Posted by Lex Konrad in Relationships | Nov 25, 2008
My life is a parade of threesomes and eager sexkittens and orgiastic delights.
Except for when it isn’t.
I never see these moments coming, the moments that leave me battered and bruised, the moments that make me want to find a dark corner and hide.
The lithe young woman rode my leg, reverse cowgirl, mashing her lips against my wife’s, moaning as my fingers slipped into her black panties and up her shorn but not completely shaven cunt. The three of us stood in a bright stairwell. People smiled as they pressed past us. I cupped a heavy breast in my palm and whispered something into the young woman’s ear.
It should have been brilliant. But it wasn’t. An awkward series of maneuvers ended our spell and the three of us shot off in separate directions like expertly struck billiard balls. Leslie and I weren’t communicating well that night and it showed in our play. I tried to find solace in a bottle of gin.
The next afternoon found me utterly, maniacally horny. It is a state I often find myself in when hungover: once the alcohol evaporates there’s nothing left but hormones. I called my mistress. “I’m gonna fold you in half,” I growled.
She was always willing. “You can do anything you want.”
Sometimes, instead of dealing with my problems like a rational being, I double down. I thought this was what I needed, that I had to get out of the house and fuck someone else. In my crazed state I headed down to the spot where my mistress tended bar, taking a seat and thinking about what I was going to do to her when her shift ended.
My reverie was interrupted by a dreadlocked rasta who sidled up to me and tried to get handsy. “Yo,” I said, grasping his shoulder and pushing him back to a safe distance, “even if I was into that you’re doing it all wrong.” He retreated. I no longer felt comfortably anonymous.
A fetching Asian woman bought me a drink — pleasant enough, I thought — but before long she insisted on having my home address so she could come over the next day and show me her erotic novel-in-progress. By the third time she asked (“I’ll give you five hundred dollars!”) it dawned on me, all too late, that she was not well-acquainted with sanity. She was possessed by that subtle kind of crazy that draws you in and makes you feel like a nutter for even having glimpsed it.
I was relieved when last call came and my mistress gave me permission to tell everyone to get the fuck out. My relief yielded to apprehension when I learned the crazy woman had followed us to the after hours place. When the woman started in again I told her I’d had enough, after which she found another guy to torment. (The next day I would learn the woman had professed her love to the poor guy, only to flee the bar in tears when he turned her down, blowing up his phone with messages through the morning.)
That night the city I loved — the city that had always taken care of me — had gone prickly and tense. People surrounded me, salivating, teeth bared and claws out. I wanted to bolt but I felt the outside world would be even worse, that knives were drawn for me, snipers were waiting amid the urban ruins and landmines were set. After another guy made a grab for me I went to find my mistress. “Take me home now,” I insisted, my firm tone at odds with my shaky resolve. “Please.”
“I am so sorry,” she said to me as we clung to each other in the back seat of a yellow cab. She had nothing to do with this madness though. It was my fault for leaving the house without my warrior’s armor, for placing too much trust in my adopted hometown. It was my fault for doubling down. This flaxen-haired southern belle had always been kind to me — her kindness having been what drew me to her. Most women expect me to play the part of the dashing playboy, the rake, the ideal lover: mysterious and cool and collected and eternally throbbing. My mistress, however, didn’t need me to be a towering inferno of manhood. My weaknesses, my humanity, did not lower me in her eyes.
I made good on my promise when we arrived at hers, which is to say I folded her in half, I fucked her like a beast and I let her gag on me, just the way she liked, my creativity owing as much to her compassion as to my sex drive. A breathless wow was all she could muster when we were finished. It should have been brilliant but I still felt tormented. I thought about my wife, who probably lay across the covers now, half-dressed, having forgotten to turn out the light. Leslie and I could have curled up on the couch and talked and healed the rift but instead I’d pulled away. Perhaps this strange, unsettling night had been my punishment.
My mistress fell silent after awhile. She began to snore lightly. I was too tired to leave and too agitated to sleep peacefully. What am I doing here? I thought over and over as I drifted in and out of sleep. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t my wife’s fault. The blame was all mine.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Relationships | Nov 18, 2008
If I am an orgy guy I am ambivalent about it. The sublime is what I am after — the kind of transcendent experiences that stay with you — and if these pleasures are more rewarding than self-gratification, they also require empathy and patience. Fuck and run just doesn’t cut it.
I try to keep my non-monogamous karma in balance by attending a polyamorous event now and then. Really though, when people tell me about their loves and lovers (and I blanch at the thought of all the scheduling involved) I start to feel like polyamory is an in-joke I’ll never get. Maybe I’m a contrarian, but I am always looking for a third way.
I hadn’t given much thought to what to do about the date — it had all been so heady and unexpected — but we did share a philosophical skepticism about things and a common love for my wife’s perfect ass. So when I decided to drop by the poly cocktail hour I invited her along.
“My ex is here,” she told me after Les and I arrived. If I disappear from certain scenes for months at a time, this is why — these little communities are all so incestuous. New York appears to shrink with each passing year (it has limits!). Most of the night I made my rounds, checking in now and then with the date, and most of the night her ex hovered around her, eyeing me like I’d pissed on his hedges. I wanted to pull him aside and let him in on my little secret, that if you learn to let women go you’ll have to beat them off with a stick.
If I was reserved it was because I didn’t want to be one of those people who come to poly parties so they can slobber all over their lovers like status-seeking primates. The sly seductress kept brushing up against me though, and so I pressed her to me as we stood by the bar talking about the sex people think sex-writers have versus the sex they actually have.
“You know, I go to sex parties fully intending to hook up,” she said, “but I’m not often comfortable enough to make it happen.”
