Weird mirror, part 3

Marie's answer to my puzzlement was long and explicit.

Hey, my beautiful philosopher (and philos)....

 

Um, sweetness.

"Wait ... that was the similarity you saw?? Girlfriend 1's hand [a {female} hand on a vulva]? Sweetheart, that’s going to replay every single time there are two women in bed together"--

 

Er, yes, my love. 

 

I did notice that. 

 

Thirty-plus years ago, even.  That's why, after I failed at sex with L. (and succeeded subsequently with [my next boyfriend]), I stopped trying with women altogether.  I pretty much decided I might find women compellingly attractive, might even fall in love with one, but that if I had any hope of actually having a sexual relationship it would have to be with a man.

 

Since "look Ma, no hands" isn't exactly a desirable attitude in a hetero relationship--but it's pretty much a deal-breaker in a lesbian one. 

 

A hand on a vulva, particularly a woman's hand on a vulva, was a trigger that made me freeze up, sexually.  For decades.  

 

I knew that before.  But, huh, I never realized before, how much I gave in to despair at that young an age.  

 

I mean, when I failed with you I decided I couldn't have sex at all until/unless I'd resolved my issues about being molested.  Which therapy hopefully would do, but I didn't have time for intensive therapy until I was out of college.   So I put sex on hold until after I graduated and was in therapy.

 

And then, yes, L. was the first attempt after that, and then L & D.

 

But when I failed with L... I was in therapy.  But when I panicked once in bed with her, I didn't decide, "Therapy hasn't worked fully yet, but give it time."  

 

I think now that I decided not to try any more for a full healing, and just to try to heal enough to make it through the motions of anything that could be considered "sex."

 

So when, with [my next boyfriend], I successfully took his penis in my vagina (and noticed! and accepted the fact!) I essentially said, okay, done.  I'm cured! 

 

And the fact that I continued to be unable to come, and continued to react to a hand on my vulva the same way I did the first time I felt it (freezing in terror), well, so what. 

 

I could screw a man; what more did I need?

 

Huh again.  That's also another (completely independent) reason for me to have given up academe.  Because the areas I was most interested in about then were Women's Studies-- feminist approaches to literature/philosophy/sociology/history.  But the cutting-edge work I was reading was being done by lesbian-feminists, and I couldn't ever be one.  But I could program computers....

 

Okay, back to your story about Girlfriend 1.

 

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but inadvertent flattery is even more sincere.

 

A measure of how much I've healed in the last two years is that I didn't notice until the next day that "female hand stroking vulva" was the very centerpiece of the story which you recounted and which I found explicitly (and extremely) exciting.  

 

But.  Let's try for a few more points of similarity, shall we, my love?

 

First off, as you chose to recounted the story, your presence might have been negligible.  Possibly a catalyst, possibly an accelerator, possibly null.  And you didn't at all dwell upon your own sexual reaction, though one might infer it (I imagine I could with some accuracy!--did I mention that the story is hot? I should imagine, I sincerely hope, that you found it hotter to observe than to recount....) 

 

So.  Stripping the husband ruthlessly out of your story, we have:  

 

An experienced woman in her sexual prime and a clueless virgin. 

 

(Mom would have been 33 the winter that I was twelve.) 

 

One is in bed, blamelessly.  The other enters the bedroom, with (consciously at least) innocent intentions.  She sits down on the edge of the bed, and starts caressing the other.

 

In the course of the (initially innocent) caresses, the experienced woman becomes overtly and obviously (obviously at the time to any experienced observer; perhaps only in retrospect to the virgin) aroused. 

 

(So eventually does the virgin, ditto.)  

 

The bedcovers are eventually pushed aside.  A hand is introduced under the chaste nightgown, and starts stroking a thigh.  And moves up, and up, despite at least one token protest, until it's rubbing the reclining figure's vulva.

 

And the stroking hand goes on. 

 

It doesn't stop.

 

*

 

Um, Hosea my love, exactly what differences do you see between your story and mine?

 

Or maybe I just had never quite given you a full, detailed, graphic account of my molestation...?

 

I've speculated for decades that part of my problem dealing with my molestation might have been that I might have been physically aroused at the time, and couldn't  deal with that fact.  (Since I felt/believed that being aroused would give permission to the event.)

 

Now, what you've just given me...   

 

When Mom molested me, it was a profound violation of my trust in her. It poisoned our relationship.  And it was absolutely inappropriate between a mother and her daughter, in any culture I've ever heard of.  Taboo.  

 

There are strong relationships that should be sexual, and strong relationships that shouldn't.  

 

But what actually happened, physically....  

 

Ever since it happened, my thoughts about sex have been influenced by my first sexual experience.  As anyone's would be. 

 

Naturally.

 

But I've been unhappy about this obvious influence, ever since I first registered it was in operation, since my first sexual experience was Dead Wrong.  As wrong as anything well could be.

