"Jack and a couple of the other guys came to see me while I was in the hospital, and they told me to hang tough, and when I had my chance, make a break for it.
"But it didn't work out that way. In this home they put me in, while I was still on crutches, they sent social workers in to try to talk to the kids. That's where I met Steve. He was a fresh faced guy-I mean, he was half-hippie, half-establishment. He wore his hair long, to his shoulders, but no moustache or beard, and he dressed neat all the time.
"He was twenty-two, had just graduated from a college in the East, and this was his first job.
"I liked him a lot right away, but he was so goddamned polite and business-like that I was suspicious of him. I thought he was supposed to find out who I really was, then they'd ship me back home to my shitty parents.
"But I finally began to feel that Steve was really interested in me as a person. He seemed to really care what was going to become of me.
He talked different to me than any of the others that came to pry, and he was different from any of the guys I'd been living with. It finally dawned on me that maybe Steve was just square enough to be in love with me.
"He arranged a foster home for me. I still hadn't told anyone anything else but that my name was Peggy, and like I said, my parents hadn't made any effort to find me, or even report me missing.
"I didn't mind it too much at the foster home I was in. They had five other kids, all lots younger than me, and I sort of got a kick out of helping take care of them. The younger ones actually looked up to me and admired me, and that was a new thing for me. I actually felt protective, like a big sister-or even like a mother.
"And my leg healed slowly. Although Steve was too busy to see me often, he did manage to get out at least once a week, but always in the daytime. Because I was only sixteen, the rules said that I couldn't have dates alone with a man, and the family I lived with went strictly by the book. They weren't unkind or bossy, but they had rules that all the kids had to live by.
"It got pretty tame and boring after a while, especially when my leg was all healed and I felt like I was being cooped up."
"I guess I'd come to care quite a bit for Steve, because when I knew I had to cut out, I felt I had to tell him that I'd had it. It seemed the fair thing to do, after all he'd done to help me.
"The next time he visited, I walked outside with him to his car. He was happy to see how my leg had healed, and I saw his eyes running over my body. I had a nice shape, and it showed off well in the clothes I was wearing, and all at once I wished I could pay Steve back with a good fuck. He seemed so hungry for. me, and it meant so little to me to give a guy I liked any part of me he wanted.
"I blurted out, "Steve, I'm going to leave here. I thought you'd want to know."
"He was shocked. He shot a bunch of questions at me without stopping. "Why? Where? Have you heard from your parents? Aren't you being treated well?'
"I told him that my parents were dead, and that I just had to get out of this setup. I told him it wasn't for me and I was beginning to climb the walls from boredom.
"He was studying me, listening to me carefully, and I guess he saw that I was telling the truth. He seemed to accept the fact that I had to get away, but he didn't want me to just take off, with no money, no place to go.
"He begged me to wait a little while, until he could figure something better for me. He promised he would help me, if only I'd wait a few days. He was so serious, so shook up, he forgot and took me in his arms and kissed me when I agreed to give him a chance!
"He was embarrassed, but nobody had seen us, and nothing came of it. Except that it got me thinking a lot more about Steve than I had been. Up until that point, I guess I had really looked upon Steve as a part of the establishment ... sort of a respectable big brother. But I began to feel differently. I was now looking at Steve as a man, not just a friend or a social worker.
"He came up with a plan that surprised me at first, but I guess I knew that he loved me, and it shouldn't have upset me. Steve asked me to marry him!
"I told him he was crazy. He knew I was only 16. He was just starting his first job. Imagine me pointing out to him all the reasons he wouldn't be smart to take on a wild, pot-smoking kid as his wife-a kid to whom total freedom was more important than any laws or promises.
"But he told me he didn't care about any of that. He loved me, and that was enough. He talked sensibly about me going back and finishing my schooling, and how much fun it would be learning to be a wife.
"I almost panicked and took off anyhow, the thought frightened me so much. All I could think of was my parents. I didn't want any part of that. So I said to Steve, very calmly: "I'll just live with you. Or, I'll try to get a job and I'll sleep with you anytime you want." But that didn't do any good. He acted as if I had slapped him across the mouth.
"I suppose I was tired of running, of having no anchor or goals to work for. Whatever it was, I finally agreed to marry Steve, and we didn't bother with the legal part of it. He insisted that we drive to Reno, Nevada, and we were married within twelve hours after he'd finally convinced me!
"We had rigged it to look as if I had just run away, with Steve knowing nothing about it, and that's how we started our married life. We didn't take any honeymoon. Steve had a small apartment, and we went there.
"I had told Steve that I wouldn't marry him unless he forgot about me going back to school. If I were going to be a wife, I insisted, then I would be just that-not a schoolgirl playing house. He agreed, and so I didn't have to do much but keep the house tidy and cook-something I was terrible at.
"At first, it was fun. It was something different for me-to have a man who loved me first, and wanted me sexually second. I was used to being treated as just one of the group, with no special attention and no big buildup before fucking.
"It was nice to have a man make over me, kiss my whole body as if it were something extra special, and be concerned with my having a good come, instead of being selfishly interested in only his own. For maybe a month, I guess it was good, but then I began to get bored. Bored with the routine of the apartment, and sex, and the lack of kids who wanted the same things I did and were free to go out and do them, f decided I needed some pot, some contact with my kind of world, and I went back to the old haunts where I'd stayed before.
"I didn't let Steve know that I was seeing some of my old friends, and I didn't tell them that I was now married. They accepted me back happily, and seemed disappointed when I said I couldn't stay. We smoked some marijuana, and when one of the guys asked me to ball, I did, and it was good. I couldn't help but compare it to the tame fucking I'd been getting from Steve.
"It was all so good. I felt I was back where I belonged, and I almost hated to go home. But I got some grass from the guys and made up my mind that I was going to smoke it when I wanted, and that Steve had to like it or else.
"I had a joint before he got home, and I felt pretty relaxed when he came in. But he recognized the sweetish smell of it in the apartment and he really clouded up, ready to rain on my parade. He came right up to me, shoved his face close, and stormed, "I'm not going to have you smoking marihuana, Peg! That's final! You're not some stupid hippie kid-you're my wife!'
"Yes," I snapped back, "but I'm not your goddamned slave! You don't own me. You never will. Don't preach to me. You knew what I was when you coaxed me to marry you, so don't get any big ideas about changing me into one of your prissy, silly wives!'
"I came on strong and it set him back on his heels. But he slipped right back into character a moment later. He came over, looking like a whipped puppy, and put his arms around me. I held back, but he began to say how much he loved me, and how he wanted me to shed some of the harmful habits I'd picked up and grow into a fine, wonderful woman, just as he knew I really wanted to be and was, inside.
"I straightened him out fast on that point. I told him that I didn't mind the sissy parts of marriage-the cooking and cleaning-but I liked myself the way I was, and I wasn't going to change. I told him I had to have freedom, or I'd just cut out on him!
"He backed off for the time being, and when we went to bed that night, he tried to make up to me. He kissed my tits and played with my pussy until he almost drove me wild. He was like a goddamned queer, he was so goddamned careful not to use his fingernails on my pussy or his teeth on my nipples. I finally jumped up and told him what I wanted. I laid it out cold. I wanted a man who wanted a good fuck, not a pawing, weak, unexciting session with my body.
"I surprised and hurt him, and almost as if he didn't realize he was doing it, he hit me! Not a slap. He punched me in the face, several times, and when I crumpled on the bed, half-unconscious, he climbed on me, straddled my ass and began to ram his cock up my asshole! He was savage, swearing, calling me a slut, and inside a minute he had shot a load up my asshole!
"It so surprised me and turned me on that it brought me out of my stupor, and I mocked him, to show him that his beating hadn't backed me up one bit.
"At least, you're a man!' I mocked. "You've acted like a goddamned queer playing with a china doll! Fuck me some more! Fuck me as hard as you can! I like it, I like it!'
"It seemed to snap him back to reality, and instead of making him angrier it softened him up again. He began to whine in his guilt, apologizing for hitting me, saying he had been crazy, and promising that he never would again.
"I felt disgust when I saw him like that. He was too spineless to ever change me, I knew, and I sure as hell wasn't going to become like him, a soft bag of shit!
"Steve didn't say any more about the pot for several days, though I smoked it with the gang, and at home every day. He just sulked around the place and made no effort to do any kind of fucking, mild or otherwise. I was getting my kind of balling anytime I wanted it from the guys, so it didn't bother me a bit. But the goddamned monotony did. I knew I wasn't going to be able to hang on much longer with this pissy little character that called himself a husband.
"I decided to force the issue, figuring that if he threw me out he wouldn't come looking for me, whereas if I just left, he'd probably sic the cops on me and get me and all the others in trouble.
"One night, after a lousy supper I'd cooked, I calmly took out a joint and lit up. He just looked at-me, his eyes cold and hurt. I had had a couple that afternoon, and this one put the cap on for me. I got really high. I didn't care what the hell Steve did, I was floating.
"He finally jumped up and grabbed the joint and threw it into the kitchen sink. Then he dumped my purse out and threw the rest of them in the sink.
"If I smell that junk on your breath again, or find one of those weeds in my house, I'll throw your fucking little loose ass down the stairs for good!' he screamed.
"I stood up, a little hazy, but I was smiling. I tried to be extra lady-like when I said, "You won't have to, my establishment friend. I'm gone!' I grabbed my purse and walked out. I guess he thought I'd come crawling back, because he didn't come after me-not then, or ever.
"I didn't have to worry. I didn't need him. I went back with the gang and they welcomed me. I was back with my kind of people-the kind that knew what the fuck life and the living of it was all about. Fuck marriage. It was worse than the hospital and the foster home, where somebody was always making rules to bug you. I couldn't see myself throwing my life away for a silly apartment that was as bad as a prison and had more rules than a reform school. I was me! Peggy! I would always be me!"
The sixties saw a growing surge of discontent among American women, married and single. One of the areas of great discontent was sex. In what we have come to accept as the Sexual Revolution, there is an ongoing and, to most, a startling change in the sexual patterns of American women.
These changes manifest themselves in many ways: a rise in divorce figures; a growing throng of lesbian women; swap clubs, "touch therapy" groups, and a drop in marriage rates. They all signify that the American woman, and the married woman in particular, is not only throwing off the shackles of the "double standard" but is insisting that husbands accept it as being here to stay.
Much psychological and sociological study concerning the reasons has been forthcoming. Learned social historians feel that Americans are once again entering what is termed a "matriarchal society," which means a society where the female is dominant.
Most of the restrictive rules of sexual and social behavior that we have lived under for generations-even centuries-have been those of a patriarchal society. History shows that always, after a long period of patriarchal rule, the pendulum swings the other way, and we enter a matriarchal society. Such changes usually come about peacefully, as when a female ruler legitimately ascends to a position of power. Queens and empresses have often relaxed the sex and social conduct laws for females. At times even a powerful courtesan had been able to bring about sexual freedom for her sisters.
In America, however, there has never been a self-generated revolution such as we are in the midst of today. From time to time, women suffragist movements had been instituted, but they had been connected with matters other than sex, such as the right to vote, better working conditions, and the right to work laws.
Today's revolutionist hits right at the heart of her demands. She wants sexual equality (in many cases, superiority), and she is waging her war from her bedroom to the halls of state houses and the U.S. Senate.
These battlers for sexual freedom come from all backgrounds and educational and ethnic groups. Although their major goal is the same, they take different routes and use different tactics to attain it.
Some of the more successful tactics shall be looked at in this work, through case histories, and an attempt will be made to throw additional light on the conflict by citing some expert opinions from psychologists, sexologists, and psychiatric researchers.
Various women seem to fall into certain categories in this new approach to sexual revolt. Some are militant and very vociferous, banding together for national attention and strength; others are disorganized, yet, they form a sisterhood of the bored. They are the pampered, well-off housewives of suburbia, who have too little attention from husbands and too much time on their hands, and they are doing something about both problems.
There is another group, one that is utterly independent. Its members are capable of supporting themselves, and in many instances make more money than their husbands. They insist on complete freedom in all things, and refuse to recognize the bonds of marriage, ignoring all sexual and social obligations.
Still another segment of revolutionary wives are those who are the product of the sixties. They are the semi-hippie type wives, who have grown up with a totally different concept of fidelity, sexual closeness, and marriage. They recognize sex only as a means of communication, and not as a cementing factor in a marital situation. Most do not even see marriage as the focal point of life, but rather, choose to live with whatever man appeals to them at the moment or provides for them in their nomadic madness.
A large group of rebels is formed by the older married women who were at first bewildered when their husbands strayed. They took longer to join the revolt, but in their maturity, they seem even less able to cope with this new sexual pattern. They are the alcoholics, the part-time lesbians, the groping bar pickups, the "joiners" of swap clubs, the graspers at the last sexual straws, no matter where they find them.
There are still others, of course, but an attempt shall be made to give the reader a hard look at these general types of women. They shall tell their case in their own words, thus allowing the reader to read between the lines and to make his own judgment As noted before, recognized experts in the field shall be quoted-men and women who have made a serious attempt at understanding the participants in this sexual upheaval, and who devoted their lives to providing self-understanding for any who sincerely seek it.
Whether the reader agrees with any one segment of the revolutionaries or not, the fact remains that all of us must be interested. The very core of American life is being remolded. Marriage is being examined carefully and, in some cases, discarded as "unworkable."
Men are frightened and bewildered by the changes in the family structure and in marriage, and they are joined by many sincere women who still believe that the old way is best. Both men and women are building new guilts, blaming one sex or the other for what is happening. Still another group sit back, studying the current trends, unsure whether to fight or to join.
All media, from the press and magazines, to the living stage and films, are exploring this phenomenon. Each seems to have a different answer and approach. The sincere researchers have no answers as yet. They do see definite patterns taking shape, and they leave it to the people themselves to work out the possible answers.
By and large, the "pro" revolutionaries are the learned women of the country. Quite expectedly, most of the critics of this new sexual upheaval are males. There are however, many unbiased researchers and students of behavior who take no stand. And it is a rational assumption that the final judgment, to be made by the people who make up society and who ultimately shape the lives by which they live.
Even the serious students and experts are not in agreement on most facets. Dr. Ruth Moulton, psychoanalyst and former Director of Training at the William Alanson White Institute in New York, writing in Family Weekly (July 2, 1972), points out the dangers involved. She says:
* * *
Although the movement has been exciting and meaningful for a lot of women, it has also caused an enormous amount of repressed anger, some of which is misdirected and undirected, and can do a great deal of harm.
Many women have responded to the new sexual freedom movement by telling themselves they have been denied a wider world, and it gives her a means to vent her bitterness-but in a lot of cases, it is backfiring. Both sexes have tremendous weapons to use on the other, both utilizing revenge. I don't think this works well in resolving human conflicts. My method, as a mother who worked, first at home and then outside, was to achieve emancipation by quietly doing a good job, seeing that my home ran right, getting adequate and loving help for my children, and then "doing my thing."
* * *
Dr. Moulton believes the goal may be admirable, but the methods are wrong and dangerous. She says: "I have seen many women throw down the gauntlet and say, "I'm through with the kitchen-you do the shopping." You can't change a man or a culture that way or just that fast."
As in any action involving the human psyche, fear plays a large part, as shall be seen later on, and as eminent psychiatrist Dr. Miltiades L. Zaphiropoulas puts so adequately.
"To be equal does not mean that you are the same. Differences tend to frighten people. If people can accept differences in others and still accept them as human beings, they are mature." He goes on to say: "This revolutionary movement is causing a lot of confusion among younger women, who are being misguided as to what a woman should do for herself and what a man should offer to do for her." The result, he concludes, is that both the male and female in many marriages are utterly confused, and when both partners in a marriage walk about in a daze, anything can, and usually does, happen-but not to the benefit of the marriage or its partners.
Some of the serious students of this situation feel that this is not actually a revolution per se but merely an emergence of sexual habits that have been prevalent for two generations, and are only now emerging in flagrant forms of indifferent attitudes toward society and the sexual laws.
Most agree that the first to turn the spotlight on our sexual patterns was Dr. Alfred Kinsey, in the late forties. His studies into the sexual behavior of the American male and female raised eyebrows and were even disbelieved by many. Later studies, however, undertaken by the Institute for Sexual Research at Indiana University (Dr. Kinsey's home base), and by the eminent Masters and Johnson team, prove that Dr. Kinsey only scratched the surface.
A more outspoken and daring researcher, Dr. Albert Ellis, in his many articles and books, has given further impetus to sexual research and an honest appraisal of our sex habits and appetites.
Who can say which of these was most important? None makes such a claim. But all of these best-selling reports tend to show the vast interest of the average American in sexual matters.
It became apparent quickly, that there was an appalling lack of sound sexual knowledge among Americans. We consider ourselves sophisticated, educated, and knowledgeable, when, in reality, we are babes in the woods when it comes to sexual education or understanding. We are still engaged in a bitter battle for better sex education than that provided by ignorant parents, church leaders, or "gutter" gatherings. Some recommend educating five-year-olds. Others feel college is the proper place for such delicate matter. Still others state bitterly that by the time the average boy or girl enters college he has already had many sexual experiences and has formed misconceptions and extreme ideas about sex.
We have gone through a period where the young people have demonstrated openly "mind blowing" sexual acts, few of which are connected with love or even respect. This has given us a special type wife-one who was indoctrinated into the hippie concept of sex but who has stepped into the "establishment's" rules of marriage and sexual conduct.
Our fiction writers have, like all writers throughout the ages, reflected the times in which we live. For this reason, our novels are mirrors of real people, sexually eager and innocent, and our films are larger-than-life reflections of the thinking (or the dreaming) of a large portion of society. If they were not, they would not flourish, for with the name of the game being "money," only that which appeals to the inner desires and beliefs of a society, will succeed.
Group sex, wife swapping, three in a marriage bed, lesbianism and homosexuality, sex ads in newspapers-all are facts of today's living. We must live with them, and we must face the issues squarely. There is a sexual upheaval going on. It takes many different names, but basically, sexual themes underlie each.
There is no lack of information concerning both viewpoints, the pro and the con. Our national women's magazines scream such headlines as: "Who Needs Motherhood!" or, "The Multiple Orgasm Myth." Other scholarly journals headline such articles as: "Does Technique Dehumanize Sex?" and, "Why not Technique Schools like the Masters-Johnson Clinic?"
It can be confusing. It seems to be, like religion, a matter of individual choice. What works for one wife, is deadly to the well-being of another. What bolsters one marriage can wreck another.
A great deal of thought and study must be given by a great many persons before any sensible sexual patterns can be adopted that will work for the majority. We are a society of "labels." We tend to group certain types into one of two categories, in the belief that there is only black or white, day or night. In reality, we are a nation of individuals in our sexual lives as well as in hundreds of other ways. We are a melting pot of nations, and that includes the ethnic teachings concerning religion and sex, and the influence of religion on our sexual laws and habits is tremendous.
Perhaps the purpose of this work is best put in the words of Dr. Alexandra Symonds, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, when she says (writing in Family Weekly):
* * *
A woman's ability to change her role in life is a matter of individual personality. The options have always been there for women who are emotionally and psychologically equipped to take advantage of them. Women's Lib, NOW, and other groups, do not speak for these women ... nor to them. What they do is to provide a framework, or a language, for these women to articulate their frustrations. The leaders are intelligent women, able to conceptualize the case for the women who are not verbal. But they go overboard, and do these women a disservice.
Different kinds of women need different kinds of help ... and different outlets. These movements lump them all together as if they were all the same.
* * *
This then, is an attempt to sincerely show many different types of women, all with different desires and needs in the sexual part of their lives, and all trying different approaches to fulfill those needs.
It is hoped that the reader will be allowed the sufficiency of coverage to permit him to make his own judgments, and ultimately to benefit from it.
CHAPTER ONE - The Malcontent
"I'm glad to have a chance to talk about it. So much is being written, and it is being written by men who don't have the slightest idea of what they're writing about.
"Of course sex is what it's all about! Most women have known all their lives that sex is the most important part of love and marriage. It's about time that the psychologists and doctors are speaking out about sex, because that's the name of the game.
"My husband treated sex like a game, or like he treats his hobby. If he feels like going out to his workshop in the garage, he does. And if, when he does go there, he loses interest and just sits and dawdles or draws silly plans to build a boat, it still doesn't bother him. And he's the same way in bed. He wants it when he wants it, and his way. I'm like a whore that he's hired. Not expected to even have any desires.
"I took that for nine years. And don't think I didn't try. At times, I felt like a cheap stripper. I've got a nice body. My breasts are still firm, uptilted and pretty, and I've always liked them fondled and the nipples kissed. And Tom always took care of me in that department. But that was it. You'd think I didn't have a pussy or an asshole or a navel.
"He would climb into bed on the nights when he was half-interested in sex, feel my tits, massage them a little, suck on one of my nipples, and then climb aboard. He acted about as excited as if he were getting on a bus to go to work.
"I tried to show him in a thousand ways that I wanted more. I wanted him to kiss my pussy, stick his tongue in my navel, turn me over and kiss my back, ending with my asshole. But he never even put his fingers in.
"About four years ago, I knew I had to have some satisfying sex, and I went after it. Not the way you might be guessing-I didn't have affairs, not then. I concentrated on Tom. He was my husband, and when we were going together, he was an exciting man. He could turn me on with a kiss.
"Then he fell into those sloppy sex habits-selfish habits would be a better term-and it was a rare occasion when I would come. Usually, it would only happen when we'd been at a party, and he had had too much to drink. Even then, I had to do most of the work. At other times, he would come within a couple of minutes, while I was hardly even warmed up. One night, when he had come, and I was a bundle of screaming nerves, I took his hand as he rolled off me, and shoved it between my legs. "For God's sake," I screeched, "use your goddamn fingers. Your tongue! Anything, but do something to make me come!'
"You'd think he would have gotten the message, but not good old Tommy. He just snapped on the light-we always used to do it in the dark-and stood there staring at me, as if I'd flipped.
"I was really hot, and I mean boiling. I don't know if I did it because I had to, or because I wanted to get the message across-maybe both-but I just shoved my fingers up inside my wet, slimy pussy, and I masturbated like I'd never done it before. God knows, I was good at it. I'd had to do it enough times after he'd left me high and dry.
"I just lay there, my knees up, my legs spread, my fingers working away at my clitoris. I didn't look at him, but I knew he was staring wide-eyed at me. I took my time. I fantasized a strange way. I filled my mind with the thoughts of what Tom must be thinking, watching me play with my own pussy! I guess I got a vicious thrill out of the hope that I was shocking the shit out of him. And I was amazed at the extra kick I was getting out of masturbation with somebody watching! I moved about, bucking and rearing as I approached my orgasm, and when I came, I gasped and moaned. It wasn't for show-off purposes. I really had a full orgasm, better than I had ever had in my life while masturbating.
"And when I turned and looked at Tom, I knew that I was never going to go that route again! Hell, I was thinking, if I have to give myself the sex thrills, who needs a man-or at least a husband!
"Tom just stood there, looking like he almost hated me. I guess it was a big comedown to his ego, but I was riding high. I wanted to shock and hurt him, and I had done it! It was a funny sight, looking back on it. He stood there, his cock soft, with some of his come hanging on, drying up. And then, while he watched me finger-fuck myself, his cock had begun to rise again. Not big and hard, but at least the sight of me doing it to myself had aroused something in him, and that was a start.
"I got up. He didn't move. He just stared at me, reddening, embarrassed, for both of us, I suppose. I put my hands on my hips, jutting out my pelvic area. "Well?" I said, just letting it hang in the air.
"Tom just shook his head. I couldn't tell from his expression whether he was disgusted with me or himself.
"I went into the bathroom and cleaned myself up. I had taken The Pill, so I was in no hurry. I felt good. I felt as if I'd won the opening round of a big battle-one that my stupid husband hadn't even been aware was going on. It felt good to feel that I was sort of independent of him. I had showed him that I could have a good come without him. Yet I felt a little sorry for him and for myself, too, because if he had taken the hint and reacted right, we could be in bed right then, sucking, fucking, fingering-getting all the things from sex and marriage that we should have had all along.
"He went out and poured himself a cup of cold coffee. He was staring at the floor when I went into the kitchen, still naked, still ready for him if he caught on. But when I saw him sitting at the table, like a whipped puppy, I grew insanely angry at him! I had tried to show him what I needed-his fingers, cock or tongue-and there he sat, still out of it as far as sexual needs went.
