My Weekend of Flashy Orgasms

In Haiti, by day or by night, I could never escape the sound of voodoo drums. At Sandstone, by day or by night, I could never escape the sound of people having flashy orgasms. Having been to both places and heard both sounds, I am here to tell you that the drums were neither as prevalent nor as noisy as the orgasms.

Sandstone, in case you hadn't heard, was an idyllic mountaintop retreat in Topanga, California, just north of Los Angeles, where few, if any, clothes were worn, where neither sexual nor toilet functions went on behind closed doors (primarily because at Sandstone there weren't many doors, closed or otherwise) and where it was thought a fine thing to have one close Primary sexual relationship and several what they called Satellite ones. (Despite its dearth of doors, Sandstone just closed, possibly forever.)

I had planned at this point to tell you how the nasty old editors at Playboy, knowing how shy I am, dragged me kicking and screaming to the gates of Sandstone and threw me inside. It would have been a blue-eyed, bald-faced lie. As a matter of fact, I think it's high time I made a confession to you: Every article I've written in these page in which I have personally investigated some area of tacky sex, such as going to an orgy or answering kinky sex ads has been not, as I've suggested, the fiendish scheme of sadistic editors but an idea thought up by your correspondent himself. I just thought you ought to know that.

Oh, the shyness and the fright I described in those articles were absolutely genuine; you needn't worry about that. But I did feel it was time I dropped the pretense that researching such stories is a job akin to mining anthracite.

Very well, then. With this new bond of frankness and trust between us, perhaps we are better equipped to share an adventure as intimate as Sandstone.

•

As our story opens, we find shy but eager Greenburg arriving at Sandstone late on the afternoon of Friday, July 2, 1976, after a scenic but chilling drive through tricky mountain passes, for a weekend of patriotic Bicentennial fun. With me in the car is an equally shy, if not as eager Primary whom I shall call Judy, largely because that is her name. Judy has made it abundantly clear to me that she intends neither to bed down with anyone at Sandstone but this reporter nor to wear anything scantier than a bikini, yet, should it become absolutely necessary, she stands willing to observe others doing whatever they feel they must.

We park the car and walk up the hill from the parking lot to the main building, where we are to be interviewed to determine our suitability as Sandstone guests. As our story progresses and you begin to get an idea of how intimate people get with each other at Sandstone, you will perhaps see the wisdom of any process designed to weed out, say, advanced ringworm cases and necrophiliacs.

In the courtyard of the main building is a pond filled with rocks and moss and giant Japanese goldfish. A plashing fountain in the pond provides the only audible sound so far. Beyond the main building can be seen the Pacific Ocean, covered with a layer of cottony clouds. Sandstone is well above the clouds.

We enter the main building and find ourselves in a large living room with a high ceiling, several sofa seating areas, a fireplace and sliding glass doors that open onto an elevated deck. Stained-glass windows adjoining the sliding glass doors prove upon close examination to be illustrations of couples in the most popular coital positions interspersed with idealized close-ups of the male and female sex organs.

A clothed gentleman and a naked woman with pendulous breasts beckon us to sit down, share a glass of fruit juice and fill out entry forms. As Judy and I are drinking our fruit juice and filling out our forms, we see another couple enter, greet the clothed man and the naked woman and also begin filling out forms. Although the two appear quite intimate, the gentleman misspells his Primary's name on her entry card.

At length, Judy and I are ushered into a small office adjoining the living room. Our interviewer is a darkly attractive and petite young woman named Pam, who used to be assistant couture buyer at Saks Fifth Avenue and who is now manager of the Sandstone Club, which is Sandstone's social section. The other two parts of Sandstone are the Community--the resident "family" of about two-dozen staff members--and the Center, which is the educational division of Sandstone and which sponsors seminars and workshops with such bouncy titles as "Open Relationships, Advanced," "Bioenergy for Fun and Prophet," "Fear of Rejection," "Being Bisexual," "Massage for Lovers and Friends," "Developing Chutzpah: Assertiveness Training" and "Pathways to Sensuality," in which "alternate styles of tumescing are demonstrated."

In the interview, we learn that Sandstone was founded in 1967 by engineer John Williamson and his wife, Barbara, was closed and reopened a couple of times, following a massive forest fire in 1970 and a gigantic legal battle with the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, who couldn't bear the thought of all those naked folks up there having so much fun together. Sandstone was finally taken over in 1973 by Paul Paige, an attractive young marriage counselor, Gestalt therapist and ex-Marine. For the next three years, Sandstone enjoyed legal and financial health. It attracted an impressive number of physicians, psychologists, professors and horny people, including Joy of Sex author Dr. Alex Comfort, writer Gay Talese, TV personality Orson Bean and former New York Times cultural editor Max Lerner.

Pam warns us that the following are verboten at Sandstone: booze, illegal drugs, children under 18, pets and hostile or abusive behavior. Fortunately, we have brought none of these in with us, with the possible exception of a smallish flask filled with, I forget now, either vodka, gerbils or sarcasm. Pam further warns us of some of the outdoor dangers at Sandstone--rattlesnakes and tarantulas--but it's the indoor ones that I personally find more threatening, like blundering into breaches of sexual protocol or encountering ensemble sexual rejection.

