Me and the Other Girls

Angie was far too wonderful-looking to hate, even if she had consented to carnally console Brian, my live-in lover, during our latest short-lived estrangement. She was a winsome combination of geisha girl and heart-slaying Southern belle: delicate little nose and mouth, cloud-soft luminous white skin and deep-brown eyes surrounded by a fringe of black lashes as perfect as those on the lids of rubber dolls. I broke the covet commandment every time I looked at her, but I liked her too much to hold her beauty against her. Angie was often quiet, but when she did speak, it was in a soft Southern drawl that frequently erupted into contagious schoolgirl giggles. We shared a rather droll sense of humor that we cherished in each other, in the traditional narcissistic manner of soul mates.

She lived 200 miles away, so our friendship was forced to grow slowly and intermittently. I didn't get to see her at all during her visit in the fall of 1969, when Brian had once again banished me for straying into foreign carnal territory and surrendering without a fight. Angie, being a practical, sympathetic girl with no inflated notions of sex, had done what she could to cheer him up. But soon she was gone; after a few lonely nights at the local beer hall, Brian swallowed his righteous indignation, along with his pride, forgave my strumpet's ways "for the last time!" and invited me back home.

We'd been peacefully recohabiting for about a week when Angie called to see how Brian was bearing up. He explained that we were back together but suggested she come up for the weekend, anyway, and this time spend it with us. Though nothing was spelled out, we assumed she knew we didn't need a third for bridge.

Please don't think I agreed to such bizarre sleeping arrangements on a moment's notice. It had taken Brian two years to get me this far. And despite a finely honed sense of adventure, I still had a few misgivings about venturing that far out on a sexual limb, especially at a time when Joan Baez had yet to declare herself and Equal Opportunity Lover and articles about group sex were more the province of pulp paperbacks than of slick magazines.

My acquiescence was all the more incongruous in light of the fact that I'd spent my formative years as an unremitting prude.

I began dating at 14, eventually permitting my steady boyfriend---a precocious 16-year-old---the honor of kissing me. But necking was merely a pleasant romantic exercise; it still didn't nudge to life any baser urges. When he finally insisted we touch each other more intimately, I threw his fake diamond ring in his incredulous face. He might have been less broken up had he known that the objects of his greatest interest were a sturdy pair of washable foam-rubber cones.

Despite my poor showing in the breast department, I turned out long-legged and pretty enough to have my share of men sniffing around, most of them older and all of them horny. I was almost 16 when a 23-year-old law student I was necking with at a drive-in refused to be satisfied with my usual hug-and-kiss routine. Nor, for once. was I. Suddenly, there was a weak thickly feeling below my waist I couldn't quite place. After some breathy mauling, he slid his hand up my sun dress and brushed it lightly between my legs. This indiscretion melted the lower half of my body. All those formerly nauseating things seemed downright marvelous. I was immediately converted from fanatic prude to rabid hedonist. Scarcely a week went by that I didn't permit some enthusiastic guy, or my own fumbling hand, to rummage around down there until that delirious melting point was once again reached. However, I still shied away from letting anyone inside my newly discovered pleasure palace; I was determined to save that precious five or so inches of unexplored space for that still unmaterialized husband my mother promised.

But soon after my 17th birthday, I met a 30-year-old doctor with whom I fell madly in love. And vice versa, or so it seemed. One night, on a feather bed in his parents' ranch house, I went all the way. But even in my new-found wickedness, I was still hopelessly naive: I thought this premarital-sex thing was as truly sinful as a body could get. Eight or nine men and four years later, when I began living with Brian, I gradually came to realize that "all the way" wasn't the only way.

Sexually, Brian was a self-made degenerate clown. His bedroom door was covered with gold tin foil; there were huge jagged mirrors at the head of his bed, surrounded by satanic black flames painted on the walls. The first time he led me to his lair, I felt as if I'd become the heroine in a Lenny Bruce version of the Story of O. He turned me on to grass, which proved to be the mellow aphrodisiac I'd always heard it was. Soon we were indulging in skin-mag fantasizing, baby-oil rubdowns, Polaroid sessions, fancy mirror tricks. I indulged his harmless fetishes gladly, flattered that my compliance was so enchanting to him. My new self-image as wanton woman made me bold; I was convinced there was nothing he could suggest that I wouldn't be willing to dare. But the night he casually mentioned that we should someday have an orgy, he went too far. I let out a howl of protest and burst into terrified tears. Orgy! Good God! I envisioned being gang-banged by a procession of sweaty strangers, cackling with glee while Brian leered on the side lines, snapped souvenir photos and shouted unnatural stage directions.