"I poured myself a scotch and water and sat down opposite him. He wouldn't meet my eyes, but I laid it on the line. I knew I'd never again pull any punches when it came to sex, with Tom or with any other man. It was more important to me than eating or sleeping, and I figured that if he couldn't get that through his head', I'd find others who would.
"I started by telling him that he was a good man, a good provider-that I was proud to be his wife on all occasions. Except in bed. I told him he was a sexual nothing, a bumbling fool. I suppose the psychiatric term would be that I castrated him. I didn't want to castrate him-to tear his balls off! All I wanted was for him to Wake up to the fact that I was a healthy, sexy woman.
"We're no dummies. Tom is an electronics engineer. He makes good money. He's interested in the world about him. He knows quite a bit about a lot of things, but the one arid spot in his mind " and senses has to be women. He knows nothing about what they want or need. To him, sex is a male prerogative ... an outlet that he pays for, like he pays the water and gas bill, so that when he turns on the tap, the stuff comes out.
"But I need sex ... good sex. I loved Tom, and I wanted him to provide that good sex. I'm making the point that we weren't a couple of dumb kids in a marriage trap. We were intelligent beings, adult in all ways except in sex, and I was trying to goad him into learning something about me and my sexual desires and needs. I didn't want him to buy a bunch of sex manuals. I wanted the old "try it-you'll like it' method. I wanted us to try everything in the book, and see what fit us best.
"But Tom sat there, acting as if he were in a daze and wasn't even hearing me. I grew more disgusted by the moment. I let him have it broadside. "Look, Tom," I told him, "I'm a good wife. I haven't screwed around ... yet. But if you don't wake up and do something for me in bed, I'm about to cut loose. I need fucking!' When I used that word, he shot a quick look at me, but then he lapsed back into his stupor again. We didn't use words like that, but I was desperate.
"I need a man! I want to try all the other ways of fucking!' I told him. "And don't give me that old crap about you being just an old-fashioned guy who has to change gradually. You've had five years and more, and you're still as dead in bed as you were when we were first married. Worse, in fact, because then, at least you tried a couple of times a week!'
"I was getting madder by the minute. He had that bewildered, hangdog look and he wasn't saying a word.
"I mean it, Tom, I'm going to do something about it, and it won't be masturbating!'
"He still wouldn't snap out of it, so I downed the drink and went into our room. I lay there, naked, thinking about the whole crummy situation, and I decided that I was going to really get into this new thing that was starting-the Women's Lib or National Organization of Women, or something-even if I had to start a local neighborhood revolt of my own.
"I had a close friend that I suspected was a lesbian, although she did date men. I had worked for her for a couple of years after we were married, and I'd seen her name in the papers of late, as one of the more militant leaders in the WLM.
"I think, at that time, I only wanted to shake Tom up. I didn't really know what the WLM was all about. What they wanted from society was a mystery to me and, in fact, I sometimes wondered if they weren't just a bunch of kooks. But, lying there in bed, proud of myself, yet hating myself in a sense, I wondered how many other women were in the same boat. What did I really want?
"I convinced myself that I didn't want sexual domination over Tom, but I sure as hell wanted a say in what kind of sex we had, and when and how often we had it!
"I knew that I had to talk to some other women, to find out if I was a freak, or if there was really something to what I felt. And when Tom came to bed, I still didn't get any response. I asked if he wanted to talk, and he just shook his head, kissed my lips lightly, and that was that.
"I called Mildred next morning. She was a big wheel at an advertising agency, but she could come and go as she damn well pleased, so we set up a luncheon date. We didn't waste any time. I told her I wanted to get with it, to get more out of my life--especially my sex life --than I was settling for, and she was sympathetic, in a catlike way.
"She told me that there was a meeting scheduled for Thursday night, and that she'd be glad to take me and see that I was prepped on what the thing was all about. She went even further. She asked me point-blank if I'd ever cheated on Tom. When I said I hadn't, but I might, Millie asked if I'd ever had a woman make love to me.
I had, when I was about eleven, but I lied and said I hadn't. I added that I didn't want lesbian love, that I still wanted sex with a man--all kinds of sex.
"Millie just smiled and patted my hand. 'You'll learn, Ruth,' she said, 'that there are lots of different kinds of love and sex.'
"She left it at that, but when I went to the meeting with her, I noticed several of the women there eyeing me up and down, with admiration showing, and, I admit, I got a little turned on.
"There was a panel discussion that night, and when I heard all the women outlining their gripes and found that many of them were along the same lines as my own frustrations, I knew I wanted to join them. I wasn't interested in a lot of the things they were yelling for: political power, complete sexual freedom, that sort of drivel. I guess what I really wanted, even then, was to shock Tom out of his sexual lethargy and ignorance by telling him that I was part of an organized, intelligent movement of women.
"The upshot was, I walked out with a whole chestful of confidence in the sexual power that any woman had over the man she loved and wanted to love her. I decided that I was going to take over the sex reins in the family, beginning that very night!
"Tom and I had been like embarrassed strangers since he'd watched me masturbate, but I put on my best face and manner at dinner--we ate out, which we often did--and asked him not to drink more than two martinis. He obliged me, and when we got home we both felt more relaxed and warm toward each other. I wouldn't let him turn on the TV, but told him we had to talk. I got into my frilliest dressing gown, perfumed myself with his favorite scent, and we sat in the living room. I wanted some lights on. Tom was always shy, or whatever, and I had prepared a mental list of things that were bothering me.
"I began by saying that I had joined the WLM. Tom showed mild surprise, but no real interest or alarm. I then told him that I was starting my own private rebellion, and that I wanted sex my way.
"That sat him up a little, but he still didn't seem to see the change in my attitude.
" 'I want to try all kinds of lovemaking,' I began. 'I want to be played with. I want my pussy fingered and sucked--all the way to orgasm ! I want to try different positions. I want to be fucked up the ass, even, just to see what it feels like! I want it from you, but if I don't get it, I'm going to try it with other men!'
"The words popped out of Tom's mouth--'You wouldn't!'
"I snapped back, 'Oh, wouldn't I? I'm not your mother or grandmother! I'm me! Ruth! Your wife--and a hell of a lot of woman! I want a thousand times more sex than you've ever offered. I want to be able to pick up a magazine and read an article about "liberated women," and laugh at them, knowing that it's all old hat for me. I want to know, without any doubt, that I'm living to the fullest capacity of my body, my mind, my sexual nature! Can't you get the message?' I suddenly remembered a phrase I had heard, over and over, and although I didn't like it, it came out of my mouth. 'You male chauvinist pig!' I snapped, but I felt it coming from deep inside of me where it had been bottled up for years. I felt empty, untouched, in the depths of my womanhood. I'd been married to a goddamn boy scout!
" 'Why don't you want to try the things that other men do? Why not suck my pussy until I come? Why not let me suck you off? Why? Why? Why?'
"Tom managed to stutter, 'I... I didn't know. I had no idea... "It sounded weak and lame, the way he looked, and I was growing more frustrated and disgusted by the second. I wondered why in hell he didn't take the challenge, pick me up and rape me? Or at least belt me across the mouth for being such a bitch. But not good old Tom. He'd been brainwashed by too many Sunday school teachers, too much mother and grandmother. He wasn't ready for me, and I wondered if he ever would be.
"Know something funny? That's a hell of a point for a sexy woman to come to, where she wants a man to do all the things she's read about and dreamed about, and the man stands there, like a stupid little boy, afraid to even say the word 'fuck.'
"I got up and shoved out my breasts and my pelvic area. I knew that he could see the whole bit through the thin material, and I wanted him to grab me... do something! Oh, God, how I wanted a man!
"Tom made a silly gesture, waving his hand at me, turning his head, and said, 'I hate to see you this upset, Ruth.'
"Upset? Jeezus, I was going out of my mind. I didn't want to go out and cheat on him, but I knew that if he didn't do something, then and there, I'd have to. I liked being married, for God's sake, but I didn't want to be married to a eunuch. I wanted some sex. He'd shown me in every other part of our life that he was a good man. Now I wanted a sexy, virile, uninhibited male. Not a husband--just a male who wanted to fuck and suck all night!
"I suppose I shocked the shit out of Tom. I tore off my gown and tossed it in his face! I stood there like a common bitch, screaming: 'Do something, you goddamned asshole. Kiss my cunt! Fuck me! Bite me! Bend me over and shove your prick up my ass! Do something!'
"All he did was stare blankly, shaking his head as if to say he was going to commit me to an asylum.
"I began to bawl like a baby, and that only made me more angry and frustrated. I ran into the bedroom and began to get some clothes on.
Tom came in, nervously, trying to figure out what to say to me. Finally, he managed in a weak voice: 'Ruth, please don't go out. You're too upset.'
"I ignored him and finished dressing. Then, at the last moment, I decided to shock him some more. I took my panties off and threw them on the bed. 'I'm going out and get laid--my way!' I said in a cold, calm way.
"All my screaming and foul language hadn't shaken him out of his stupor, but when he saw that I really meant what I said, he began to cry. He just stood there, looking at me, and the tears began to roll down his cheeks. 'I'll do anything,' he managed to sob out.
"I can't describe my feelings. I was sorry for him, yet I detested him for his weakness. I knew I had driven him to this point, but I had wanted him to stand up and be a man, not a cry-baby. I really wanted him to belt me, or tear my clothes off and spank my ass, like I deserved. At the same time, I detested myself for doing this to him. But I couldn't take any more of the dull, monotonous lovemaking he offered. I really would have gone out and picked up a man, I'm sure, but when he began to cry, I backed off.
"It was a strange scene. He was still sobbing as he got out of his clothes. I undressed, feeling cold inside. I wondered what I really wanted him to do, now that he had surrendered to me. I was afraid that he had given up too much of his manhood to be any good to me sexually.
"Tom sat on the bed, watching me strip, as if he were seeing a woman naked for the first time. I stood beside the bed, pushing out my pelvis and being as wantonly sexy as I could.
" 'What do you want me to do?' he asked.
" 'How about whatever you've always wanted to do to a woman--any woman?'
"Tom reddened. 'Like what?'
" 'Oh, for God's sake, Tom!' I snapped. 'Whatever you want. Everybody has to have some secret desires about sex!'
"I could see that he was fighting a battle within himself, and then he suddenly seemed to get some of his nerve back. 'Will you suck me off?' he blurted out, blushing.
"I didn't even answer him. I just climbed on the bed, pushed him back and began to play with his cock and balls. I massaged his balls while I tickled the head of the shaft of his cock with my tongue. He began to get hard, and he propped himself up on his elbows so he could watch me. When I had him really going, I began to plunge his cock in and out of my mouth, sucking and nipping it with my teeth. I could feel him coming, and I sucked harder than ever, swallowing his come. Tom just collapsed with the pleasure of it, breathing deep and moaning. Without letting go of his cock, I squirmed around so I was straddling his face, then I lowered my pussy down to his mouth.
"Believe it or not, in our years of marriage, we had never done that. Tom didn't like sucking pussy. He had done it a couple of times for me, but it had been awkward for me, knowing it was distasteful for him. And he had never had the nerve to ask me to suck his prick, although I'd have been happy to, if it would have given him some sexual nerve to try different things.
"Now, he reached up, spread my pussy lips, and began to suck and nibble at my clitoris. He began to get his second hard on, and he grew wild with his mouth and fingers. I really let go, and we both ended up in a rolling, bucking, sucking orgasm, almost at the same time!
"I was elated. My threats had worked. Now we would be able to go on from there to try all sorts of positions. I felt almost like a new bride. But I underestimated the old brainwashings that Tom had lived with all his life.
"I started to suck his cock again, hoping he'd come back with another hard on, but he pushed me off him and away from his body. I was shocked and a little insulted. I sat up and stared at him, seeing that old hangdog look coming back to his face.
" 'What's the matter?' I asked, feeling resentment again building inside me. Tom just shrugged and looked ill at ease. 'Didn't you like it?' I asked. 'It's what you asked me to do.'
" 'I know, Ruth,' he said in a whining tone, 'but it just isn't for me. All that kind of stuff just isn't for me.'
" 'For you!' I snapped. 'What about me? Do you ever care about what I want? Don't you ever want some variety, something different than just plain old man-on-top fucking?' I was boiling again. 'How about me on top? Or trying it standing up, face to face?'
"Tom shook his head in confusion. 'I... I just can't do those things, Ruth.'
"I started to scream at him again, but I knew it was useless. I walked to the bathroom door and glared at him. He looked pathetic. I think that at that moment most of the love or desire that I had felt for him, left me for good. At that moment I wondered what in hell I had ever seen in him. Words ran through my head, like 'stable, hard-working, faithful,' but all of a sudden, none of them mattered. Hell, I could take care of myself financially. I didn't need a man for that part of my life!
"Almost matter-of-factly, I said, calmly, 'I'm going to have to get some sexual satisfaction and excitement, Tom. And I'm going to do it with your knowledge. Any time that you wart to try it again with me, just say so... but it has to be my way... my kind of sex!'
"I walked into the bathroom and locked the door. I felt shitty, in a way, but in another, better way I felt like a new woman. I had taken the first step to a new and exciting life!"
* * *
The account of Ruth W. is a typical one in that she uses the most commonly given reasons for becoming a militant, freewheeling sexual woman, who puts her sexual gratification above all other elements in her marriage to Tom.
While most psychiatrists feel that much of the blame for the disintegration of a marriage such as Ruth's is the fault of husbands like Tom, a great deal of the blame must be shared by women who, like Ruth, expect and demand too much from the male.
James E. DeBurger, Ph.D., writing in the May, 1972 issue of Sexual Behavior, reported the results of a careful analysis he had made of thousands of cases in which married couples had sought marriage counseling. He proved what most of his colleagues strongly feel, that the major cause of marital problems is the lack of sexual compatibility. Running a close second to sexual incompatibility, he finds, is a lack of affectional relations.
Many couples can make up for a certain lack of sexual excitement and gratification by a deep warmth in their affectional relations, that is, they enjoy each other as persons, as companions and cosharers in many pleasures that have nothing to do with the sex act itself. They, in fact, become close friends. Later, if they are not adept at satisfying each other sexually, this warmth allows them to discount sexual failures and often provides a background for open discussion and further attempts.
As in the case of Ruth and Tom, when both sexual and affectional rapport are lacking, the marriage inevitably disintegrates. This does not mean that it ends in divorce, for as Ruth typifies, the woman of today sometimes likes to "have her cake and eat it too." That is, she chooses to hang on to the security of marriage for financial and social reasons, while she leads a separate sex life of her own. Such women are usually the militant type, who dominate males with a "take it or leave it" attitude.
Most militant women maintain that they are compelled to seek their own identity, and this has become an obvious central motivation in women, as Betty Friedan made clear in The Feminine Mystique. This has helped spawn the idea of equality of the sexes and the interchangeability of the sexual roles. This equality is clung to at the price of denying not only biological differences, which are basic, to say the least, between men and women, but emotional differences, from which comes much of the delight in the sexual act.
Dr. Rollo May, psychoanalyst and author of Love and Will, writing in Family Weekly (July 2, 1972) states:
* * *
The self-contradiction here is that the compulsive need to prove you are identical with your partner means that you repress your own unique sensibilities, and this is exactly what undermines your own sense of identity. This contradiction contributes to the tendency in our society for us to become machines even in bed.
* * *
In the case we are dealing with, Dr. May's theory applies to Tom, the husband. He allowed himself to become a machine, a mechanical man, in bed, simply to maintain his own identity as a lily-white puritan in sex.
Ruth, on the other hand, in seeking her own sexual identity, became almost vicious in her efforts at arousing Tom. She ultimately placed her marriage in jeopardy, as shall be seen when her narrative continues. Her methods, however, were far too harsh, according to most experts.
Dr. John Briggs, a practicing psychoanalyst in Chicago, told a convention of psychologists recently (and was quoted in Family Weekly):
* * *
Since World War II, women have had real options between work and family. It only helps to perpetuate the myth of women's oppression to say that they haven't had those options.
Where I part company with Woman's Lib is with this whole "blame syndrome," which I see as an exercise in futility. I believe that a woman with real understanding of herself takes a dim view of the blame factor and feels it is irrelevant.
Men are frightened by Woman's Lib. Any change in the family structure threatens both men and women. No man is going to change by being beat over the head with blame. I think a man will change if he is persuaded intelligently that there is something that his wife wants to do that will make her a more fulfilled person. No one will change his thinking or personality if he is approached with hostility. The idea that a man's world is such a wonderful place is what we call in psychiatry an overcorrection. Any woman who has given some thought to this will recognize it as a myth.
* * *
It is obvious that Dr. Briggs has dealt with many women like Ruth, and has formed some sound conclusions. Certainly, her approach to her sexual problems with Tom was a hostile one, and from her account, no attempts at reasonable talks or understanding can be detected.
Studies of faltering marriages show that a great many women today are taking the same approach to the sexual problem that Ruth did. They are hostile, demanding, and usually end up giving their husbands an ultimatum.
* * *
"I decided that night to really get into Women's Lib... to work at it. It became an outlet for me, and once I found my place in a world of women who felt like I did about most things, I began to ask myself what I really wanted from sexual contacts.
"At first, I thought of taking a couple of half-hearted offers I'd had for clandestine dates from friends of our circle... married men who wanted a little cheating fling. But I knew that wasn't for me. I wanted somebody who was free to have wild sex and who wasn't afraid to have it with a married woman. That meant finding a man who was unmarried. But I was like a lot of other women who had been married for a number of years. I was out of it, as far as the swingers were concerned. I didn't even have an idea how to find a sexy date, but it didn't take me long to learn the ropes. The sexy ones came at me, but I didn't want it. I'm talking about the lesbians in the group.
"They made a point of congratulating me on my 'liberation from slavery,' as they always called it, and two of them were quick to try to get me into bed. Alice and Claire ran a beauty salon, and both worked in the shop. I agreed to have my hair styled by Alice, after admiring her short, very becoming pigeon cut.
"I didn't think at the time that I was adopting the almost universal symbol of the lesbian-- the short haircut, but it did become me. I'm average height, with big breasts and a nice, teenage set of legs and hips. The short hair style seemed to make me look years younger, which was what I wanted. I already felt years younger, since I'd made my decision to find my own kind of sex partner, and I didn't realize that the lesbians in the bunch would take the attitude that I had opted for their kind of lovemaking when I had my hair done to emulate their common style.
"Alice and Claire invited me to their home.
They lived together quite openly as lovers, which I was still naive enough to accept. But they came on too strong and frightened me. They actually made love to each other while I watched, after we'd had some cocktails. I was fascinated at first, but when they began to use vibrators on each other, I got fed up with it. I asked myself if that could be any more gratifying than ordinary masturbation, and when they insisted I give it a try before knocking it, I left with as much grace as I could. They were decent about it, there were no hard feelings, and it was through them that I met Hank.
"Hank was the best hairdresser in the shop, and next time I went in for a shampoo and set, I chose to have him do me. He was tall, longhaired, handsome in a rugged, menacing way. Anyway, he asked me for a date.
"Hank was dance-crazy, and hung around a lot of swinging places where the rock groups played and couples danced the wild new dances. I didn't let on that I didn't know the first thing about them, figuring he'd teach me what I didn't know.
"We had a nice dinner. Incidentally, I told Tom that I was going out with a male date, although I didn't tell him Hank's name or where I'd met him. We went to a discotheque, where everyone seemed to know and like my date. I had already been aroused by Hank. I liked the way he let his hands linger on my body, the intimate way he treated me, as if I were something really special, and when he danced, I couldn't take my eyes off the bulging crotch of his tight pants. I just threw myself into the rhythms they played, like Hank told me to, and I did all right. Everybody seemed to just 'do their own thing,' as the saying goes, and my body was crying for some release.
"By the time we were ready to take off for Hank's apartment, I was hot. I mean sexually hot. I had envisioned his big cock without any inhibiting clothes, and when he had kissed me with deep tonguing kisses on the dance floor, he really turned me on.
"He lived in one of those 'swinging singles' places. I'd read about them, and his place lived up to everything I'd read. Anything went with the tenants and Hank said that there were always three or four 'balling' parties going on in the place, and, sure enough, there was one in progress across the hall from him.
"The door was open, and several couples were dancing or necking--one couple was sprawled in a chair, and the girl's panties were off and the man was fingering her pussy while they sucked tongues. When they spotted us going into Hank's place, several of them called out an invitation to join them. Hank looked at me and I smiled. Might as well jump into the deep water, old girl, I thought, and really get a taste of swinging.
"Somebody shoved a drink into my hand, and the hostess, a young, long-haired hippie-type girl, tried to give me some of the names as she waved a hand at her guests. It didn't matter. Hank took me to a pile of huge pillows in the corner, we sprawled out, and he began to make love, just as if we were alone.
"I was aware of others watching, but somehow didn't mind. Hank was about ten years younger than I--I'm thirty-five--and I was flattered at the mild envy that I saw in some of the younger women's eyes.
"When Hank began to fondle my breasts and started to take off my bra, I just went ape. I helped him off with it and relaxed while he kissed my nipples. By that time, two of the other girls were completely naked, and were being kissed all over. One was playing with the penis of a huge blond boy who looked like he was a wrestler, and I remember wondering how that monstrous cock would feel inside a woman.
"I was getting drunk--not so much from the liquor as from the heady wine of sexual freedom, and when Hank took my panties off, I didn't care what he did or who might be watching.
"Hank was a ham. He thrived on the attention he was getting from everyone else except the two couples who were already working into intercourse. One couple was doing it the old-fashioned way, except that the guy had the girl's ass in his hands, raising her high off the floor, and she had her legs locked tightly about his waist. They made me hotter than ever when I glanced over and saw them. And about that time, the other couple went into the bathroom, and a few seconds later, I heard the shower running.
"But Hank was keeping me busy. He was down between my legs, spreading my pussy lips wide with his fingers, and stroking my clitoris with his tongue, using long, pressured strokes that started at my asshole and continued on until he ran his rigid tongue over my clit.
"I grabbed his head and pushed it harder against my body. I was talking to him, but I hardly knew what I was saying. And I suddenly became aware that another man, my age, was standing beside us, his penis out, masturbating. It made me seethe. Almost without realizing I was doing it, I reached out and took it in my hand, stroking it. He sank to his knees so that it was right beside my face, and I took it in my mouth, sucking and licking it as if I were starved for it!
"All the while, Hank was sucking and nibbling on my clitoris, and I came a half-dozen times, it seemed, each one better than the last. I remember vaguely wondering what Hank would say about my sucking another man off while he was working on me, but I needn't have worried.
"Hank had taken his own penis out, and was playing with it, moaning and gasping as he brought me to orgasm time after time, and then, all at once, the man I was sucking shot his load into my mouth, grabbing my head and forcing his cock deep down my throat, so I had to swallow his come, almost choking as I did so.
"And it only made me hotter! As the guy gently took his cock out of my mouth, Hank left off sucking my cunt and rolled me over. He urged me onto my knees with his hands, and I posed there on the cushions, buttocks and legs spread, ready for my first 'dog-fashion' fuck!
"And dog-fashion it was. Not the way I expected, with Hank shoving his cock up my cunt from the rear-entry position. Instead, Hank began to shove it up my ass! It hurt at first, and it sure as hell surprised me, but I tried to cooperate by moving my hips. Soon Hank's cock was sliding in and out smoothly, and I was surprised at how much I was enjoying it. It wasn't like being screwed, but it stimulated my cunt a lot, and I began to play with my clitoris. Long before Hank came in my asshole, I had had a couple more orgasms, and 1 felt like I was on cloud nine!
"That was my introduction to swinging, but there were a lot more surprises in store for me. What I didn't know then was that almost all of the couples at the party, and most who lived in the apartment building, were really bisexuals. I didn't find it out until later, though, because we left soon after my ass-fucking session and went to Hank's apartment.
"His place was really something... mod, psychedelic colors and pictures... a way-out stereo... We stripped and took a shower together; then we just went at each other like animals. I couldn't get enough of him. I wanted his cock in me, in every opening I had, and I wanted to feel his coming a million times. I wanted to know that I was the one who was making him come, and that he was going to want me again in a few minutes!