Pam says that although sexual activity can and does take place in any part of Sandstone, most of it is centered in the two rooms on the main building's lower floor: The Playroom is an immense room lined with king-sized mattresses and water beds--couples interested in one-on-one sex predominate in the Playroom. Those with a penchant for multiple couplings tend to hang out more in the smaller, split-leveled Ballroom next door.

If we should find ourselves in the Ballroom and be intrigued with the notion of participating in the activities of any ongoing group, Pam explains, the protocol is to touch one of the participants of the group lightly on the arm. He or she will thereupon either wave us away or pull us into the group.

Pam says that most men, when they first come to Sandstone, experience two phenomena: one, what Sandstone regulars refer to as the kid-in-the-candy-store syndrome, or what I call The Heartbreak of Satyriasis, and two, impotence. Neither of these, says Pam consolingly, lasts very long--usually no longer than a month. Women, says Pam, tend at first to find it difficult to refuse any man who wants to do it with them--what Sandstone regulars call mercy-fucking. The other noteworthy term that Pam uses and that we will hear a lot during our weekend stay is down-the-hill--Sandstone members' mildly patronizing term for the rest of the world outside Sandstone.

The main events this weekend are an all-day seminar-workshop called "The Sandstone Experience" and a special Saturday-night party, whence most sexual activity of a scheduled nature takes place. Attending the seminar-workshop is a matter of taking a short interview and paying an enrollment fee. Attending the Saturday-night party is a matter of getting a personal invitation after one is looked over and deemed suitable. It is not clear to us at this point what makes one suitable, it is only clear that not to be found suitable is going to be rather unpleasant should it occur.

Although Judy informs Pam of her reluctance to either copulate with strangers or to disrobe, Pam does not seem to be dismayed. She concludes our interview, which we appear to have passed, and tells us that we can now pay our fees of $50 per person per day (or $200 for two days) if we wish, and even if we don't wish. And then, she ushers us to the Pong Room, so named because it is adjacent to the outdoor ping-pong table, where we shall be spending Friday and Saturday nights. The Pong Room is one of the only two private guest rooms with doors at Sandstone, other guests being obliged (continued on page 226)Flashy Orgasms(continued from page 140) to sleep communally in the Playroom and Ballroom, cuddled up together like litters of kittens. It does not occur to me until it is too late that sleeping cuddled up like kittens with an informal group of ladies and gents in the Playroom or Ballroom might be preferable to sleeping in the Pong Room, which is not only adjacent to the ping-pong table but also to the kitchen, whose activities begin in the vicinity of dawn.

After writing Pam a check for $200, we make our way out of the understated simplicity of the Pong Room's lumpy convertible sofa to the parking lot to get our bags. There we are confronted by an affable yet not-altogether-reputable-looking chap, who asks us if we are swingers.

We say no, and the affable chap says that's OK, no problem, he just happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to check this Sandstone place out, he being a swinger himself and having heard a good deal about the thing and having also been a member for quite a few years of a similar place not far from here called Elysium Fields, had we heard of it?, here was his Elysium membership card right here, see, same type of place, really, except that there were young kids on the premises, so you couldn't fuck right outside, but otherwise about the same, and he'd been hanging out at Elysium for quite a while, as he'd said, although he was tired of the place, felt Elysium was a little too, well, intense for him, the relationships one got into there were a little too deep, since what he really liked to do best was go into a bar and pick up some broad and throw her a fuck, begging Judy's pardon for his French and hoping she wasn't offended.

Judy indicates she is not offended, at least not by the word fuck, and I manage to extricate us from his nonstop affability long enough to grab our bags out of the car and run. The gentleman, it seems, has also just been interviewed by Pam and (one begins to see the wisdom in such things) failed to pass.

•

That night, there is an astonishingly good buffet dinner of fish kabob in a creamy white-wine sauce and broccoli with hollandaise, and a mixed consciousness-raising session in the Playroom, in which 17 clothed people attempt to raise their consciousness on the topic "Dignity and Privacy in Sex."

Usually, consciousness-raising sessions are segregated by sex here, but tonight's is not, due to the small turnout of guests. In a recent women's c-r session, it came out that most ladies didn't really know what other ladies' vaginas looked like, much less their own, and so they turned up the lights and turned down their panties and looked inside one another and poked around in there until they got a real sense of the thing, and a guy who was passing in the hall peeked in and asked what was going on and was told that they were examining vaginas and did he want to take a look, and he said sure and went in for a gander as well.

Our group leader asks what dignity and privacy in sex means to us. One woman says, "To me it means that when I am fucking some guy in the Ballroom, my husband feels free to come and join in with us, but not when I am fucking somebody in the Playroom--then he is discreet and stays away."