"No, purty," he quickly added, drying my eyes with a bed sheet. "I mean just the two of us---with a girl."

A girl! This was small comfort. "My God, Brian," I huffed, "I'm not quee-er!"

Or was I? Brian wisely dropped the subject temporarily, but as I fell asleep that night, I thought back to childhood mists, searching for clues to substantiate my claim. The evidence wasn't all that conclusive.

Once, when I was about 11, I spent the night with my best girlfriend and we got into a long and giggling discussion of sex and marriage (she was engaged to her fifth-grade sweetheart, I believe); then we decided to take turns being the boy as we snuggled naked in bed together. The "boy" had to tuck between her legs a rolled-up shower cap, which bore little resemblance to a penis but served its general function. There was no inserting on either part, of course---we had no idea how that was actually done---but this was the closest I came to any childhood sexual sensations. It felt good to hold someone I loved that close and it was pleasant to rub my round little-girl belly against hers.

I admitted to myself that, yes, there had been a few homosexual dreams peppering my normally heterosexual fantasies. Still, several times over the years, I'd been approached subtly by women and my instinctive reaction was always negative. One spooky-looking girl had come on to me at a party where I had had a fight with Brian and left the room in tears. She followed me and, though I had just met her, offered to take me in for the night. I refused: she implored. Finally, she reached for my hand, tucked inside the pocket of my peacoat. "Leave me alone!" I shouted, jerking my hand away from hers and running back up the stairs to Brian, who suddenly seemed the lesser of two evils.

It wasn't long after that, though, that I met Angie. There was something about her that always got me hyped up and anxious for her approval. I'd often been that way when meeting a man I was attracted to, but I had never felt---or let myself feel---that way about a woman. So by the night Angie called, I was glad that she was coming to see us---almost as glad as I was terrified.

I spent the two days before her arrival bustling around the house like any middle-American housewife: cooking, cleaning and conscientiously stocking the icebox with beer, wine, Pepsi---and three tabs of five-dollar sunshine acid. Brian and I had taken five or six LSD trips in the past, as part of my comprehensive sex training, and I'd always found LSD wonderfully erotic. I also thought it might be handy for removing any last-minute inhibitions.

Angie arrived on schedule, smelling of Alpha Keri bath oil and looking as great as ever in her short shorts and thong (continued on page 112) He and the Other Girls (continued from page 86) sandals. We spent the evening drinking, talking and listening to music at a local hangout before getting down to our real, if unmentioned, business. Though Angie was almost as tall and thin as I was, she had a lovely soft roundness to her. I kept wanting to reach over and run my hand across the slinky dark blouse she wore, which outlined her smallish but perfect breasts. Despite my boyish figure, Angie seemed to be harboring similar tactile urges. After she watched me dance with a mutual male friend, she commented, "I can't decide which of you looked better." It was the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to me.

When last call for alcohol was announced, the three of us feigned sudden, acute exhaustion, abandoning the crestfallen stags who'd swarmed around Angie all night, assuming she was a third wheel looking for the right axle to come along. If they hadn't been so fixated on Angie, they might have noticed the revealing expression of sultanic conquest on Brian's beaming face.

By the time we'd locked ourselves into our playhouse, the acid we'd washed down with the last pitcher of beer was working its usual wondrous ways with me. Everything looked shimmery; Angie seemed more beautiful than ever and my womb muscles were performing involuntary rumbas. But Brian, always an alcoholic first and a dopehead pervert second, had consumed so much beer he'd fallen asleep on the day bed where we sat making nervous small talk. We panicked. There was no way on earth either of us could make the initial overture without Brian's providing the essential friendly persuasion. As frantically as if giving artificial respiration, we shook him back to consciousness. He awoke to find himself flanked by his two eager companions. Quickly recovering his bearings, he reached out and gave each of us a simultaneous hug, then turned to kiss Angie. (This didn't bother me, company first being an old Southern custom.) She received his attentions by leaning back in a rapturous swoon, closing her Kewpiedoll eyes and tacitly assuming no further responsibility.