"I must have come a dozen times, before some of the kids from the party across the hall came over to Hank's place, and we just picked up where we left off.
"The guy I had sucked off was really turned on for me, and we had a ball. It was a real orgy, with the guys and gals just going all out; it didn't matter whether it was a man or a woman --everybody just pitched in and did whatever he or she wanted to.
"It was the first time that I went down on a woman, and I don't quite know how it happened. The first thing I knew, one of the guys was sucking my pussy, and there was Lori, the hostess of the party, kissing my mouth and then my breasts. When she stuck her tongue deep inside mine, it turned me on, and I began to kiss her back. Then, before I knew it, she pushed the guy away from my cunt and took over. What a difference I felt.
"I got carried away, and then Lori just reversed positions so that we could suck each other at the same time, and I made her come. It just seemed natural to know the right spots to suck and nibble and use my fingers on, and she was moaning and half crying when she came.
"Suddenly I began to sober up. I suppose, it was from seeing Hank with the big guy I'd sucked off. They were on the couch, where Hank and I had had such a ball, and they were making crazy love to each other. They jerked each other's cocks, sucked them, and then I watched while the big horse fucked Hank up the asshole ! And Hank loved it.
"It was like somebody had thrown cold water on me. I sobered up in a couple of minutes. I looked around me at all the cheap, sordid sex- pots--weirdos, really--and I just about threw up. I got my clothes and left, and I doubt if anyone really missed me. By that time, nobody knew who was screwing or sucking who, and when I got out into the night air, I felt dirty-- really filthy dirty--inside and out.
"I walked all the way home, and I knew then that that wasn't the kind of sex I'd wanted. I knew I wanted it from one man, a good man, a man I could respect and love.
"I wanted to pour it all out to Tom, but I couldn't. I was too ashamed and disgusted with myself. I wished honestly that Tom could see inside me and beat the living shit out of me for the cheap filth I had been involved with.
"I tried to talk to him, but he had been too hurt by my telling him I was going out with another man, and he had gone to bed in the guest room and locked the door. I knew he had heard me come in, and I heard him go to the bathroom off the guest room, but he didn't try to talk to me.
"I was miserable, but I finally did get to sleep. Next day, I went out and found a job. I'm a good secretary--I'd even been office manager for a while before I married Tom--and I found a good job with a large firm of accountants.
"I was in an in-between world. I didn't want to try to pull Tom my way; I couldn't go his way; but I also didn't want any more of the cheap, meaningless, animal sex that I'd had with Hank. I wasn't a bisexual. I was a woman who wanted good sex, and lots of it, but with one man.
"I didn't want to divorce Tom, but I couldn't see any other way. We had nothing left. We hardly talked. He just acted like a whipped dog when I was around. I couldn't even bring myself to try talking to him, and at the same time I was dying for some sex--some good, satisfying sex. I even played with the idea of going to Alice and Claire, but I knew that would be making a big mistake. I wasn't a lesbian, and I didn't hate men. I needed a man, not a woman, to make love to me.
"I finally had to go to a psychiatrist. I didn't know what was happening to me. But I went to a female psychiatrist. The girls at the WLM told me that part of the trouble with marriages was that almost all marriage counselors and psychiatrists are men, and they can only take the male viewpoint. Dr. Wilma K
set me straight. She made me see after only a few sessions that marriage to Tom was an impossible affair for me. She made me see that the best thing for both of us was divorce, which would allow him to find his kind of draggy wife, and me to find the kind of man I needed.
"I began to have dates with James, one of my bosses. He treats me with respect, but there are no strings. We have sex when both of us feel like it, and I date other men if I feel like it. James is a divorce, and he was married to a woman who must have been cast from the same mold that Tom was, from the things Jim says about her.
"We have joined a group that spends weekends in sort of experimental sex. It's not 'swapping,' as much as it is communicating. We usually meet at one person's house and have a few drinks. Sometimes we take off our clothes and just sit around and talk about things--people--their intimate relationships.
"One of the group members is a practicing psychologist, and he tries to keep the sessions on a sort of scientific plane. His belief is that we all put too much emphasis on sex and its meaning. He points out that animals lead uncomplicated lives because they just take sex as a natural function, and do not center their lives around it.
"He gets a lot of argument from most of the group, but maybe he has a point. I've learned this: I know that I don't have to be 'ready' at every glance or every winning smile I get from a man. Playing it cool is always better when you finally do get around to doing it. Not like that crazy orgy I went to, where it becomes meaningless.
"I still think that it's the men who have the most to learn and to change in sex attitudes. When we talk, I'm always astonished at how dumb men really are about what turns a woman on and keeps her coming back for more.
"I read a lot, now, and I've formed my own opinions. I think Women's Lib is a meaningful thing for women. It gives us a voice, for the first time. And, once we stand up, shoulder to shoulder, and face the problems, it gives each of us more individual courage.
"And, even if they don't know it, Women's Lib is doing a lot of good for men, too. At least, the relations between the sexes are more honest now, and if men don't want to learn from the women who are speaking out, and make some adjustments our way, then it's their fault, not ours; "But back to my own sex life. Strange, but I see men differently now. Take Jim, for example. He's good in bed, but he never pushes for sex. He likes it in all kinds of positions and settings, but he waits for me to start things going. He makes sure he is pleasing me first, and not himself.
"We've talked about that at meetings with the group, and it makes me wonder just a little. The psychologist says he feels that we women are now creating puppets that are the very image of our former husbands... meek, servile, dull. I've thought about that a lot, and I really feel he's wrong. There's nothing wrong in a woman having her way in sex, nor in her picking the time and place to have it. But a couple of the men agree that they are being made into what one fellow called 'male whores.'
"I'll give you an example. James and I went with a few others to a cabin in the mountains. It slept twelve persons, and we intended to engage in some sex--group sex--if you want to call it that. But it wasn't supposed to be an orgy. We were to discuss sex, then offer to be part of an experiment with another person of the opposite sex. While one couple engaged in an act, they were supposed to let their thoughts flow free and talk constantly about what they were feeling.
"The rest were to watch and note carefully what was being said, and then, later, everyone discussed what occurred and what was said, trying to analyze whether the couple really had satisfied each other.
"When it came to Jim's turn, he admitted that he had always wanted to screw a woman up the ass, but that in his heart, he felt it was all wrong. And he hinted in his talk about it that he wouldn't have any respect for any woman who would let him do it! Now, it's that crazy mixed-up kind of shit that makes men the stupid asses they are.
"Anyhow, one of the women said that she actually enjoyed that kind of ass-fucking once in a while, and she offered to be Jim's partner. He wanted to back out, but the rest wouldn't let him, so they finally got set.
"They got Vaseline, and after she had played with Jim's cock until it got hard enough, she rubbed it with the ointment, put a lot of it up inside her asshole, and then got on her hands and knees on the floor, ready for reaming.
"She began to talk about how she felt--how it was exciting to feel a man's cock deep inside her body--deeper than he could go into her pussy, she said. She babbled on about how good it made her feel as a woman, to know that she could make a man come in a dozen ways, with many parts of her body.
"Jim began to talk as he started to insert his cock into her asshole. He kept saying, almost to himself, 'I don't know why I'm even doing this --I feel like a damned queer.'
"Nobody was supposed to say anything but the two that were doing the act, but I almost broke in and told Jim to stop the crap and enjoy himself. He was embarrassing me with all his talk about being, or feeling like, a queer.
"But he couldn't finish it. At first, when he quit, the rest made fun of him, but then we remembered that we were honestly trying to learn something about sexual feelings and emotions, and we talked seriously about it.
"It came out in the discussion that most of the men felt the same way, that if they had anal intercourse, even with a woman, they felt guilty because it was primarily a homosexual act. Yet, they all admitted to liking it, mostly because it provided a much tighter case for their penis, and more friction.
"We have meetings fairly often, and I think we are learning what makes us sexual beings as well as emotional and physical humans.
"I'm active in Women's Lib, and I think we're making some progress. By that, I mean, I think we are making a lot of men stop and think about what we are demanding. I said demanding, not asking.
"I know what some males are saying, that we are paranoid, bordering on insane, wanting to attain the goals we have set. But we're not crazy, and we don't feel sorry for ourselves. As a matter of fact, I feel sorry for most men I know, like Tom. They don't ever learn what a woman can be, all the sexual dynamite that is packed inside her, waiting for the right man to unlock it.
"Meanwhile, I'm having the time of my life. At last, I've found some men who aren't afraid of sex. They still have a lot to learn about women's sexuality and capability, but, if enough women get on the ball and stand up for their rights as women, the men will have to fall in line. If they don't, they're the losers, because we women are finding out that we can do without them... even in sex."
* * *
The prognosis for Ruth is not encouraging. As may be seen from her own words, she hasn't really learned anything from her adventures in sex. She admittedly doesn't want the wild sex orgies; neither does she feel that lesbianism holds any attraction for her. She says that she wants a variety of sex experiences with one man of her choosing, yet, from her own account, Ruth still insists on being the dominant factor in the relationship with her boss, James.
Chances are, Ruth will end up as a bitter, promiscuous woman because she will find few males whom she can dominate as completely as she seems compelled to. Another possibility is that she will eventually become disenchanted with all males, for she is certain to clash with some who will doubtless use physical force to put her in her place. If this happens, she will, in all probability, turn to the lesbians who pervade her WLM chapter, in all sincerity believing that only a woman can provide the kind of sexual love she demands.
Ruth's relationship with men is abnormal, whether she approaches them as friends, or as sexual partners. Some of her experiences have crippled her judgment of males, as well as of herself. She detests cowardly men, yet persists in attempting to domineer men, giving them a secondary role in the relationship. Her only hope for emotional and sexual satisfaction probably lies in seeking professional help, which judging from her own strong attitudes and opinions, Ruth will never feel the need for. The Drifter "I feel like a sexual castaway. I got married to have sex, good sex, lots of sex. Instead, marriage is, or was, keeping me from having sex of any kind.
"Sex in my marriage, after the first couple of years, was all bad--what there was of it. I'm still a young woman. I'm only thirty-two, and I've been married for ten long years. I suppose that a lot of women would envy me a lot of things, but a nice home, security, money, as corny as it sounds, don't make a sexually starved woman happy.
"Maybe I'd better start at the beginning, and you'll be able to understand a little more about my becoming what I am. I'm a sexual drifter--a tramp, in the eyes of a lot of people. I've had probably a hundred different men in the past three years, and I'll probably have hundreds more.
"When Dave and I were going together, it was so different. We met in college. I was just fooling around, making believe I was studying sociology and psychology, but Dave was a serious student of engineering. And he was good. When we found we were in love, I quit school and took a job, and we lived together for his last year of college. I worked as a receptionist for a firm of engineering consultants, the same firm Dave is a partner in now.
"Sex was wonderful then. It was like a game we played, trying to find new ways to please each other. Neither of us had any real hang-ups, although Dave was a little less daring than I was in most ways.
"In fact, it was so wonderful that we knew our marriage was going to work. When we got married, it was like a trip to Las Vegas. We bet all our chips on marriage, knowing that it couldn't fail. But it did--for me, at least.
"It's crazy, in a way. We had everything going for us, and yet, my marriage is a mess. I guess the real reason we did get married was because society approves of sex when the couple is married. We got a lot of static from our families and even some friends, when we just lived together. It didn't bother me. To hell with them. But Dave squirmed and talked about how it might hurt his chances of a good job when he got his degree.
"My bosses met Dave, of course, and by the time he graduated, he had a job waiting. Nobody came right out and said it, but we both knew that the firm expected we would be married right away, and we were.
"But let's get to the nitty-gritty. I like sex. I always have. I'm not one of those women who claim to have ten or twelve orgasms in one fuck. I like to be built up to it with a lot of playing around, sucking, tickling, biting, and then end in one big come. But I like that at least twice a day, and more, if it's possible. And don't call me a nymphomaniac. I've read enough to know that I'm sexually quite normal. I have beautiful orgasms. I can be completely satisfied, and in the beginning I wanted to be fucked, sucked, and satisfied by just one man--my husband.
"I guess it started about the end of our first year of marriage. Dave was working hard, I know, putting in long hours, writing proposals, figuring costs of projects, but so do a lot of other men I know, who still produce in bed.
"Anyhow, he began to be 'too tired' when we went to bed, or he had to 'finish up a little more work.' I tried the old siren bit. I would walk around naked, kiss his neck, nibble his ears--do everything but carry a sign saying, 'I want to be fucked! "It's humiliating for a woman to offer herself to a man she wants and loves, and then be rejected. All at once, sex changed from something exciting and wonderful to an item about as interesting as a grocery list! It was bewildering to me at first, but then the anger began to gnaw at me.
"All at once, I wasn't attractive to Dave, and my natural reaction was to wonder if I was attractive to any man.
"I decided to find out, and I guess that's where it all started. I had quit work right after we were married. Dave was already on his way up in the firm, making good money, and we were buying a home. But our life was like a Greek sarcophagus... beautiful on the surface, but rotten inside.
"I can't tell you how I ached inside for love. When I started roving, looking for it, so help me, there wasn't a tiny bit of revenge or anger involved. I was just starving for some exciting sex. Remember, I'd had a couple of years of just what I wanted: good sex, at least twice a day. It was like being rich and then suddenly becoming poor. My body just wouldn't adjust to the change.
"Once I've faced a problem, I do something about it. I can't just sit back and feel sorry for myself. So, I began to go out in the daytime. I joined a couple of civic clubs, but that didn't work because I found that they were composed mostly of women who were as bored as I was, and the rest were retired old men.
"The obvious answer was the bars. I'd always liked a few cocktails, and Dave did, too, up until he began to drown himself in ambition and work.
"I felt uncomfortable at first, but then I found a cocktail lounge downtown where a lot of office people hung around, sneaked in for a quickie, or had long liquid lunch hours. They were my kind of people, and I had no trouble in getting the eye and drink offers from several men.
"It did my ego good, and put me in the right mood to swing and flirt. Funny, but the first one wasn't one of the office bunch. It was the bartender, Mac.
"He was a good-looking, wisecracking guy. He had a good rapport with every customer, male and female, and he was always there with a light for my cigarette and had a cute story to tell every ten minutes, it seemed.
"Anyhow, one afternoon about two, when the place had pretty well cleared out, Mac got serious for the first time. It surprised me, because it had always been light between us, even though some of the jokes we made were pretty sexy.
"He brought me a fresh drink and leaned on the bar, looking into my face soberly. "What's with you, Marge?" he began. "You're an attractive, intelligent woman. You're not a lush, nor a street tramp. What's the score?'
"I had become turned on for him several times, but I didn't have the guts to throw myself at him, but here was my chance.
"I'm just plain lonely," I told him.
"He glanced at my left hand, where I wore my engagement and wedding rings. He didn't say a word, but I knew what his thoughts were.
"Yes, I'm married," I said. "And that's the worst kind of loneliness in the world. I love my husband, and I think he loves me, but that's all there is anymore. Just love. No sex. No fun. No excitement. No happy times. Just ... just love."
Mac was listening, nodding slightly, a sympathetic look on his face. He reached out and put his hand over mine. "Want to try me?" he said, still very serious. "No love, no involvement, just good sex and fun."
"Once he'd said it, I was shocked by what I was doing, and by the cold, almost casual way it was being handled by both of us. But I recovered quickly, and smiled. "Your pad or mine?" I joked.
"He gave me his crooked, sexy grin, and the air was cleared of any tension. "I'm off at four," he said, glancing at his wristwatch. "Like a matinee?'
"The time we spent waiting for him to get off was fun. We were building toward something exciting, and it was a thrilling, provocative game for me. I felt alive again. I felt young and sexy and desirable.
"Mac had a nice, modern apartment not too far from where I lived, and we drove both cars, that first time. Once we closed the door, Mac took me in his arms, then let his hands run up and down my body, stroking my ass, then cupping the cheeks and squeezing them, pulling my pussy close to his cock. When he began to kiss me, my eyes, my nose and neck, I almost came from just the feel of his mouth and the hard shape of his cock that was rubbing against my pussy.
"I began to move my hips, rubbing my cunt against his hard on in a dry fuck, and while I clung to him that way, he began to undress me.
"When I was naked, he broke away and looked at my titties and my cunt with admiration and hunger written all over his face.
"He took his clothes off quickly, and when I saw his stiff, erect cock, standing almost up to his navel, I almost blew my top. I hadn't realized how terribly hungry I was to have a man make sexy love to me.
"Mac came over and got down on his knees. He spread my pussy lips and began to lick my clitoris, while his fingers probed deeper inside it.
"I began to shudder and feel weak. I pushed him, away. "I can't wait!' I said. "We'll do all that later. I love it, you'll see. But right now ... I want to be fucked!'
"I lay down on the floor and spread my legs. Mac was ready, and I was already wet with my own juices and his saliva. He caught the mood I was in, and he wasn't gentle. He mounted me and shoved his cock in deep and hard. I locked my legs around his hips, he put his hands around my ass cheeks, and we just fucked like a couple of horny animals. I liked the way he kept away from my face, so that we could look into each other's eyes.
"I saw raw lust in Mac's face, and I know mine must have shown the same. And he was wonderful. His cock was going deeper and deeper, rubbing my clit with every in-and-out stroke, and I came within a minute!
"It was the brutal, dispassionate way Mac handled me that got to me. He seemed to be putting sex in its proper place. I didn't want love or romance ... I just wanted plain fucking, and that's exactly what he gave me.
"He was getting near his climax and he began to pull my ass closer to him, so his cock was going in deeper with every stroke. I matched him thrust for thrust, and before I felt him coming, I had at least three more orgasms.
"He was a better man than I had thought. He kept on ramming me with his big cock, so that it never did go soft, and although it took a little longer for his second come, I wasn't complaining. I kept building toward another good orgasm, after a lot of little ones, and by the time he was ready to come the second time, we were sweating and gasping for breath. When he began to move real fast, and I knew he was coming, I used every muscle I had inside my cunt, knowing somehow that it was one of the best fucks Mac had ever had. And when he launched into the final series of fast thrusts, I exploded inside! I'd never thought that sex could be that penetrating physically. I mean, the good feel of an orgasm didn't just stay inside my cunt. It seemed to spread all over my body, making everything tingle and sing.
"After a few moments, Mac got off me and did the most perfect thing he could have done. Like I said, I had wanted raw, hot sex, and he'd given it to me. Almost as if he didn't want to break the mood, he crawled down between my legs, reversed his body so that his come-covered cock was next to my mouth, and began to stick his tongue deep inside my cunt. At the same time, he lowered his pole into my waiting mouth, and when I caught a glimpse of it, covered with come juice, it drove me wild. I just gobbled it up.
"I can't quite describe how I felt. Wanton isn't quite strong enough. Whorish? Completely female? Completely sexual? No other thought was in my mind but sex, and how good it was at that moment. I tried to take his cock so deep that I gagged, but I didn't stop sucking. I sucked and grabbed his balls and massaged them, guiding his lunges into my mouth. My jaws ached, but it was a good ache. I was paying him back the best I knew how for the best fucking I had ever had in my life.
"All this time, he was digging at my clitoris with his fingers and his tongue, and when he shot his load into my mouth, I swallowed it and, at the same time, came again.
"Mac rolled away then and just lay there on the floor, his chest heaving from his efforts. "Oh, God ... what a woman you are!' he gasped. "And you mean to tell me that your husband doesn't go after that every night? He must be the dumbest bastard on the face of the earth, believe me."
"For some strange reason, that made me feel angry. Then it came to me that I really did love Dave. I wondered if I was a nymphomaniac, but I knew that couldn't be, because I'd read that nymphos never have good orgasms. I just wasn't getting the kind of sexual satisfaction I needed and wanted from the man I was married to. And I had to have it, even if it were to be with a relative stranger. In fact, I thought at the moment it was much better that way, without all the gooey lovemaking that actually amounted to only so many words.
"When we dressed and I left Mac's place, it was without even a kiss! Instead, he patted me on the ass and grinned his crooked grin and said, "You're something else, baby. When do we do it again?'
"I told him I'd let him know, and he seemed to think that would be soon, for he said, "Tomorrow is my day off. Want to try it on your home field?'
"The thought intrigued me, and I gave him my address and told him to be there by nine-thirty. I knew that would give Dave plenty of time to clear the place, but, just in case, I took Mac's phone number.
"I was still floating on air when I got home and, strangely enough, I was hot for some sex with Dave that night. It was as if I wanted him to prove to me that I didn't have to go out and have cheap sex with a man I didn't really care about. I tried all the tricks I knew-cuddled up, tongue-kissed him, rubbed my pussy against his cock ... all while I was naked, but it didn't work. In fact, for the first time, Dave lost his temper over my sexual advances.
"He rolled away from me in bed and snapped, "For Chrissake, Marge ... is that all you ever think about? Getting screwed!'
"It hurt my pride at first, but then it made me cold inside. I was glad I'd discovered that sex could be good with somebody else, and I didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt. And I decided that from now on I'd never again beg Dave for sex. To hell with that! If he wanted it from me, from that moment on, he'd have to really beg for it!
"He tried to apologize next morning before he left, but I just acted cool. I guess I was thinking that I'd get my revenge in a few moments, and I almost wished he would be around to see it. If Mac had walked up to the door at that moment, I'd have invited him in and sucked his cock in front of Dave!
"When Mac did arrive, I was sizzling. I don't know if psychiatrists have ever made any studies about anger and sex, but I was in the mood for some really raw sex when Mac got there. I practically tore his pants and shorts off-I was already naked when I opened the door. I had never been a great one for fantasizing, but every move I made to turn Mac on and to make him come, I imagined it was Dave, and I was saying to myself: "You cold-assed sonofabitch, you don't know what you're missing. It could all be yours!'
"I began to jerk him off, while he dug his fingers into my cunt and my clit with his fingernails. I was letting my nails scratch the skin of his cock, too, and he seemed to turn on fast from the rougher treatment, just as I did. He used one hand to rake my breasts, and I remember thinking that I hoped Dave would see the marks and ask me about them. Would I ever tell him the truth!
"When I wanted to have some real cock, I told Mac to lie down on the floor. He did and I squatted over him so I could take his stiff cock and insert it into my cunt. Then I lowered myself down on it. I'd read about this position, but I had never tried it. It was fantastic. I began to rock back and forth, controlling the penetration of Mac's cock completely.
"He must have done it that way before, because he seemed to know exactly how to make it good for me. Another thing I liked about that position was the way I could look full into his face. I liked to see the animal look in his eyes. It's difficult to describe, but let's just say that he was interested only in fucking me. I didn't see any respect or even liking for me, and that was just what I wanted.
"He was fantastic in sensing what I needed, and he said, "You're a terrific fuck, Marge. You're as good as any whore in the world."
"That turned me on real high, and I began to rock forward so far that I could reach his face on the forward motion, and I would stick my tongue in his open mouth, then, as I withdrew it, he would bite it-I mean really hurt it! On the backward motion, Mac's cock penetrated deep into my cunt, and I don't care what some women say about that not mattering, that everything is the clitoris-for me, it was marvelous.
"When I came, I was almost jumping up and down so that his cock was sliding along my clit and then burying itself in my cunt depths. Mac had put his hands on my hips and was helping me go straight up and down on that hard, good prick, and he was bumping his ass on the floor, trying to come also. I came, and it was that same all-over kind of come; it just took the energy out of me.
"I could tell that Mac hadn't come, and that spoiled it a little bit, because, at the moment, I couldn't do any more. So I got off and went down on him. He seemed to appreciate that, and I really gave him a good blow job. I licked his shaft and his balls, nibbled the shaft and the head, tickled it with my tongue and then plunged it deep in my mouth, sucking and nibbling while I massaged his balls. He lay back, propping himself up with his hands so he could watch, and I liked his eyes pinned on me that way.
"When he came, I deliberately held his come in my mouth, scrambled up on his body, and before he knew what I wanted to do, I spit the whole thing into his mouth! He was so surprised that he swallowed it! I held his mouth to mine, shoving my tongue in and out, our spit, tongues, and his semen all mingling together. I almost came again, just from the sensation of sharing a man's come with him in his own mouth!
"After a minute, he rolled me off him. I could see he was angry, and his cock was soft.