 

The wrong gender, rape (nonconsensual assault), inflicted on a pre-pubescent (a child), by someone trusted, by a parent, by the mother.

 

If there's any taboo (or even warning flag!) of our culture that Mom DIDN'T violate when she violated me sexually, let me know.

 

But.

 

If you strip off all the violations, all the things that should and do make any right-thinking person recoil in horror at the very thought of what mom did to me:

 

If you recast the story without all the taboo-violations, if you rewrite it to leave all of them out....

 

It's hot.  

 

Legitimately.

 

Which, my love, makes it legitimate on my part that I should, still, respond sexually to the memory, or to stimuli that evoke that memory.

 

Gods, what a gift you've given me!

 

I still react sexually to my first sexual stimulus because it was a legitimately-arousing sexual stimulus!  (It's not wrong of me to do so; my feelings, if I admit them fully, don't constitute permission to rape another child....)  

 

 

Your reeling but much happier

Marie

 

Weird mirror, part 2

My answer was very brief.

Wait ... that was the similarity you saw?? Girlfriend 1’s hand? Sweetheart, that’s going to replay every single time there are two women in bed together — so it’s strange to think of that as the critical variable. Age, agency, consent, ... those are variables I might have imagined. The hand by itself? Not so much.

Sorry, this is quick and off the cuff.... We’ll discuss at greater length later. But I’m still a bit puzzled....

Love you,

Your Hosea

Weird mirror, part 1 (WAS: Uno, dos, tres, ... part 7)

Marie's next installment went in a different direction.

Hey, sweetness!  

 

Very weird reaction last night.  I'd gone straight to bed after reading your email thinking I'd need to spend an hour or so playing with my vibrator.  (Do you note I found parts of your email extremely stimulating?)  But, instead, I felt ill.  And it was EXACTLY the way I'd felt much of the winter I was in 8th grade, the times when I'd come home from school and go up to my bedroom and either masturbate or try not to (and think of Mom, or try not to).  I was cold overall, and couldn't get warm, and my hands and feet were icy while my face was burning.  So I felt that way last night--I cranked my heat up to 75, which is just unheard of--and I couldn't figure out if I was really physically ill (possible, because I'd been sneezing some during the day, so a virus was an option)--or if how I felt was, and had always been, psychosomatic.  Still not sure, but I feel better but a bit backachy now.  

 

Huh.  I wonder--hot flashes, backaches.  I wonder if a sudden surge of hormones could be causing it.   

 

(Back after browsing some things on the internet.)

 

Huh again.  Apparently restricted blood flow to the hands and feet is a fairly common response in women/girls to progesterone spiking.  As are skin problems (and I've developed a boil since yesterday).  And both are also associated with stress, so maybe it's a combination of stress and sexual hormones surging...?

 

Because I realized only this morning (okay, I can be slow) that your story about Girlfriend 1 was not only extremely arousing to me.  It also bore major points of resemblance to my incident with mom.  But I only noticed that this morning, which is a testament to your powers as an erotic writer, my love.

 

So it would make sense that I might revisit simultaneously being aroused and being stressed about it.  

 

I really, really hate that I have to leave for work in half an hour.  I would love to explore this a bit---specifically, try masturbating wildly and see what physical symptoms I can induce in myself on the side.  And... what you've been teaching me about intense sensation and pleasure, my love;  if I were experiencing the intensely cold hands and feet and had carried through masturbating instead of going, oh, I'm not feeling well, I'd better crank up the heat and try to sleep instead, would that be a rewarding experience?

 

And I should pay attention--if hormone surges have physical side effects, then these become something to expect instead of worry about....

 

It also makes sense that I'd notice this masturbating rather than with you (besides the side of possible stress); kind of how I was noticing the other day that I'm not vocal when I'm by myself.  It's different with a partner, and one of the differences is that there's nothing to distract my attention along the way.  I mean, if my feet started getting cold while you were fucking me, I doubt I'd notice, and if I did I wouldn't care....  (if my feet got cold enough, of course, you might!)

 

More later, beloved!

 

Your Marie

 

 

She followed this, a couple hours later, with a short letter that clarified just a bit.

 

 

Actually, thinking about it, love, in a weird way your story is a distorted (and adult and consensual) mirror of mine.  Leaving out your contribution, of course, which seems mostly to have been moving matters along to their foregone conclusion.  And with the roles reversed, which happens in mirrors....

Which makes listening to your story and accepting its effect on me, really, a very good thing for me.

More later!!!

Love you,

Your Marie

Uno, dos, tres, ... part 6

My next installment was somewhat longer and a bit steamier.

Good morning, my love!

It’s amazing how much laundry I’d built up. No choice but to wash it today. So now I have half an hour to write you, while the machines run. I also really need a haircut.