Brian necked with her, stroking the inside of her blue-jeaned thighs, as I watched, transported. It was so intimate I felt like a Peeping Thomasina, but I still couldn't keep from staring. Gradually, he unbuttoned her blouse and, taking my hand, gently eased it inside. My hushed and tremulous awe must have been contagious: None of us made a sound. The strange sensation of fondling soft round curves and stroking her baby-soft skin took away what little breath I had. I realized how totally different women's bodies feel---and how great. No wonder they love us so much! By then, Angie was as carried away as I was in my woozy acid delirium.

Then Brian turned to me. "Go get in bed now," he whispered. I obediently withdrew my hand from its warm, comfy nesting place, went into the bedroom, undressed and slipped between the covers, sitting up expectantly in bed, waiting for my feast to be carried in. A few minutes later, Brian appeared at the door wearing nothing but a hard-on, followed by a now-blouseless Angie, a tiny self-conscious smile on her happy flushed face. Brian stood beside me while I buried my head in my favorite salty place, rhythmically moving against him as he guided me with his hands. When I turned my attentions from him, Angie was lying stretched out beside me on the bed, now completely naked. Looking down at her small brown nipples and the slight sprinkle of freckles on the white skin above her breasts, then down to the pale belly and the dark glossy center, I realized I'd never been that close to a nude woman before, certainly not in a horizontal position. It was strange to see sex from a man's viewpoint. After a moment of hesitation, our shyness was overcome by the stronger force of sexual gravity. Angie's tongue and mouth and her short wispy hair seemed to be everywhere at once, her small hands fluttering over me: a flock of birds landing on a still pond, sending forth ripples. Soon we were wrapped around each other, moaning the soft, ecstatic moans of a long repressed desire suddenly satisfied---two little girls with no need for a rolled-up shower cap. Brian, smiling, slowly stroked himself as he watched. He looked serene, happy, vastly pleased: perfectly content to sit back and spectate, occasionally reaching over to put Angie's hand on me or mine on her as we moved and stroked and whimpered. I remember thinking how ironical it was that something so forbidden and supposedly perverse should come so naturally. The narcissism of it was undeniable: It was like making love to my own shadow.

"Kiss her," Brian urged, as I lay resting with my head on Angie's belly, inhaling the musky scent of sex mingled with her lotion. I planted a tentative kiss on the dark mound, almost fearing she'd refuse me. She didn't, but neither of us, I felt, was quite ready for this, and I kissed my way back up into her arms in affectionate retreat. Sensing our trepidation and our need, Brian slipped his hand between my legs and began moving his fingers inside me while finding Angie with his mouth, burrowing into her until she gasped for breath---working on us so deftly we both began to spin simultaneously. After he'd satisfied us, Brian climbed on top of Angie and pushed his way in with no trouble, though she looked too small and fragile to accommodate him. Apparently my fears were unfounded: She lay quietly beneath him while he moved inside her for a few minutes. Pulling out of her, he thrust himself into me so unexpectedly that I gasped more from surprise than from pleasure. It's difficult to say who was responsible for my final scalding-lava climax, but I realized when I finally opened my eyes that Angie's little cat's tongue had been lapping away at an often overlooked nipple the whole time--- which may be why coming felt about twice as good as usual.

By then, we were all exhausted from overspent passion and the simultaneous comedown from the acid. Brian left us, to sleep in the other room, and Angie and I fell asleep in seconds, holding each other, kissing and purring but never exchanging a word. Once, early in the morning, we awoke at the same time, instinctively reached for and caressed each other, were quickly and thoroughly satisfied and fell into an even sounder sleep---that long-elusive goal of simultaneous orgasm reached under rather off beat circumstances.

Brian woke us about midmorning and took us out to breakfast. My fear that things would be awkward after the fact was dissipated. We laughed and talked in a way that made it clear none of us was self-conscious, though all were aware of the pleasant difference. I felt more tender toward Angie that ever before and knew she felt the same about me. Brian seemed so proud and happy having two pretty girls on his hands he apparently forgot to feel left out when we practically ignored him.

Angie left for home later that day and Brian and I were suddenly left to cope with the letdown of already realized fantasies. Still jangling with residual sexual energy, we found ourselves falling into bed, mauling each other lackadaisically while we avidly recalled every small erotic detail: two doddering remember-wheners yearning for the good ole days of the night before. But something was very wrong: Sex without Angie suddenly seemed far less tantalizing than it had before. Seeing a man naked wasn't half so erotic to me; everything Brian did seemed like second-banana thrills. Previously, I had whiled away the hour in a boring Government II course fantasizing about men; now it was Angie who crowded out everything else. I began to worry that maybe I really was queer, after all---that all my years of selective but enthusiastic nymphomania had been nothing but a (continued on page 184) Ne and the other Girls (continued from page 112) desperate masking of my true inclinations. God! What about all those dreams I'd had? It wasn't that I was turned off by ordinary he-she love, just that I found myself enjoying it far less psychologically---and, because of that, physically---than before.