"Don't ever try that again!' he snapped. "I'm not a goddamned pig. If I want come in my mouth, I'll go suck a cock!'
"Oh, come on, Mac," I coaxed. "We're just getting warmed up. A little come juice never hurt anyone."
"Maybe not,'-he grumbled, "but I don't like that kind of shit."
"Let's make up. I'm sorry." I really meant it. I didn't want to lose my little sex toy so soon after I'd found him. "What kind of fucking do you want? Anything ... any way at all."
"But Mac had lost the mood. I could tell by the way he looked my body over, as if he were wondering what kind of a piece of garbage was wrapped in that nice outer covering.
"He got dressed and said he'd call me later, or see me at the bar. He added the word "sometime," and I felt that my little love game had ended then and there. But I wasn't worried. I knew now that I could have all the sex I wanted and needed, and Mac was only the first of the ones I could get it from. There were a lot of other men around, probably as starved for wild, satisfying, thrilling sex, as I was. In a way, I was grateful to Mac for opening the door to that."
* * *
A great many respected psychiatrists and social scientists agree that sexual gratification, as the climax of an act of love, is the greatest emotional and physical experience a human couple can know. Without love, sex is seldom fulfilling. When it is reduced to the animal level, it loses a great deal. This is what happened to Marge S.
In his excellent book Games People Play, Eric Berne says:
* * *
People tend to live their lives by consistently playing out certain "games" in their relationships. They play these games for a variety of reasons: to avoid confronting reality, to conceal ulterior motives, to rationalize their activities, or to avoid actual participation.
These games, if they are not destructive, are both desirable and necessary.
* * *
It is already quite clear that the sex games that the subject of this case plays are destructive-to her marriage, to herself and to her husband.
Marge and Dave S. were chosen for this study because they typify the average couple of comfortable circumstances who find themselves in sexual difficulties. The developmental pattern is a familiar one: the ambitious, hard-working husband who begins to neglect his wife's sexual and social needs and causes an ultimate severance of sexual relations altogether, and the wife who is too immature to do anything about it. What can one say about such a situation?
The fact that the subject and her husband had relatively fine sexual relations before marriage is significant in this case, for Marge reacted to the cessation of sex by feeling cheated and neglected. She is a relatively intelligent woman, and she did make an attempt to arouse her husband to the fact of her sexual starvation. It is important to realize, however, that Marge took the wrong approach.
Helen Colton, in Adults Need Sex Education Too, makes this point:
* * *
In their first flush of sexual freedom, many women mistake liberty for license. They go overboard in their efforts to dominate the male. In almost every case, the male rebels, and often, his rebellion takes the form of frigidity, or what can be worse, nonchalance.
Both sexes today know that it is not difficult to find other sex partners, often without incurring the scorn of the community. This is dangerous.
* * *
Marge, in her desperation, became domineering and threatening. Although she did not initially threaten Dave with the possibility of having sexual encounters with other men, the thought was there, bolstering her confidence at all times. Her early successes in the sexual area with Dave, before and for a year or so after their marriage, shored up Marge's confidence as a capable, sexually, exciting woman. When Dave began to neglect her sexually, Marge either consciously or subconsciously began to question her sexual attractiveness. Of course, Dave's callous rejection of her overt sexual approaches only furthered her doubts.
Once this doubt took root, it was only a question of time before Marge had to find out for herself whether or not she was still attractive to other men. And because sex was at the bottom of her fears, she went directly to the heart of the challenge, using her sexual personality to draw advances from men.
Marge was not a swinger in the generally accepted sense of the word. That is, she did not want sex with many men, only good sex with one man who had no inhibitions, and, importantly, with a man who would put aside all other occupations or preoccupations and give himself to her completely.
Marge made the common mistake of using the wrong weapons. She did not try to communicate, or even to discuss intelligently, presenting her needs to Dave. Most counselors and psychologists agree that lack of true communication is at the root of most marriage deteriorations and dissolutions.
Discussions can be a healthy item in marriage, if they are constructive and two-sided, and are not mere diatribes by one or the other partner.
In The Intimate Enemy, by Dr. George R. Bach and Peter Wyden, we find the following:
* * *
Verbal conflict between intimates is not only acceptable, especially between husbands and wives, it is constructive and highly desirable. Many people, including a few psychologists and psychiatrists, believe that this new scientific concept is an outrageous and even dangerous idea. We know otherwise, and we "an prove it. At our Institute of Group Psychotherapy in Beverly Hills, California, we have discovered that couples who fight together are couples who stay together-provided they know how to fight properly.
The art of fighting right is exactly what we teach couples who come to us for marriage counseling. Our training methods require patience, good will, and the flexibility to adopt some challenging and unconventional ways for dealing with humanity's most personal drives-with sex being the strongest, we have found. Most of all, they demand hearts and minds that are open-open to reason and to change.
* * *
In studying the case of Marge and Dave S., it will be seen that both had these qualifications, but that Marge's overly threatening attitude precluded any mature, unemotional discussions outlining both partners' positions.
Lack of money was not a factor in this case. Dave made a better-than-average salary and was moving up rapidly in his firm. Ambition has been the enemy of many a man's sexual life, and while hard work and the desire to move ahead are admirable qualities in most persons, they can, in instances such as Dave's, be severe barriers to a successful marriage relationship.
Dave is responsible to a large degree for the lack of communication. He is an intelligent man, a college graduate and a member of a highly intellectual fraternity, but all this did not give him (nor does it a great many others) the proper qualifications to communicate with the woman he loved and to whom he was married.
Words are important between married people. They should say exactly what is in the person's heart, as well as in his mind.
In Sex in Human Loving, by Dr. Eric Berne, the author advises the use of sexual words in sexual arguments or discussions. As an example, he says:
The words that people use for sex start with copjugation, which is what lower organisms do, and copulation, which is for higher animals. Sexual intercourse is for people. Sexual union is something you can talk about in any group, but, you cannot talk of sexual intercourse. Without using the correct words, communication with a sex partner is impossible. Just plain talk is my idea of communicating.
A cynical friend of mine, Dr. Horseley, tells overeducated couples who are not getting along to stop communicating and start talking.
* * *
This unwillingness to talk or communicate on the part of Dave, and to some degree on the part of his wife also, almost caused the collapse of their marriage. It has already been seen that Marge was capable of reducing several sex acts to clearly understandable terms. She referred to sexual intercourse as "fucking," and to fellatio as a "blow job." Other studies of the use of words reveal that many men and women are extremely aroused sexually by the use of such "gutter terms," especially during foreplay or coitus.
In a sense, Marge was indulging this desire in a somewhat different way when she insisted on assuming positions during sex acts that allowed her to look into the face and the eyes of her sex partner, Mac. Expressions and glances can communicate clearly the emotional and sexual reaction of a sex partner; thus, we see that Marge was capable of communicating (or as Dr. Berne advocated, "plain talking"), but made no effort with her husband to get down to the basics of their marital problem.
Most modern women see nothing wrong in using basic four-letter words in sexual discussions, but psychologists find an astonishing number of them who do not use them at the right time-that is, to get their own needs and desires across to their mates!
Emotions revealed are best shown in down-to-earth words. There is certainly a language of love, but most experts agree that after marriage that language should give way to a large degree to practical and effective language of sex. This is not to say that a married couple should not engage in the niceties of courtship, the flowery phrases that mean much to the emotional side of married partners; however, when the couple is in bed, naked, and engaged in the ultimate act of love, sex words are needed.
Marge S. demonstrated this rather effectively when she described her feelings toward Mac. She didn't want the nice love phrases, the "buttering-up" language of lovers. She wanted sex, with only sex words used!
Dr. Berne feels strongly, and his conclusions are based on hundreds of case histories of his patients, that the language of sex needs to be used and employed, particularly among sophisticated, highly educated married couples. He makes some strong points.
* * *
Lawyers have words of their own, such as cohabitation, adultery, and sexual relations. All have accusatory, unsavory connotations that help to give sex the importance of being a legal matter, instead of the personal matter that it is. Adultery, for instance, tells nothing about whether the intercourse involved was dreary, or the greatest thrill each had ever had.
To further prove my point about proper sexual words, there is no such term in the language as "decent exposure," yet, for a wife to expose her genitals to her husband or he his, to her, is certainly not indecent exposure.
Some of the biggest fights between lawyers are over the word obscenity, which is somewhat stupid, because what is thrilling to one person may seem obscene to another. The trouble with all of these words and phrases is that they evade the issue, which is lust and pleasure, and sexual intoxication.
* * *
As Marge's narrative is resumed, it will be seen that Dr. Berne's points are extremely important, for when people "talk" to each other, instead of trying to communicate in dry, sterile language, they can truly come together sex-
* * *
"I only saw Mac once after that. I suppose my pride was hurt. In his own way, he had scorned my sexual approach as much as my husband had. He didn't contact me the next few days, so I put him out of my mind. It wasn't easy, because he really was a stud and he'd given me some of my best sex kicks.
"I was good for two weeks, and I even made a couple of halfhearted attempts at picking up some kind of sex relations with Dave, but I just couldn't accept his old "on-again, off-again' routine, and he didn't give any indication that he wanted anything more exciting or different. He made a couple of feeble attempts at feeling my pussy and tits, but, in spite of the fact that I loved him, I just didn't get turned on by him. It made me stop and think a little, though, and I wasn't so sure anymore that I wasn't a nympho.
"I toyed with the idea of getting a job, just to involve myself with some men, but it made me feel cheap, and I knew that Dave wouldn't stand for that. Understand, I didn't want a divorce. I didn't want to be free to bounce from bed to bed. All the time, inside me, I wanted Dave to change. I wanted him to come over to my sexual way of thinking. I admit, I didn't give much thought to his side of it at all. Why should I? I wanted fucking, lots of different kinds of fucking, and he didn't. It was as simple as that.
"I didn't realize it at the time, but I was beginning to feel guilt. I went back to the bar where Mac worked and had a couple of drinks. I was still sore, but if he'd have made a pitch, I would have taken him on. But Mac gave me a cold reception. He was polite enough-too polite. But two other men moved" in fast. Both of them had been at the place when I had been there before, and they were, in my estimation, just cheap wolves. Both were married, and one of them, George-something, was downright crude.
"He didn't even offer to buy a drink, just moved up the bar and sat beside me. "Long time no see," he said. "Been shacking up with strangers?'
"I frowned at him and told Mac, "Get this creep away from me."
"Mac grinned his crooked grin and then motioned with his head to the guy to move out, and he did. He had no sooner moved away than another guy got up from a booth-he was with two other men-and came over to me. He stood beside me and ogled my breasts via the low-cut blouse I wore. He made me sick. He asked if I'd like to take a ride. Imagine, they were treating me like I was a common prostitute! He went on talking, saying he had to go to San Diego, and he'd like company, if I could make it for a couple of days!
"I almost slapped him; instead, I got up and walked away. I turned and saw the smirk on Mac's face, and the other man cracked some joke I couldn't hear. It came to me suddenly what was going on. Big-mouth Mac had been spreading the word around that I was an easy lay, and, probably, that I was a good one.
"I called out loud enough for everyone to hear, "You impotent pimp. I hope you never do manage to get it up!' Then I stalked out, figuring that that would cut him down in the eyes of his goddamned boozy friends!
"That finished me with bar-hopping for sex. I had been a fool to pick some tramp out of a bar, where I had become a cheap tramp in their estimation. But all of this spinning my wheels wasn't doing anything to put out the fire in my pussy. I was still hungry for sex, and I was getting confused by my own feelings. I wanted to be a good wife, but I wanted to be a wife who got plenty of fucking from her husband.
"I guess I panicked-inside, at least. I masturbated a lot, but I didn't fantasize about Dave or even Mac. I dreamed up characters-made them up out of composites of several men who had vaguely turned me on when I'd met them. One thing they all had in common, though, was a big, king-size cock!
"I began to become introverted. I didn't want to go out of the house at all, and I grew sloppy about the housework and about my own appearance. I used to laugh to myself about one of the lines from "The Boys in the Band." One man is twitting the other about masturbating too much, and the other comes back: "One thing you can say good for masturbation: you don't have to dress for it."
"I felt that way about myself, in a sick, sorry way. If all the sexual satisfaction or stimulation I was going to get was from finger-fucking myself, then why primp for it. Why even fix my hair or makeup. That didn't add anything to it.
"I even bought a vibrator, but I discovered that that was a bunch of crap. A gimmick. It's just no good without a man's cock inside your cunt, no matter what else you stick up there and try to tell yourself is thrilling.
"But, in a funny way, the vibrator turned out to be the best buy I ever made in my life.
"I used it on myself a few times, figuring maybe I just had to get used to it for good results. I even fingered my clit while I used the vibrator up my asshole, but it wasn't any good. The frustration was worse than doing without anything at all.
"One night I deliberately left it on my dresser hoping that Dave would see it and ask me about it. I was ready for a reply that would set him back on his heels. I would tell him that it was one hell of a lot better in my cunt than he'd ever been!
"He didn't even notice it for two days, so I put it in his bathroom-we had two, and he seldom came into mine.
"He went in to shower after coming home late and I was holding dinner for him. Evidently he didn't notice it at first, because I heard the shower run, then stop, and in a couple of minutes, Dave walked into the parlor, still partially undried, totally naked. That was something he had never done in his life!
"He had a towel in one hand and the vibrator in the other. It was one of those cordless things, about an inch-and-a-half in diameter, and seven inches long, with ridges along the barrel of it.
"Dave looked half stunned, half angry. He held out the vibrator to me, his whole face a question mark. "Is this what I think it is?'
"If you think it's a vibrator, you are right."
"I was playing it cool, waiting for him to walk into the trap so I could let his manhood have it right between the eyes. But he wasn't reacting the way I thought he would. He stood staring at it, and I saw his mouth droop. He actually looked like he was going to cry.
"Have you used it?" he asked quietly, his eyes almost begging me to tell him I hadn't.
"I suddenly didn't want to hurt him anymore. I saw that he was already deflated and his pride cut. "Yes," was all I said, and there wasn't any anger or vengefulness in my voice. I wanted to add: "But it wasn't any good. I need you." But I didn't.
"He just stared at that damned thing, slowly shaking his head. When he did speak, his voice was soft and had a tone of shocked amazement in it. "That bad," he said, as if talking to himself more than to me. "I must be one hell of a mess."
"He wasn't feeling sorry for himself. He was accusing himself harshly, as if finally aware of all his neglect and even gruffness to me in regard to sex. I somehow knew that this moment might never come again, if I let it get away, and all my love came sweeping back and gave me courage.
"I left it there deliberately, David," I said. "I wanted to do something to hit you with the fact that I love you and I need you. I love you as a man, though, as a lover ... as a male. I want you sexually and I need you sexually, and if we don't talk this out, now, I'm afraid our marriage is headed for the trash."
"Dave sat down in a chair, the water dripping off his hair. The sad look was leaving his face and his jaw began to set in the old determined look I loved to see there. Dave was a fighter, a driver, a tireless man in going after his goals. The only place he had become weak and careless was in his sex life.
"And I love you and need you the same way," he said firmly. "You know that, don't you? Don't you think I miss the good times in bed? Don't you think I'm carrying a load of guilt around about all this? I want to, but "He shrugged helplessly.
"I said, "You've got to more than want to, David. You've got to do it. It's the most important thing in the world to me. I mean it. More important than you making money and becoming a big shot in the firm. More than security, this home, bank accounts ... anything! Do you understand?'
"But-' he started to object. I butted in.
"I know all the cliches, Dave. We've got to stop letting things get in the way of two people who love each other. So you're too tired at night. Let's fuck in the morning, when we're both fresh!' I noticed the widening of his eyes when I used the word "fuck," and I decided that I might as well shock him even wider awake. "We've got to talk about what can and should be done, David, then do it ... or at least try it. And the first thing we have to do is to use plain language with each other. I want to talk plain words about what I want and need from you, and what I want to give. I want to call things by their right name. I want a cock to be a cock, and a cunt a cunt, and forget playing "doctor games' where it becomes a penis and a vagina."
"I was really shaking him alert now, and I went right on. "I don't see anything wrong, if you really are tired, in my going down on your cock with my mouth. You know that I get a thrill from making you come that way, or at least in getting your prick hard so that you can fuck me. It worked before and it can work again. We had a wonderful sex life, and that's most of my problem. I resent being put on a sexual diet, fitting my cunt's needs to your sex schedule. I'm here all the time, and you can't be tired all the time."
"He was looking at me as if seeing a different woman. "Do you realize," I said, pointing at his naked body, "that I haven't seen you naked in years, and never in anyplace but the bathroom? What the hell ever happened to these two crazy sexpot kids that used to play sex games naked, even on the beach. Hell, it seems only yesterday that neither of us could wait to get to the apartment and get our clothes off, bathe each other with hot kisses, suck, fuck, jerk off and finger-fuck. What happened? I still want-no, not still-I want those things now more than I ever did before.
"There's a depth and an anchor to our love now. We have all the things we wanted, except the one thing that we wanted them for-to give us a marriage like no other couple on earth had ever known!'
"Dave's face had softened. He looked young again, and there was something I hadn't seen for a long time: eagerness and interest in me, and in sex with me.
"He got up, walked into the kitchen, calling to me to come out there. I walked into the kitchen and Dave was standing with the vibrator poised over the garbage pail. He had dropped the towel, and I could see that he was beginning to get a hard on. He managed his old-time smile, and his eyes began to twinkle.
"If you'll get all those damned cunt-concealing clothes off, old lady," Dave said, "and let me play with your titties and your clit and your asshole until you beg me to fuck you so hard you'll shit yourself-" He dropped the vibrator in the trash and closed the lid. "I'll be such a fucking good lover that you'll never need one of those again until you're ninety. And even then, I'll use it on you, just to cool you down after our fifth fuck! How's that grab you?'
"It grabbed me. We caught the game mood together. "If you want to suck my cunt or nibble my boobs," I mocked, "at least have the decency to rip my clothes off."
"He walked over to me and did exactly that. And from that moment on, Dave and I could write a sex manual, if we had to. There was and is nothing in the book that we haven't tried sexually. We don't have to swing with the swappers, or try a third bed partner. Our sex is perfect, and we're going to keep on working at it-consciously working-to make it even better. Strangely enough, once Dave got back into the swing of it, he's not only become a better lover than ever, but he has more creative energy on his job! He's a full partner, and will one day have his own company. Best of all, he's engineered himself a swinging, loving, fucking, sucking, sexy wife, who will never again let either of us slip back into the sexual slums we lived in for too long."
* * *
The prognosis for this marriage is obviously good. It would seem that, perhaps, Dr. Berne has hit on the proper solution for many couples, particularly the sophisticated ones who are positive that they are in communication via the use of technical or clinical terms concerning their sex life.
Plain talk provided the answer for David and Marge. It may well lead to the salvation of other couples who are bored, drifting, and seeking sexual unity.
CHAPTER THREE - The Swinger
"I don't think that this sexual revolution is as new as a lot of people want to believe. At least, the real aims and desires of women aren't new. Women have always wanted to swing, to have more than one man, and any student of history can tell you that some of the women have always had them. The big difference today is that the so-called "common people' are swinging, where once it was confined only to the rich or the ruling class. Look at all the courtesans and bitches and mistresses who have actually changed history's course. And for every one that showed up in a history book or as an artist's subject, there must have been thousands who didn't get the publicity.
"Women have always been thought of as the pawns of men, but has anyone bothered to think that maybe most of the women wanted to do the sexy things they were told to do? How about Salome, who seduced her father-in-law, Herod.
She must have been a swinging bitch long before she ever heard of John the Baptist. And Delilah. Do you think that Samson was the only lover she ever took? Bathsheba? And how about Madame Pompadour? She was an expert cocksucker, and was proud of it.
"Read the stories of modern madams, even great actresses, and you'll discover that these women weren't the victims of men. They fucked because they liked it, and they spread it around among dozens of men because that was the way they wanted it.
"So I don't feel that I'm so different from most women. Only I do it, while a majority of those who want to swing just dream about it, then go and masturbate, or fantasize they are having some big movie-star stag when their husbands get around to fucking them.
"I'm not too keen on the idea that husbands are to blame for all the swapping and swinging, either. My husband is fairly good in bed. He's no prude. But the fact is, no one man can keep me sexually happy forever. And I think there are millions of women who feel the same, whether or not they will admit it.
"It has always been thought that man is the predatory creature, roving about, seeking sexual conquest. Well, I think that women have been doing the same thing, not for conquest, but for kicks and satisfaction.
"I'm not talking about the whores. They have always been around, because men have always wanted some fucking on the side. And whores do it for money, while swingers do it for the fun of it. Fucking for fucking's sake, you might call it.
"I had no quarrel with Art, my husband, about our sex life. We pretty well tried most of the stuff. We even tried anal intercourse one night, but Art was pretty drunk and it hurt me quite a bit, so we never tried it again, although I wouldn't mind, if we were both sober and used some sort of lubricant, like petroleum jelly.
"But anyhow, after about eight years of marriage, and two kids, Art and I both knew that our sex life was pretty boring. We didn't talk about it, but we both knew it and knew the other felt the same way.
"Art is a newspaperman. Not a reporter, a circulation manager. But he's pretty hep to what's going on in the community and the world. He's not too educated-one year of college, and I only finished high school, but what I'm trying to get across is: we both know what changes are taking place in all areas of life because we both read so much.
"We both saw the start of the so-called swinging and swapping phenomenon in the late 1960s. The underground newspapers began to come out in the open then. In our city, you can get them on the newsstands now. But at first, they were hawked by college kids standing on corners-hippies with dirty beards, weird old men who wanted to pick up some extra money at their newsstands.
"Anyhow, Art brought a couple home, and the shock value had an appeal at first. I mean, you just weren't used to seeing words like "fuck, shit, cunt," in print. You weren't used to seeing the president, God, big business, any target at all, attacked with words like that, and I got pretty fed up with them after a few issues. But the one part of those papers that fascinated me was the personal ads. Now, they're called the "fuck ads." I thought they were a put-on, but Art said he had talked to several reporters and writers who had investigated, and that most of them were for real.
"I was reading on one night, and Art was watching TV-a thing he'd seldom done in the first years of our marriage. We used to bowl, play golf a lot, swim, even nightclub most weekends. But of late, Art had taken to watching TV until the eleven-o'clock news was over, then we'd go to bed and that was that. Some nights, we'd make a feeble attempt at getting each other aroused, but usually we'd fall asleep before my cunt was even wet or his cock hard.
"That night I became fascinated by this ad. It read: WANTED: Middle-class couple, ages 30-40, for first-time swinging. We're in love, but bored. Desire to meet couple with same interests. Then it gave a phone number, which I knew must be within a few blocks of our place. I read the ad aloud to Art. For a couple of minutes we both just sat looking at each other. I guess we felt ashamed to admit that we'd let our sex life deteriorate to the point we needed outside help and kicks, but at the same time we knew it was true.
"Art said sheepishly: "Probably a put-on. Some kooks who like whips and chains." He laughed nervously, then looked straight at me and said, "But if you want to try, Joy "
"I saw what he was doing. Weaseling out so that I would have to be the one to suggest it.
"What do you mean if I want to try?" I snapped back. "Let's be honest, Art. We've grown bored with each other, and, like the couple in the ad, we still love each other. So, what do we have to lose? All we need to do is talk about it. Can you stand to see another man balling me? Would I be jealous if I saw you sucking another woman's pussy? Can we still face each other for sex if we find that this other couple excite us more?'
"We both thought about that quite awhile. We weren't ready to face the answers, and we went to bed. For the first time in weeks, I felt Art's hard on rubbing against my butt as he played with my titties and kissed my neck. Finally, he said, "Honey, do you ever fantasize, make believe, it's somebody else, when I'm having you or kissing your pussy?'
"I told him that I did-often, the past couple of years. He continued: "Me too. I was just wondering if that makes it better for us, even a little more exciting. Do you really think that it might be worthwhile to answer that sex ad?'
"I made up my mind in a second. I said yes. And I suggested we pick up the phone beside the bed and do it right then! I didn't want this mood to slip past, because I had already made up my mind that unless our sex got better, I was going to go out and find me some man who could really excite me in bed.
