and I don’t know if it was true at the time, or what she’s doing now.
“There are times when I think our trouble was that we were born ten years too soon. Kids who are the age we were then can adapt to that kind of a situation nowadays a hell of a lot better than we can. Alicia was ahead of her time, sexually emancipated before the term existed, and Fritz and I were not able to handle that kind of emancipation. There are other times, though, when I look at my marriage and realize that I could never be comfortable with any relationship involving more than one man and one woman. I consider myself lucky to have gotten out of it as easily as I did. Suppose Alicia had become pregnant and didn’t know which of us was the father? Even now I get a chill thinking of something like that.”
JWW: For Dana, a threesome was a distinctly unpleasant experience. For Kirsten, threesomes are pleasant enough; she maintains, however, that it is a mistake to think of them as permanent relationships. She is about twenty-five, a fragile blond with an absentminded air about her.
“I tend to get into trios a lot. I don’t know why, exactly. It happens. Being bi probably has something to do with it. When I’m with a man, I tend to want to be with a woman, and vice versa. A trio rounds it out for me. I guess I must give off vibes that way, because it’s common for a couple to come on to me as if they know in front that I’m into their scene.
“The thing is, people think it can last. ‘I love you and you love her and she loves me and it’s beautiful.’ One person always splits, and then the two who are left either try to make it as a couple or try to get a third person, or split up and look elsewhere. Because splitting from a trio is a very easy thing to do. Sooner or later somebody gets uptight. Two of you will have a stronger thing going than either has with the third, or one person is uptight about the whole idea of the thing, or somebody just splits because something interesting is happening in Denver and he wants to check it out.
“A permanent relationship means one man and one woman and a house and a station wagon and children and the family dog, and it’s got to be as straight as possible so that it’s very fucking hard for you to split from each other. I could not possibly handle that straight a scene the way I am now. I’m not ready for it, I have no desire for it. But someday I will be a little older and a little more together, and this is what I will want. And I’ll want the whole trip. One man, and I’ll marry him in a church, and after that I’ll never fuck anyone but him, and if he fucks other women, I will not want to know anything about it.
“People tell me, like, that I have very unrealistic ideas about marriage. That if a person has been around, has been hip, they can’t handle the hassles of the kind of marriage I’m talking about. I don’t think this is true. I think the more you’ve been around, the more you know it’s all shit and the easier it is to say fuck it, enough of that, and make a marriage work. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know.