Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
I swear this is how it happened. I still insist I was totally innocent...
Up till the mid eighty's I lived a quiet monkish life in my studio without much regard for the outside world. During that time there were about a half dozen or so lovers who would occasionally drop by. Some white, but mostly black women. Long time holdouts from the black period of my life, (see my story Accidentally black) who still liked to drop in for what my ego referred to as tune-ups. There were also new ladies along the way who would become interested in me and start dropping by. Just enough sex so that I was always able to keep my nose in other peoples business, as it were. Overall though, nothing too complicated.
As usual, it all started with a simple photo session. When she came in I had no idea this was the beginning of a new phase in my life. I thought she was good looking, but she didn't arouse me much at all. She had a delightful girl next door charm and that was about all I felt about her during the photo session. Until then I had been mostly drawn to dark, mysterious and exotic women. Yet somehow, that casual photo session managed to turn into twelve years of almost constant sexual arousal.
Every person I've ever dealt with had a story to tell me, some explanation or reason for why they ended up in my studio instead of the Sears portrait studios. Hers was a little different but not unique. She was leaving her husband and the fellow she was leaving him for was getting nervous. She wanted some sexy pictures to help remind the new fellow of her charms.
After the session I gave her my standard impersonal hug and told her I was sure we had made some great shots in the sitting.
I always phoned my clients the day after a sitting. This call served more or less as an "I still respect them in the morning" sort of call in case by the next day they felt they may have gone a little too far during the shoot. As a bonus, of course, this also kept the client firmly connected to the excitement of the sitting.
So, as was my fashion, I called her the next day to let her know how delighted I was with the way her session had gone. This was just a brief call, but I knew immediately that there was something a little different happening here. A nervous tremor in her voice suggested some future promise. Some excitement I hadn't noticed or paid any attention to the night before.
I should mention that I never made a sexual pass at anybody who interested me until the business end of our transaction was completely finished. Not necessarily out of any moral principles, simply that I find it difficult to extract money from someone I'm carnally involved with (unless we're role playing some game that involves my partner leaving money on the dresser to pay me for my services). My landlord, to whom I needed to pay my rent every month, totally endorsed this very practical business approach.
Her photos were ready a few weeks after the shoot and she arranged to come in and pick them up. I thought when she came by I would make my move and ask if she had any interest in getting together. Disappointingly, I had to scuttle my plan when she looked through the shots and decided to order a couple of 16 x 20 enlargements from the sitting. She gave me a deposit for this new order and went on her way.
I had my own colour lab so I immediately went down to the darkroom and started to print them. I was becoming quite interested in the possibility of getting some more of her and the sooner I could get our financial dealings out of the way I would be able to find out if she had considered or would consider exploring any future contact with me.
When she came to pick them up the following week I suggested that if she needed a temporary refuge from the demands the current changes in her life were making, she was more than welcome to call me and we could have a quiet dinner together if she wanted. As it turned out, she wanted! A few weeks later she came over for dinner and ignited the beginning of a long, new chapter in my life.
For the next few months or so, whenever she found the time she would call me and drop over to the studio if I was available. We would spend a few hours exploring each others bodies and then she would go back to work or disappear into the night. During this time she was still looking for a place to move to with her young daughter so they could start living on their own and she could make the final break from her husband. I had seen some photos of him and he was a big burly bear of a guy who drove a Harley Davidson bike. She was also still seeing the boyfriend who was now becoming less important to her.
As luck would have it, the apartment above my studio became available to rent. At the time we both thought it would be great fun to have a fuck buddy nearby and would be kind of neat to have an available lover living upstairs or in her case downstairs, so she decided to move into the apartment.
During this time my lifelong friend Bill did his best to convince me that there must be an easier way to commit suicide than the path I seemed to have chosen. He was sure the biker dude who was twice my size would inevitably try to kill me. Rational thinking has rarely gotten in the way of mankind's sexual interests, so naturally I helped her move.
After moving in she continued to see her husband. They hadn't become enemies, they just didn't want to live together anymore. He never presented any difficulty to our relationship and in fact turned out to be a gentle prince of a guy who I got to know a bit over the next dozen years.
During this time her boyfriend set up a threesome for her with another girl and himself. This was more about his fantasy than anything else and although it didn't excite her much, it did pique her interest. So we started talking about trying out things she and I could do together that would interest her more.
After months of talk and debate about what we wanted and might like to try, as well as exploring how we felt about the concept of jealousy, we joined "Club Eros" which was the only swingers club in town at the time.