"We called, right then, and the man and woman both talked to us, thanking us for the call, telling us that we sounded more like their kind of people than any others who had called. They were surprised and glad to discover that we lived only five blocks apart, and that we might have seen each other many times because we both patronized the same local restaurants and cocktail lounges.
"We set up a date to meet at their place the following Saturday night, so if it worked out we could stay up as late as we pleased. They were going to send their ten-year-old daughter to her grandmother's for the weekend, and we were to get our regular baby-sitter to stay all night.
"That night, after the call, I guess we both fantasized about the unknown couple and the things we would do for sex kicks, because Art and I had just a straight fuck, but it was one of the best both of us had had for years. He lasted over five minutes before he came, and in that time, I'd had at least three good orgasms. When we kissed good-night, we were more at peace than we had been in months.
"We were like newlyweds for the next three nights, and when Saturday rolled around, it was as if we were preparing for another honeymoon.
"We showered with each other, playing sexy little kissing and feeling games, like we used to do when we were first married, and we primped and preened and perfumed and lotioned ourselves all over. We both wore brand new underclothes, and at a couple of points we just broke out laughing at the eagerness of two thirty-five-year-old parents to get together to trade off the body of our mate.
"The M's, Bill and Sue, had a lovely home, with a huge den, a small swimming pool, and three spacious bedrooms. The den had a wet bar, and we started off with martinis. We quickly decided that we had seen each other several times and pinned down two or three community affairs we had all attended. The atmosphere was a warm one, and I saw that Art eyed Sue's teen-age shape with actual lust. At the same time, I felt an electric thrill go over my body when Bill, a tall, graying athletic man, ogled my body with obvious admiration and desire.
"Sue broke the ice. She said, smiling, gazing into Art's eyes: "I find it hard to believe that two such handsome people as you and Joy have any sex problems, Art."
"Art leaped right in. "It's not exactly a problem, Sue. It's just that we've gone stale with each other." He looked at me and asked, "Doesn't that say it about right, Joy? Just no fire."
I nodded and smiled, feeling warm as Sue and Bill smiled at us. I felt a little uncomfortable for a little while at the way Sue eyed my body, touching me with a gesture of delight at every opportunity. But she took the edge off it when she said sincerely, "I think I can approve of my Bill having sex with such a lovely creature as you, Joy."
"Bill got to the nitty-gritty by saying: "Well, I'm new at this, but I'd like to have a good look at that lovely body of yours, Joy. How about you, Art? Sue?'
"Without any further words, we undressed there in the huge den. It was fun, taking my clothes off and having three people eye me occasionally. I noticed that Sue looked at Art with bright eyes, and Art at her as she stripped to the buff and stood there proudly, naked. She had magnificently shaped breasts, and she fondled them proudly, saying-to my surprise that we could discuss mundane subjects while naked. I never nursed Rogella, my daughter. Bill says I have the nicest breasts in the world."
Struck with the challenge of the statement, Art said proudly, "They're beautiful, but I'd have to argue that they may be only the second most beautiful pair in the world." He looked over at mine as he spoke, grinning at Bill, who was staring in stark admiration at my breasts. Both of us women had about 35-inch busts, but mine was also nicely shaped, uptilted as Sue's were, pert and youthful, in spite of the fact I'd breast-fed both my children.
"I felt a bit embarrassed at the competition, and I nodded my head toward Bill, who was beginning to show signs of a hard on. "The male equipment seems quite adequate, too," I put in, noticing that Sue's attention had been drawn to Art, who was also getting an erection.
"Bill and Sue seemed more at ease than Art and I, yet I was thrilled at the sight of all the naked bodies, and even Art's familiar body was arousing me more than it ever had. I was actually looking forward to watching him make love to Sue, and I was astounded that I felt not the slightest twinge of jealousy. She was a lovely woman, and it seemed quite proper for the four of us to be here.
"We looked at one another in comical wonder, as if each were saying: "What do we do now?'
"Bill made the first sensible suggestion. He walked to me, put his hand on my breast and said, "I've never wanted to kiss a woman's breasts in my life as badly as I want to kiss yours, Joy."
"Fitting the action to the words, he bent and took one of' my nipples in his mouth, pinching and massaging the other with his hand. I hit the top in excitement. It was marvelous, having him kiss and massage them, while Art and Sue stared, obviously aroused by the sight.
"Bill continued to suck my breast, but he stopped massaging the other and let his hand slide down to my cunt. He inserted a couple of fingers and began to manipulate my clitoris. Inside a couple of minutes I was on the verge of an orgasm.
"I looked over and saw that Art had one of the best hard ons I'd ever seen. His cock was standing straight up, almost touching his navel.
"Sue was as fascinated as Art. She walked over to him and pulled him down on a love seat, stroking his cock lovingly. As they sank into an embrace, Art's arms went about her, Sue's hand gripped his hard cock, moving up and down on it gently, and they engaged in an openmouthed, tongue-sucking kiss that sent thrills along my spine.
"Art ... my husband ... was really something else as a lover, and still I wasn't jealous, because he wasn't giving Sue any more than he always had given me. And Sue's stroking of Art's cock was no more loving or exciting than mine had been.
"They had a huge couch, and Bill picked me up and carried me to it, his hand still on my crotch. We ignored what Sue and Art were doing. I felt all atingle, like an anxious, somewhat fearful bride. I suppose I was wondering What weird form of perversion Bill wanted to perform, but I wasn't really afraid. And he simply went down on my pussy, just as Art often did. He spread my legs, using his fingers to open my cunt lips wide, digging into the soft, warm, wet walls of my cunt, while his tongue began to lick and stroke all around my clitoris.
"I was positioned on a cushion so that I could watch what he was doing, and also catch glimpses of Sue and Art across the room.
"Sue was down on her knees in front of Art, giving him a tremendous blow job. Knowing how Art loved oral sex, I didn't even have to look at the rapture on his face to know how it was thrilling him. I saw, too, that he was looking at Bill and me, and that sent an additional pang of ecstasy through my body. And Bill was doing a terrific job of getting me ready with his tongue, teeth, and fingers.
He was probing deep inside with his tongue-something Art never did, for some reason. Art always concentrated his tonguing on my clit, but Bill was going deep, catching my clit on the first part of his tongue thrusts, then touching the inner walls of my cunt with the tip of his tongue. His nose buried itself deep inside the upper folds of my cunt, until I wondered how he could breathe.
"When I had had a little come, Bill moved up on the couch from his awkward position on his knees. He shifted me so that my back and neck were leaning against the back of the couch, then he picked my ass up in his big hands and pulled me close to him. He held me with one hand while he inserted his prick into my wet slit; then he grabbed my ass in both hands and began to pump it into me.
"It was wonderful. Thrilling. The height of sexual experience. He was able to look down into my face, and I know I was gasping, looking horny, showing how much he was filling me with ecstatic sexual fulfillment. It wasn't that his cock was any bigger or longer than Art's, I am sure, but Art had never tried that position. It might sound awkward, and it must have looked awkward, with Bill standing with bent knees, holding my ass, drawing it into him with each stroke of his cock and thrust of his ass, but he was shooting that pole of his so deep Into my cunt that I imagined I could feel it touching my heart!
"It was marvelous. It caught my clit with a good stroke coming and going, and at the same time the climax of Bill's thrust touched the deep inner walls of my vagina, which, too, was something that Art seldom did.
"I paced myself, waiting for Bill, but I did have a couple of minor orgasms while he was still building to his, and when I felt the first drops of his come enter my pussy, I let everything go. By the time he had hit the middle part of his orgasm, I was coming in a series of lightning like orgasms, each one building on the last, until, when I finally collapsed, I was breathless, almost numb with the delicious feeling of having been fucked to the hilt!
"Bill rolled over so that his cock was still inside me, his hand on my breast, his teeth nipping at the skin of my shoulders and neck, and we lay in that beautiful afterglow of a good fuck and watched the bout between Sue and Art.
"They had gotten down on the floor, and Art was On top of Sue, but they were in the sixty-nine position, so that each could suck the other off. And were they ever enjoying it! Sue's head was bobbing up and down like crazy, and Art was duplicating her movements as his tongue was going deep inside her cunt and his Angers were almost tearing at the soft folds of her sleek, wet cunt.
"Bill squeezed me tenderly as we watched both of them come at about the same instant. Sue simply swallowed Art's load and kept on sucking and nibbling at his cock, and Art managed to keep his hard on. Ignoring us completely, almost as if we were not there, they swapped ends, Art climbed on Sue, put his cock inside her shiny pussy, she locked her legs about him, and they really went at it. We watched the rhythm speed up, the gasps and moans became quick and loud, and then Art's ass began to trigger machine-gun-like motions, which Sue matched with her up-thrusts.
"It was obvious to Bill and me, locked in an embrace that let his cock nestle in the crack of my ass while his hand caressed and excited my breasts, that they came together. Afterwards, they lay still, with their mouths and genitals locked tightly, for at least three minutes. It had obviously been ecstasy for both of them.
"Know something? I was happy. I was glad that all of us had had good comes. I had. I knew Bill had. And it was plain that Sue and Art had taken each other to cloud nine ... even beyond.
"When they finally broke it up and sat beside each other on the love seat, Art's hand playing with Sue's breast, and her hand playing with his soft cock, squeezing, massaging his balls with gestures of love, it seemed like a new and better world we were in.
"I felt at peace. I had thought previously that, being me, I would have to feel guilt, even shame, but I didn't. I felt just plain happy.
"It surely didn't feel wrong, and I know that none of us felt that we were breaking any laws, either man-made or God-given. I've never been greatly religious, but I do have a strong belief in God as the Creator, with reservations about the divinity, but none about the goodness, of Jesus. Of course I knew that no church would approve of what we were doing, but it didn't seem to matter much. We were completely free in a way I had never known, and that we were happy, I had no doubts.
"Bill was the first to break the spell of the afterglow of wonderful sex. He squeezed my breast affectionately, and said: "Well, darlings, what now?'
"Let's talk about it," Sue said quickly. "After all, this is new to all of us, and we all have strong feelings about it. So let's talk frankly. Let's use the words that tell what has happened to us, how we felt then, how we feel now. I'll fix us more martinis."
"She rose, bent and. kissed Art's mouth, then went to the bar and prepared martinis in a huge glass pitcher. While she did that, Art asked casually, "Was Joy good for you? As good as Sue was for me?'
"Joy is one hell of a full, wonderful, sexy woman," Bill answered. "I'd have to say that I've never had better sex, even with Sue, and she's right there to hear it. How about you?'
"I feel the same and, strangely," Art said, "I don't feel guilty about saying that Sue was as wonderful for me as Joy has ever been."
"Then we were right in putting the ad in the paper, and lucky as hell to have two people like you-wonderful people-show up to test the theory we had."
"Sue came in and set down four martinis, smiling as she said, "Do the women get a chance to comment? If so, then I agree with Bill. I've never had better fucking and sucking in my life, and that includes Bill. And I don't feel anything except-' She hesitated, looking skyward for the word, then said, "-good."
"Art raised his martini in a toast. "Let's drink to a warm, wonderful relationship, without jealousy, without recriminations, without regrets ... ever." We all drank a sip in silent contemplation of his words, and I know that they agreed with all our thoughts.
"Would it be in order to make love to our own wives, and then comment?" Bill asked. Art and I exchanged glances, and I saw a glow of pride on Sue's face as she looked at Bill.
"I think so," Art said firmly. "I'd certainly be proud to have anyone see my wife making love to me, and vice versa."
"Be a good host," Sue smiled; then, getting up from beside Art, she came over and sat at Bill's feet. She leaned over me and casually felt Bill's cock, which was semi soft now. "We'll take care of that problem, honey," Sue cooed, and at the same moment she leaned over and planted a kiss on the nipple of my right breast!
"I confess that I thrilled to it. I had never had a lesbian contact.
"Sue looked deep into my eyes as she said, "I don't blame Art for loving you. You are a lovely woman."
"Looking back, it was a significant message, but at the time, it only embarrassed me. Sue rose, looking down at me, her martini in her hand. ,'If you'll allow us the space-' she said graciously. I arose, Bill's hand lingering on the crack of my ass as I stood up, and walked over to sit beside Art.
"Sue finished her drink with one gulp, and Bill did the same. It was almost as if we were looking at two actors, too bored with their oft repeated roles to really give a good performance, and it struck me as being so typical of Art and me that I nudged him. He glanced at me and put his arm over my shoulder so his fingers could play with the nipple of my breast. He said in a whisper: "I get the message. Like you and me on many a night, right?"
Art nestled my body into his, one hand on my breast, the other on my cunt, his fingers toying with it, one of them massaging my clit as we watched Bill and Sue go to work on each other. I was thinking that it was amazing that Bill could get a good hard on so quickly after all the good sex he and I had had, but it was an admiring evaluation, not a cynical one.
"Sue got on her hands and knees on the floor, and Bill positioned himself behind her. He spread her ass cheeks with his hands and began to lick her asshole, sticking his tongue in and out as she began to gasp and move her ass in rhythm to his tongue thrusts. Then Bill reached underneath her and began to play with her clit with his fingers, all the while stroking her asshole with his tongue.
"I could tell that the action was getting to Art, because his cock, under my hand, was getting hard, and I wasn't doing anything to excite him.
"After a couple of minutes of this, Sue said, almost casually, "I like it up my ass, but Bill doesn't think it's much good. How do you two feel about it?'
"Art and I looked quickly into each other's eyes, and I guess Art felt he had to be honest.
"I want it that way, but it hurts Joy."
"Want to trade places?" Bill volunteered. "Again, Art looked at me and I nodded. Bill got up, came over, and sat beside me. Art, his cock now in a state of excitement, his eyes riveted on the tight, wrinkled brown spot that Sue was presenting, positioned himself on his hands and knees behind Sue's beautiful, exposed butt, and began to jerk his cock to get it fully hard before inserting it into Sue's attractive asshole. He spit on his hand then, rubbed the saliva over the head of his cock and, without any other preliminaries, began to jab his cock into the brown spot of Sue's ass.
"I can't speak for the others (although later, Art said it was exciting), but I began to get hot between the legs as I watched Art push in and pull out, gradually working the head of his cock deeper and deeper into Sue's asshole. I unconsciously began to stroke my clit, but Bill gently took my hand away from my cunt and substituted his own for it. He began going over my clit with one finger while two other fingers took care of the sensitive areas just to the sides of the clit. Not many men know those areas, but when the clit gets too worked up, it pulls back, and the areas to the left and right of it are the most sensitive. Bill knew it, and he worked on it.
"I watched in fascination as Sue began to move her ass in rhythm to the in-and-out motions of Art's cock within her asshole. She enjoyed it, I could see, for she had a raw, lustful look on her face, and she began to balance herself on one hand, while she used the other to play with her clit.
"Art had his hands on her hips, pulling and pushing to guide the movements, and he began to gasp for breath, sweating and moaning.
"Evidently Sue knew exactly what she was doing, because her hand motions grew faster as Art speeded up the thrusting of his cock in and out of her asshole!
"It may be hard for the average person to understand, but at that moment I was unaware of anything in the world other than my husband's happiness. I forgot the kids, myself, our world! We were just four people, so wrapped up in sexual ecstasy that nothing else mattered!
"I was so carried away that I hardly noticed that Bill had laid me back on the sofa and had inserted his cock into my cunt, from the rear. I was aware of the thrilling, filling sensation of it, yet I was too enraptured by the scene of Art ass-fucking Sue to fully appreciate the effect of Bill's cock fucking me, deep and hard and steady. I liked the way Bill was doing it to me, demanding nothing, but making me respond with all the fibers in me as his cock went in and out of my cunt. I still can't say whether it was his approach that did it, or whether the sight of Art and Sue added to it, but about the time I saw Art launch into a quick series of thrusts, gasping, so I knew he was shooting his come load up Sue's ass, I had one of the most full orgasms of my life. Bill came just about when I did, and I felt his hot come flooding my cunt. I turned my head and stuck my tongue into his mouth, feeling a flood of love, respect, admiration, desire ... whatever the words are, only not for Bill, but for Art, too.
"And that was the beginning of a year of wonderful, exciting sex with the M's. That it made Art's and my sex life better is beyond question. We had a wonderful, free relationship that is hard to describe to anyone who hasn't tried it. Of course, we were lucky, because we fit perfectly-all four personalities blended beautifully-and our sex appetites seemed to jell as if we were made for each other.
"After a series of visits during which we exchanged partners, took Polaroid pictures, held open discussions, and all that, we settled into a routine of twice-weekly sex sessions that were truly marvelous. We only hit one snag: Sue wanted to go bi-that is, she wanted Art and Bill to have homosexual sex, while she and I had lesbian sex. But both Bill and Art objected strongly. We had some serious talks and finally agreed that there would be none of that.
"But both men forgot that Sue and I had a lot of time to be together while they worked. Sue was hot for me by that time, and, to tell the truth, I was wide open to try some female sex loving.
"Sue showed up at my place one morning about ten, and she Came right to the point. When I offered her some coffee, she said quickly: "I came over for sex with you, Joy. Let's find out once and for all if it's as good as all the women's lib lesbians say it is. Why miss out? If we don't like it, we'll drop it and go back to the old way. If we do like it, it's a bonus for both of us."
"I looked at her luscious body. I had always thought, from the moment I saw her naked the first time, that she was one of the most desirable females God had ever made, and I admit that I had wondered many times what her cunt would taste like, how her nipples would fit into my mouth, although I kept reassuring myself that I was completely heterosexual, and had no lesbian inclinations. And all at once, I wanted her to suck and kiss my cunt, wanted to suck and kiss hers, and I didn't care what happened after that!
"Let's go into the bedroom," I said, my body trembling as I walked ahead of her, conscious of her eyes on my moving buttocks.
"Once in the bedroom, we didn't waste time. We both stripped quickly. I had seen her naked body a score of times, but never as a sex object for me. Now it took on a new attraction for me. I loved the way her hips curved into her thighs, the way her stomach shaped into her small-seeming cunt. I liked the way Sue had always kept her pubic hair trimmed so it was easy to see the outline of her cunt lips.
"I was ready. No doubt about it. She had picked the perfect time. I sensed somehow that Sue had had other lesbian experiences, and I had to ask her. I blurted out: "You've done this before, haven't you?'
"Sue smiled, moving close to my body so she could rub her pubic area against mine as she put her arms about me and buried her tongue in my receptive mouth. "Yes, darling," she answered. "I was supposed to become a nun. I thought you knew that. And when a hundred women and girls are cooped up, regardless of religious beliefs, there is sex. And it's good sex, darling, believe me."
"Her tongue went deep into my open mouth as our cunts rubbed against each other. I won't say it was my greatest thrill from a kiss, but it was so different from anything I had ever felt it has to rate on a par with my greatest sex kick.
"I lay down on the bed, feeling inadequate, wanting Sue to take the lead-and she did. She went, down on my pussy with fingers, teeth, tongue, and lips, and I confess that neither Art nor Bill, nor any of the boyfriends I'd ever known, had been able to open me up like Sue did. Orally, she was the greatest! I came within minutes after she first touched my cunt with her mouth and before she'd finished, I had at least four good, full orgasms!
"We had built a rapport, and when she was certain I had come several times, Sue asked calmly: "my turn?'
"I wanted to satisfy and thrill her so badly that I didn't even answer. I just moved her body so that she was on her back, her legs spread, her golden-haired cunt spread wide, and when I went in, I was wild. I bit, licked, sucked, and used my fingers, and I was exhilarated when I heard her moans of delight and looked up to see her blue eyes staring at me as I sucked her off.
"After that, we tried everything: we would use the-nipples of our breasts to stimulate the clit of the other. We used fingers, vibrators, even large sausages, to bring each other to orgasm. The strange part was, it didn't affect our heterosexual sessions at all, except to pep them up, because we gradually showed the men that we were going both ways.
"The climax came one night at our place, when Sue and I were just too hot for each other to deny it or hide it.
"We'd had our cocktails, and we were ready to pair off, or go on a four-way binge. We had experimented in the possibilities of simultaneous sex, with some sucking, others fucking, and it had worked out fine, but always with the men fucking and sucking the women, and vice versa.
"Sue and I hadn't had a chance to be with each other for over a week, however, and we were just too hot to handle.
"Sue had a lot more courage than I did. She wanted to join Women's Lib, she was the type to take over, and she did that night. She stood up, naked, lovely, half-drunk, and faced Art and Bill. She said bluntly: "Joy and I have been finding another aspect of exciting sex. Yes-' She became emboldened by my smile. "-Joy and I have been having sex with each other at both our places while you've been at work. We don't apologize. It's been wonderful, and we want you two to see what it's all about."
"And then we just went at each other.
"By that time in our relationship, Sue and I had no embarrassment with lesbian sex, but I could see that Bill and Art were apprehensive and a bit angry. However, as Sue and I sucked each other's pussy, in the sixty-nine position, the two men became fascinated. I'd heard that most men are really turned on by watching lesbians work on one another, and it sure worked for our husbands.
"When we had each come a couple of times, we got up and kissed each other with deep tongue kisses. Art was sitting in a chair and Bill on a love seat and both of them had magnificent hard ons!
"For a long moment, nobody spoke. Then Sue smiled at Bill and said, "Well?'
"I was proud of Art when he spoke. He had a silly grin on his face when he glanced at Bill and said, "Judging from our stiff cocks, I guess we found it pretty hot stuff, watching you two like that."
"That melted the tension, because Bill smiled at his wife and then me, and when he walked over and took Sue in his arms and kissed her, his tongue going deep in her mouth, I knew that the men had accepted Sue's and my lesbian setup.
"After that night, our sex with each other in the foursome was better than ever. Several times after that, the men actually asked Sue and me to make love while they watched. But neither of the men touched each other sexually, ever."
* * *
Inasmuch as statistics on swapping and swinging are available, Joy, Art, Sue, and Bill followed a somewhat typical pattern. They fit the picture of the average couples who engage in semiprivate swapping, in the way they began it, as well as in their economic and social status.
Dr. Gilbert D. Bartell had done considerable research into this phenomenon that seemed to have begun in the mid-sixties and is still growing. Writing in the June, 1972 issue of Male, Bartell revealed some interesting results of his studies. He offers this breakdown of the standard group-sex addict:
* * *
Based on our data, 83 percent of organized group sex members are middle-class White suburbanites, ranging in age from 18 to 70. The average age for men is 32, and 28 for women.
Average earnings are about $12,000 per year. Of the men, 42 percent are salesmen, with a sprinkling of lawyers, dentists, professors and engineers.
A few of the women are career women, but 78 percent are housewives who stay home and look after the children. Although they do not generally consider themselves religious, swingers frequently send their children to Sunday school.
In general, it has been found that female swingers generally dislike drugs, hippies, blacks and liberals. Most of the female swingers have few outside interests and when they begin to swing and swap, they become absorbed in it totally, developing what can be described as a condition akin to an addiction.
* * *
It is obvious from Joy I.'s account of her venture into sexual swinging that she did become almost addicted to it, and that Sue M. was a sex addict even before the married couples teamed up for group sex. Sue admittedly had had lesbian experiences, and, although Joy did not mention it, we suspect that both women had had at least a minor affair or two somewhere in their marriage.
Although Joy's account revealed sexual suffering and frustration on her part, it did not reveal much about her husband's inner needs. He, like thousands of other men who are climbing to important positions in their work, doubtlessly substituted work for sex. This is probably the case in the 70 percent of the females, cited by Dr. Bartell, who have few if any outside interests. Thus, this sexual frustration bubbles over and demands emendation in women much more than it does in men.
Another interesting theory has developed in the past year concerning causative factors in adultery or swinging. The average male engages in some form of sport, such as bowling or golfing, and diverts his sexual energies into that sport. However, millions more substitute spectator sports for their vicarious thrills, and the press and magazines have made much of the fact that millions of men have become what one reporter calls "sexual dropouts" for about 25 weekends during the football season. They stay glued to the TV, watching it steadily, and several psychiatrists feel that this has the effect of diminishing their sexual drive and desire.
There are many psychiatrists and counselors who feel that swinging can, and often does, save marriages that would otherwise end in divorce.
In his excellent work The Sexual Wilderness, author Vance Packard has this to say:
* * *
People want warmth and love in their sexual relations, and this is true of the average swapper. It probably has a profound effect on smaller groups who build a more meaningful relationship with the other couples involved, and tends to make some groups limit themselves in membership to the original members, who then frequently remain as a static group for several years.