[Two memos added much later. First, this took longer than half an hour. Second, this whole email comes with a serious NSFW warning. If you are reading it at work now, just close the email and save it for later.]

First, to fold your other email into this one, yes Girlfriend 1 actually thanked me timidly, early on, for sharing Wife with her. Now after a year or two had passed (Wife said that) she was encouraging Wife to leave our town and me, and to come to the Bay to live with her. But I chalk that up to passion, plus two years at college listening to other people’s coming-out stories and weaving a romantic fantasy of her own. Perhaps I flatter myself and she actually thought me an ogre, who knows? I tried to be a gentleman, but Eros can distort the best of intentions all to hell. The only way to know for sure would be to ask her, I guess, which would first mean finding her .... Maybe not my most practical suggestion.

I don’t know if Girlfriend 1 learned anything from watching me about what to do in bed with Wife. I don’t remember overtly teaching her anything. On the other hand, I do remember that first morning, after we had all been cuddling for a while and it was getting pretty steamy but nobody was admitting it yet, I surreptitiously slid my hand under the covers and up Wife’s nightshirt to verify that she was, as I guessed, wet. She was sopping. So then in a few minutes, as slowly and gently as I could, I pulled back the covers and then took Girlfriend 1’s hand and guided it up Wife’s thigh. There was not the slightest resistance from Girlfriend 1, which told me loud and clear that this was fine with her and she had only been waiting for permission. And when I got her hand all the way up I pushed her fingers into Wife’s squishy-soggy vulva. Wife giggled nervously and asked, “Are you shocked?” I don’t remember any answer from Girlfriend 1; but when I removed my hand, she didn’t remove hers.

Afterwards in private Wife berated me for pushing things to become sexual so fast. But I would have sworn — and would still swear in court today — that all I was doing was to make open what each of us already really, really wanted. (Feel free to add your favorite joke here using the phrase “make open”.) 

Here’s the TLP link. It’s clear that he is thinking specifically of MFF threesomes; also that he assumed his archetypal reader is a guy. Most of the article is about something else, or rather a hundred things (as is typical for TLP). https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/06/amy_schumer_offers_you_a_look.html

Hot and also very tender ... yes, that’s an excellent description of the Girlfriend 1 Story. Of course it had its sad parts too, and of course it ended... in fact I think it ended with Girlfriend 1 not wanting to see Wife any more ever again, though that might be creative embellishment by my subconscious. But “hot and very tender” is how I remember it in a nutshell.

Thank you for clarifying that by “jealous” you meant “envious”. I get it now. And yes, that probably would have suited you well. (One of Wife’s reasons for repeatedly pushing me away from Girlfriend 1 was, “She’s young and virginal, she needs to go slower” — where slower seemed to mean “me but not you” because it never changed over years. And slower would have suited you just fine ... as would the sight of L coming to your rescue, I imagine.) I will add that from the guy’s point of view that configuration is less than totally satisfactory. But that wasn’t the question.

But also, ... that really was early! If it was before [the boyfriend you mentioned], ... um, gosh, had you been in bed with anyone before L and after me? Because going straight from our time in bed to something as complex as another woman and then a threesome ... oh, my sweet, innocent little lamb. Oh heavens!

May I suggest (as you already know) that you really got things out of order in the early years of your sexual history? Wouldn’t it be fascinating to think what changes one could make with the ability to send what you know now back in time? (I guarantee my undergraduate years would change a lot if I could do that!)

Interesting that you’ve assumed that any Third Person would have to be a woman. Now of course I’d be thrilled with a woman, don’t get me wrong. I’ve always loved women. But I recognize that for you the stakes would be a lot higher with a woman. I suggest that three criteria, at a minimum, would have to be met.

First, she would have to be someone you trusted. 

Second, she would have to be someone you lusted after. “Finding her attractive” would not be enough, because it can mean so many things. I mean a woman who made your heart beat faster, and your nipples stand erect straining against your T-shirt.

Third — and maybe this is a corollary of the second — she would have to be someone whose enthusiasm you found urgently and overpoweringly contagious in case I had occasion to play her like a violin. The point here is that you’d have less chance to feel jealous if you were also feeling really horny. Or rather, more exactly, the jealousy and insecurity would generate emotional fuel that would be taken over by the overpowering lust ... so that you would feel every spasm vicariously, voraciously, and so that when it was your turn right after you would launch into orbit.

You could hold her or even kiss her while I was attending to her other end, if it would help the contagion. I don’t need a lot of room in which to work. 

I think these criteria are not impossible, but they certainly set the bar very high. On the other hand, they might encourage you to keep your eyes open.

Ooh, ooh — apropos of very little, but I had an idea at the laundromat. Let me pass this on to you as, ... umm, as a compelling image or storyline. Let me know if it shows promise.