Now I understand why: It was simply the difference between old and new, between wrong and wronger. I'd finally done something far more sinful and forbidden than fucking out of wedlock. How could I ever enjoy stealing hubcaps after having robbed a bank?

In the course of the next several months, we saw Angie four more times, but on each successive visit she became a more and more passive companion. And each time, though still fun, was less exciting than the time before. But then, what isn't, with repetition? During our last romp together, Angie achieved a very premature climax and lost all interest in the game. Crankily pushing Brian away, she yawned, rolled over and tucked her head under a pillow. Neither Brian nor I was halfway satisfied, having (as usual) devoted most of our attentions to her. So we tiptoed into the other room, where, charged up by the evil doings with Angie, we spent a long and steamy night indulging in lascivious hedonism---our best solitary sex since pre-Angie days.

As an only child, Angie was unaccustomed to less than total attention, and the next morning she woke up sulking, apparently offended that we'd deserted her, even in slumber. For this and all the usual reasons, the triangle had gotten so lopsided it finally collapsed. Though I've kept up with her doings by occasional letters and the reports of mutual friends, I've never seen my first lady lover again.

If only because time dulls remembered senses, I eventually got over my feeling that ordinary sex was a consolation prize. But twice, when I was no longer living with Brian, I got involved in a couple of one-night threesomes. In both instances, perhaps because there was no real emotional involvement, perhaps because suddenly I was the odd sexperson out (as poor Angie must have felt herself to be), I found myself barely enjoying it. One time, the girl was beautiful. So unresponsive, however, that it was like caressing a life-sized Barbie doll. With the second couple, the girl simply wasn't pretty or voluptuous enough to turn me on. It's embarrassing to admit this, but were I to have a sex-change operation, I'd probably emerge from the anesthetic a male chauvinist pig in choosing women sex partners by their looks. I don't understand why, but it somehow makes more of a difference than it does with men.

These less-than-satisfactory excursions taught me something else: that my fascination with Angie had less to do with homosexual leanings than with omnivorous ones. I realized that some people were so sexy to me I would find them irresistible regardless of their gender. If sexually I were a registered Democrat, there would occasionally be candidates so appealing I would cross party lines for them.

Needless to say, such sexual dynamos are rare---and by the time I was introduced to Matt, my newest and present lover, it had been almost a year since I'd done anything more intimate with a girl than exchange friendly gossip in a powder room.

•

After three weeks of intensive dating---leaving the motel room only to visit bars, restaurants and newsstands---Matt and I eloped without benefit of clergy and took up housekeeping together in his apartment on the Eastern Seaboard. I understood how 19th Century mail-order brides must have felt: There I was, an open-air Southerner, suddenly thrust into an ugly, alien environment without a single friend except the virtual stranger who had taken me there. Fortunately, he was a virtual stranger I continued to be crazy about. I became so contentedly domesticated, in fact, that the thought of committing adultery with either sex barely crossed my mind. Besides, I had all the sex I could handle at home; the absence of a marriage license didn't keep us from frolicking like honeymooners: We christened every flat surface but the stove.

Matt is a big sweet bear of a man who is just as sexually talented as Brian, if less imaginatively decadent. At first, he annoyed me by refusing to mix his sweet talk with his lovemaking or to treat sex as more romantic than any other bodily function. However, his concentration on the actual act of fucking, as opposed to any "sissy" billing and cooing, makes him quite a successful lover, one who takes me past the plateau, into the green valley beyond, almost every time he takes me to bed. As if this weren't enough to guarantee my undivided adoration, he is also terribly generous. For our first anniversary, he gave me a tongue bath and a Saks Fifth Avenue charge plate: They both made me come with joy.

One day, returning from a shopping trip to Saks that had yielded only a T-shirt and a nightie, I was feeling as homely and glum as I usually do after such excursions. Trying on clothes under fluorescent lights can be devastating to a girl's ego---especially if, like me, she owns a model's figure instead of a Playmate's. Fighting my way home through smoggy rush-hour traffic did nothing to cheer me up. By the time I staggered through the door, my spirits were well below sea level.

