I'll take the filet mignon, please!
Effortless music from the Cameroons
The spinning darkness of her hair
A conversation in a crowded room going nowhere
The open palm of desire
Wants everything
It wants everything-Paul Simon, Further to Fly
She positioned herself astride my cock, facing me, leaning back with her arms braced against the coffee table, and we both gasped when she lowered herself onto me, the smooth muscle of her little puckered asshole stretching to accommodate an unwelcome intruder. I pressed an index finger to her clitoris as she impaled herself over and over again. Leslie’s mouth was open; her eyes were shut. That old saw came to mind again and again like an incantation: why fuck around with hamburger when you have steak at home?
Why, indeed. I haven’t been terribly interested, lately, in what anyone else has to offer. Oh, I’ve looked—it’s a man’s evolutionary burden, after all—I’ve flirted, I’ve teased, I’ve even tweaked a nipple here and there, but I have not done these things, as a lawyer might say, with intent. Like window shopping on the day after Christmas, my forays into the world of extracurricular sex have felt a little pointless, a little indulgent. Double blowjobs notwithstanding, there’s nothing about my sex life right now that cries out for the addition of a third. Or fourth. And so on.
This revelation first struck me at one of Porno Jim’s legendary soirees. Les and I were fooling around with a young, busty babe from Chicago (in the bathroom no less, after watching her take a piss) and at some point I realized I was done; I didn’t need to take it any further. Jim was surprised when we decided to leave just as the orgy was heating up, but all I wanted to do was take my girl home and have her good and proper, her face in the pillow and her big round buttocks in the air, beckoning me to do my worst.
We talk about our best sessions for days afterwards, Les and I do; I call her at work and remind her of all the dirty little details, egging her on until she’s begging me to stop.
A couple weeks after the Porno Jim soiree we were juggling invites to a few different events, trying to figure out how to spend our weekend. Les asked me whether I wanted to go to the bukkake party or whatever the hell it was and I said, without really thinking about it, “Oh it’s just a sex party.” My fiancée cocked her eyebrow at me as the import of what I’d just said finally sank in. “Wait, did I really say that?”
It’s just a sex party. A few years ago I was burning with curiosity about this debauched world and now its rhythms and peculiarities are familiar to me, comforting yet also mundane. It’s a queer reversal of our culture’s conventional wisdom: sex with your partner is supposed to get boring, to the point where you go into therapy or else buy marital aids to spice up your sex play, to the point where you have to train yourself to avert your eyes from the forbidden fruit. What the morons who dispense relationship advice don’t realize is that freedom has a funny way of making a man content with what he has, that sometimes he tastes the erstwhile forbidden fruit and finds it’s gone rotten.
A the Chemistry party a couple weekends ago, someone who’d never been to a sex party before asked me whether people go for reasons other than winding up on a bed in a sweaty tangle of bodies. I explained that I for one enjoy the permissiveness of an anything-goes atmosphere, and that there are nearly as many reasons for going as there are attendees at any given party. Les and I had spent most of the night catching up with friends and flirting with a pretty Russian MILF, yet in the end we went home to have our own fun.
There is a vast and largely unexplored wilderness between lock-step monogamy and indiscriminate hookups, a place Leslie and I call home. I’ve come to understand that what I enjoy—again, double blowjobs notwithstanding—what I enjoy most about our “lifestyle” is going on the occasional date (even the weird ones can be fun), going out on the town with other kinksters, and generally engaging in behavior that would be scandalous to straight-laced couples. I’ve come to learn that simply having sex with other people does not a kinkster make, and that standing in line for the next available orifice only to tap in like a professional wrestler is not my idea of a good time.
On the relationship-oriented end of the continuum, dealing with other people’s sexual and emotional issues can be exhausting. Like, a massive pain in the ass. Leslie wrote about her disenchantment with the male of the species, and I’ve experienced a similar disenchantment with the female of the species—the young, urban North American female being an erratic and capricious bird indeed. Although Les and I have agreed, in principle, to dating separately should the right moment arise, I still haven’t bothered asking anyone out.
As Les and I cabbed home the other night I asked myself a simple question: How many of the women Les and I have dated together would I have dated were I single at the time? The answer is a disturbingly small number. Which is not to say that none of the others were attractive enough, or nice enough, and so on—indeed, most delivered what the situation called for—but there was always something lacking. A profound lack of the kind of sexual creativity I’m accustomed to enjoying at home, or else a profound lack of the kind of affection I suppose I’d taken for granted.
And most women here, most people here, are lazier than long-haired cats on a hot summer afternoon. They’re all waiting around for someone to come along and tell them what to do, what to think, how to feel. New York spoils us with convenient access to everything, the result being that anything not within the immediate reach of our fingertips is seen as too much work. There’s always someone else, something else; some shiny new object upon which to squander one’s attention.
At first I was concerned about my lack of interest in other women—frankly, I was even a little embarrassed, ready to see a doctor or a shrink and get a prescription for anti-apathy pills. Now I realize it’s just that I know what I want; I know what turns me on and what turns me off; I know what I’m looking for in a relationship or a casual encounter. And I’m willing to forgo hamburgers indefinitely. As I told Les, we’ve had some great lovers and some truly wonderful experiences. If I’m thrilled again by someone or something there’s nothing to stop me from acting on my desires, but in the meantime I’m as happy with my relationship as anyone has a right to be. To torture a metaphor, Abu Ghraib style, if I’m going to head out for seconds, that meal damn well better complement the steak I have at home.
So, as a beautiful summer afternoon gave way to a beautiful summer evening, I fucked my fiancée in the ass, with my finger pressed against her clitoris, and I watched, fascinated, as she rode me like one of the girls from those naughty videos, impaling herself over and over again. Her smooth brown skin glistened with sweat and her pretty curls, some of them matted to her face, rolled to and fro. When I came I groaned and panted and clawed at the furniture, lost in my animal self. And as my heart pounded away it crossed my mind that this was the best sex I’d ever had, or ever will have, with anyone.
More: Swingers | Sex Party | Threesome | Anal
