3 is Not a Crowd (John Warren Wells on Sexual Behavior) Read online

  In the stag films, of course, anything goes. I’ve been in, I think, it’s six of them. What they call hardcore pornography. I have a print of one, I ought to run it for you sometime.

  So this is what I did. I started off living with a guy in the city and when he split I kept the place myself. Just a couple of rooms in the East Village. The rent was like thirty dollars a month. Cheap. If I went a month without working it was no big deal. I would work for a couple of days and make a couple of hundred and that would last me a long time.

  Sometimes I think that with my attitude it’s a wonder I didn’t start tricking. That I never became a whore. I did once go to bed with a man specifically for money. That was when I was living with a musician in L.A. and he said that this man had come on to him and wanted to ball me, that he would give me twenty dollars. I didn’t need the money but this man I was with, he wanted me to do it. He said he dug the whole idea, just that I should do it once. I did it to please him. It was no big deal to me one way or the other. Afterward he gave me the twenty and my man and I went right out to spend it. We spent the whole twenty on a tie for him and a scarf for me. I don’t know what happened to the scarf. I must have left it somewhere, I haven’t seen it in years.

  The party scene, the orgies, it was natural that I would start getting involved with that. I was the type of girl you could invite to an orgy and figure she would probably go along with it. Just a typical stupid cunt without a thought in her head, and that nobody had to give a thought to.

  PETER: The night we met. It was a small party, I think four couples and two extra girls. It’s so rare to find extra girls at those sets. That’s the way everybody I prefers it, but usually it winds up the other way around, with extra men. A man can’t get in without a girl—girls are called tickets in some circles—but sometimes a man will bring a girl who doesn’t know what kind of a party it’s going to be, and she leaves, and then you can’t really throw him out.

  I’m getting away from the point. Well. I went to this set, got there a little late, and I walked into the room and looked around. Things were in the undressed-but-not-balling stage. People were sitting around talking, and on one couch I saw Grace talking to a guy with a beard. She was playing with him in a sort of casual way.

  It was love at first sight.

  There is no other way to explain it. I took one look at her and it was absolute magic. I fell completely in love with her. I didn’t know the first thing about her and it couldn’t have mattered less to me. I wanted her. Not just to take to bed, but to take home and keep. She could have had a husband and ten children and it wouldn’t have mattered to me, I would have taken her away from all of them and kept her for myself. It was an immediate intense attraction wholly unlike anything I had ever experienced.

  I had never believed in this sort of thing. Not for a moment. But when it happens to you it doesn’t help much to tell yourself you don’t believe in it. It’s like not believing in the principle of the internal combustion engine and getting hit by a truck. You become a believer in a hurry.

  I went straight over to her. I paid absolutely no attention to the guy she was handling. I looked at her, and she turned from him and looked up at me, and our eyes locked together.

  GRACE: He owned me. One look, and Peter owned me.

  PETER: She let go of the bearded one and stood up. She said the bedrooms were in back. I said, “No, get your clothes on, we’ll go to my place.”

  GRACE: I had come with a fellow but I didn’t even bother to tell him I was leaving. I was like hypnotized. If Peter had told me to walk out the window I think I would have done it. Absolutely. I never felt anything like this before.

  His apartment, I had never seen anything like it. It was this place. I couldn’t believe he lived here all by himself. It’s big enough for the three of us now and he was all alone in it. And the furnishings, and the way everything went together so perfectly. And the view across the river.

  But that was just part of the setting, the magic, the whole feeling that something new was happening. It was nothing compared to Peter himself.

  I was really a person to him.

  I can’t explain this very well. I’m not good with words, sometimes I know what I mean and can’t get the words right. Other times I even have trouble figuring out what I mean, never mind finding words for it.

  PETER: We couldn’t get enough of each other. I had trouble believing what was happening, and couldn’t possibly believe it would last. I figured that I would have to screw this marvelous girl as much as I could before the thrill wore off, because I might never experience anything like this again. We fucked incessantly. After two days it became obvious that the glow was not wearing off, and I told her she was never going to leave. She said something about going back for her things. I didn’t want her to go back. I gave her money and sent her out to buy new things, then stopped her and insisted on going out with her to pick out her clothes.

  GRACE: Peter picks out all my clothes.

  PETER: For two weeks we were together constantly. I was in the habit of doing most of my work at home, so they didn’t miss me at the office, but I wasn’t doing any work during those weeks. It wasn’t just bed. We talked for hours, hours on end, talked on and on about everything.

  GRACE: No one had ever bothered to talk to me before. People would talk at me, but no one ever talked to me. I was just this stupid cunt and it never occurred to anybody that I would have anything to say worth listening to. In fact I never thought I had anything to say.

  Peter was the first person ever to take me seriously, and because of him I finally was able to take myself seriously. I really had always believed I was stupid and shallow, and during all those years I was. Peter changed me.

  PETER: Like a butterfly from its chrysalis.