Matt was in the opposite condition. I found him bustling around the living room with a vacuum cleaner in tow and a dustcloth trailing from his back jeans pocket, whistling a happy tune and looking like the nursery-tale momma bear.

The place smelled of lemon Pledge, Rose Floral Bouquet and Windex. Such a burst of housewifely vigor in a self-confessed male chauvinist who thinks nothing of handing me 15 shirts to iron or asking for grilled-cheese sandwiches at three A.M. struck me as rather peculiar. As if this weren't suspicious enough, my normally undemonstrative mate greeted me with returning-P.O.W. hugs and a lingering sexy tongue kiss usually reserved for drunken lapses into sentiment. I wondered if he'd been drinking the Windex.

I asked about his unnerving exhilaration. "Well," he grinned, "you know I had lunch with an old college friend today?" I knew. He went on to explain that just as he was slipping into a cab to head home, a huge good-looking girl slipped into the back seat beside him and gave him the longest, wettest stranger kiss he'd ever had. It turned out he'd met Terry briefly years ago, when she was dating a casual friend of his. They shared the cab to their respective apartments, and when he mentioned he'd recently acquired a lithe and lovely roommate (that's me, as seen through the silk-screen eyes of love), she didn't appear dismayed in the least. So, he concluded, saving the big news for last, "I asked her to have dinner with us tonight. Maybe she'll want to fuck us!" he added, his eyes sparkling with hard-core mischief. I felt a sharp Charley horse of jealousy knife through me at seeing him so intrigued with the prospect, perhaps because I always tend to find the unknown the biggest threat of all. Also, it didn't help when he happened to mention that she also sported a pair of semicolossal breasts. But I agreed to go along with his scheme---more out of a loving unwillingness to disappoint him than from any personal interest in a woman given to accosting virtual strangers in taxicabs.

Besides, I had the nagging feeling that if I didn't agree to go along, he just might arrange to go without me. I wasn't about to tag along looking like the sullen jealous-wife type, so I disappeared for an hour into the bedroom and pulled my Cinderella routine. When I emerged, Matt's rangy tomboy had shed her jeans and T-shirt for a long, slinky white gown, dangling earrings, curly hair and smoky eye make-up. For the first time since we'd been together, Matt---normally as niggardly with praise as a football coach---told me I looked luscious. The power of suggestion being what it is, I immediately took his word for it and felt ready to take on all contenders, big tits and all.

Terry joined us at our favorite restaurant. Matt was certainly right about her size. She was enormous but well proportioned, with a perky, attractive face and a friendly disposition. To my great relief, I kind of liked her and wasn't gagged by the thought of temporarily sharing my mate. After a long, leisurely meal and three bottles of wine, Matt leaned over and whispered something in her ear. "Very!" she exclaimed in response, her voice providing the italics. (I later learned that the $64,000 question was, "How sexually adventurous are you?") Needless to say, no one ordered dessert.

She'd come in her own car, so I allowed Matt the pleasure of directing her home and followed in our car. I took my time getting there, stopping at yellow lights and trying to summon my flagging courage. This time, the girl wasn't a close friend; and there was no acid to get me over the initial hump; and she was unattached, a potential threat to my happy if informal marriage. If you can believe it, I was actually feeling a little bit shy.

By the time I arrived, the cute gargantuan couple had made themselves at home on the couch. She had her head in his lap---face up, thank God. He was languidly sucking on a joint and massaging her huge breasts through her blouse. The sight brought back my Charley horse for a moment, but I needn't have felt threatened. When I sat down on the couch next to her, it was apparent she was just as interested in Goldilocks as she was in the bear. After I'd taken a drag on the joint, she casually reached up under my long dress and began molesting me in the brazen manner one might expect from such an amazon. How could I have been so unfair to my sweet Matt? I thought to myself. He's gone and brought me the world's biggest breathing vibrator. Soon we'd finished the joint, snuffing it out just as Matt's sprang to life. Moseying into the bedroom, Terry voraciously pounced on him, giving him a $50 blow job without even pausing to take off her clothes or unpin her updo. Matt was so turned on by this eager outsized sex maniac that her mission was accomplished in the time it takes to soft-boil an egg. After coming up for air, she took a deep breath and dove between my legs---a first for me with a mouth instead of just a hand---with equal gusto. She had a very talented mouth and appeared to be having the time of her life showing it off. I certainly was. After a few minutes of this one-sided demonstration of sisterhood in action, Matt got a little fidgety. Soon, even I was ready for a break, discovering that there can actually be too much of this particular good thing. I was glad when Matt finally broke it up, officious as a referee. Pulling her off me, he proceeded to give her one of the fiercest workouts I'd seen. Angie had been fairly passive on such occasions, but Terry apparently liked screwing as much as I did, writhing around and whinnying loud enough to wake the next-block neighbors.

