Lawrence Block - Threesome

But more than that, they were two people I loved. And to see them giving pleasure to each other this way, and connecting with each other as both of them had been connected with me, was very moving.

I don’t mean arousing. I don’t mean sex, really. This was the most completely sexual moment of my life, I would have to say, and yet I didn’t feel what I would have expected to feel-passion, hunger, horniness.

I kept thinking: Now we all belong to each other.

I couldn’t have been standing there even a minute before Harry’s head turned and his eyes met mine. He was startled, but I guess my nakedness let him know right away that I hadn’t come here to raise hell in the traditional Woman Scorned position. I smiled softly, and put my finger shushingly to my lips, and then took my fingertip inside my mouth and sucked at it as Rho was sucking at him. Then I grinned quickly, and coming around from an angle that made it less likely Rhoda might see me out of the corner of her eye, I tiptoed over to them.

I felt so light and airy. As if I could have flapped my arms and soared into flight.

I put an arm around Harry’s shoulder. He turned toward me, and I guided his head to my breast. His lips fastened around my nipple and he suckled like a baby. I stroked the back of his neck, and with my other hand I stroked Rhoda’s hair.

Now we all belong to each other.

Funny thing.

Just realized something that was going through my mind from the moment all of this began to get itself in motion, and that has been in and out of mind ever since.

The wish that I had someone to tell all this to.

I get the feeling that this is a very male-type thing. It is men, after all, who kiss and tell, and who do so largely because the telling is as essential a part of the game as the kissing. It’s partly a matter of celebrating a triumph, sure, but it’s also a way of making the experience real, a way of keeping it alive in your own mind.

Now women are different. Women will also tell each other sex things, but in a very different way. They’ll tell each other things about their relationships with their husbands, personal details that not one man in a thousand would tell another man about his wife. And men, on the other hand, will talk to each other about the screwing they do outside of their marriage, while the women who play around keep their mouths shut about it.

I know it’s a sweeping generalization. But what’s the point in objecting to a sweeping generalization if it also happens to be true?

There is, impossible as it may seem, a point to all this. And that is that this book of ours is serving different functions for each of us. Of course it’s everybody’s psychoanalyst, that goes without saying, but for me it is also a male ear into which I can whisper all the sex stories I want.

You may recall a Jules Feiffer cartoon-you may recall a hundred Feiffer cartoons, he’s so fucking great I could cheerfully strangle him-in which Bernard, his favorite alter ego, is distraught because his best friend is getting married. The last frame is something like, “Look, there are women all over the place. But at the age of thirty where am I going to find a buddy?”

Too true. One has passed the point of forming those intense friendships, and if one lives on a hill surrounded by woods and farms, one never talks to anybody, let alone develops a buddy.

What was it like? There’s a question a buddy would ask, an envious expression on his face (I Am Curious-Green) and a catch in his throat.

What was it like?

Well, let me tell you, buddy, it was great. It was Ace-high all the way, it was king of the mountain, top dog, the whole schmear.

That doesn’t say diddly-do, does it?

Well, let’s back up and start over. Let’s see. First of all, what we’re talking about right here is what it was like right at the beginning, from the time we three walked from the shed to the house and got into bed together for the first time. For about the next, let me see, I guess two weeks, or maybe even a month, there was a freshness, a newness to the whole thing. So that’s what I’m talking about now, that first month.

How to describe it?

To begin by saying that we were entirely involved in one another. There was a war going on, the economy was in a state of chassis, the world was going to hell in a hand car, the Mets were doing surprisingly well in spring training, and in all other spheres of human and inhuman activity the world was doing any number of things, some good and some bad, and for all we were concerned none of this was happening at all.

You know, it’s hard now to remember exactly what that month was like. Not because things have changed radically but because the changes have been on the subtle side. We are still very much ingrown and self-contained, not much concerned either with other people or with cosmic events. But then the mutual self-absorption was total, all-encompassing. Nothing got through the shield.

It was not merely that we spent an astonishing amount of time in bed together. We did. It was not merely that we invented an incalculable number of ways for three people to make love. Again, we did.

But when we were not actually balling, either two of us or all three of us would be wrapped up in some verbal unfolding of self. We did not merely talk, but, as the children say, we rapped.

Magic days, old buddy. The years melted off like fat in a steam room. Overnight, we became young again. There was an innocence to us, an openness about us, that was probably in any objective view at least a little ridiculous. But, see, there was no one around to view us objectively. There was just our holiest of trinities, self-contained and utterly complete, and we did not find ourselves absurd in the least.

This is slow going, this chapter. The work went poorly this morning, and the girls left the house together after lunch, and I’m alone with the typewriter, addressing remarks to a mythical old friend. And trying to describe a mood, an ambiance, which I can barely get exactly right in my own mind, let alone render in words. This writing is easier, it seems, when one knows exactly what one wants to say.

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? That’s what it says in those tables on the backs of children’s notebooks. Twelve inches to a foot, sixteen ounces make a pound, and one thousand words equals one picture.

Let us try a picture or two.

The bedroom at early evening. The last of the sunset barely visible through the window. The closet door slightly ajar and the closet light on, a yellow bulb that throws a soft diffused glow over the room.

Rhoda lies on her back on the bed, eyes closed, breathing slowly, gradually returning to normal. Her body is glossy with perspiration. On her left Priss is curled up with an arm flung across Rhoda’s waist and her head pillowed on Rhoda’s belly. I lie on Rhoda’s other side, but further up on the bed, so that my waist is almost even with her shoulder. I have propped myself up on one elbow. My eyes move back and forth between Rhoda and Priss. I have an erection, which I hold in one hand and brush idly to and fro against Rhoda’s breasts.

Rhoda says, “I love you both so much.”

“And we love you,” I say.

“And we love you,” Priss echoes.

“I came so beautifully. I came in beautiful colors, all red and green and blue. Like a Mexican flag exploding.”

“What an unusual image-”

“Ah, senior, senora, my Mexican flag, she is exploding.”

“Beautiful, beautiful.”

“Harry, you’re going to turn me on all over again. You’re waking up my sleeping tit. What are-oh, for the love of God, that’s your cock! ”

“What did you think it was, my elbow?”

“I didn’t really know. I guess I-oh, hey, wow!”