Someone else says that to him it means that a couple can have a go at it on the front lawn like one couple did here quite recently, and everyone respected their privacy and paid not the least bit of attention to them, with the one teeny exception that, at the moment of the couple's mutual and not inaudible orgasm, everybody burst into applause.

There is much talk of a somewhat self-congratulatory nature about the seriousness of the Sandstone phenomenon, its larger ramifications for the society as a whole, blah blah blah, and some young upstart of a single guest--Friday night is usually the only night that singles are allowed at Sandstone without partners--says that this is all a lot of hooey and why can't anybody admit that Sandstone is nothing but a fuck club. Everybody leaps on the guy and has a lot of salty things to say to him, and if one thing is sure it is that this guy is a snap not to be invited to the Saturday-night party.

After the c-r session, we drift upstairs. I am hoping there will be some sort of sexual activity scheduled, but what there is, is a couple of young entertainers singing and playing the guitar very sweetly, and one or two informal rap sessions, also clothed.

I meet a guy named Mitch, who is in his mid-30s and who is a group therapist and a sculptor. With Mitch is an attractive blonde girl, very slender, name of Susan. Susan is 28, is a dental hygienist and a struggling stand-up comedienne. She is also Mitch's Primary. They live together at the beach in Santa Monica and have an open relationship, which means they allow each other to have sleep-over dates with other people.

Both Mitch and Susan claim to have outgrown all feelings of jealousy regarding each other's Satellites. Both have been members of Sandstone for several years. Both have matched sets of Jewish parents who are mortified by the whole notion of Sandstone and of open relationships, Susan's refusing even to acknowledge her as a daughter for the first two years they know about it. (Both Mitch and Susan are named things other than Mitch and Susan--they have asked me to disguise them in this article to save their parents further migraines and peptic ulcers.)

Mitch and Susan are equally endowed with a strong sense of humor, but Susan's is initially too acidic to my taste and so I spend the bulk of my time with Mitch, who has the greater warmth. Mitch and Susan leave early and say they'll be back tomorrow night. I have good feelings about both of them, especially about Mitch. If we lived in the same city, we'd probably be friends.

After they go, I strike up a lively conversation with a lovely plump grandmotherly lady with schoolmarmish steel-rimmed glasses and white hair piled up in a bun. She tells me that she is, indeed, a schoolmarm, for prekindergarteners, and that she and her husband came to Sandstone after 25 years of wedded bliss, and they are still blissfully wedded. The members and guests at Sandstone are of all ages, from 20s through 60s, and we will meet many this weekend who claim to have been happily married for that long, and a few not so happily who came here after a quarter of a century of matrimony to save their marriages.

A fellow on my left, hearing me express surprise at the number of oldsters who seem willing to frisk about in the altogether, tells me he once brought his 75-year-old mother up to Sandstone for a visit.

"When she finally got around to taking off her clothes," he says, "two young girls in their 20s came up to her and began admiring her boobs and fondling them and saying what great shape they were in."

By about one A.M., it is apparent to me that nothing more promising than stories about the handling of granny jugs will happen tonight. Trips to the closest bathrooms prove unfulfilling. Small groups of lallygaggers loiter at the doorways and there are no doors to shield me from them. Not being one who is comfortable performing toilet functions as a spectator sport, I elect to hold it in till morning. It is not clear to me why Sandstone's open-door policy on sexual activity extends to the bathroom, but I guess that's just East Coast muddle-headedness on my part.

•

Morning produces no more private opportunities for Dignity and Privacy in Toilet than the previous night, and so I am forced to enter a rest room clotted with amiable bathroomgoers and stand in line with both men and women to use the commode. I take turns admiring the wallpaper, which is patterned with stylized couples in Top 40 conjugal positions, and studying the aplomb of the various pishers who precede me in line. The last person ahead of me is an attractive lady of about 40 who looks like she's been doing such things all her life. She pulls down her panties, sits down on the seat, and takes one of the least ruffled leaks I have ever seen.

When she is finished, I stride to the john and, mustering as much nonchalance as I can, unzip, dig out my shvantz and execute one of three most casual pisses of the day. (I am to participate in many such communal urinations this weekend, but somehow I shall never make the quantum leap to communal defecations. Self-critical as I may be, I do not find this to be a serious flaw in my character.)

Right after breakfast, two dozen of us meet clothed for a rap session in the Playroom, which is the formal beginning of the daylong "Sandstone Experience" seminar-workshop. Everybody in the group introduces themselves and gives a brief biographical sketch. There are two M.D.s. one of whom just kicked a dexie addiction he picked up years ago in med school. There are a couple of lawyers, a couple of shrinks, several housewives, one phone-company executive and one gas-company one, three engineers, three writers, a professor of musicology and a chiropractor. I decide to be out front about the article I'm writing, which makes everybody instantly self-conscious and quippy.