I began to feel a little left out but contented myself with watching and occasionally fondling a heaving breast. Then it was my turn. Matt, bless his heart, had saved a little for me. But as we were flailing away, I happened to glance to my left, where Terry, with uninhibited abandon, was whipping herself into a delirious lather, a prime research subject for Masters and Johnson. Judging from her multiple oohs and ahs, anything Matt could do she could do better, or at least as well.

Matt and I finally heaved ho to a stop, completely drained. But not Miss Terry: Like the killer shark, she never rested, only circled endlessly in search of more prey. Granted, petting is a wonderful pastime, but not four seconds after achieving total satisfaction.

As all girl readers know and boy readers ought to know, tender female parts molested at this point in time register far more pain than pleasure. Apparently, Terry's privates were made of polyethylene, because she began mauling me with her hands as if we were starting from scratch. Being a good sport, I staunchly let her have her way with me one more time, but then I'd had it for good (well, at least for the evening). Matt was audibly sighing, drumming his fingers on his head, as bored by watching two girls mess with each other as a country-and-western fan attending a violin recital.

He finally got up, wandered into the living room and flipped on the TV set, looking for some real entertainment. It was two A.M. by then and there was nothing on but a segment of War and Peace. I soon straggled in behind him, in search of a little peace myself. Being victims of fundamentalist Bible Belt upbringing, Matt and I both had put on bathrobes to hide our shame. Not Terry of the limitless libido: She plopped her huge self between us on the couch, every square foot of her stark-naked.

Soon our friendly amazon began pawing Matt and me simultaneously, her once-soft hands now feeling like medium-grade sandpaper. A look of weary exasperation crossed Matt's face as he wrenched her hand from his dozing peter. "Let's leave it alone for a while, OK?" he pleaded. "It's tired." Being a good-natured girl, she wasn't offended by the rebuff but merely concentrated all her efforts on me, until I, too, begged special dispensation. She at last relented and after a few more minutes of Russian melodrama, Matt and I were more than ready for bed, hoping she'd take the hint and opt to sleep at home. No such luck. I quickly offered to sleep on the couch. Matt and Terry together totaled 380 pounds and measured 12'2" (Terry with the two-inch advantage)---and I feared that if we all tried to sleep in a regulation double bed, I'd be compressed into a flesh-colored swizzle stick by daybreak. Besides, I rationalized, Matt could defend himself better. So I made myself a bed on the couch, glad for once to be sleeping alone.

Around six in the morning, I was awakened from my innocent slumber by a most distressing noise---loud whooping and hollering in the general direction of the bedroom, in both bass and soprano tones, accompanied by a rhythm instrument sounding suspiciously like creaking bedsprings. I was instantly consumed with fear and loathing, too stunned to even move, much less to join Terry and Matt. Five minutes later, they apparently reached a gasping truce; silence descended. Matt came huffing into the living room for a drink of water, sweating and wheezing like he'd just escaped with his life. When he caught me staring at him on his way back to bed, he smiled a sheepish smile. "We just woke up fucking" went his measly sotto voce explanation.

"That's interesting," I replied. "We never have." He had no comeback for this devastating retort, so he shrugged and went back to bed. I didn't join them, preferring to sulk miserably on the couch. Big tears rolled down my cheeks and I nursed my hurt tenderly. Soon the amazon was up and dressed, off to her job at an ad agency. She delivered asphyxiating goodbye hugs, begged us to call her any time, anyplace, anywhere and left us three sets of addresses and phone numbers, which I carefully wrote down and just as carefully tore up.

Matt found my jealousy attack amusing under the circumstances. "How can you actually feel threatened?" he laughed. "She didn't mean anything to me but an overnight fuck. You were right in the same house!" He was truly puzzled. Well, I admit it seems a little absurd looking back on it two years later, but it was the first time I'd been in love with a man who was actually screwing a woman without my being either entirely included or entirely oblivious.