You remember that man with the nefarious plan to twist a woman’s feelings by subjecting her to inescapable ecstasy? What would it be like if you had a job as his lab assistant, and he assigned you the task of running the machinery, or administering the medicine, or whatever it was? “You’re a woman, so you’ll know exactly where to hook up the electrodes to have the most devastating impact.” In this story you took the job in all innocence — and let’s assume that you really needed the job so you couldn’t afford to walk out when you learned of his darker plans. But now he’s making you administer the treatment to his subject or even subjects — not just to attach the electrodes or inject her with the serum and then walk away, but to stay there for the whole operation: twist the dials if it’s a machine, closely monitor her reactions to the medicine if it’s a serum, jot down on a clipboard exactly what she does and exactly when she does it, all the way through to the end. You’d have to pay close attention throughout. You couldn’t let anything go unnoticed out of delicacy because “We’re all scientists here.” You’d have to stick with the operation straight through to the end. And what would that be like? How dispassionate could you remain in this job that demands total passionlessness, while the subject(s) is/are experiencing limitless passion?

Of course the spin that it adds to the normal story is the change in your role. You still have no real agency — you need the job and so you have to do whatever he says — and yet you are at the more operational end, rather than the victim. Let me know what you think.

Or maybe you thought up this variant years ago, and were just too embarrassed to say anything.

Ahem. Where was I?

Oh right. Threesomes. 

On the other hand, looking at the option where the Other Person is a man ... I’m surprised that never consciously occurred to you. I distinctly remember more than once whispering exactly that fantasy into your ears while you were giddy and incoherent. So it’s funny that you never remembered it for private use later — that’s certainly how I hoped you’d use it! Filling out your repertoire of fantasies was part of my motivation, along with just looking for sounds to accompany your sensations and thinking you might have gotten bored of growls or of “Yes, yes, more, more.” It gives me a way to fuck you even when we are apart.

Anyway, yes I assume you could find a Second Man very agreeable. And that configuration takes advantage of women’s naturally greater endurance — not just for any physical exercise but specifically for sex. Once a guy has come, he’s going to be limp for a while in the best of cases. But at the same time that he’s (temporarily) losing interest, he has just made the girl’s insides even wetter, and she’s usually perfectly ready to keep going. If both men are young and energetic, the first one might even recover in only a little more time than it takes the second one to come in his turn, which means the party can go on (alternating men) quite a while. Once — only once, I’m sorry to say — Wife and Boyfriend 1 and I spent a very agreeable Saturday that way. We needed slightly longer to recover than the other guy took, so we used her vibrator in between. Pity I’m so much older now ....

But look for a guy that I can talk to and make friends with, if possible. Or, ... well, ... I always wanted that in the past, partly because it was so very hard for me to talk about sex and I wanted to be able to talk with the other guy about what we were doing to/for Wife. Also I wanted to be friends rather than rivals. But I can talk about sex better now than I could back then, and I’m less worried about rivalry. In any event it would be nice if he were a good guy. Fortunately it is likely that any guy who met enough of your criteria would meet a lot of mine.

Now I’m going to go get that haircut.


Loving you ever, with body and heart and mind and spirit,

Your Hosea

Uno, dos, tres, ... part 5

Marie's reply was as follows:

Hey sweetness!  Thanks so much for the long, meaty, reply; yes, I think that answers my immediate questions (no guarantees, obviously, that I won't come up with more at some time in the future....  but probably not tonight).

 

"It just happened"???  Definitely not something I'd say about mine!  (Hope that doesn't make me not-a-girl--checks--nah, I'm safe!  Whew!)  And not something I'd want to say with any conviction if I ever do it again.  But it did make me laugh a bit.

 

Wow, that description of how it started with Girlfriend 1....  Um!!!!  Even decades later, it sounds hot! 

 

And ... very tender. 

 

On your side, absolutely, but it sounds like maybe on all sides.  I like that.  Another modification to my more uncharitable recent impressions of Wife.

 

But yeah, I can see if it started that way Wife might have found it hard to break precedent, especially when you didn't want to and the apartment was small.

 

I really miscommunicated about my threesome and what I was feeling, though.  Sorry about that! 

 

As to when it happened:  I rounded up a year or so.  Winter of 1983/4, I think.  DEFINITELY not a decade later.

 

Goodness.  After Thanksgiving, but before spring, so coming up on the anniversary right quick, I think.  Maybe over Christmas?  Well before [another boyfriend] on my side, and before [another boyfriend] on hers.

 

Jealousy.... maybe I mean envy?  I meant that I had just recognized (this morning, actually, after thinking about it overnight) that some of my self-righteous disapproval of the unevenness of your threesome with Girlfriend 1 (and BF1 & BF4), my disapproval that you and Girlfriend 1 weren't also touching/fucking each other because threesomes are supposed to be equal (says who?  Says my principles, because rigid equality is necessary...)  covered up that I was jealous of Girlfriend 1 for her position of being in bed with the woman she was in love with and that woman's established male lover, and not expected to put out for the guy, and able to watch while he pleasured her.  And, if Girlfriend 1 chose, to touch her but not him.  