Paul Paige, Sandstone's mentor, discusses with us the exquisite philosophical distinctions between Balling, Fucking and Making Love, and between Sexuality and Sensuality, none of which at this point I understand. There is a brief tour of the grounds, the buildings and the outdoor Jacuzzi whirlpool bath--"Three women have left their husbands for the nozzles on this thing," says our guide and everyone chuckles in anticipation. We are shown the private bungalows occupied by Paul and Pam, where, for some reason, they choose to get in an occasional private act of either sex or toilet, and then we are ushered into the building that houses Sandstone's incredible Olympic-sized indoor pool with body-temperature water and are given an opportunity to undress.

Only Judy, of the two-dozen seminar-workshop members, elects to remain clothed. The rest of us slip out of our duds, hang them on hooks on the wall and enter the very warm and surprisingly erotic water. Several of the men are wearing gold chains around their necks. Several of the women are wearing gold chains around their waists and some around their ankles. Judy observes to me later that there appears to be in Southern California a relationship between nudity and ornamentation--"The less clothing, the more body jewelry," she says.

We are instructed to form a large circle in the waist-deep part of the pool. Then one person at a time lies down in the water on his back, closes his eyes and trusts the rest of us to keep his head out of the water as we float him slowly around the circle. As each person is passed around, there are occasional light random caresses of the trusting person's body, though not in the genital region. When it is time for me to be floated around the circle, I find it a wonderfully peaceful and lovely experience.

The second exercise finds us forming two straight parallel lines in the pool, again passing one floating and trusting person after another down the line. This time there is more activity on the part of the passers. There is some light stroking of breasts and of pudenda. One fellow asks that we hum to stimulate his eardrums underwater as he passes us. Another, an apparent foot fetishist, persistently reaches out for and sucks on any passing toes in the vicinity of his mouth. Yet another finds himself bending to kiss and lick an occasional female nipple. (Generally informed sources at Sandstone contend that the nipple kisser was this correspondent.)

The third exercise finds us forming two concentric circles, joining hands and closing eyes. At a signal from our leader, the outer circle, of which I am presently not a part, begins moving and, at another signal, stops. With no eyes being opened, each person in the outer circle then feels around for the person in front of him and begins stroking his or her body.

The first time I realize that hard masculine hands are caressing my back and chest and shoulders, I feel quite uncomfortable. It seems to me that, were I to find myself enjoying being fondled by a man, I would burst into full faghood and become an instant hairdresser--Mr. Dan, giving limp-wristed wash-and-sets. As it continues, and no hair rollers sprout from my palms, I begin to relax and I decide that it is not inappropriate to be thus stroked, particularly since the genital area doesn't seem to be involved. The group leader repeatedly tells us to take responsibility for communicating with our bodies what we wish or don't wish our fondlers to do to us.

When the outer circle has completed a full tour of the inner one, we exchange places, and our group has an opportunity to caress the other group. Once again, the first time I reach out for the body ahead of mine and feel not the familiar smooth shape of a lady but that of a hard, hairy, heavily muscled man, I am initially uncomfortable. And once again, finding no hairdressing salons materializing around me, I relax and decide it is OK for me to pat a male body.

To my extreme disappointment, the bodies I find in front of me as I move blindly around the circle seem to be more frequently male than female. To my further disappointment, our group leader soon indicates it is high time we open our eyes, climb out of the water and go to have lunch. I am the last to leave the pool.

I stand drying myself off and dressing and I notice that alongside me is another of Sandstone's famous doorless bathrooms. On the can, a guy from our workshop is defecating rather noisily and giving a running commentary on the state of his bowels.

I beat a hasty retreat and make my way over to Judy, who has participated in this morning's activities from a safe, clothed, arid vantage point. Judy assures me she intends to continue being safe, clothed and arid. I tell her she really missed something by not being in the pool.

"Yeah," she says. "I also missed World War Two and I'm not sorry about that, either."

I figure everything in the second half of the seminar is going to be anticlimactic after the morning's activities in the pool. I figure wrong.

The first thing we do after lunch is a massage workshop. Three narrow folding massage tables have been set up end to end in the Playroom. Everybody in the 24-member group takes off his or her clothes, except for Judy and except for one guy with white hair, who keeps his socks and shoes on because, he says, he is recovering from a cold. One person gets up on each massage table and lies down. The rest of us form a circle around the three tables. We are handed several bottles of appealingly scented oil and are instructed to pour great quantities of same upon the bodies in front of us and to rub it into their skins. At a signal from our leader, the recumbent bodies close their eyes and the upright ones begin moving clockwise around the tables, massaging the bodies in the same way we're moving.

If there was only light petting above the waist in the pool, there is now very definitely heavy petting both above and below the waist on the tables. Oddly, none of the men appears to be getting an erection. The bearded professor of musicology, who had in the morning rap session used a number of polysyllabic words like "pejorative" and who consistently referred to his privates as "genitalia," says that in the pool he was sad that nobody touched his genitalia, and that now that they were, it felt good and he wished that he had an erection so as to call further attention to them.

"Call attention to what?" someone asks.

"To my...cock," he replies.

Everybody applauds.