  GRACE: I am by no means an intelligent person. I’m not. Peter and Wanda are both brilliant, and I can’t help feeling slightly dumb in comparison to them. But I am not as stupid as I always thought I was.

  I can’t believe it was all there inside me just waiting. It’s so hard to believe. And if I hadn’t met Peter it would have never come out.

  PETER: I hadn’t ever really talked to anyone but Wanda.

  GRACE: I never even talked to myself. Never let myself have any real thoughts. Until I met Peter.

  PETER: I married her a month after I met her. We could have gotten married sooner than that but there was never time, we were always either talking or making love. Finally we got around to getting married. A month doesn’t seem like an unduly long courtship, but in our case it seemed more like a year than a month because we were interacting so intensely in every way.

  Before we were married we talked about swinging, about whether or not we ought to continue to do this. At first we thought no, we didn’t need it. We had such a complete thing ourselves that it didn’t seem necessary.

  That’s the goddamned Protestant ethic operating, of course. No matter how liberated you think you are, old habits of thought die hard. Necessary, for Christ’s sake. None of the best things in life are really necessary. Who the hell cares if something is a necessity or not? The fact remained that swinging was something we had both always enjoyed intensely, and why on earth should we force ourselves to give up something we both enjoyed?

  GRACE: I was afraid at one point that you would want me less if you went with other girls. Or that you wouldn’t want me if I went with other men. But that was just stupid. And when we realized that what we had been thinking was stupid we made a date to party with another couple that Peter knew.

  PETER: This was before the wedding. I felt it would be worthwhile to find out how it went before going any further. It seemed obvious that we were going to resume swinging to one extent or another sooner or later, and if it was going to change our feelings about each other in any way, it seemed sensible to find this out before we were married, not after. I was confident that it wouldn’t change anything but it was only common sense to check it out.

  GRACE: It
didn’t change a thing. It got us over being anxious about the subject, that’s all. We had a good time with the other couple and then we came home and had a good time with ourselves, and nothing was changed.

  PETER: I didn’t call Wanda until after we were married. We flew down to San Juan for a week-long honeymoon, and after we were back I called Wanda in Chicago. I had been putting this off longer than I should have. Obviously I was apprehensive as to how she would take it. We had been in touch from time to time since I returned to the States, mostly over the phone because neither of us has ever been much at writing letters.

  I called her finally and told her.

  WANDA: I was very happy for him. That was my immediate reaction. Also I was happy that he had been able to find someone with whom he could have a complete relationship, not only for his sake but for my own. It seemed to mean that I had the same thing to look forward to. In other words, if he could love someone other than me, I could perhaps love someone other than him.

  I wished them well and spoke briefly with Grace and went out shopping for a wedding present. And then about ten days later a strange thing happened. I became desperately depressed. I started crying hysterically in the middle of the afternoon and had to go home from my job and take to my bed like a Victorian lady with the vapors. And for the next week I was in an amazing state. Enormous anxieties—I couldn’t cross a street without being firmly convinced that a car would careen wildly around the comer and mash me to the pavement. I worried about everything. Earthquakes, for God’s sake. I was in Chicago and I was afraid there was going to be an earthquake. This might make sense in California—everybody knows the whole place is falling into the ocean, but Chicago?

  I was by no means blind to the reason for all this. It was clear enough.

  It was Peter. He was in love and he was married and I didn’t have him any more.

  In a sense I hadn’t had him in a long time. I hadn’t had him with me. But that was just temporary, you know, and whether I knew it consciously or not I was always certain inside that sooner or later we would get back together again. And even if we were apart we had continued to belong to each other, he was still a part of me, and now he was gone and it was like losing a part of myself. He was still the only thing I had to hang on to, the only constant in my life, and now he was gone and I didn’t know how to handle it.

  I wanted to see them but I didn’t know if they would want to see me. I wasn’t sure what I should do, and I kept waiting for things to get better, and they kept getting worse instead of better.

  I couldn’t function. I quit my job and stayed in my apartment day after day. It was all I could do to force myself to go out now and then and have something to eat. I had no interest, no appetite.

  I wanted to kill myself. I had been vaguely suicidal from time to time in the past, but those occasions were always impulsive adolescent things. Now I was thinking about it, dwelling on it at great length. The main thing that stopped me, outside of that instinct for self-preservation which is what keeps us all taking one breath after another, was the thought of what this would do to Peter. If he knew my death was suicide he would inevitably blame himself for it and it would probably ruin his marriage, even his whole life. I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t louse up his life as well as taking my own.

  There’s a saying to the effect that thoughts of suicide help people get through a lot of bad nights. This was true enough in my case. I think the solemn contemplation of suicide helped me realize that what I might as well do was go on living, and I tried to do this.

  When I was in somewhat better shape, I decided to go to New York for a week and visit the two of them. I had to face them, I had to meet Grace. I didn’t know if she knew anything about me or not, the role Peter had played in my life and I in his. I also had to see how I felt about Peter now.

  GRACE: Of course I knew everything about Wanda. Except that I didn’t know how Peter felt about her.