As far as jealousy is concerned, that part for me was easy. I simply have never felt jealous about any companion I've been with. I always enjoy that the woman I am with is coveted by other men. I also never compare myself to others; I know there will always be many smarter or richer men with bigger dicks or more adept tongues than mine, so I just don't care. On the other hand, it has always proved to be much more of a challenge for my companions... I dealt on a daily basis with gorgeous women that were scampering around my studio with their clothes off, so the women that sign on for a trip with me have to be pretty sure of themselves to be comfortable with that.
Anyway, the club ran weekly theme party dances at a private bar that many people would frequent. It's not quite as archaic as the old "key clubs" from the seventies, but swinging is certainly a unique and alternative approach to sexual activity. At the bar people mostly swim around each other (just like singles bars I would imagine) and zero in on couples that appeal to them for whatever reason. If interest proves mutual then arrangements are made to meet somewhere "off premises" for those that are in a hurry or to get together at another time for the more patient in the crowd.
I have this theory that your partner can actually be thought of as additional bait in the swinging culture. If that's true, then it's no wonder that I was originally an extremely useless piece of bait. I can't dance, am totally tone deaf, couldn't find a beat if my life depended on it. I hardly drink at all, and hadn't been in a bar in about thirty years. So I sat there rather somberly trying without success to look cool and casual. There's little doubt that I was not exactly viewed from across the room as the most comfortable choice to get together with. My features are fairly angular and I have deep set dark eyes, so even at the best of times when I'm my playful child self, I look pretty severe. I eventually learned from people I got to know that many were surprised I didn't have a chainsaw resting on my lap. The overall consensus was that I just didn't look very inviting. So after a few unsuccessful visits we tried ads in adult newspapers instead.
When you run an ad with unusual requests, this is what you can expect to get in the way of replies... About one third will be thigh slapping funny and utterly impossible to consider, one third can be put in a pile that you will call if nothing else works out and a third can be considered possible. We started with about sixty replies, so initially we had about twenty potential victims, ah, I mean couples, to meet with and sniff out whether we wanted to get together on a more intimate level.
We started filtering what we could by phone and had a few casual meetings at coffee shops and bars, but nothing really clicked for us. We were getting pretty fed up with it all when we finally met with a couple who seemed to be exactly what we had set out to find in the first place. They were novice swingers and because we were too, nobody felt intimidated. We all decided this would be the ideal way to start off and satisfy our curiosity. We set a date for dinner at their place a few weeks down the road.
The whole idea was very exciting for us and thinking and talking about it for the next few weeks proved very horny indeed.
This could be where I interject some anecdote about how the evening went awry, but it didn't go wrong at all. The whole evening turned out to be a spectacular success. We got together and sat around on the floor in the living room chatting about everything and nothing. This was late nineteen eighty but it was just like being in the sixty's or seventy's again, the only thing missing (fortunately) was disco music and the fondue pot. We then had a comfortable dinner and talked about everybody's expectations and needs. After dinner we returned to the living room floor and continued with a lot of verbal foreplay.
I don't know which one of us proposed the obvious, but I think it was probably me. I'm generally the first one in any crowd to remind everybody why they got together and in this case I suggested that this would be a really good time for everybody to get naked and start exploring the possibilities. Well we did, and everything was far better than we had hoped it could be. The experience was very exciting, sensual and exploratory. It would not be misleading to call the whole evening intensely exotic.
I found it extremely horny to watch my companion blow our new found friend and she too was turned on watching me explore his partner. There were some confused amateur moments when nobody knew what to do... it was sort of like being in a candy store that you owned. It seemed the choices were unlimited and sometimes it was very difficult to decide what to do (and to whom) next. Although we were lost in the excitement of these new people, we also remained very aware of our own partner's needs. We both had agreed before we got there that we would not abandon each other, no matter how much fun we were having with the others.
Fatigue eventually got the best of all of us and by about four in the morning we decided we were satiated and couldn't take (or give) anymore. When we went home that night we talked about how we were so used up that we would probably need a month to recover before we could be able to enjoy each other again.
Well, were we ever wrong about that! It turned out that evening of exploration made us so horny that we couldn't stop talking about it or keep our hands off each other over the following months. Over the next year or so we continued to have dates with that first couple. In the next dozen years we made many new intimate longtime friends as we became converts and proponents of the swinging lifestyle. We eventually even held seminars at some Club Eros and other swinger conventions.
Last I heard she and her new partner were still very involved in swinging and although I now live monogamously I still advocate for the lifestyle. I don't miss it, but still think it is a great alternative for those who have strong relationships and are willing to be more adventurous in expanding their circle of friends in such an intimate way.