Before long, all the men, including me, have touched the flaccid penises of the gentlemen on the tables we passed. It is an odd sensation. One man observes that other men's penises feel softer and more fragile than his own, and everyone concurs. One lady observes that she finds the same is true about the breasts she's been touching.

"You can sit around all day touching your breasts," she says, "but they just don't feel the same as someone else's."

Finally, it gets to be my turn on the table. I close my eyes and the hands begin a tour of my body. Up the right side, down the left. Someone rubs my penis. So does someone else. And someone else. And several someone else. It feels weird. And marvelous. Twenty-one people, 42 hands, all massaging me, stroking me, fondling me, caressing me, loving me up. It's as if an entire committee suddenly fell unanimously in love with me and asked nothing more than the opportunity of expressing its affection. It's as if a 42-handed sea creature were trying to seduce me. "It's like passing through a human car wash," says a man on the next table.

The massage is supposed to take three minutes. It is impossible to say how long it actually lasts. Like the other men, I don't have an erection during the massage. It seems somehow appropriate not to. It would also seem appropriate were I to get one. I feel for the first time here a great sense of relaxation and suddenly I realize that I know the difference between sexuality and sensuality, that this is the latter, with no expectations about performance on me, with no anxieties about doing the right or wrong thing. It is very nice, very nice, indeed.

When it is over, the massagees are supposed to tell the massagers what it was like for them. I tell the massagers a bit about the above, about getting the difference between sexuality and sensuality and all the rest of it, and then I tell them I'd like to room with all of them next semester--an old Kingston Trio line, but it pleases them.

Eventually, we all have had our turns on the tables, one or two of us may have even snuck in a second turn, and we are all glistening and oozing and dripping with perfumed oil. The group leader says there will be a break for showers and then we will reconvene for a rap session in the Ballroom.

I walk into the oversized shower room with three men and a lady. The lady is about 30, dark, attractive and nicely shaped. The lady is rubbing soap on one of the men, who looks a bit like Jimmy Carter. Then the lady starts rubbing soap on me, on my back. It feels nice and I thank her. The lady smiles and begins rubbing soap into my sexual equipment. As she does this, she looks at me and says as follows: "Hi, my name is Cynthia and I would like to be mentioned in the article you are writing for Playboy."

"Cynthia," I say, "you got it."

Whereupon I lean over and plant a nice kiss on her lips, whereupon her lips part, whereupon I slip my tongue in between them. Cynthia shivers, startled, as if all this massaging of sex organs were just in fun but tongues in mouths are serious stuff. Perhaps tongues in mouths in Sandstone shower rooms are inappropriate. Perhaps everyone is merely holding back, saving it for tonight, saving themselves for the big Saturday-night blast.

When Cynthia pulls away, I open my eyes and notice that the chap standing just in back of her is the big guy who looks like Jimmy Carter and who is evidently the lady's husband. I know that I have done nothing really out of line, that Cynthia's hubby is as conversant as I am with Sandstone's policy on Primaries and Satellites and all, but still there is a little something in how he is looking at me, and I decide to flash him a quick smile and beat it out of the shower room.

The rap session in the Ballroom is the concluding phase of the all-day workshop. In it, everyone shares her impressions of the day and how the experience matched up to her expectations of it.

The guy who wore his socks and shoes in the massage workshop tells Judy he resents the fact that she wore her clothes throughout the seminar and didn't participate with the rest of us. Everybody jumps on him, saying she did participate, but on the level she felt comfortable with, that that was just as valid as the way in which he had participated, that that was called taking care of oneself and that that was to be not attacked but admired.

It's beautiful. Judy herself is so grateful for the group's reaction, she is on the verge of tears. She thanks them and says that she does feel she participated with them in the activities and she also says that she has never had such a warm and supportive reaction from a group in her life.

The seminar ends. Judy and I return to the Pong Room. I tell her about the incident in the shower with Cynthia. She seems inordinately interested in hearing about it.

We dress for dinner, still not knowing whether we are invited to the big party afterward. Like the story about the man with the flat tire who's walking to the gas station in the boondocks and worrying how much he's going to be charged for the jack and getting madder and madder in anticipation, I begin to fantasize demeaning conversations, in which I am told that, for whatever reason, Judy and I are not invited to the party.

I walk into the main living room and try to find someone who knows if we're invited, but all I manage to do is find out some of the people who have not been invited: the guy who wore his socks and shoes and didn't approve of Judy's being clothed has not been invited; the guy who said Sandstone was nothing more than a fuck club has, of course, not been invited; a very tall psychiatrist with strange red hair and a strange red Mephistophelean beard, who'd been spotted playfully trying to drown some of the young ladies in the pool in this morning's exercises, has most emphatically not been invited.

There has been a lot of talk about how everybody who stays for the party must have a partner of the opposite sex available to others, and I worry that Judy's known policy of abstinence, no matter how much it is officially cheered as Judy's taking care of herself, may have disqualified us.

I finally manage to seek out a Sandstone official and, eyes smoldering, demand to know if we are invited or not to the goddamned party. Yes, he says, we are. We are? Really? Oh. How nice.