* * *
This would seem to be true in the case we are discussing, for none of the four wanted sexual adventures with strangers. They were content to have way-out sex with people they came to have a deep affection for. Vance Packard, however, further in his book points to the fact that there are also a strong group of psychologists and sociologists who believe that swinging can only lead to what they term "sexual anarchy." Others feel that the question of benefits versus detriments to a marriage is still debatable, for, there are too few guidelines upon which to base sound, statistical conclusions.
One small faction of thinkers feels that if a marriage has been deteriorating relentlessly over a period of years, it will eventually explode, regardless of what the couple tries. They calmly view the large number of divorces that have resulted even after the couple has engaged in group sex, as inevitable merely because the couple had allowed a long period of sexual dissatisfaction to create ill-feelings and even hatred for the partner to such a degree that it could never be restored to love, or even respect or affection.
Another fact that seems to be emerging is that all married couples fight, over one thing or another, but that the root basis of all their fights is sexual dissatisfaction and frustration. Researchers such as Masters and Johnson, and the group at the Institute for Sexual Research at Indiana University find that, although the couple may actually think they are fighting about money, personal habits, religion, politics or whatever, at the bottom of their emotions is a reaction to what they consider insufficient and unsatisfactory sex.
An excellent book being recommended by many counselors for couples who are basically in love, but who are constantly quarreling, is The Intimate Enemy by George R. Bach and Peter Wyden. The premise of the book is: How to fight fair in love and marriage.
This pair of marriage counselors feel that verbal conflict is not only acceptable in a marriage, but that if it is conducted on rules of respect and fairness it can be healthy.
It is the contention of many psychiatrists that couples should delve deep into their hearts to discover just what is the basis of an argument with a mate, for often, even if a woman may gripe to her husband about being late for dinner, she is actually saying in her subconscious, " ... and you left me high and dry without an orgasm, you son of a bitch."
A final disturbing sidelight of the swinging scene is the growing number of women who are becoming bisexuals as a result of contact with lesbians and women who are already bisexual in their sex lives.
Few of the males involved in swinging groups practice homosexuality, yet at least half the women who have agreed to talk to writers and psychiatrists admit that they have become openly bisexual in their sex lives. Often, they engage in lesbian sex acts at group sessions, but most of them have lesbian affairs in their homes, while the husbands are at work. Perhaps not oddly, many swinging husbands have no objections to this, for, as it will be seen, in the final portion of Joy's account, the husband "benefits" by having two women to use for sexual enjoyment on a permanent basis, instead of just his own wife.
* * *
"After we had begun to really swing, Sue and I, I mean, we stepped out of our own group for the first time. We didn't let the men know about it at first, although I guess we both knew that they would find out sooner or later.
"We answered an ad we found in one of the papers. It said: Forming new group to teach sexual responsiveness. It stated clearly that the group would only meet during the day, and it intrigued us. Although I suspected that it would be mostly women, I was stunned to find that it was all women. When we began to talk, we found that none of the women had been lesbians before they had joined swap clubs, but that all of them had now come to need lesbian sex as much as they needed fucking from males.
"The upshot was that we formed what in essence was a lesbian swap club. That isn't the right name, however, for we were not lesbians, but bisexuals. We discovered that none of the women wanted to go completely lesbian. All wanted to keep on having sex with their husbands, and with some of the other males in their swap groups.
"The idea was there, although nobody quite put it into words, that some of the women had been having lesbian sex with one or two other women, and that they were actually getting a little bored by having the same sex partner all the time. It made me do a little thinking on the matter, and I had to admit that perhaps I was growing tired of Sue for my only daytime sex partner.
"There were twelve members when we finally formed the club, and we were invited by two women who had large homes and no children to use their homes for our meetings.
"The first one was a real thrill. Althea was wealthy and bored, and she decided to throw a poolside party for us at her place. The instructions read: no bathing suits. We all knew what that meant.
"It may be hard to believe, but the sight of eleven naked women, of all sizes and shapes, really turned me on. It was really exciting to compare the sizes and shapes of breasts, asses, and cunts, and to anticipate what it would be like to suck and kiss them, and to have some of those beautiful women make love to you!
"We all went into the pool for a while, acting like a bunch of teen-agers, playing grab-ass and feeling pussies and titties as if it were the first time for any of us. I'd say the average age of the girls was 35.
"I found myself strangely drawn to a woman named Jill, although she wasn't exactly pretty.
She had the sexiest female body I'd ever imagined, and I was flattered when she seemed to pair off with me in the pool. I liked the way she touched me and let her eyes dwell on my cunt and my breasts. She was only 22, but she had been married twice. Her second marriage was still in effect, but she told me that it was falling apart at the seams and that her husband, who was 45, just seemed to have no interest in sex any longer, after only a year of marriage.
"Althea, our hostess, had told everyone that once we broke the ice with the swim and frolic in the pool, we were on our own, free to choose a partner and use any room in the large house.
"We got out of the water, naked as the day we were born, and Jill took my hand and led me over to the pile of towels that Althea had provided. We dried each other off with slow, deliberate movements that allowed our hands to explore the feel of the other's breasts and cunts, and by the time we had finished, we were so turned on for each other that we weren't even aware of the others, who had also now paired off. Some had already disappeared, others were getting ready for some lovemaking-two couples were already engaged in kissing and fingering on the air cushions that surrounded the pool, oblivious to everything but each other's bodies.
"We used one of the large bedrooms that wasn't occupied, and I was so excited when Jill's mouth covered my own, I was trembling. Her hands were like electricity on my body, and I think I actually had a minor orgasm when she began to kiss my nipples while stroking my cunt lips.
"She must have felt the same way, because after a little feeling of each other's pussies, we assumed a sixty-nine position and began to massage, lick, and suck each other's cunts. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what made Jill's lovemaking so much more exciting than Sue's-or anyone else, for that matter-until just before I made her come.
"While nibbling and sucking my clit, she began to move her cunt with quick jerks that told me she was coming, and she mumbled over and over, "I love you, Joy!'
"As I launched into my deepest orgasm, I found myself saying into her cunt, "I love you, too, darling." And ... I meant it!
"We lay in each other's arms a long time after that,, our cunts rubbing, our breasts flattened against each other's, and we kissed tenderly, wildly, in astonishment to find that it hadn't been just words. We did love each other!
"It was a stunning realization for me, because I knew that I didn't love Art any the less, but I loved Jill with all the ardor and longing and need that I had ever felt for Art! I had liked and admired Sue, but I knew that I had never felt anything even remotely resembling the love-spiritual and emotional love-that I felt for Jill.
"We must have been on the bed for at least two hours, when Althea knocked, opened the door, and said with a happy smile, "Come on, girls. How about sharing?'
"It shocked both of us, and we looked at each other in dismay. We had lost all interest in the others. We wanted only each other.
"Let's go to my place," Jill said. I nodded and we quickly got our clothes and dressed.
"Althea was dismayed, but not angry, when we told her we were leaving. At the door, she kissed us both and said she understood, that she'd be in touch. We both knew that we would never attend another lesbian party. We had found each other, and we were enough.
"Jill had a lovely home. Her rich husband indulged her every wish-except for sexual fulfillment-and for the balance of the afternoon we just grew deeper in love with every gesture, every kiss and glance. She was a gentle, but exciting lover, and that afternoon was the first time I had a vibrator really work. In her hands, while she kissed and caressed my ass or my breasts, it was almost as good as a man's cock. But I preferred her tongue, and her lovely mouth sucking huge clumps of my quivering cunt flesh into it. I was astonished at the steadiness of my responses. I just couldn't seem to get enough of her in my mouth, or of my cunt in her mouth, and both of us constantly kept reassuring the other that we truly did love, in the conventional, deep, spiritual sense of the word, as well as in the sexual way.
"I found myself telling her, as I was leaving to go home, that I never wanted to leave her, that I truly wanted our love to find a fresh start, every day of my life.
"That night, I was bursting with desire for her, and I wanted to blurt it out to Art. I tried to analyze my two loves, and I couldn't choose or find any real difference between them.
"Sue called in the early evening, but I was in no mood for explanations to her. I told her I'd call her next day, but I knew in my heart that I'd never again have sex with her ... or with her husband.
"Art was his usual bright, happy self. He'd changed so beautifully over the past year, and I was grateful to Sue and Bill for that. It had made a different person of Art, and we were truly closer and more in love than we had ever been in our lives.
"When we went to bed, he let me know that he wanted some lovemaking. He kissed my breasts and played with my cunt; then he got down between my legs and started to suck my clit and shove his fingers inside my cunt. But I suddenly didn't want him to do that. It would spoil all the delicious things that Jill had done that afternoon. It may sound crazy, but that's how I felt at the moment.
"I pushed Art's head away and rolled away from him. I was as gentle as I could be when I said, "I don't' want that tonight, honey. I just want a plain old, deep down fucking from the man I love."
"My sincerity evidently took the sting off my refusal to have him suck my cunt, and it may have pleased him a bit to find that I still wanted his cock inside me, in spite of all the swinging we had done.
"When he put his prick inside me, he sensed that I wanted all the maleness I could get, and he gave me what I call an animalistic fuck, concentrating on plunging his cock so deep into my cunt that it made me moan with the pain/pleasure of it as it slammed against the deepest walls of my pussy;
"I had a tremendous orgasm, despite the fact that my cunt was a little sore from all the sucking and fingering I'd had from Jill. Art lay locked inside me for a few moments after we'd come, telling me how much he loved me. It was a sweet moment, and I hated to break it, but Jill was breaking into my thoughts and I just had to tell Art.
"Art, dearest," I began, "we've found something very special, these past few months. We're able to please and thrill each other, and we're able to talk honestly, and that's most important. I want you to use all the understanding you have in you, for what I have to tell you.
"I love you, Art, with all the love that any woman can give a man. I admire and respect you, and, almost as important, I like you. I like being your wife, and the mother of your children."
"I took a deep breath, then got to the heart of the matter. "Today, I met a woman called Jill. I went to bed with her, Art, and we made love violently and tenderly, and-I'm so in love with her that it hurts me to be away from her, even for a few hours."
"Art gasped and I put a hand gently over his mouth. "Hear me out. I love her, and I love you ... neither more than the other. I'm not selfish, but I can't live without both of you. Will you try to understand and work it out with me?'
"My whole life seemed to hang on how Art would answer, and I was shaking inside. He sat up and looked deep into my eyes, letting his gaze go all over my body.
"His face was soft with love as he said, "I love you so much, Joy, that I'd do anything, rather than lose you. I'd change my life to make you happy. I've already proved that. We'll work it out."
"He leaned over and kissed me with all the tenderness in him, and I fell asleep in his arms with the world all turning pink and blue.
"To make it short, within two months, Jill divorced her husband and came to live with us. None of us ever dreamed such happiness could exist, for Jill and Art get along beautifully. She actually told me that she thinks she's come to love him as much as she does me. Sexually, it's the most thrilling arrangement I'd ever imagined. It's exciting for me to watch Jill and Art making love, and sometimes both of us work on him in a variety of positions that involves fingers, mouths, asses, cunts, and cock.
"And Art still gets excited when he watches us make love to each other. It's truly a threeway love affair, and I am the happiest person in the world.
"There's only one minor problem I can seethe kids. They are getting bigger. So far, we've kept the sexual arrangement from them. They think that Jill is a young cousin of mine, and they adore her.
"One day, of course, they're bound to ask questions or to discover that the three of us share our sex lives as well as our love.
"Art thinks we should explain it to them. I'm not sure how to handle the problem when it arises, and Jill feels that we ought to consult with a child psychiatrist for advice. But whatever way it comes out, the three of us will stay together as long as love lasts, and I know it will last forever."
This seemingly bizarre sexual situation is not as unusual as most persons imagine. The menage a trois (household of three) is being practiced by both singles and married couples. It is almost always the same pattern: two women sharing one man. What is unusual in Joy's situation is the presence of children.
Although Jill's suggestion of talking with a child psychiatrist is an excellent idea, the statement made by Joy (" ... whatever way it comes out, the three of us will stay together....") casts a suggestion of fanatic determination on her part, which suggests that she is concerned more with her sex life than with the welfare of her children. As a result, the prognosis does not appear to be optimistic for the children.
CHAPTER FOUR - The New Breed
"We're from a different world, in a way. What you people think about sex and mores is not what we believe in. We think the rules should be changed and we are going about changing them-by doing! You older people have proved that you cannot legislate sex mores or demand that sex fit into a mold of outdated silliness! Look at your divorce rates. Look at the number of kids who have rebelled against you by turning homosexual! You blew it-bad! Now, we're doing something about it.
"Let me tell you how I came to feel this way. I didn't hear it from some wild college kids or other hippies! I learned firsthand what your kind of sex was all about. It's built on lies and cheating, on pretense and guilt feelings. Our kind of sex is honest and open.
"By the time I was thirteen and had begun to get a tingle between my legs when a boy felt my tits or gave me a deep kiss, I began to realize what my mother and father were doing.
"My mother was little better than a whore, picking up men at bars, taking them home ... even fucking them in cars. At the same time, my father was practically keeping another woman and her three kids, for the privilege of sneaking over to have a little ass a couple of times a week.
"I'm supposed to respect the views of a couple of sneaks like that, on anything in life, and especially about sex? You're kidding yourself. You people don't have the right to lay down sex laws for anyone but your own individual self. And it's for damned sure that you're not getting anywhere trying to tell my generation what to do in bed or out!
"Sure I'm militant. Sure I'm one of the free love bunch. What the fuck good is marriage in this fucked-up world? It's supposed to provide homes for kids. That's its only reason for being, and it fucks up bad in that department. All it teaches kids is that, for the privilege of food and clothes, you have to have your mind and soul filled with garbage about morals by a bunch of immoral, ignorant parents!
"I found out that love and sex don't have to be tied into a big package of nothing. Fucking is good, whether you're married or not, and it can be just as good with a dozen guys rotating, as with one man, whether he's your husband or not.
"In case you think I'm just mouthing what the others in my class are saying, forget it! I've been there. The marriage bit, the hippie commune bit, and the way I am now ... just playing the field, fucking or sucking whomever I want at the moment.
"To go back to the beginning for me, I gave my first fuck when I was just a few days past my birthday ... I had just turned thirteen. And take note: I didn't say I "lost my cherry." I gave it away. I wanted it busted, and I picked the guy I wanted to have my first fuck with.
"It was my uncle-my mother's older brother. He was thirty-two at the time, and he'd been fingering my pussy since I was old enough to remember. Now, how's that for a good start at believing in the establishment kind of sex? He was married and had two daughters of his own. In fact, it happened at his house while I was baby-sitting one night. He and my aunt came home from a party, loaded to the gills. She no sooner got home than she passed out cold and I had to help Dick get her into bed.
"He took off all her clothes as she lay conked out, then began to laugh in a drunken way. "No nooky for Dicky," he giggled, "unless little pretty pussy Peggy wants to try it."
"He'd always talked sexy around me, but this time he seemed to really fix on the idea. Usually, his hawk-eyed wife, Norma, kept an eye on him when he was around me, but here we were, the kids sleeping and Norma out like a light.
"He'd felt my cunt and my tits often enough to know that he could turn me on, and he came over now and put his arms around me. He was a little unsteady, but as he felt my ass and I rubbed my cunt against his cock, I could feel it begin to stand up a little.
"We went out into the living room and he took off my clothes. I knew there'd be one hell of a mess if we got caught, but in a way he deserved to have problems. And I was pretty curious by then as to what this fucking was all about and why everybody in the adult world made so much of it.
"He got his own pants and shorts off, and his cock was only half stiff. I lay down on the big couch and he came over and stood beside me, skinning back the loose flesh on his cock, trying to get it up. "How about taking it in your mouth," Dick slobbered, jerking his cock harder and harder, without it getting much more erect.
"He bent over me, holding it out, and I suddenly wanted to taste it and feel it inside my mouth. I raised myself up and took it in my mouth, sucking it and nibbling at the fat head of it with my teeth. It got hard real quick, and he began to crawl up over my face, shoving it down my throat and gagging me.
"It scared me, and I pushed him off me as hard as I could. "Fuck me if you're going to," I snapped, "don't choke me to death."
"You're a hot little fucker," Dick mumbled, flopping down on top of me, fumbling around to shove his prick up inside my cunt. I'd masturbated a lot, and when he finally got it in, it didn't hurt. It slid in pretty easily because I was juiced up. When Dick settled down to steady fucking, I began to have a whole bunch of little orgasms. He was just drunk enough that it took him a good ten minutes to come, and by that time I'd had at least five or six orgasms.
"He gave me that old guilty shit when it was over. "You wouldn't tell anybody, would you?" he whined. "We'd both be in bad trouble."
"I told him to forget it. I wasn't that proud of being fucked by my own uncle to go around bragging about it to anyone. I was a little brainwashed in those days, and I felt some of the guilt people said I should. I knew what incest was. And I felt a little guilty. I don't anymore, and I wouldn't if I'd fucked my own father. Fucking is fucking, love is love, and they have nothing to do with each other.
"After that, though, I really began to live. I began to hang around with the kids from high school, and I began to smoke some pot and take a few pills. No hard stuff, though. I've never taken the heavy stuff. I don't need it. I can get as turned on by love or pot as I want.
"It was easy to get grass. Most of the older guys had plenty, and, of course, they saw that their girls had it, too.
"By the time I was fifteen, I knew all the tricks in the book about sucking and fucking, but-you know something? Plain old fucking is still my bag. I mean, no fancy positions or any of that shit. That's for the establishment, who don't know enough about real love to make out from just the plain old fucking.
"My mother and father found out about the pot. I never did make any attempt to hide the fact I smoked up a storm, and I didn't deny it when they challenged me.
"They knew about my fucking, too. At least, they knew I wasn't a virgin, because a couple of the older guys could get birth-control pills, and my nosey mother found a whole six-months' supply of them in my dresser drawer.
"Know what their kind of parental love was like? Just a bunch of screaming lectures and punishment. They were so fucked up in their own sex life that they didn't have time to worry too much about me. They were just afraid that I'd get into trouble with the fuzz, and that would throw the spotlight on them. That was all they worried about, because when I stood up to them about the pot, they cooled it fast-especially my mother. She knew I knew all about her fucking men, and she knew I'd blast off about it if she got too mouthy with me.
"But I still left when I was fifteen. I didn't "run away," as they say. I just walked away with a guy, and there wasn't any big stink about it. Actually, I think they were both glad when I left, because they didn't have any idea where I had gone or whether I was dead or alive, and they never turned in a report to the police.
"Jack was going to junior college, but he was in a lot of trouble all the time-protest marches, sit-ins, that kind of thing. And when he was arrested on a narcotics charge, he was kicked out of school for good. I'd been out with him a lot of times. We balled real good together, and even though he used drugs he never tried to get me to. And he often settled for some pot.
"He beat the narco rap by stating that he had been smoking pot, not taking drugs, and he got probation for that. Right after that, he drove to my school one day on his motorcycle and said he was taking off for San Francisco. He wanted me to go along. It took me just five minutes to make up my mind.
"We went to my house and I just took my jeans and sweaters, tied them all up in a bundle, and took off. I took a few dollars from the family "sugar bowl," plus some I had stashed away.
"We just bummed along easy for a few days. We slept out in fields, or in deserted buildings. It was a blast. It was my first real look at California countryside, and I loved it. It was wonderful to be free-free to stop and fuck, or, free to stop and walk through woods or a patch of grass. I knew it was the life for me, and to hell with what anybody else preached.
"Jack was careful to stay away from towns where there had been rumbles between the cops and the motorcycle gangs. Jack was no Hell's Angel type. He was radical, all right, but only about busting down the laws about sex, the educational programs, all that stuff. I guess, looking back, he must have been a communist, but it didn't matter to me as long as we balled good and kept having the fun we were.
"We finally got to Frisco. Jack knew quite a few hippies and yippies there, but we moved into a big old empty factory on the outskirts of Berkeley, and Jack worked along with a lot of the college kids that were raising hell on and off campus. He got a part-time job, so he could kick in on the community food and pot supply. We lived with about twelve other guys and girls, and it was like a sex circus.
"It was there I found out that you don't have to have love or a marriage license to have real sex kicks. It was "Freesville" as far as sex went. Nobody was possessive or demanding. When you wanted to do it with someone, all you had to do was ask, and if they felt that way, you'd do it. We didn't try to own anybody else, like a lot of dating couples-and all married people do. We shared whatever we had. Our bodies, food, thoughts, pot, clothes, whatever. And we loved each other in a way that most people never do get to understand, unless they try it our way.
"I learned that sex was no big thing. It's just something that everybody has to do. It doesn't need a big bunch of bullshit before you do it. As if saying "I love you' is going to make it holy or clean, and not saying it makes it dirty and illegal. Sex is like taking a shit or eating a meal. It's necessary, and it's no big deal.
"All the guys I balled turned me on about the same when we fucked or when we sucked each other off. A cock was a cock. There was a little difference in the size, but that wasn't important, because any of them could make me have a whole string of orgasms with no trouble. And there was never any rough stuff. We respected each other's rights all the time. If I didn't feel like fucking, I just had to say so, and there were no hard feelings.
"I lived there for over three months. Then I broke my leg. We were in a protest march and when the fuzz began to use tear gas, we ran like hell. I got a whiff of the damned stuff, it half blinded me, and I fell over a low chain fence and ended up in the hospital.
"They took me to a charity place, and when I wouldn't give a name or address, they called in the juvenile authorities and I finally ended up in juvenile custody.
"Jack and a couple of the other guys came to see me while I was in the hospital, and they told me to hang tough, and when I had my chance, make a break for it.
"But it didn't work out that way. In this home they put me in, while I was still on crutches, they sent social workers in to try to talk to the kids. That's where I met Steve. He was a fresh-faced guy ... I mean, he was half-hippie, half-establishment. He wore his hair long to his shoulders, but no moustache or beard, and he dressed neat all the time.
"He was twenty-two, had just graduated from a college in the East, and this was his first job.
"I liked him a lot right away, but he was so goddamned polite and business-like that I was suspicious of him. I thought he was supposed to find out who I really was, then they'd ship me back home to my shitty parents.
"But I finally began to feel that Steve was really-interested in me as a person. He seemed to really care what was going to become of me. He talked different to me than any of the others that came to pry, and he was different from any of the guys I'd been living with. It finally dawned on me that maybe Steve was just square enough to be in love with me.
"He arranged a foster home for me. I still hadn't told anyone anything else but that my name was Peggy, and like I said, my parents hadn't made any effort to find me, or even report me missing.
"I didn't mind it too much at the foster home I was in. They had five other kids, all lots younger than me, and I sort of got a kick out of helping take care of them. The younger ones actually looked up to me and admired me, and that was a new thing for me. I actually felt protective, like a big sister-or even like a mother.
"And my leg healed slowly. Although Steve was too busy to see me often, he did manage to get out at least once a week, but always in the daytime. Because I was only sixteen, the rules said that I couldn't have dates alone with a man, and the family I lived with went strictly by the book. They weren't unkind or bossy, but they had rules that all the kids had to live by.
"It got pretty tame and boring after a while, especially when my leg was all healed and I felt like I was being cooped up.
"I guess I'd come to care quite a bit for Steve, because when I knew I had to cut out, I felt I had to tell him that I'd had it. It seemed the fair thing to do, after all he'd done to help me.
"The next time he visited, I walked outside with him to his car. He was happy to see how my leg had healed, and I saw his eyes running over my body. I had a nice shape, and it showed off well in the clothes I was wearing, and all at once I wished I could pay Steve back with a good fuck. He seemed so hungry for me, and it meant so little to me to give a guy I liked any part of me he wanted.
"I blurted out, "Steve, I'm going to leave here. I thought you'd want to know."
"He was shocked. He shot a bunch of questions at me without stopping. "Why? Where? Have you heard from your parents? Aren't you being treated well?'
"I told him that my parents were dead, and that I just had to get out of this setup. I told him it wasn't for me and I was beginning to climb the walls from boredom.
"He was studying me, listening to me carefully, and I guess he saw that I was telling the truth. He seemed to accept the fact that I had to get away, but he didn't want me to just take off, with no money, no place to go.