  PETER: I didn’t know myself.

  GRACE: As far as how I felt about her, in the first place I was terrified of her. Not that she would take Peter away. I didn’t think of that very much. But I was sure that she would hate me, and if she didn’t like me I felt it might affect how Peter felt about me. And also I knew how much Peter loved her and I wanted her to like me and approve of me because she was a part of Peter’s life and I wanted to share Peter’s life completely.

  As far as how I felt about the two of them having sex together for so many years, I don’t think I thought there was anything wrong with it. I had never had any brothers or sisters and had never thought much about that kind of thing. As far as whether or not it was right or wrong, if Peter thought something was right, then it was right for me.

  I must sound pretty simple-minded when I say something like that, but it was the way I felt. It’s mostly the way I feel now. I tend to take Peter’s word for things. I know I’m not his equal in most ways, or Wanda’s equal—

  WANDA: Oh, come off it, honey. You still downgrade yourself all the time. You’ve got a good enough mind. Don’t keep putting yourself down.

  GRACE: Well, I’m the only one around here who can cook worth a damn. That ought to count for something.

  • • •

  JWW: Wanda stayed for only a week on that first trip to New York. She had wanted to stay at a hotel but Peter and Grace were both adamant in insisting she stay with them.

  The week seems to have gone rather well. Wanda was relieved to discover that she liked Grace very much and that the girl seemed to be perfect for Peter. She was also happy to find that she and Peter were still close and that the marriage did not seem to have changed his feelings for her, or hers for him.

  Sex played no part whatsoever in the week’s entertainment. It was on everyone’s mind to a considerable extent, but no one considered saying or doing anything about it. Peter and Wanda seem to have wanted each other during the week, but in a somewhat remote fashion.

  Grace liked Wanda at once and found herself more at ease with her than she had expected to be. She saw Wanda as a sort of female version of Peter and was attracted to the qualities she found so attractive in her husband.

  The visit went very well, to the relief of all three. But they were also all somewhat relieved when the week ended and Wanda returned to Chicago.

  • • •

  PETER: It was about a year before we saw Wanda again. In the meantime, our life together went along magnificently. Grace and I never stopped being good together. If anything we improved in every respect, physically and emotionally, everything. The improvement would have been more noticeable if things hadn’t been so perfect from the beginning.

  She began taking odd jobs of work from time to time. She was hesitant about this, not knowing how I would take it. She didn’t want to bring it up for that reason. God knows we didn’t need the money, but she felt she ought to be doing something now and then, contributing somehow.

  But she needed a certain amount of life apart from me, however much we had going for us together. At first she tried the usual sort of housewife busy work. She took a couple of courses at the New School. This bored her to tears. She tried painting, then took some sculpting classes. She went to concerts while I was working. She enjoyed some of this and hated some of it, but what she really wanted was now and then to do what she had done—to pose for a photographer or act in a movie.

  And I felt she ought to try it. I certainly wasn’t going to be jealous because she fucked some moron in a stag film. When we swung, which we did on the average of once every two weeks, I enjoyed watching her with other men. Jealousy is for insecure people.

  WANDA: I guess I should have been jealous then, because I was certainly insecure. I went back to Chicago convinced that all I had to do was find a man who would be for me what Grace was for Peter. Suffice it to say that I didn’t find one, although God knows I auditioned enough candidates for the role. I wound up in a very messy affair with a married man and succeeded in breaking up his home, although by th
e time things got to that stage I had already realized that he and I couldn’t possibly work together. He left his wife and children and then I broke up with him, and ultimately he came to my apartment with a gun.

  I don’t know if he intended to use it, or if he would have gone through with it, but who can say for sure? I went out through a window while he was banging on the door and used a neighbor’s phone to call the police.

  After that I felt I had to get out of Chicago. Nothing was going right and I no longer felt good about the city. I was too completely alone and at too many loose ends. I wanted to go back to New York. There didn’t seem to be any reason to stay away. I was in touch with Peter and Grace—I would call them or they would call me several times a month. I never planned on living here with them but I felt it would be good for me to be in the same city. If nothing else, it would save on the phone bills.

  They insisted I stay here at least until I could find a suitable apartment. I didn’t put up much of an argument. I always hated hotels.

  This time we were all more immediately relaxed with each other. My trip earlier had gotten us past the reunion bit and the introduction bit both at once, and now Grace and I were almost old friends. Neither of us saw the other as a threat. I settled in and started apartment hunting and began to realize how impossible the housing shortage has become around here. I was quite honestly anxious to get a place of my own, but it was impossible to find anything decent.

  PETER: I was conscious of a real yen for Wanda from the minute I picked her up at the airport. When I kissed her hello it was all I could do to keep my tongue in my own mouth.

  WANDA: I felt the same way.

  PETER: This would have disturbed me a year earlier. Now it amused me. I think that’s the best way to put it. I had come to take my own reactions to virtually all situations a good deal more casually. I enjoyed observing myself, my reactions to one thing or another.