Dinner Saturday night is again buffet style. Judy and I heap our plates and then look around for someone to sit down with. There are perhaps 30 or 40 people in their 30s or 40s sitting about in the living room and out on the deck, most of them fairly attractive-looking. Two outrageously wholesome and pretty California girls with long blonde hair pass by us and I wonder idly if I will be having intimate dealings with them later on tonight, singly or--my great fantasy--in a threesome, and how one goes about arranging such things.

I spot Cynthia and her husband sitting out on the deck and point them out to Judy. To my surprise, she suggests we sit down with them. We do. And when it is time for dessert, both Cynthia and Judy get up and bring it back for us, and when they return, they are both smiling in a peculiar manner.

"Judy tells me that the thing in the shower really turned you on," says Cynthia.

I admit that it did.

"It turned me on, too," says Cynthia. She flashes a quick look at Judy and then continues. "I told Judy I really wanted to make it with you and asked her if she minded. Judy said she liked me and that if you had to do it with anyone here, she'd prefer it was with me."

I nod and flash a fast look at Judy and then at Cynthia's husband. His face is betraying nothing at all, but he and Cynthia are looking at each other and it is a cinch that as many messages are going back and forth between them as pass through any Western Union office on Mother's Day.

"So," says Cynthia, "would you like to come downstairs with me?"

"When?" I say.

"How about right now?" says Cynthia.

I look at Cynthia a moment, then at Judy, then at Cynthia's husband, then back at Cynthia.

"Now is fine," I say and get up and, with more rapid glances and a few quickie smiles at both, I take Cynthia's hand and follow her downstairs to the Playroom for dessert.

Outside the Playroom is a little dressing room with lockers and towels and a couple of racks for hanging clothes. Cynthia and I swiftly slip out of everything but our underpants, agreeing we find this sexier than starting out totally naked, and then we enter the Playroom.

In the faint light, we can see bodies rhythmically rising and falling, and the ever-present cries of lovers in the throes of unimaginable ecstasy provide a suitable chorus of greeting. Although dinner upstairs has scarcely concluded, at least six couples have already begun strenuous workouts on the mattresses, being obviously unaware of the warning I was given as a kid, that rigorous exercise immediately after eating gives you cramps.

Cynthia and I make our way to the end of the Playroom to a vacant king-sized mattress in a corner, lie down and begin foreplay. If the sounds of love-making on all sides of me are not necessarily a stimulant, neither, surprisingly, are they a deterrent, and soon our voices blend with theirs in some primitive tribal call of the wild.

When we have finished, we are breathless and pleased with ourselves and with each other, and not yet sated. I suggest a visit to the pool and Cynthia assents. We pick our way back through the bodies in the Playroom, which, like machinery in Southern California oil fields, have never ceased their regular and relentless up-and-down activity. We don minimal clothing against the chill night air and make our way across the unlit grounds to the pool house.

The pool house is deserted and dark. Without turning on any lights, we slip naked into the 93-degree Fahrenheit water and embrace. I have attempted underwater lovemaking on a few previous occasions--at night in a semipublic swimming pool in Mexico and in the day-time in both the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean--and at no time was it any more than a zany adventure and a barely lubricated and, hence, moderately painful proposition. Tonight, with an already slippery Cynthia in the hot waters of the Sandstone pool, submerged sex comes of age.

It seems almost gratuitous to tell you that at one point we attempted an embellishment of the morning's first pool exercise, with me floating on my back with eyes closed, while Cynthia, who has obviously given lessons to Linda Love-lace, busied herself at my groin and soon qualified for a permanent niche in the Fellatio Hall of Fame. The feeling was indescribable, as if one were not only back in the womb but also getting head from a close relative. If God Himself had appeared to me then and said, "All right, Greenburg, that's it--a little fun is one thing, but you've gone and abused the privilege and that's the 3--0 mark for life on Earth," I would have found it entirely reasonable and gone along quietly.

Cynthia and I proceed from the pool house to the outdoor Jacuzzi, which, though hot and bubbling, is not going to make either of us leave our mates for one of its nozzles. When I suggest to Cynthia that we drop into the Ballroom to see whether anyone has any openings on their dance cards, she replies that she really isn't up for it, that she really is beginning to worry that we have been gone too long and that her husband might be getting restless.

"Frankly," says Cynthia. "About the only thing I'd be the slightest bit interested in at this point is a threesome with another girl."

If my teeth were not firmly anchored to my jaws, they would have surely fallen out and clattered to the deck of the Jacuzzi.

"Are you serious about that?" I say.

Cynthia looks puzzled.

"Sure, I'm serious," she says. "Why?"

"I really have died and gone to heaven," I say. "A threesome with two women just happens to be my longest-running unfulfilled fantasy."

Cynthia smiles at the notion that anything so attainable could possibly be anybody's fantasy and suggests I look around for a lady I want to be our third partner.