"He begged me to wait a little while, until he could figure something better for me. He promised he would help me, if only I'd wait a few days. He was so serious, so shook up, he forgot and took me in his arms and kissed me when I agreed to give him a chance!
"He was embarrassed, but nobody had seen us, and nothing came of it. Except that it got me thinking a lot more about Steve than I had been. Up until that point, I guess I had really looked upon Steve as a part of the establishment ... sort of a respectable big brother. But I began to feel differently. I was now looking at Steve as a man, not just a friend or a social worker.
"He came up with a plan that surprised me at first, but I guess I knew that he loved me, and it shouldn't have upset me. Steve asked me to marry him!
"I told him he was crazy. He knew I was only 16. He was just starting his first job. Imagine me pointing out to him all the reasons he wouldn't be smart to take on a wild, pot-smoking kid as his wife-a kid to whom total freedom was more important than any laws or promises.
"But he told me he didn't care about any of that. He loved me, and that was enough. He talked sensibly about me going back and finishing my schooling, and how much fun it would be learning to be a wife.
"I almost panicked and took off anyhow, the thought frightened me so much. All I could think of was my parents. I didn't want any part of that. So I said to Steve, very calmly: "I'll just live with you. Or, I'll try to get a job and I'll sleep with you anytime you want." But that didn't do any good. He acted as if I had slapped him across the mouth.
"I suppose I was tired of running, of having no anchor or goals to work for. Whatever it was, I finally agreed to marry Steve, and we didn't bother with the legal part of it. He insisted that we drive to Reno, Nevada, and we were married within twelve hours after he'd finally convinced me!
"We had rigged it to look as if I had just run away, with Steve knowing nothing about it, and that's how we started our married life. We didn't take any honeymoon. Steve had a small apartment, and we went there.
"I had told Steve that I wouldn't marry him unless he forgot about me going back to school. If I were going to be a wife, I insisted, then I would be just that-not a schoolgirl playing house. He agreed, and so I didn't have to do much but keep the house tidy and cook-something I was terrible at.
"At first, it was fun. It was something different for me-to have a man who loved me first, and wanted me sexually second. I was used to being treated as just one of the group, with no special attention and no big buildup before fucking.
"It was nice to have a man make over me, kiss my whole body as if it were something extra special, and be concerned with my having a good come, instead of being selfishly interested in only his own. For maybe a month, I guess it was good, but then I began to get bored. Bored with the routine of the apartment, and sex, and the lack of kids who wanted the same things I did and were free to go out and do them. I decided I needed some pot, some contact with my kind of world, and I went back to the old haunts where I'd stayed before.
"I didn't let Steve know that I was seeing some of my old friends, and I didn't tell them that I was now married. They accepted me back happily, and seemed disappointed when I said I couldn't stay. We smoked some marijuana, and when one of the guys asked me to ball, I did, and it was good. I couldn't help but compare it to the tame fucking I'd been getting from Steve.
"It was all so good. I felt I was back where I belonged, and I almost hated to go home. But I got some grass from the guys and made up my mind that I was going to smoke it when I wanted, and that Steve had to like it or else.
"I had a joint before he got home, and I felt pretty relaxed when he came in. But he recognized the sweetish smell of it in the apartment and he really clouded up, ready to rain on my parade. He came right up to me, shoved his face close, and stormed, "I'm not going to have you smoking marijuana, Peg! That's final! You're not some stupid hippie kid-you're my wife!'
"Yes," I snapped back, but I'm not your goddamned slave! You don't own me. You never will. Don't preach to me. You knew what I was when you coaxed me to marry you, so don't get any big ideas about changing me into one of your prissy, silly wives!'
"I came on strong and it set him back on his heels. But he slipped right back into character a moment later. He came over, looking like a whipped puppy, and put his arms around me. I held back, but he began to say how much he loved me, and how he wanted me to shed some of the harmful habits I'd picked up and grow into a fine, wonderful woman, just as he knew I really wanted to be and was, inside.
"I straightened him out fast on that point. I told him that I didn't mind the sissy parts of marriage-the cooking and cleaning-but I liked myself the way I was, and I wasn't going to change. I told him I had to have freedom, or I'd just cut out on him!
"He backed off for the time being, and when we went to bed that night, he tried to make up to me. He kissed my tits and played with my pussy until he almost drove me wild. He was like a goddamned queer, he was so goddamned careful not to use his fingernails on my pussy or his teeth on my nipples. I finally jumped up and told him what I wanted. I laid it out cold. I wanted a man who wanted a good fuck, not a pawing, weak, unexciting session with my body.
"I surprised and hurt him, and almost as if he didn't realize he was doing it, he hit me! Not a slap. He punched me in the face, several times, and when I crumpled on the bed, half-unconscious, he climbed on me, straddled my ass and began to ram his cock up my asshole! He was savage, swearing, calling me a slut, and inside a minute he had shot a load up my asshole!
"It so surprised me and turned me on that it brought me out of my stupor, and I mocked him, to show him that his beating hadn't backed me up one bit.
"At least, you're a man!' I mocked. "You've acted like a goddamned queer playing with a china doll! Fuck me some more! Fuck me as hard as you can! I like it, I like it!'
"I seemed to snap him back to reality, and instead of making him angrier it softened him up again. He began to whine in his guilt, apologizing for hitting me, saying he had been crazy, and promising that he never would again.
"I felt disgust when I saw him like that. He was too spineless to ever change me, I knew, and I sure as hell wasn't going to become like him, a soft bag of shit!
"Steve didn't say any more about the pot for several days, though I smoked it with the gang, and at home every day. He just sulked around the place and made no effort to do any kind of fucking, mild or otherwise. I was getting my kind of balling anytime I wanted it from the guys, so it didn't bother me a bit. But the goddamned monotony did. I knew I wasn't going to be able to hang on much longer with this pissy little character that called himself a husband.
"I decided to force the issue, figuring that if he threw me out he wouldn't come looking for me, whereas if I just left, he'd probably sic the cops on me and get me and all the others in trouble.
"One night, after a lousy supper I'd cooked, I calmly took out a joint and lit-up. He just looked at me, his eyes cold and hurt. I had had a couple that afternoon, and this one put the cap on for me. I got really high. I didn't care what the hell Steve did, I was floating.
"He finally jumped up and grabbed the joint and threw it into the kitchen sink. Then he dumped my purse out and threw the rest of them in the sink.
"If I smell that junk on your breath again, or find one of those weeds in my house, I'll throw your fucking little loose ass down the stairs for good!' he creamed.
"I stood up, a little hazy, but I was smiling. I tried to be extra lady-like when I said, "You won't have to, my establishment friend. I'm gone!' I grabbed my purse and walked out. I guess he thought I'd come crawling back, because he didn't come after me-not then, or ever.
"I didn't have to worry. I didn't need him. I went back with the gang and they welcomed me. I was back with my kind of people-the kind that knew what the fuck life and the living of it was all about. Fuck marriage. It was worse than the hospital and the foster home, where somebody was always making rules to bug you. I couldn't see myself throwing my life away for a silly apartment that was as bad as a prison and had more rules than a reform school. I was me! Peggy! I would always be me!"
* * *
Peggy's case was chosen not only because of her wide range of sexual experiences as a hippie type, but because her words went deep into the psychology of most girls in a similar situation. Without realizing it, she laid bare the deeper feelings and needs that motivate thousands like her.
The pattern is a simple one: the child is deprived of real love by careless or ignorant parents until she finally scorns it as something that makes one weak, as she considers the parents who withheld it to be. In the struggle to establish an identity, the hippie gravitates toward other free-thinking youths, and in an effort to cover the deep, gnawing hunger for love, the girl uses her body as a means of communication. She insists there be no love involved, that sex be treated like any other body function or necessity. Then, as in Peggy's case, she is confronted with an honest love, but having become such a stranger and even an enemy to it, she cannot cope with it. Consequently, she launches into an entirely lawless world, as Peggy did, where there is a wide choice of behavioral styles at her disposal, a noticeable absence of generally accepted guidelines, and a bewildering lack of counsel.
In The Sexual Wilderness, Vance Packard covers a point that is often overlooked in this behavioral development, by almost all groups except those based on religious concepts. Specifically, the church and the home were once the roots of the community and the family. Today, churches are empty of young people, for the most part, except for recreational activities. And an alarming drop in the enrollment in seminaries is indicative that the church will not soon again resume its role as youth counselor. As one young girl told Packard:
* * *
"There are just no norms anymore. College is a training ground for revolt; the churches still produce guilt complexes, and the family is so tangled up in fighting both, they don't have time to lay down any norms. I feel there is danger in both situations, but from my own experience, I know that the greatest danger of all is a society that has no conventional norms."
* * *
Without realizing it, Peggy and her kind are seeking reasons for their existence. They have no sound solutions of their own, and none are offered by the conventional establishment.
Dr. Robert S. De Ropp, writing in Sex Energy, points up this fact. He says:
* * *
Parents seem to be able, more and more, to shrug off their responsibility for the formless void that is our youthful society today. Their attitude is: "I tried. I failed. Where did I go wrong." This is exactly what the youth themselves are trying to discover. What is right? What is wrong? And from neither group do we hear sensible answers.
Rebellion against repressive sex laws was bound to happen, but the frightening thing about it is that it is a rebellion against a vague threat, the boundaries of which are not known to any man, because each individual wants to set the limits of his own sexual deviation.
* * *
This can be seen in Peggy's case. She feels that she is sexually free, yet, she denies others (her husband, Steve) the right to set a lower limit to his sexual activities. When she did make one attempt to taunt him into greater, rougher sexual tactics, she did it in a manner that only further alienated him.
To most youths like Peggy, sexual freedom seems simple. It means to them that they are free to perform any sexual act they choose, with whomever they choose, so long as no other person gets hurt. And there is the rub, for few acts can be performed on earth that do not affect others.
What Peggy and others are really saying is that the parents, friends, husbands, and other children involved, such as their own, or brothers and sisters, pretend, they aren't hurt or humiliated," or else pretend that they didn't even see what took place.
It is obvious from Peggy's own words, that Steve was severely hurt by her attitude during marriage, and by her simply walking out on him over the issue of sex and marihuana, both of which she considered as matters in which she alone had the say.
Even in her distorted, love-starved viewpoint, she was convinced during her early relationship with Steve that he was different, better than her other friends. She became convinced that he loved her, respected her and wanted her, although it is significant that nowhere in her account of her marriage, does she state that she felt love for him.
She calls her parents selfish, yet she emulated their attitudes exactly in her approach to marriage with Steve.
It is a difficult task to lay down sexual behavior rules for an entire society. The complex problems boil down to one main issue: what restraints can be applied that will be acceptable to both young and old, of whatever religious persuasion, and from whatever ethnic or economical background? A perplexing issue, indeed.
In Family Life and Sex Education, Esther D. Schulz and Sally R. Williams come up with what seems a sensible suggestion. Many professional students of sexual behavior agree with them. "The element of fair play is the principal and perhaps the only element that should be in a modern sex code."
This makes sense. Peggy, for example, had she shown an inclination to play fair-to give and take in her relationship with Steve-might have found that the security of his love, the sense of belonging to a community that many wives feel, would have more than compensated for his (in her estimation) weak sexual lovemaking. And had she chosen to analyze her own desires more carefully in an effort at fair play, she would have ultimately noticed that she had stated that no man really turned her on more than any other. She might have discovered that the fault lay in her own blase views on sex, love, and marriage, and eventually have come to see that the element of love can also add spice to the element of sex.
Many experts today are cautioning the sexually unchained youth that casual sex, or as some phrase it, "neat sex," the impersonal, uncommunicative kind, shrinks the soul. Sex with a history, on the other hand (a history of close, warm human relations along with sex, such as a marriage provides), requires the very involvement with another human being that many youths today think sex provides. Sex, as it affects them, is far from involvement. It is impersonal, given to one as freely as to another, in fleeting, meaningless encounters.
Other experts have stated flatly, in advising youth, that their kind of impersonal sex is no better than that provided by whores to their customers, and, in fact, is less satisfying from a sexual standpoint.
Many youths today are beginning to admit that they made the same mistake Peggy made. They are allowing sex to overwhelm all other elements in a relationship simply because they themselves make so much of the very casualness of it.
The quality of any relationship should determine its rules, according to many counselors. If sexual fulfillment comes about as the result of other successful relationships, it will be only but a part of an even more meaningful relationship.
* * *
"After a while, I began to wonder if anybody in the group even knew my name. We were like a bunch of strangers, in a way. When a guy wanted sex, it didn't seem to matter who he had it with. No guy there singled me out any more than any of the other girls. I was one of four, and yet it almost seemed as if we had to just take our turn with them. Not that I lacked for quantify-sometimes, two or three of the guys would ball you the same day.
"But I began to feel like a thing, not a person. I didn't know anything about them other than their first names, and that was all they knew about me. It got to be a weird thing, when I'd think about who I was, what I wanted, what I was getting or giving, and where I was going.
"So, one day, I quietly took my little bundle of clothes and my purse, and hit the highway. I didn't much care which direction I went, east or south. I didn't want to go north, because the cold climates weren't for this southern California girl.
"It took me two minutes to hitch a ride. An older man in the first nice car stopped and asked me how far I was going. I just answered: "To the end of the line." He said that was Los Angeles, and that was perfect for me. I had read a lot about the Sunset Strip hippies, and others who lived pretty good out in the hills of the San Fernando Valley and the Simi Valley, and that sounded like what I wanted.
"We talked a lot-or he did, asking me all kinds of questions about myself and my family. I lied a lot. I told him I was an orphan, gave him a line of bullshit about having an older brother in L.A., and said that I'd married a man and he had run off and left me. I guess he believed I was a sad case, because he told me that when we got to Los Angeles he was sure he could get me a job. He said it wouldn't be much, but that he was part owner in three drive-in restaurants, and he'd see what he could do about getting me a job as a carhop in one of them.
"The more I thought about it, the better I liked it. If the L.A. hippies were anything like the Frisco and San Bernardino ones, they hung around hamburger drive-ins like crazy. That way, I'd be able to get into a real bunch, right off the bat. And if I liked it and made some good tips, I told myself, I might even get myself a little pad and swing on my own.
"I didn't know it then, but I guess I was fed up with the roaming and the uncertainty. I'd never really had a home that was all mine, where I could make the rules and live my own life. I was sick and tired of being just a nameless little fuck that some guys could grab, screw, and not even remember next day. I wanted more than that from life.
"Old moneybags was as good as his word. He even gave me twenty bucks and told me to get a place to stay, and the square old fart never even made a pass at me! Never even put a hand on my leg. If he'd have asked, I'd have balled him in any motel along the way, especially after the job offer and the twenty. But he didn't. Some people are nuts, the way they toss dough around, but I guess if you've got it, it doesn't mean much.
"As it turned out, the joint I went to work at was nothing like I'd pictured it. Although it was a take-out joint, it was located in a quiet, residential section of Burbank-the kind of joint where a station-wagon full of kids comes in, and daddy buys them all the double burgers and malts they can hold. There wasn't a goddamned young person that wasn't with his girl that showed up.
"The only passes I got were mild ones, made by old bastards who would have fainted if I'd taken them up on it.
"All but one. This guy ate in his car every night. He was about 40, very pleasant and polite, no smart cracks about how cute my ass was, no tricks to try to look down the low-cut blouse I wore-just a nice guy.
"After a week, I got so I'd stop and gab a little with him. I found out he was divorced, and he had found that he didn't know how to look for a date anymore. He had a small apartment near where I worked, but he hated to cook, so he either ordered a meal from one of the delivery service places, like Chicken Delight, or he came over and ate in his car or at a little lunch place down the street a block or so.
"I got to enjoy seeing him look at me with that hungry look on his face, and I knew he'd never have the nerve to ask me for a date. He probably didn't think a teen-age chick would go out with him. So I opened the door.
"I casually remarked that I was new in town, and wondered if he knew a nice restaurant with some music or entertainment that he'd recommend. I added that I got so tired of eating the same old food, and that I was nuts about good lobster tails.
"He took the bait and asked me if I'd have dinner with him at a nice place up in the hills, called The Castaways. We went up there that night, and it was one of the nicest nights I've ever had. The place is high in the hills overlooking Burbank and Glendale, and looking down at the millions of lights was something else. He ordered some fancy rum drinks where two used straws to drink out of one big bowl where some baby orchids were floating around on top.
"It was all new to me. It was like a different world. It was like the Hollywood I'd seen in pictures, but which everybody said was a myth or had disappeared. I don't know if the drinks had a lot to do with it or not, but I warmed up to Douglas more by the minute. We had a delicious dinner, more drinks, and then we walked out on the big stone patios and looked at the city below us.
"It wasn't like me, but somehow, I wanted all that hazy softness to continue. I liked it. It was so peaceful, after the hectic nights with the gang in Frisco. Doug didn't seem old at all. When I felt his arm go around me and his hand go to my breast, I admit that I got a thrill. A new thrill. A feeling that at least he noticed me. He wanted to be with me, not just any female body his hand happened to fall on, like the guys in the Frisco pad had been.
"Then he kissed my ear. He didn't say a word, just kissed my ear and neck and hair. I turned my face to meet his kiss and said, Take me to your place, Doug. I want to."
"He looked at me funny, startled. "If you're thinking that you're too old for me, or I'm too young for you to mess with, forget it," I told him. "I've been married, too." I hadn't told him that before, and it seemed to please him. "I'm lonely. I need some lovemaking," I added.
"He wasted no more time. We drove to his place, a nice, man-smelling apartment, and without any big deal we both undressed and got into bed. He was just right for the mood I was in-not too quick or rough, but no namby-pamby like Steve.
"He sucked my nipples a little, then moved down and used his tongue on my pussy, and he really began to make me feel warm and ready. Not excited, exactly, but ready for him. I really wanted him, and when he stuck his nice-sized cock into my cunt, I really moved all the muscles, and we worked on each other until we hit a perfect rhythm and came at the same time. That was unusual for me. I always had a lot of little ones, then sometimes was too late to enjoy it when the guy came. But Doug was perfect for me.
"We live together now. No marriage. He's scared of it, and I am also. We don't date anyone else, but if someone came along that appealed to me, I'd ball him. Doug doesn't approve of the idea, but he's promised he'd go along with it, so long as I come back to him every time.
"That's about it. Where do I go from here? I don't have any idea. I'll never marry Doug, but as long as it stays this nice, I'll live with him forever."
* * *
That Peggy will find anything but a transient form of happiness is doubtful. She is actually not happy, only content. She may always be in that tolerable state, because she does not equate happiness with her own usefulness to society, nor even with her worth to one individual.
She lives in a world of self. The gratification of her sexual desires is her only interest. She has much to offer a man, but she refuses to tender herself in any relationship on a lasting, truly meaningful basis, where a love might grow that would one day reveal wonders in sex that she has never dreamed of.
It would be interesting to follow her career in sexual freedom and promiscuity, if only to see what happens to today's hippie, when she becomes tomorrow's adult woman. Or to see if that transition is even possible, with a background of sexual chaos such as Peggy and countless sisters have founded their lives and dreams on.
CHAPTER FIVE - The Bewildered
"It's about time that somebody is interested in the older wives. All the research seems to center on the very young, or the young marrieds. Few seem to know or care what happens to a woman of forty, no longer sexy or pretty but who still has strong sex drives and needs.
"Society seems to be oriented towards the young, but that doesn't mean they know more about or need more sex. In fact, I feel that sex can become a habit-forming thing, like smoking or drugs. I had good sex for a lot of years, and when it was cut off, I began craving it, just like a drug addict wants drugs. I'm not just a horny old bitch, looking for young studs to bring back memories of my youth. I'm a grown woman who had a lot of boyfriends before I married, with a lot of sex. Even the first few years of my marriage were good sexually.
"But I'm not pushy about anything. I mean I just can't go into a group of people and walk up to a man and ask him if he'd like to screw me. I'm actually shy, although I never play kittenish or coy once a man shows he's interested in me. I like sex too well to take any chances of losing out on it.
"But it gets rough when you get to be forty-two. I've still got a nice body, and I know all the tricks in bed, but somehow even older men seem to think that women my age are either all fucked out or aren't interested in sex anymore.
"And I'm not going back to masturbating, not even with the new vibrators they have today. I had enough of that when I was a teen-ager. In fact, I masturbated almost every day of my life from the time I was ten until I married, at age 22. Once you've had the real thing, an artificial cock doesn't do much for you.
"Let me see if I can pick a logical starting point. I was true to Al for over fifteen years of our marriage, and I suppose he was also. But about five years ago, we began to be bored with each other-not only in bed, but in every part of our life. We went through the motions, but we never talked about trying some new and exciting position. Once in a while, if I got desperate enough for some fucking, I would suck Al's prick until it got hard enough for him to put it in my pussy, but I didn't get any bang out of that because he seldom ever sucked my cunt. He did when we were first married, but he never seemed to like it or get with it. He did like to have his cock sucked, though, but not until he came in my mouth. He felt guilty about the few times he had accidentally come while I sucked him off.
"Then Al suddenly began to gamble. He'd always been a gambler-cards, football pools, shooting pool for money, and an occasional crap game at somebody's house. I've read a lot about the gambling urge, since Al became addicted to it, and I know now that he was substituting it for sex.
"He began to stay out night after night, later and later, playing poker, and it not only cut out my sex life but cut our bank account to ribbons. It got so he would tumble into bed at three or so in the morning and barely struggle out of bed at 7:30 to make it to work. Al makes good money, but he works awfully hard for it.
"It began to get bad, money-wise, and I had to take a job. I hadn't worked in over 18 years and had really lost my touch as a typist and secretary. And I found out fast that the good jobs went to the young chicks who eyed the boss and wore miniskirts.
"So I took a job as a waitress in a cocktail lounge. I did it mostly because the tips were good and I could make twice as much money as they were offering me to start out as a typist.
"But the more I made, the more Al gambled away, and the more frustrated I got-emotionally and sexually. To be blunt, I needed a damned good fucking!
"I tried to joke with some of the customers, to act like a swinger, but I didn't get many passes. I can't hide the fact that I have lines on my face and wrinkles on my neck, but the thing that bugged me was that my body, once my clothes were off, looked as good as any woman's of 21! But you have to get a man to want to take your clothes off, before you can impress him with your nice breasts and legs, your nice ass and pussy.
"The best I could do was to get an offer of a drink once in a while. No passes--just a guy being thoughtful. And I began to accept. When guys didn't offer often enough, I conned the bartenders into setting them up. Before I knew it, I needed that goddamned booze as bad as I wanted to be fucked. You don't keep boozing a secret, and I got fired.
"When Al got way over his head in gambling debts, so that his paycheck was all gone before he got it, I began to dig into the savings that I had kept in a separate' account of my own over the years. I thought it was for a nest-egg surprise in our old age. I was going to surprise Al at my thrift.
"I got so I was drinking almost two fifths of scotch a day, and even an out-of-it character like Al was bound to notice it. He asked me where I was getting the money to booze it up, when I didn't have any to help him play cards, and I tried to make him jealous enough to at least take me to bed for some sex. I told him that men bought it for me, or gave me the money to buy it.
Al just called me a cheap slut and went out and borrowed more money.
"I began to be a shrewd alcoholic. I decided I'd find some lonely men at Alcoholics Anonymous, so I joined. I played it cagey. I told them I was a widow and that I drank because I was just plain lonely. It worked.
"Ben was about my age, maybe a little older, and he was a real widower. He was a shy guy, polite, always smiling, and I knew right away that he wanted another wife. All I wanted was some sex.
"I accepted his offer to dinner, and I almost died without some booze before and after the meal, but I made it. He took me home. I knew "Al would be out until real late because it was payday and he never came home anymore when he had money in his pocket.
"I got into a nice robe that showed a lot of tit and leg and sat on the couch beside Ben. I wanted to get right to it, so I asked casually if he missed sex or cooking most, since his wife had died. He was surprised, but happily surprised. "Show me a meal that can replace good lovemaking, " he grinned back.
"I was getting hot for him-for any man, for that matter. I became serious. "I miss sex so much, Ben," I told him. "My husband was a good lover. Would you think I was cheap if I told you I want you now?'
"For an answer, he slid his hand inside my robe and began to rub my pussy. I almost went wild. When he leaned over and began to nibble at my nipple, I thought I would come right then.