Listening to their chorus of moans and groans. I actually entertained the idea that Matt might want her to move in with us. I'd read enough of Hemingway's memoirs to know how those situations end up! Suddenly, fooling Mother Nature with all these variations on the two-by-two Noah's-ark arrangement didn't seem like such harmless fun anymore.

Later that same day, still in the deepest of doldrums, I fell asleep and dreamed that Matt was running off down a road carrying Terry's detached size-D tits---one tucked under each arm, like two loaves of bread. It was an upsetting, if ridiculous, indication of my pathetic insecurity. Besides, what made me think he hadn't taken mine along as well? They could've been stashed in his watch pocket.

•

I got over my trauma after a while, but a lack of opportunity and preoccupation with other things took precedence over such mischief. By the time our next and last threesome occurred, almost a year had gone by. I'd turned a definitely postnymphettish 25; and though I'd heard and read that the real beneficiaries of the sexual revolution were the kids a few years my junior, Tammy was my first flesh-and-blood proof of that. I'd never seen anyone so serenely content with her life, so lacking in any ambition or uptightness or self-consciousness. After drifting through a semester of college, she dropped out and began to lead the existence of a continuous road movie. She did nothing but travel around the country in her beat-up Volkswagen, eating nuts and fruit and staying stoned on grass or whatever drugs were offered to her by the men and women she picked up as casually as we old fogies do a ringing telephone. It was easy to see why strangers were so attracted to her. Her total lack of nervous energy didn't leave her with much more personality than the corner fireplug, but she was very sweet and docile and attractive. Her face wasn't beautiful, but it was fresh and appealingly impish. And she had a golden California suntan and longish sunlit hair that fell in a halo of natural curls.

On the weekend, we ran into her; she seemed to follow quietly wherever we went. It occurred to Matt that her presence itself was a form of passive insistence. When he asked if she'd like to spend the night with us, she acted as if she'd been expecting the invitation and cheerfully accepted.

After a drag or two on our shared joint, Tammy pulled off her clothes. I'd never thought much about her body, which was usually hidden beneath Mother Hubbard hippie clothes; judging from the look of happy surprise on Matt's face, he hadn't, either. "Those are fine breastworks you got there, Miss Tammy," he offered. He was right. They were absolutely perfect---bronzed and round and firm and small-nippled. The rest of her was just as nubile---my first "younger woman," I realized with some amusement. She looked as if she'd been airbrushed into perfection.

Once again, Matt and I fell into a pile, though it soon became apparent that I---and not Matt---was the object of her hotter desires. She was sweetly compliant with Matt, the dutiful turn-of-the-century wife; but with me, she was transformed from the diffident passive creature I'd just observed into an aggressive, passionate, self-assured miracle worker going about her task as if she'd had vocational training.

She made over me as if I were manna from heaven---muttering endearments, kissing my hands and face and neck, stroking my hair, turning everything but my fingernails into bona fide erogenous zones. There was something about her that truly made me insatiable---as if each new jolt only served to further recharge my batteries. I'd never been so turned on---perhaps because no one I'd ever been with had been so turned on.

Eventually, Matt became bored by our calisthenics and disappeared to the other bed. A few minutes later, glancing up during a ten-second rest stop, I noticed that my sweet but jaded fool was engrossed in the evening paper. Tired of the editorial page and his busy companions, he drifted off to sleep.

Not Tammy and I. We performed our erotic ballet the night through, tasting and touching and cuddling. We fell into a trancelike sleep just as the sun came up. An hour or so later, I awoke to find Matt still asleep, the hair on his forehead arranged in a Gerber-baby curlicue, a perfect if hairy picture of innocence: blissfully unaware that his mate had enjoyed a month's worth of sex in a single night.

As if aware of being watched, he opened his eyes, yawned and asked ingenuously how we'd slept. Tammy and I burst into giggles. Understanding at last, Matt appeared more astonished at our stamina than at our lasciviousness.

Matt had to be somewhere in an hour, so he headed for the shower. A gleam came into Tammy's eyes. "Great," she murmured. "Now we can be alone!" Something about her enthusiasm scared me; I was convinced that I definitely didn't want to be alone with her. I'm not a superstitious person, but suddenly I sensed that true lesbians are something like lady vampires, that only in complete privacy could she deliver the deadly irrevocable kiss that would be so passionate, so intimate it would turn me into a lesbian as well.