 

Because that's what I had really wanted:  not to fuck D.  (well, there was no penetration anyhow because he was sensitive to my being not ready for that), not to touch him, not to be touched by him.  To watch him touch and fuck her, and maybe to touch her a little myself.  And maybe be touched by her a little.  But mostly I wanted to watch her be given pleasure by him.  Enjoy seeing her come without any responsibility for having to make it happen myself.  And without either of them having an expectation of my coming, or experiencing/expressing visible pleasure myself.  No performance pressures at ALL on me, in any direction. 

 

Really, just to be a voyeuse, with permission to touch if I chose.  That's what I really wanted.  

 

But I didn't ask for that.  I didn't even admit to myself that that was really what I wanted (though, it totally makes sense that I WOULD want that, given my insecurities and the way I had frozen when I'd tried with L. alone, and that I was a near-virgin). 

 

(Did Girlfriend 1 use you shamelessly, my love, to show her how to delight Wife?  I'm sure you were quite amenable to being so used.....)  

 

But, see, I thought then that agreeing to a threesome meant I was automatically agreeing to touch and be touched by both of them; because I thought that's how a threesome was "supposed" to work.    

 

So I didn't ask for what I wanted, and I found myself in bed with two people who expected me to participate actively with both of them, and it became clear that D. really wanted to engage with me more than with L. that night (well, I was the one he didn't have access to otherwise, and I was cute enough....)  And so I was self-conscious that I wasn't doing enough for either of them, and self-conscious that I wasn't enjoying enough what either of them were trying to do with me. 

 

(That is, I was basically fatally self-conscious whenever either of them paid me any attention at all.... )  

 

Performance anxiety is really the key here, I think, love.  I felt inadequate about not being able to give pleasure; I felt inadequate about not being able to receive pleasure.  Being the vertex would have been terrifying, and I was closer to that than I wanted that night.  

 

Being in bed with one person put too much attention on me, on what I could give and what I could feel; my hope, unadmitted and unrealized, is that with two other people there I could fade to the sidelines without them noticing.

 

And, y'know, I maybe could have.  If I'd actually told either of them, or better yet both of them, that that's what I really wanted.  "Would it be okay if I mostly just watched?"  Like they would have said, "No!"  

 

Now I just feel silly.  Oh, well.  

 

Isn't it wonderful that one does learn to communicate better with age?  TOTALLY makes up for any loss of libido, in my opinion. 

 

And I didn't have to be jealous of L. with D., or anyone, because I had the distinction of being the only woman, she said, she'd ever even thought about wanting.  A man couldn't threaten that; we wouldn't be in competition....  (So long as I didn't insist on being her only, on her giving up her male lovers, and I never was stupid enough to even consider that.)

 

Huh.  Just realized; thinking about you and a possible threesome, I've been assuming it would have to be another woman so you could get something out of it, my love.  But I'd feel threatened by another woman, and I wouldn't if I were in bed with you and another man.  For exactly the same reason as with L.--there'd be no real competition for my place in the ecology....

 

Have you read the Spider Robinson Callahan Crosstime Saloon stories?  Or, more particularly, the part of that series set in Lady Sally's brothel?  There's a bit in one story I was thinking of today, about a married couple who comes in once a month or so, and she fucks all comers while he watches until she collapses in exhaustion....  

 

Does that answer your immediate questions, my dearest?

 

 

Your Marie

 

 

And then, a few minutes later, she sent me a short follow-up question.

 

 

Huh.  Girlfriend 1.  Just thought of something else, my love.  From her perspective, you were sharing your wife with her.  When you didn't have to.  She probably believed (possibly correctly) that if you'd actually put your foot down, Wife would have dumped her in a moment.  

 

So she would have had charitable thoughts for you, at least.

 

Or am I completely off base with that, my love?

 

 

Your Marie

Uno, dos, tres, ... part 4

And I in turn replied like this:

“Weirded out by what you were feeling and saying”? Well yes, it is unconventional territory. That doesn’t mean it has to stay weird. Eating snails sounds weird until you spell it escargot.

But let me ask: did your final letter from this morning include all the weird stuff, or is some of it still shoved under the bed?

Also, “35 years ago”? As in 1982? I knew it was a long time but I was guessing close to a decade later. Oops. But even so 1982 sounds really early.

So, you ask a bunch of questions and then you say things that make me want to ask you questions in turn. Which do I address first? I suppose I’ll try answering your questions, pretty much in the order you ask them.