“I’ve been going to sex parties off and on for years now… if you’ve seen one big sweaty pile of bodies you’ve seen them all.”
She laughed, and when she did so I tugged at one of her pigtails. “And then there are the creeps, and the people you don’t want to see naked.”
“Right. It’s so much more… fulfilling with people you trust. I guess that’s why I prefer the kind of parties that happen in my living room.”
Later on, over dinner, Les and I conducted our customary debriefing — well, we gossiped like schoolgirls — while our date listened, very much amused at our take on things. Something set me off and I went on a far-ranging rant about how so-called sex-positive communities are still not safe spaces for women, after which I felt slightly self-conscious. Then it struck me that it is probably okay to relax around a woman whose ass I’ve fucked.
Leslie disappeared for a while. We would find out later on that she had been pulled into a comedian’s routine and had, of course, held her own against him. That’s just how my wife rolls. “Theoretically I’m poly,” I told our date. “I also adore my wife. Maybe I’m overly picky, but it’s hard for me to justify taking time away from her to be with other women just because I can.”
There was a time when I was after the perfect fuck, or else the perfect love. These are illusions. I am more confident now that as long as I approach life with a spirit of openness and adventure good things will come my way. Because I’ll never really be the orgy guy, with his eternal hardon and his unending parade of partners, and I’ll never really be the poly guy, with his new-agey philosophy and his five totally serious girlfriends.
There may not be a name for what I do, there may not be an off-the-shelf identity that fits, or a community that reflects my particular viewpoint, but I am content, for the most part, with the path I have chosen.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Relationships | Nov 08, 2007
Dating people separately is not new to us. There was a time, back in the day, when each of us saw other people regularly. On a few occasions we went as far as to schedule double dates (our last MFM threesome was the outcome of one of these — it should have been an orgy but my date was a total bitch).
So the world did not end when Leslie took a male lover.
Not that many people appeared to grasp this fact: upon hearing the news (delivered in passing, usually) people would pause for a moment as if they were expecting me to make some tearful confession. Unlike our threesomes, orgies, couple-swapping, months-long triads, Leslie’s girl-on-girl dates, and even my own shore leave, it was a radical act for Les to see another man on her own — a sign, even, of trouble in paradise.
Of course, people’s discomfort with equal-opportunity extracurriculars derives from the horribly fucked up way our society views gender, sexuality and relationships. But it surprises me how often even sexually liberated folks tend to fall back on social programming. A few weeks before Les and I were married my favorite prank was to tell friends I had renounced non-monogamy, that I planned to stop fucking other people because “that’s just what you do when you get married.” Almost no one called me on it.
I find myself having a recurring conversation with guys. It goes like this:
Dude: “I’d love to have a sex life like yours.”
Me: “There’s nothing stopping you.”
Dude: “But I’d lose my mind if I saw my girlfriend with another guy.”
Me: “And that’s why you don’t have a sex life like mine.”
I understand jealousy — I don’t identify with jealous people but having been there I understand the emotion. What I’ve never been able to get my head around is the peculiarly male preoccupation with being the only cock in the hen house. I know several men who would probably benefit from non-monogamy (and whose significant others would probably be up for it), and yet these same men are paralyzed at the thought of granting the women in their lives the same freedoms they desire for themselves. Some of these blokes would rather cheat than talk about doing what Les and I do.
The irony is that more often than not I do end up being the only cock in the hen house. This is probably because I don’t try to impose arbitrary sexual constraints on the women I’m with. Sexual liberation — sexual fulfillment — is an exercise in letting go. Time spent preventing other people’s satisfaction is time better spent finding your own. Even then, it can be less about actually doing it than simply knowing you can.
And so on the night of Leslie’s first date with a man in ages I sat at home and watched Law & Order. To be honest, it slipped my mind for a couple hours that she was on a date and I nearly called her at work. It occurred to me that perhaps there was something wrong with me — that maybe I ought to have been upset that my wife-to-be was with another man. But then I remembered I knew where she was and who she was with and, most importantly, that she would be coming home to me.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Sex | Jun 16, 2007
I’ve been conducting experiments using my wedding ring, making a conspicuous display of my newfound bling when talking to chicks. It hasn’t put anyone off — if anything, it’s had the opposite effect. Perhaps this says something sad about the world.
The Bad Man and I were engrossed in conversation when the woman approached. “Can I buy you guys drinks?” she asked. I glanced in her direction with some skepticism. Isn’t this supposed to be my line? It was, however, only the latest in a series of interruptions. Women had been hovering around us all night.
She introduced us to her friend and moments later the Bad Man and I had been expertly isolated. I made a point of tapping my gold ring against the bar counter but the friend appeared oblivious. Finally, I told her, “You know I’m married, right?” Before her face could fall I amended my statement: “It’s okay though — she has a boyfriend.”
The friend lived on the Upper East Side, on my way home. When she invited me up I pulled out my phone. “Hold on, I have to check in with my wife.”
So this is what the 21st century is like, I was thinking to myself in the morning — being in an open marriage and getting picked up by young women. Of all the post-millennial scenarios I’d never imagined, this is by far the strangest.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Relationships | May 16, 2007
Central Park, 2007
Unless you’re a night-owl (or, of course, in another time zone), by the time you read this we’ll be on a flight to the Bahamas. We’re in desperate need of a Bahamavention — and a marriage. Yes, after over a decade of shacking up, Les and Lex are finally getting hitched. Obviously I have much more to say about this, but for now just know that I am happy and very much looking forward to being a married man.
You may notice I’ve posted a couple hot parties to our new events section. There’s much more Naked Loft Party awesomeness on the way when we get back. See you next week… and wish us luck!