Besides, I'd reached the sexual saturation point and would as soon have gotten nibbled by a red ant as by another person. Jumping out of bed, I claimed that I had to accompany Matt to his appointment. Tammy was invited along, but I hoped she wouldn't accept. Being tactful and perceptive, she claimed to prefer to sleep awhile longer.

Matt teased me at breakfast about my reported excesses, expressing amazement that I had deliberately given up another hour or two with her. "I'd rather have breakfast with you," I said---and meant it. The sexual tension prompting such unnatural couplings was temporarily gone and I was flooded with a cold objectivity. At that point, my frolicking with Tammy didn't deem disgusting or filthy but merely---well---distasteful.

"I know what you mean," Matt said. "Once the fun is over, you begin to wonder if maybe some rules are meant not to be broken."

I squeezed his hand, feeling the intimacy that often comes after having been with a third person in such passionate circumstances. My occasional fears of being a secret queer were gone for good. I realized that I'd just survived the ultimate trial by fire: If I could resist Tammy's heated passions, I could resist anything. But I also knew that if there hadn't been a man I cared about to turn to, I might well still be in her arms; might have gotten up that day and turned in my Capezios for combat boots.

Most of the men to whom I've mentioned my exotic sexual history respond with a patronizing got-your-number look. I can almost hear them thinking: Women who have sex with other women have to be frigid. They can't get off except by rubbing each other. The more enlightened think it's perfectly natural; after all, they say, women are far more orgasmically insatiable than men, so it's understandable that a girl would turn to her same sex for satisfactions it might take a battalion of men to provide. Both of these presumptions miss the point and assume that women who sleep with women are either cold fishes or hot gluttons.

No doubt this is sometimes the case; I know plenty of frigid women, and even the responsive ones, including me, can't make it with every man. And it's certainly true that women are able to have more climaxes per hour than any guy but the Six Million Dollar Man. But no matter how you slice it, there is still no satisfactory way a woman can actually fuck another woman.

What women do provide in bed that most men don't is simply their tender, leisurely approach to lovemaking. They tend to be more personal, more loving and gentler than the men I've had---and this even without the kind of long-term emotional commitment that would undoubtedly make sex even more fulfilling.

Angie and Tammy fluttered around me with soft whisper kisses and tender nibbles and touched me as if they were reading braille instead of a shopping guide. Now, you may wonder, why don't women just tell men what they want? Well, I've tried; but with guys trained from adolescence to believe that foreplay means getting naked first, my words fall on deaf ears. Besides, my numerous perversions don't include unnatural pushiness. It's difficult for such an obliging, accommodating soul to feel comfortable saying to a man, "Uh, John, wouldja please cuddle me awhile, lick my ear lobes, tenderly massage the small of my back, tell me I'm wonderful and nuzzle my collarbones first? Thanksalot." For women like me---and I fancy I'm in the majority---sex with a girl gives us a chance we've never had before, a chance for the first time to be completely equal, to take our pleasure into our own hands. We're finally able to be the aggressor, if we like. Because of this, it's easy for me to see why many women decide to become practicing lesbians, even if their original inclinations are heterosexual.

Women also provide a much more sensuous ambience, largely because they give more feedback, the kind Tammy so kindly exemplified.

Apparently, men are taught to restrain expressions of pleasure as well as those of fear or pain: If they hesitate to weep in sorrow, it seems they're equally reluctant to cry for joy. Only two or three of my lovers have audibly made it clear during the act that they were really happy and enjoying themselves, even though most men praise me afterward. Women weren't taught to be so shy: Their little moans and groans are almost unspeakably stimulating. Men expect such responses from us, yet they seem to forget that we, too, need a little reassurance.

Many of them also seem to be in too much of a hurry---maybe as a result of those universal guilt-ridden back-set jobs with the town punch. One lover of mine liked to screw between halves of the Sunday-afternoon football game. Well, quickies can sometimes be fun, but not when you're actually running against a time clock. It's especially unnerving when you know that your partner is more interested in what Sonny Jurgensen will do in the third quarter than in what you're doing to his wonderful warm dick in the meantime.

Ardent feminists are very vocal in their resentment at being treated as sex objects by men as a whole. But I think they equally resent the fact that with the men they care for, they are rarely enough of a sex object.

If I had a man who was willing to provide all the sexual fundamentals, as well as the fringe benefits of tender loving care more common to women, I doubt that any female---with the understandable exception of a Julie Christie or a Brigitte Bardot---would ever turn my head again.