I have not gotten far into looking when we come across Cynthia's hubby. We have been gone a long time, and I feel a bit peculiar seeing him and look the other way and busy myself with the belt of my bush jacket. Cynthia's hubby must be feeling a bit peculiar, too, judging by how much he looks like he is not feeling peculiar. Cynthia says she will go and talk with him awhile and that I should keep looking for our third partner and then she goes off with her husband.

I go back to the main living room and find Judy and ask her how she is doing. Judy says she is doing OK, so I drift away and continue looking around for a girl for our threesome, but there do not seem to be any loose ones around and it soon becomes apparent that Cynthia is very much no longer around herself.

It is starting to get late. I have had an incredible time with Cynthia and now it is over and, for some reason, I find that I am still hungry. How, after all the stuff I did with her, could I possibly be feeling this way? Maybe it's that I haven't yet gotten my threesome, nor found my way to the floor of the Ballroom. Maybe this kind of sex is like Chinese food--great at the time, but half an hour later you're hungry again. Maybe it's simply the old kid-in-the-candy-store syndrome.

I chat with the attractive staff member named Annette, who enrolled me in today's seminar-workshop, about the seminar-workshop, about the difference between sexuality and sensuality, about changing sexual mores and the ramifications of the Sandstone experience on the society as a whole, about threesomes, about how Annette feels about threesomes, about how Annette doesn't go in for threesomes, about how Annette feels about maybe popping down to the Playroom for a fast twosome.

Annette says she's already had enough sex for one night, thanks, besides which her date is feeling a little neglected because she left him alone to go downstairs awhile ago with somebody else and she really feels she ought to go and find him and see how he is. But I persist and Annette relents and we do go down to the Playroom for some spirited if not lengthy lovemaking, at the conclusion of which, she bounds upstairs to make sure her date is OK. I amble back upstairs and prowl about wearing just my bush jacket--a hunter on a sexual safari who has found the spoor but not yet bagged his limit.

Judy is getting restless and wants to go to bed. Cynthia has not reappeared. Mitch and Susan do not seem to have made it back up the hill for the party. I don't quite know what it is I want, but I know I haven't found it yet. Judy goes off to bed. I continue prowling.

A darkly beautiful and very young married girl named Dianne sits on a couch in the living room with her husband and two other couples, laughing. I normally can't stand strangers anywhere sitting and laughing--I always think it is me they are laughing at--but now is not normally and so I sit down and join them. They are polite but seemingly into their own thing, whatever it is, and so I end up feeling slightly foolish and leave.

In the kitchen, I am surprised to run into Susan. She and Mitch got here a while ago, looked around for me without success, and now Mitch has disappeared somewhere, Susan doesn't know where. Susan is wearing jeans, no top, and a pair of small yet perky breasts with pert pink nipples. Looking at them, I feel myself getting turned on and wonder whether, in view of my new friendship with Mitch, this feeling is appropriate.

Susan seems tired, willing to talk, less acidic and not discernibly interested in making love. I figure it's probably just as well. We stand in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and drinking somebody's too-sweet jug wine, and compare notes about the stand-up comedy biz--five years ago, I had a stand-up comedy act with partner Avery Corman and I sympathize with anybody who is similarly obsessed.

The perplexing thing is that, inappropriateness notwithstanding, the more Susan and I talk, the more I want to make it with her. At length, I elect to bring the matter out into the open.

"Susan," I say, "I feel slightly disloyal even mentioning this, but here I am talking about comedy routines when what I am mainly doing is studying your remarkable breasts. I know you and Mitch don't have any qualms about such things, but the fact that you're his Primary prevents me from even suggesting that we go downstairs together."

(Note the sneakiness here of using the notion that I have philosophical difficulties with making a pass at my friend's mate as the actual pass itself.)

Susan fails to respond in the fashion I'd anticipated, fails to draw me to her bosom and assure me I'll soon learn Sandstone's loosy-goosy lifestyle, and it takes a while longer before I am able, under the pretext of doing a little harmless hugging, to turn her on and persuade her to come and play with me in the Playroom.

The whole time we are down there, I am wondering what I will say if Mitch shows up. I tell Susan what I am wondering and she assures me that there isn't any problem, he will just whisper, "Susan, are you all right?" and she will whisper, "Yes," and then he will go and wait outside.

We finish making love and Mitch has, fortunately, not shown up. I am relieved. I am also perversely disappointed. I feel somehow that I would like to have the experience of being assured by Mitch that it is OK with him for me to have had sex with his girlfriend.

We go upstairs to find Mitch. But Mitch is not upstairs, nor is hardly anyone upstairs at this late hour. Susan goes off to look for Mitch and I go off finally to the Pong Room and bed.

Judy is in bed but not asleep. I sit down on the bed, feeling a little strange. Strange about the fact that I have made love to three other women tonight and that Judy not only gave permission for same but actually set up the first one. Would I have been so permissive with Judy, especially if we had been deeply involved with each other, married or even living together, told her to go ahead, fuck any guy you want, even spoken to someone she seemed turned on by and told him that it was OK for him to fuck her? Not in a male chauvinist pig's eye would I.