"I opened his zipper and began to play with his cock. It got real hard, fast. I stripped off my robe and lay on the couch while he took off his pants and shorts. Then we went at it like the starved animals we both were! I could tell that he hadn't had any in a long time by the quick way he jabbed his cock home. I was afraid he'd come and leave me high and dry, so I slowed down the action. When I felt myself coming, I let go with everything, and when he shot his load into me, I had a come that almost made me faint, it was so wonderful!
"We went two more times after I had sucked him off enough to get it up, and after my fourth or fifth come I was dying for a belt of booze. I didn't make any excuses to him. He was washing his cock in the bathroom and I just poured myself a stiff belt. When he came out and saw me with it, he scowled and tried to take it away from me.
"I'm just starting at A. A., Ben," I said sternly. "After all, one drink instead of twenty or more a day isn't bad."
"He looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he smiled and said, "Okay, Lois. I'd be a fool to give you up now, after what you just gave me. And anytime that I can replace the booze with myself-just whistle."
"Before he left, I promised him another date after the next meeting, but I never made it. I met Marcia.
"I was drawing unemployment, getting by, by applying for waitress jobs where I knew I was too old to be hired, and got to talking to this slim, model-type woman while waiting in line for my unemployment check.
"Marcia was a man-hater. I knew it from the start by the way she made degrading remarks about several of the men in our line.
"When I got my money, she was waiting at the door for me. I don't know if she knew I was dying for a drink-it was beginning to show in my face by then-but she said, "Let's have a cocktail, honey."
"That was exactly what I had in mind, so I nodded and smiled. "Good idea. Where?'
"How about my place?" she said, smiling that sexy smile. I have to admit, I didn't know much about lesbians, and I thought she was just a woman who was alone, had problems with her men, and wanted a talk session with another woman.
"Got any scotch?'
"Whatever," she said gaily. "I'm Marcia. I've got my car in the parking lot. Shall we go in mine?" I'd been riding buses, and she smiled when I told her I needed the ride.
"She had a fancy place, all artsy-fartsy, busts, nude paintings, psychedelic art. I opened my eyes wide when I spotted two nude photographs of her in the bedroom, along with other poses she'd modeled for in swimsuits and sports outfits.
"She poured a fast and heavy drink for me, but said she didn't feel like one so early in the day. She was an interesting talker, and before I realized it I had had four healthy glasses of booze and was beginning to feel out of it.
"She told me to lie back on the couch and rest a little, and I did. I dozed off for a minute or two, and when I managed to open my eyes again, I was stark naked and Marcia was down between my legs, sucking my pussy!
"And-I came alive with a bang. I'd never had a lesbian experience in my whole life, and here this tall, luscious hunk of woman was sucking away at my cunt, sticking some fingers deep inside it and using her other hand to massage my breast!
"I grabbed her auburn hair and pulled her head closer, loving the feel of her tongue going inside my cunt, and her teeth rubbing against my throbbing clit! I think I came three times within a couple of minutes, and when she raised her mouth from my cunt and smiled at me, the only thing I was aware of was how badly I wanted to suck her cunt, to give her the same wild thrills she had given me.
"She knew how I felt, for she urged me up to my feet, then lay on the couch, her legs spread, her nipples standing up hard. I moved slowly toward that naturally red-haired slit, and buried my mouth on it. I knew instinctively where my tongue and fingers belonged, and she began to buck and writhe like crazy with a series of moans that could have been heard a block away, I thought.
"She came with a shudder, then rammed her pussy again and again against my mouth, my teeth raking her clit. Then she relaxed and lay with her eyes closed. She was still shivering a little, and then she surprised the hell out of me!
"She opened her eyes, sat up, and pushed me away violently, so I almost fell on the floor! "Okay, you butch bitch," she grated. "Get your ass out of here before my boyfriend shows up and knocks your teeth out!"
"I was half-drunk, and her words and attitude were making me even more fogged up. "What-what-?" I said stupidly.
"I need one of your kind about every couple of months!' Marcia said, her face suddenly ugly with hate. "You had your kicks, too, so get the hell out!'
"I was in a daze as I dressed and left. I didn't know if she'd been putting me on and really did need lesbian sex once in a while, or whether she was actually queer and had just been finding out if I was any good at her kind of sex.
"It was a sobering experience, and I mean that literally. I took the next two days to look at myself, without a single drink. I came to the conclusion that I was on the wrong road and it would lead me to a nuthouse, or suicide. I knew I didn't find the answer in booze, and I simply knocked it off. As quick as that. I've always been able to discipline myself when I wanted to. I just hadn't wanted to, the past many months. I had liked the escape booze gave me, because when I did some stupid thing I could blame it on the booze.
"I decided my problem was simply that I wanted to be married, but I wanted some sex and some attention and my bills paid by a man, and if Al wouldn't do it, then Al had to go. I wasn't about to waste my life working my ass off to supply Al with money to toss away.
"I faced Al with my decision. I told him he had to get out, or I would. I tried to show him that if he stayed, he'd be tossed out on the street in a month, because he wasn't paying any bills or bringing any food-in the house. I at least could work and keep my head above water.
"He cried and begged but finally agreed to get his own apartment. He promised to give me fifty a week toward my upkeep, but I guess I knew that he wouldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't even keep lunch money in his pocket. He was worse about gambling than any drinker is about booze.
"He left, and I began to look for a job again. I got a selling job, house to house, but I didn't make a dime the first week, except for expenses of three bucks a day, so I quit. That same night, Al came back, begging me to let him stay. He hadn't been able to come up with the balance of the month's rent on his two-room apartment. He'd only put a small deposit down, promising the full amount on payday, and you can guess what he did with his pay. So he was locked out, and I let him stay.
"I felt that I was weaker and more pitiful than he was. But, do you know something? I tried to get him to fuck me that night. He was so ashamed, and feeling so sorry for himself, that he slept on the couch. And I found out something that night-AJ's cock was as limp as a dishrag. I couldn't even get a tiny response from him. I had gone into the living room, naked, feeling debased, but knowing that my problem was a need of sex. I didn't care with whom, or what kind of sex. But he just stared at me sheep-eyed.
"I took off his shorts, screaming at him: "You goddamned idiot! Did you even gamble away your balls?" Then I went down on his soft, little-boy cock with all the fury I was feeling inside. I sucked it, licked it, scratched it, and bit it, but it stayed as soft as the day he was born-and about as small!
"He just lay there, as if I were whipping him-and I guess I was. He was a piece of shit, and he knew it and acted it. I guess I gave up, right then. I left him there, went into the bedroom, and masturbated the hell out of my cunt. But it was no good. I lay there in the dark wondering why I couldn't even make myself have a little orgasm, and it came to me like a cold bucket of ice water: I didn't know a man that I even wanted to fantasize was fucking me! The thought of Al being the one nauseated me. Ben? Marcia? Nothing. I felt nothing.
"I finally fell asleep, feeling like some animal in a trap, knowing that tomorrow he'll still be there, with no way out.
"Al was gone when I woke up. One thing I will say for the man, he always managed to drag himself to work.
"But I was at
THE END of my rope. I didn't know where to turn. I actually was afraid I was losing my mind and might do something to myself or to Al if I continued in this rat race. I suppose you've heard of the "Hotline' idea that a lot of big cities have? Well, I was at that point.
"I dialed the number and a young woman answered. When she asked me how she could help, I screamed, "I need a fuck so bad, with some loving along with it, that if I don't get it, I'll cut my throat!'
"Can you imagine a human being acting like that? But I'd tried the other things-booze, pickups, tricking men into bed with me. I'd even debased and degraded myself to try to get my husband-my husband of 20 years-to fuck me even if he didn't love me. Nothing had worked.
"The pause at the other end told me that the young lady was stunned at what I'd screamed. Her voice was unsteady when she stammered "Are you putting me on, lady?'
"No, I mean it!' I screeched. "Your ads say you'll help with any problem-well, that's mine!'
"There was another silence, then she said in a flustered tone, "Please wait just a moment. We can help. I'll call someone else."
"I felt stupid, standing there waiting for some voice on the phone to promise me a man who would fuck me. But I rationalized that it wasn't any more stupid than some of the other things I'd done.
"A man's voice spoke. "Are you sober, miss?" I assured him in a loud voice that I was. He replied, with suspicion and apprehension: "Will you give me your name and address, so I can send a doctor?'
"It struck me funny. They thought I was crazy. But I stopped laughing when it struck me that perhaps I was.
"Yes," I said, trying to steel myself. I gave them my name and address-even my phone number-and they said I'd be contacted within 20 minutes.
"After I hung up I almost panicked and ran, but I remembered some of the degrading things I had tried on my own to solve my sex problem, and I decided I had nothing to lose by waiting. I could always run afterward, if I decided to.
"A couple of moments later, the phone rang, and when I picked it up the soft voice of a man said, "Lois? This is Dr. F. I'm with the Mental Health Clinic locally, and I'd appreciate it if you could come to my office right away. I will see you immediately, if you'll come."
"He paused, while I thought over the import of what he'd said. They thought I was crazy. In a way, I couldn't blame them. What sane woman would call strangers and ask to be fucked? Maybe they were right, I told myself calmly. Maybe I do need attention from a psychiatrist
"I told him I'd be there in less than an hour, and he reassured me I'd made a wise decision and that he'd be expecting me.
"I got dressed, making sure I didn't over paint my face. I had decided I'd be honest in all respects with the psychiatrist.
I was just ready to leave the house when the doorbell rang. I opened it to find two policemen standing there. I sensed something was wrong by their awkward manner and their sober faces.
"Are you Mrs. Lois G.?" the older one asked.
"I nodded.
"I'm afraid we have some bad news," he said, dropping his eyes, then hurried on quickly: "Your husband has had an accident at the steel mill."
"I knew before I asked what the answer would be. "Is he dead?" I was surprised at how calm I was. Both officers nodded in unison. "Sorry, ma'am," one said.
"I just nodded and closed the door. I leaned against it, tears in my eyes. But I was astounded to realize that I was not crying because Al was dead. I was crying because I was free!
"I know it sounds cold, but I felt as if Al's body had been weighing me down and driving me insane; now, it had been removed and I could move about again.
"I didn't think about anything but that. It was at least three days later, after the funeral, that I remembered that he had some insurance. It was only ten thousand dollars, but the accidental death doubled that. His service and Social Security money almost paid for the funeral. I came out of my daze to discover that I was free to do as I wanted and that I had enough money to get hold of myself and chart a decent life course for myself.
"I suppose any woman who has gone through all I had would be able to guess what happened. When the word got around the neighborhood where we'd lived for some 15 years, I found I had more "friends" than I ever knew. Some people were wanting to help-but most of them wanted a "helping loan." They wanted me to "invest" my money.
"I spotted them all for what they were: all but Donald. He didn't know about my money, I was certain, because I met him at a local social club I had joined a couple of weeks after Al died. It was for persons over 35, and they had meetings with lunches, discussions of the problems of the lonely, and dances.
"I hadn't danced since before I met Al. He never did like to, so we just avoided it. Don was just 35, and he was a handsome man. I don't know how it all happened, but the very first night I danced with him, he asked to see me home and I let him. He was so suave, so persuasive, and sex just oozed from every pore.
"I invited him in, knowing he would make a pass because I'd felt his hard on rubbing against me when we danced. And he didn't disappoint me. He almost tore my clothes, getting at my breasts to kiss them and massage them, and I was so hot by the time he got my panties off and went down on my cunt, I was getting impatient for the feel of his hard cock inside me.
"He made me come a little by kissing my cunt, but I wanted all of him, and I pushed him away and took off the rest of my clothes.
"When he undressed, he was the handsomest man I'd ever seen! He was muscular, tanned, and had the biggest cock I'd ever even dreamed of seeing or feeling! I had to get him as excited as I was, so I just took it in my hand and began to suck it. I took it deep down my throat, getting more excited when I saw his black eyes watching every move of my mouth and my hand on his prick. He came in my mouth and I swallowed it. I just kept on sucking and nibbling so he wouldn't go soft, and soon it was hard as ever.
"He raised me up, kissing my mouth and my eyes, and laid me on the couch. He positioned me so that he was sort of kneeling between my wide-spread legs, holding my ass in his hands, lifting my cunt so it was level with his cock, and then he began to fuck me! And, oh, how he could fuck. I'd never had a man go that deep inside me before, and I think I had my first Vaginal orgasm' that time, if there is such a thing. Anyhow, I had a terrific series of orgasms, until I was weak and gasping, and Don hadn't yet come once in my cunt.
"He waited another ten minutes, kneading the soft flesh of my ass, pulling my cunt even closer to him so his cock went in deeper, until finally he began to mount his climax, and when he shot into me, I really went into a semi faint!
"He was like no other man on earth. For the first time in many, many years, I felt I could love and adore a man. He had everything I'd ever dreamed of sexually. He was my man!
"Afterward, we lay in each other's arms, naked, playing with each other's tender spots, and he told me he'd been married and divorced twice. He said both his former wives had been hare-brained schoolgirls, and that both had cheated on him from the day they got married. He told me that I had thrilled him with the kind of sexual performance he had dreamed about but never had from a woman. He told me that he needed a mature woman with common sense about marriage, fidelity, handling money-oh, he really came on strong with all the things he knew I wanted to hear.
"He stayed all night, and we fucked in several different positions. His stamina was fantastic, and when his hard on finally refused to come up again, it was the first time in my entire life that I could truly say I'd had enough sex.
"He had just come to our city a week before, and he hadn't found work as yet, so I told him he ought to stay with me until he found what he wanted. I told "him I was able to take care of any bills until he got going, and he was so grateful.
"He'd been a bartender, he told me, most of his adult life, and, within a week, he had found a nice little bar that he could buy for fifteen thousand dollars down.
"I was still in seventh heaven from his sexy body and his strong personality, I felt I was truly falling in love with him, but I wasn't foolish enough to just give him the money. I believed he could make a good living from the bar, and build it into much more than it was.
"I told him he could have the money, but-it had to be a wedding gift. Don seemed overjoyed. He told me he hadn't the courage to ask such a wonderful woman as I was to marry a footloose wanderer like him, who had already messed up two marriages.
"I tell you, life looked rosy to me. We were married within a week, and I had the sexiest lover on earth for a husband: we put the down payment on the bar, and we had a promising business going. I could settle down with a man I loved and just be the sexy, loving woman I'd always wanted to be. I could be a real wife, who would make Don so sexually fulfilled that he'd never look at another woman! Or so I thought "
* * *
Foolish as Lois T. might seem, authorities have thousands of verified cases to prove that she is quite typical of the aging, sexually deprived woman.
The woman of today is admitting that her sexual needs are as great as or greater than those of the male. Lois is a fine case in point. She had been used to having adequate, if not fulfilling, sexual relations most of her adult life, and when Al became a victim of "gambler's fever," she felt sexually starved.
This effect of gambling on the sexual drive of the male is another reason for selecting this case to study. Impotency is not uncommon in such situations, and even when the gambling husband can maintain an erection, psychiatrists believe he does this with an unconscious reluctance. He is suffering from a "death wish," which prompts him at least to debase himself, if not destroy himself. He becomes convinced that he is a loser, and he will go to extremes to prove this to himself.
The gambling syndrome has enough fascinating ingredients for a series of books on it, but we shall not dwell much on it here. Suffice it to say that it did definitely affect Lois's sexual patterns. It forced her to seek work after years of idleness during which she felt the world had more or less passed her by. It also forced her to seek out other men and to venture into a near-fatal bout with alcohol. It brought her her first lesbian experience and, eventually, it was responsible for her marrying a man much younger than herself, merely because he was sexually exciting and virile.
The pattern Lois followed in order to right her sexually ragged life is rather typical. National research shows that both she and her husband chose the most common avoidance paths taken when sexual frustration sets in.
A startling number of chronic gamblers who have come to the attention of authorities and psychiatrists, have a compounding problem of sexual rejection or frustration. An equally large percentage of women who suffer sexual frustration turn to lesbianism, alcohol, or both. That Lois followed both and found neither to be the answer to her problem is also typical.
Lois clearly fits the description provided by David Reuben in his latest book Any Woman Can! "Many girls get married in order to have sex," he says, "only to find that marriage is depriving them of sexual fulfillment."
Expanding on this subject, Reuben goes on to explain the phenomenon of what he calls being "sexually marooned." In essence: A woman gets married, anticipating sexual excitement, happiness and fulfillment. Suddenly, her husband loses interest in her sexually, for any one of a variety of reasons, and she has no recourse to sexual fulfillment except through masturbation. She is marooned, left high and dry on an asexual desert island, for she feels that she wants to be true to her husband; she does not want to have affairs with other men, nor is she in a position to, if she is economically dependent on him, or if she has small children. Yet, the sexual desires within her gnaw away at her emotions and her mentality until she becomes an emotionally unbalanced person or goes out and seeks sexual relief from other men.
We see a woman who is bewildered by her sex drive, unable to contain it or find an outlet that is compatible with her moral standards.
Lois failed to realize that the sex act always involves more than the two persons who participate in it. Society is involved, and although she made no mention of fertility on her part, we may assume that the life of an unborn, unwanted child might have been involved. Most important, Lois was flirting with mental illness, as she had at one point admitted, and she did not take into consideration the fact that her actions were further adding to the causative factors of a mental breakdown.
Lois discovered that what David Reuben states in Any Woman Can, is utterly and often bitterly true. He says:
* * *
Many women are dismayed to find that getting married isn't the final solution to their sexual problems. Unless they are constantly alert, they may be just substituting new problems for old familiar ones.
* * *
It is obvious that Reuben and other researchers are saying that much of the blame must be borne by the Loises of the world. They refuse to recognize the symptoms of a failing marriage, due to a deterioration of sex relations, and simply sit back with the same hope that it will somehow turn out well as they had when they anticipated marriage.
Unfortunately, in this case, the deep-root beginnings of Lois's relationship with her husband are not known. It is not known for certain if they were ever sexually or emotionally compatible, and this makes prognosis difficult on the part of even the most highly trained experts.
"Don was like a kid with a new toy, at first, and I was as enthusiastic as he was about the new venture. It wasn't a fancy place, but we cleared out some tables, hired a piano player, and business picked up.
"But the better the bar was doing, the more time Don spent away from me. And when he did get down to some fucking, it wasn't the same. It was like he was doing me a favor, or performing a duty. The warmth and spontaneity had gone from all of the sex acts, from sucking pussy to straight fucking, and I realized after six months that I'd been taken.
"I want to explain: I don't mean taken for money-I mean taken for my emotional and sexual self.
"I thought he was putting too many hours into the place, and I tried to help--just by being there, sometimes, and even waiting on the tables and booths. But this made Don angry, and I began to notice that the young waitress, Dolly, with the round ass and the nice legs, was getting most of Don's attention.
"Once I saw that, I began to check up. I soon found that she was getting most of his cock, also.
"You don't quite know what it does to an older wife to find that her husband is bedding a young chick. It is the equivalent of emasculating a man-cutting his balls off. It's like cutting a woman's cunt off, so all she can offer a man is a blow job-and that was about all that Don seemed to want from me, after almost a year of marriage.
"He was doing good-too good. He hired a day and a night bartender, and he became a man of leisure. I saw him only between four in the morning and noon-and then he was flat on his ass in bed, sleeping.
"Sex? I had less than I had with Al, even though I had a healthy young stud in bed beside me night after night. But he'd blown his wad with some young chick, somewhere, and there was nothing left for the "old lady." And that began to bug me. He started introducing me as "my old lady," and he would smirk when he said it, as if to say: "And I'm not kidding, either."
I began to hang around the bar. At first, I was just letting Don know I was available and lonely, and that I wanted him. But when he would disappear for two or three days at a stretch, and refuse to give me any explanation, I began to hang around the bar for another benefit-for another man.
"I had the disadvantage of being "the boss's wife," but a few did notice me. I tried to make it obvious that I would be an easy lay, a pushover, and some of the older men got the message and began to buy me drinks. I warmed up fast, and two of them began to make suggestions about going to bed with me. But they were scared of Don-'the boss'-and backed off when I let them know I was available.
"So I became "the boss." With Don gone, chasing and fucking the young stuff in the neighborhood, I had to take charge of the running of the joint, and I soon had the two young studs that tended bar jumping when I said "jump!'
"I guess I get all the sex I need, but I wonder if it's good sex. Chuck, a young guy of 22, fucks me because he needs the job. Twenty-two years old, with three kids! And I have to steal his best fucking from his wife!
"Vic is older, but he's a thief and a drinker, and he just fucks me because he's afraid I'll tell Don he steals from the till and drinks like a fish.
"And Don? What am I supposed to do about him? When he wants to, which is seldom now, he can still fuck me to heaven. He cheats, but I have a home, a business, and, on occasion, a hell of a man in bed.
"I still like and want and need sex. Lately, I seem to need it more than ever. I've thought about joining some of the swinging clubs, but I know it wouldn't help.
"I want good sex, from one man. The others are just "stand-ins," taking the place of the real thing. They just let me get my rocks off-sexual relief is all it is. It doesn't mean anything. I'm blackmailing those two young studs. They know it and they resent it. That's why neither of them can go all out with me. There's no love-not even affection or respect. It's just fucking for fucking's sake, to have an orgasm. When one of them finishes coming, he just climbs off me. He doesn't ask or care to know whether I've come or not. He's doing a service, just like he gets paid for serving drinks at the bar. He "services' the boss's wife, and probably makes smart jokes about it to knowing customers.
"When Don runs out of fresh stuff, I humiliate myself by letting him make love to me. Why not? At my age, and in my circumstances, a good fuck is a good fuck. When it comes right down to it-is love important? Does it really make a fuck more thrilling? Can a man saying, "I love you, Lois," make me come more times?
"Of course I'm cynical, but I'm still open to suggestions. Life, for me, has become a series of fucks. There is no love involved--just the gratification of my needs, and I guess that makes me no better than a bitch in heat, doesn't it?
"But I can't figure it out. I wanted marriage. I wanted sex with just one man-my husband. I'm willing and able to give a good flick or suck or even an ass-fuck to any man. So who's to blame? Am I?
"I've given up the idea of finding a man who would really love me. There isn't anything except sex these days.
"I sometimes remember my first date. This kid was 16-I was 14. He felt my tits, then my pussy, got a hard on, took my panties off, and shoved it in me. He pumped away, doing nothing for me, shot his load, panted and moaned a little, and then-when he had his pants back on, and was going out the door-lie blushed, walked back and kissed me for the first time and mumbled, "I love you, Lois."
"I think most men are like that kid-I can't even remember his name, now. They need to fuck, but they forget or never know that a female is just like a male. She needs to be fucked-and if the guy happens to mean it-she'd like a little love, too!"
* * *
It seems obvious that Lois is much too embittered by her experiences with shallow men, including two husbands, to ever be able to recognize or respond to true love. She has become sexually blase, no longer equating the sex act with any form of love, devotion, respect or even affection. It has become a biological act with her, and because it has, she attracts and unknowingly seeks men who look upon sex in the same way.
Chances are, in the estimation of several analysts, that Lois will become a "silver dollar," drifting from hand to hand until she literally wears out. Time is her great enemy. Unless she finds and actively courts a man of integrity and emotional honesty, she will become a "tramp wife." She may remain married to Don, or enter into a succession of marriages, but unless she herself feels the desire to become not just a sex partner but a wife and lover, sexual fulfillment will remain just a hazy dream.
CONCLUSION
The present work has investigated the personal lives of five different and distinct types of modern wives. Each has her own problem concerning her sexual appetites, mores, and methods, yet each is suffering from the same general problem.
That sexual boredom and frustration is at the bottom of the sexual revolution we see taking place on all sides is undeniable. We tend to believe that there are answers to the wholesale problems, but they do call for each individual to take part personally in the effort at bolstering our shaky marital and sexual fulfillment premises.
That love has been discarded as an important element in sexual delight and fulfillment is becoming more patent each day. Hedonism is rampant. Defiance of sexual laws is common. It is felt by many experts that the answer lies in men and women not flaunting the laws of man, which are ridiculous concerning sex, but in stopping the flaunting of the sexual laws that are dictated by their own bodies, their own emotions, and-most importantly-by their own reasons.
