Of course I’ll be glad to discuss our plural marriage with you. I suppose the first step is to introduce the players. I’m twenty-three, B.S. in psychology, minor in sociology. Typical Midwestern WASP background. Fair student, rotten athlete, mediocre bridge player... Nan, twenty-two, English major, poet, published in several of the no-pay poetry magazines, novel vaguely in progress, parents divorced, older brother a career marine, believe it or don’t... Kitty, twenty-one, history major, active on college newspaper, parents divorced when young and mother remarried, no contact with father, no brothers or sisters... We three were the beginnings of the group, having initiated a threesome a year ago this week. This summer the group was enlarged with the addition of Sam and Janet, who are married to each other. (Of course, we are all married to each other, but they are married in the legal sense, having a scrap of parchment to that effect, even as I have a square of sheepskin testifying to the world that I am educated, and of about as much validity.) Sam is a graduate student in philosophy, twenty-three, wit like a razor and built like a Theodore Bear, Jewish, Philadelphia-born, future vocational plans uncertain... Janet, twenty, lapsed German Catholic, a botany major who is sufficiently liberated even from the concept of liberation as to aspire to nothing more (or less) than a career of voluntary domestic servitude. Her bounty of breasts and hips suggests God had her in mind for just such a role, and all small children love her on sight...
JWW: There follows a very long and involved explanation of the origin of the original threesome. In brief, Burton commenced an affair with Kitty while in the process of an affair with Nan. Kitty was aware of his affair with Nan. He subsequently made Nan aware of it as well. With both women, first separately and then together, he discussed the impossibility of monogamy and the validity of the “you-can-love-more-than-one” philosophy. The idea of a threesome evolved from these discussions.
“Two moments stand out in memory. The first was the night when I first made love to both Nan and Kitty, each in the presence of the other. Inhibitions and hang-ups withered and fell by the wayside. All three of us learned to relax in the pleasure of watching and being watched, to have sexual joy enhanced rather than constricted by this added dimension. For two full hours I copulated first with one girl and then the other. (I had earlier taught myself to have non-ejaculatory orgasms, by surrendering myself to all of the release and satisfaction — physical and emotional — of orgasm without allowing semen to flow, and it permits a man to perform the sex act almost indefinitely, as potency is not diminished by this variety of orgasm. Of course, at the end of two hours I did let myself ejaculate, and enjoyed it immensely.)
(I would jolly well hope so—JWW)
“... will also not soon forget the night when Nan and Kitty made love to one another for the first time. As they became more and more at ease with each other, a sexual bond emerged between them in a beautiful fashion. Often when I was making love to one girl the other would lie close beside her, holding her hand and gazing deeply into her eyes at the moment of climax, so that the climax was shared in essence not by two of us but by all three of us... This intimacy developed into mutual love play between them. Nan in particular felt that she was bisexual and that the love of women for one another could be compatible with their love for a man. They began to make love one afternoon when I was out, but decided their first full experience should be shared with me. That night I was with them and watched Nan make beautiful oral love to Kitty. I viewed with rapture the special differences of the lesbian embrace, its inherent gentleness as opposed to the symbolic conflict and aggression of man-woman intercourse. Then, when Kitty gratified Nan orally in return, I sat beside them and masturbated. My ejaculation splashed upon Nan’s beautiful breasts at the very instant that Kitty brought her to a final climax...”
JWW: Other sexual possibilities explored by the three are next related in detail. Tone and style are much the same as in the material quoted above, with recurring emphasis of the beauty and love characteristic of each episode. Burton and Nan and Kitty evidently found the whole range of troilistic sexual practices enjoyable and gratifying. If any of the three ever had any qualms about the relationship, Burton does not mention the fact.
Early in our three-way love affair, there was no thought of enlarging our group. We felt that the three of us constituted a full family and could be permanently happy together. We went through several marriage ceremonies of our own design. First we simply pledged to love one another fully and completely and honestly. On a later occasion we felt we had reached a point where we were ready to commit ourselves to one another on a permanent basis, and we restructured our vows to include this commitment to permanence. These small ceremonies were held by ourselves in the privacy of the apartment where we live together. On another occasion we attempted to duplicate the water sharing ceremony in Stranger in a Strange Land and become water brothers. This was done largely to express our acceptance of Robert Heinlein’s concept of water brothers more than anything else...
The idea gradually arose that a family unit of three persons was too small to function at its best. This feeling came about not from discontent but through the elevation of our own consciousness through meditation, conversation, and the stimulation of various reading matter.”
(Here he offers an extended reading list with comments on various books — JWW)
... One point that we felt was significant was that a group with only one male member had elements of the harem about it. In a true plural marriage the female members ought to belong to more than one man. (I use “belong” not in the sense of the male possession of the female, but in the sense that all of us now belong to each other.)
But there is a big difference between deciding that a group should be larger and taking immediate steps to enlarge it. This point, I feel strongly, is where a great many attempts at communes, plural marriage, and other radical life styles fail. The addition to a group of the wrong person or persons could easily be disastrous. Each of the three of us had stayed briefly in communes (while never belonging to a commune), and we all knew many people with communal experience. In case after case, communes have failed because the wrong people have been allowed to join, or to visit on a permanent basis. We knew our group could only grow if and when we found people whom we could all love and who would all love us. In the months which followed our decision, many friends and acquaintances were considered and rejected — without their knowledge, of course.
Sam and Janet... became close friends of ours. Nan and Kitty found Sam emotionally and physically attractive, and I could not help being strongly attracted to Janet. Like all of our friends here, they were aware of our life style and viewed it with sympathy. They, too, were into Rimmer’s writings, etc., and had speculated on the possibility of entering into some form of plural marriage situation but were concerned that they could only do so if the situation were to be permanent and based on genuine mutual love... To make along story short—
(Fat chance! — JWW)
— we invited them to join us, and they accepted on a trial basis. This trial period was not a long one. We all of us learned before long that we were suited to one another. Sam and Janet had had some reservations, feeling that their marriage to each other would separate them from the rest of the group. Janet was also uncertain about her own capacity for bisexual response. None of these fears was justified.