Why did Wife keep replicating the threesome configuration if she didn’t like it? The first one just kinda happened, and I think she hoped that it would keep each of us (Boyfriend 1 and me) from being jealous of the other. And it helped but it didn’t really work. Also it is possible that she thought, “Oh wow, this is cool. I’ve never done this before,” kind of like you saying it’s good to be able to look back on something exotic in your misspent youth. (BTW, The Last Psychiatrist has a great bit on the phrase “it just happened”. He says that girls always describe threesomes this way, and guys never. He says the only times a guy will say “I dunno, it just happened” are if he’s talking to his girlfriend and just cheated on her, or if he’s talking to the police and holding a head.)

With Girlfriend 1, ... it’s hard to remember for sure this far back, but I think that may have been how she first got Girlfriend 1 into bed. Wait, let me explain. That is, Girlfriend 1 had been in love with Wife while her student; after graduation, Wife invited her to visit our apartment for a weekend; Girlfriend 1 slept on the sofa but came in to say Hi one morning, sat on the bed and started to caress Wife’s hair, and it went from there. (I am certain I have telescoped the real course of events by a whole huge lot.) After that, my sense is that Wife didn’t really want Girlfriend 1 and me in the same bed; but a precedent had been set, and of course I wanted Girlfriend 1 there (hope springs eternal), and it was a small apartment. I don’t know what Girlfriend 1’s own preferences were. (Wife told me plenty about what Girlfriend 1 allegedly wanted, but I no longer trust anything she said on that score, though I did believe it all at the time.) I do know Girlfriend 1 and I exchanged Christmas presents for a couple of years. I have at least two books that were gifts from her. So if she wanted me to outright vanish she hid it well. That still leaves a lot of other choices. It is likely that she didn’t want sex with me, though I do not guarantee that she would have been forever unpersuadable. In the event, though, it never happened.

Boyfriend 4 was more than a decade later, and he and Wife talked it out first. I think she brought it up (not he) but I don’t remember why. She said privately, months later, that the only time she came with Boyfriend 4 was when I was there helping too, but that might have been a lie to make me feel better.

Apparently part of what Boyfriend 4 said when she suggested it was, “Well OK, Hosea’s not bad looking.” So it is possible that Boyfriend 4 was expecting some action between him and me. I’m sure (on theoretical grounds at any rate) that my programming on that front is at least partly social and not 100% biological, but I’m also certain it would take a highly controlled lab environment to even think about changing it at this point. So we didn’t. And after a short while Boyfriend 4 called it off.

Rereading your letter, I think the foregoing addresses most of your questions. That is, you ask a lot but circling around the same topics. Let me know what I missed.

As for the questions from my side, ... well it’s mostly that you say a lot of different things about how you felt, and I want to make sure I understand you right. So mostly I’m going to ask, “Did you really say X and did you really say Y?”

First, it sounds like you say that you felt self-conscious being watched — which I think means, you felt self-conscious having L watch while you were fucking D. Is that right?

If yes, that’s no surprise the first time it happens. I don’t know if it makes it better or worse to remember that you were also hoping to watch D fuck L. And you sound a little embarrassed when you write even that, but of course you shouldn’t. It can be enjoyable to watch other people fuck. Admittedly that’s why there’s a porn industry, but I’m not talking about porn. I’m talking about people you know and (hopefully!) care about — and at that point I think the dynamic is not pornographic or prurient but something else. Something deeply caring, even loving. And if you can watch lovingly while others fuck (assuming you love at least one of them), then in the same way it can be just as loving for one who loves you to watch you fuck. “On display” is when you’re on a stage, under a spotlight, showing off for strangers. But in a warm bed at home, basking in the love of L while enjoying physical closeness with somebody else ... it’s not the same thing. Of course it’s way too late to tell you that now, and yes I remember that you said in retrospect you didn’t enjoy it so much. But remember it if it ever happens again. (As for enjoyment, there’s a quote out on the Internet. I thought it was from Billy Crystal, but Google turns up names like Mel Brooks or Sharon Stone. “Sex is like pizza. Even when it’s bad, it’s pretty good.”)

You talk about jealousy, but I’m not sure I understand what you mean, because right away in the same paragraph you say you would have liked Girlfriend 1’s role. But wait. Jealousy is when you don’t want your Beloved fucking someone else. But in Girlfriend 1’s role that’s exactly what you would have gotten: L would have fucked D in front of you. If you were jealous, wouldn’t that have been a problem for you? Or is “jealousy” really the right word?

In that setup Wife’s role was the one position that should have felt no jealousy at all, because neither of her lovers was with anybody else besides her. But you say you would have hated being the vertex of that angle. I will add that whoever is at the vertex in that setup gets the most sex, because she gets twice what anybody else gets. That wouldn’t have been your main motive of course, but FWIW.

So think if there’s a better word than “jealousy” for what you mean....