But if it's all right for me to have other women, then why isn't it all right for a woman of mine to have other men? Why, outside of the fact that, despite the best of intentions to the contrary, I still seem to have strong gut reactions to macho and to the double standard and to all the rest of that nonsense, which, although nonsense, continues to have a profound influence on my life.

Judy doesn't press me for details of the night's safari and I am glad. We lie together and hug, and then, although I am by now exhausted and my member is chafed from friction with assorted places it's been tonight and although I am developing an odd sense of déjà vu, we still somehow manage to complete the act and fall asleep.

•

Sunday. Sunday is very low key. Although it is the Fourth of July, the nation's 200th birthday, there is, surprisingly, not a single double-entendre about bangs or whatever. Contrary to some of the things I have thus far chosen to tell you about Sandstone, the folks up here are not only smarter and more articulate than I had expected, they also--wonder of wonders--have a fairly nice sense of humor about themselves.

The sun is hot and about 20 of us, mostly nude, lie out on the sun deck together. I am only slightly worried about the dangers of a tricky sunburn on areas not already tanned. One man tells of a time he had a painfully sunburned scrotum.

"Oh, there's nothing worse than sunburned nipples," says a lady who evidently has some expertise in that area. There follows a good deal of idle speculation about whether the sensitive skin of the nipples is the same as that of the scrotum or penis. Somebody is using a brand, of suntan oil that smells like coconuts. We all help ourselves to liberal splashes of it and rub it primarily on our nipples, scrotums and penises, and soon we are all smelling like one big macaroon.

I have a lingering uneasy feeling, which is in part due to the fact that I have yet to talk with Mitch about my experience with Susan. I ask whether anyone has seen Mitch or Susan around today, but no one has.

Directly below my position at the rail of the sun deck is the Jacuzzi. In it are Paul Paige and a number of people in a workshop he is running. For over an hour, I watch successive members of his group being suspended in the warm water of the Jacuzzi with eyes closed, being held and hugged and fondled. The experience evidently causes many of them to have flashes of a happier interuterine life and to weep softly. I could weep softly myself, thinking about my own interuterine experience in the pool last night.

Meanwhile, back on the deck, a young man lies down alongside a pretty young woman, who is half-asleep on her stomach, and begins gently finger-fucking her. This activity continues for perhaps 30 minutes. The young lady breaks into wracking orgasmic sobs just as Pam appears, leading a middle-aged friend of her mother's whom she is showing around the place. Pam's mother's friend, being no fool, is instantly impressed with the place and elects to stick around.

Cynthia and her husband have not reappeared. I commend Judy on the incredible generosity she displayed in fixing me up with Cynthia at dinner. I hadn't expected her feelings about me to permit such generosity.

"I didn't really do it out of generosity," says Judy.

"You didn't?" I say.

"No," says Judy. "I fixed you up with Cynthia to get you away from those two great-looking blondes with the long silky hair you were looking at when we came in to dinner. I figured Cynthia was at least married and a known quantity."

Later on in the afternoon, I spot Mitch. With mounting apprehension, I make my way over to him and, without even saying hello, I blurt out the following:

"Mitch, I just wanted to tell you that I made love to Susan last night and I know you probably already know that because she told you and I know it's probably at least theoretically OK with you, but I just wanted to be sure I told you about it myself, too, and to be sure that it is OK with you."

"Susan did tell me," says Mitch, smiling, "and it is OK with me. Susan said you were very nice."

"Well, so was Susan very nice," I say, "and so are you, Mitch, I really mean that. And this is one of the strangest conversations I've ever had in my life."

•

We left Sandstone late Sunday night, long after the appropriate departure hour. I walked backward all the way to the Pong Room to pack and all the way to the parking lot, hoping that perhaps somebody would beckon me back. I did not want to leave, I really didn't. And I want to go back.

I miss the curiously free and intimate feeling of walking around without clothing. I miss the low-key sensuality that pervades the place. I miss Cynthia and Annette and Dianne and Susan and Mitch and Pam and Paul, and I miss the committee who fell in love with me. For some curious reason, I even miss the relentless and yet strangely reassuring sound of people having constant flashy orgasms, and I have lately taken to listening to the more contrived ones on the Donna Summer record albums.

I want to go back to Sandstone and have an experience or two in the Ballroom, and I want to have that threesome, and I also want to find out how a guy my age who was raised in the same traditions I was raised in could unlearn jealousy enough to share his lady with me, and I want to see if I would ever be able to even consider reciprocating, and what it all means in the larger scheme of things, and whether any of this seems likely to rub off on the world down-the-hill

By and large, I think that Sandstone has spoiled me for the world down-the-hill.

"A guy passing in the hall peeked in and asked what was going on and was told that they were examining vaginas."

Having heard that Sandstone was closing at the end of December 1976, our man Greenburg went back there last Christmas to try to answer some of the questions he'd asked himself following his last visit. The surprising, tragicomic results of the experience will appear a future issue.