“Join in timidly” — I have to smile. Sweetheart, when there are only three people in bed there’s no place to hide. And for the most part people don’t expect to find timid virgins in threesomes. (I include spiritual virgins, ignoring the hymen for now.) So yeah, they would have had every reason to expect you to be bolder and more sexually aggressive than you say you were ... also at least potentially interested in experiencing the new person, whoever that was. You weren’t, but I think it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for them to think you might be .... 

Oh well. Live and learn. Trust me, every single time I was in bed with two other people it was awkward too, for one reason or another. It ain’t easy. Anyone who says otherwise has never tried it and is just extrapolating from having watched a lot of porn.

I hope this works as the next step in the discussion. Do let me know what your next questions are, and how weird you feel now.


Loving you ever, intellectually and carnally and every way in between,

Your Hosea

Uno, dos, tres, ... part 3

Marie's next installment ran like this:

VERY interesting to read, my dearest! 

 

(stops and tries to compose self...)

 

Devolving--a threesome into two twosomes. Um.  Ulp.  Wait, I was the one who insisted on talking openly and honestly, right?

(Gods, how I love that I can with you, love! Oops, we'd recently agreed not to indulge in undue flattery, yes?)

"Partly I think this is because it really, really bothered her to be watched, even by someone she was fucking. So if one of us was fucking her and the other was hanging out — kissing, caressing, or just waiting — she felt on display."

Oh, Jesus, love. I really hate to admit it, but this is a lot of what I felt with L's D.    

Only... Wife had set up the threesomes, right? With three different people, and apparently on more than one occasion each. So... if she didn't like it, why did she keep replicating that setup? Weird.

 

Also... Wife was fanatically possessive of Girlfriend 1?  Set it up as look but don't touch? (What did Girlfriend 1 want, by the by?  Did she even want you there at all?)

 

And with the others... you're not into men.  So you weren't interested, I assume, in having sex with either of Wife's other lovers.  So it sounds like none of your encounters was really a threesome; it was Wife going to bed with two lovers at once.  

 

I mean, I've read fictional threesomes in which all the parties fuck each other in various combinations in random sequence.  And the one I was in, we did--but, huh.  I'd have rather not, and that's what made me uncomfortable.  Okay, one of the emotions I'm detecting in myself is jealousy.  Because I would have liked my threesome better if it had been like yours with Girlfriend 1,  with me playing Girlfriend 1's role. 

 

I'd have had conniptions playing Wife's.  Then, at least.  Oh, god.  But maybe L. expected me to, or thought I'd want to?  We really did not talk about logistics or expectations beyond:  there will be these three people in the bed.  Agreed?  Agreed.  And I think I just assumed of course L. would be the star, and the apex of everyone's focus. But just because I assumed that didn't mean anyone else did.  

 

Good god, what a thing to figure out 35 years later!  I always thought a threesome had to be roughly equilateral, not an obtuse isosceles triangle, much two intersecting lines without a base at all....  but what I really wanted and hoped for that night was not even isosceles.  It was really to be allowed to watch D. and L., and to join in timidly when I thought I'd least be noticed.  But I didn't ask for that, or even hint at it, and what I thought consciously was that a threesome was supposed to be equal.

 

(Oh, Marie, what an adorable little shy demi-virgin IDIOT you were....) 

 

I am conventional in my thinking, aren't I?

 

And ain't communication grand?

 

Huh.  And now I'm wondering something else.  Did Wife, perhaps, not really want threesomes at all, and just engaged in them to try to make her affairs more palatable to you?  To allow you to get something out of it?

 

Sorry, love, that I'm not responding till now.  I started to write, and then had to sleep on it overnight; I was a little weirded by some of what I found myself feeling and saying.

 

I love you dearly, my philosophic lover!

 

 

Your Marie

Uno, dos, tres, ... part 2

I replied to Marie's letter as follows:

Just home from the grocery store. I’ve been having troubles with my phone today because it will no longer download work emails. This means I’ve been over to IT a lot, which in turn means I’ve been shoveling your recent messages out of my Inbox and into a folder as fast as I can read them ... just in case his finger slips and he opens the home email folder instead of the work one. I know that if you work in IT you have to be immune to shock because you see everything. But maybe not while I’m standing there.

Thank you for this letter, though. You had alluded to the event before, but never really talked through the details and motivations, and it was really interesting. My only direct comment is that I absolutely 100% agree with your conclusion in the last paragraph. My own experience supports it, though in different ways.

So I’ve been in three different threesomes, each one with Wife and one of her amours. (This doesn’t mean three solitary events, but three casts of characters. In each configuration there might have been a small handful of events.) The third parties were, respectively, Boyfriend 1 (1986+), Girlfriend 1 (1990-1992 or maybe later), and Boyfriend 4 (maybe 2005?). Anyway, the details of particular encounters varied one to another, but a key part of the dynamic in all three cases is that Wife kept striving to decompose each threesome into two twosomes. Partly I think this is because it really, really bothered her to be watched, even by someone she was fucking. So if one of us was fucking her and the other was hanging out — kissing, caressing, or just waiting — she felt on display. And she kept coming up with excuses why “just tonight” she could be alone with the other person. (I forget if she ever offered to be alone with me, but of course I’d be there after the other person was gone.)

The problem is that what I found when I examined my own feelings was that if she was fucking someone else and I was locked out, it made me absolutely crazy with jealousy. You don’t want to see me like that, because it’s not a good time for anybody. But if she was fucking someone else and I could be part of the experience, my jealousy receded. When the Other was a guy, I was prepared to make the experience a mutual project for both of us to gratify Wife as much as possible. When the Other was Girlfriend 1 ... well, she was young and very pretty so I had a variety of totally unoriginal hopes; but Wife was fanatically possessive of Girlfriend 1, so those hopes were pretty much all frustrated. (“Look but don’t touch.”) (deep self-pitying sigh) 

And these experiences lead me to conclude, with you, that a threesome can work only if all three of you want it. If someone is actively trying to subvert it, the dynamic is all wrong.

So we agree, even though the particular details were a little different.

Loving you ever, in all ways (or from all ends),

Your Hosea

Uno, dos, tres, ... part 1

Shortly thereafter, Marie and I started a conversation about threesomes. This was a purely theoretical conversation, you understand, but it got interesting as it developed. I'll reproduce part of it here, in sections.

As an aside, Marie reminisces about an event in her past involving two people she calls "L" and "D". But they are emphatically not the blogger L nor my former lover D. Do I need to rename them? Or is it enough for me to mention this warning, this once, that when Marie uses those initials she means someone else? I'll hope it is.

Anyway, Marie started off as follows:

Huh, my dearest.  Ever since you mentioned Girlfriend 1 [in an earlier letter] I’ve been thinking, off and on, about the one threesome I indulged in.  (You hadn’t noticed, right?)

 

And remembering, I’m remembering more my motives, and questioning them a bit. 

 

I think I told you most of this already.  I hope you don’t mind if I go over this again, since it’s been in my thoughts.

 

I think, if I ever do this again, I’ll want to be more careful about making sure it is a threesome, something wanted by all of us.

 

The one threesome I was in…

 

Well.  I’ve never regretted having done it, and I’ve never felt guilty.  (And of course there is the agreeable remembrance of having had a really sophisticated sexual encounter in one’s misspent youth!)  But I didn’t like it.  And afterwards, I felt that my motives had been questionable, and that maybe there were better motives for fucking (like, desire!)  than mine had been. 

 

I remember myself doing it for two main reasons:  because L. wanted it strongly, and I very much wanted to please her; and because going to bed with her alone hadn’t worked out so well, and I was hoping that having a guy in bed with us would take the pressure off me enough that I could relax and function better sexually.  Both receiving and giving. 

 

(Huh—just realized, this having been on my mind is probably one of the reasons insecurities about being able to give pleasure have been re-surfacing.  Receiving being, um, no longer an issue.  Cough.) 

 

I was also rereading a LeGuin short story about a man very much in love who’s being pressured into marriage. And in his culture, it would be a group marriage, and he hasn’t even talked with (successfully) the woman who’s supposed to be his bride if he consents.  Egged on by a sympathetic outsider, he tracks her down and demands, “Is it honest to marry someone you don’t even like in order to be with someone you love?”

 

And I sort of feel that way about my having fucked D.  Not that I had lied to him, or him to me, or L.  to either of us.  But I would never have fucked him on his own.  And it felt dishonest in some way to screw someone I didn’t really want to screw, in order to screw someone I did. 

 

Self-serving.  Even if it wasn’t strictly taking advantage of him, since he’d consented. 

 

(Snort.  Thinking about one of Peter Wimsey’s dicta now:  “The one sin passion can commit is to be joyless.”  Oops!!!)

 

And on the other parties’ sides…. well, I had the impression that D. would just as soon have been in bed with me alone.   That his interest in consenting to the threesome was, that was the only way to get me in his bed.  (I had expected most of his attention to be on L., and was taken aback that so much of it was on me.)  And L…. well, she liked having me be in love with her, but she was very much in love with him and wanting to please him.  So I was never sure how much she proposed the experiment because she thought a threesome might work better than the two of us alone, and how much she just wanted to give D. a treat.   (And it was shortly after that that she decided, and persuaded me, that it would be better, and more of an honor and singularity, for me to be her One Best Friend than one among her lovers.)

 

If we ever do indulge in threesomes, love, I think I’ll be happier if we work it out that we’re all of us clear that we want to be in a threesome, at least on that specific occasion.  Not any of us harboring a secret preference to be in a pair.

 

Thanks for listening to me!      

Your Marie