Chapter 10

Our first orgy wasn't the last. In the months following we made the swinging scene at least once a month. We also spent several nights with Carol and Larry. But after a while, several months to be exact, problems appeared. We knew every swinging couple we wanted to know and while we had many a romp in the sack we found no true friends with whom we could bond outside of sex. For a time we thought Carol and Larry could became real friends, it turned out, though, that this attractive pair, interesting as they were, was interested only in sex and at that they bored easily.

They were on an endless search for new bodies, new people to fuck. We went back to Joan and Michael, they had turned out to be the—friends-plus—we had hoped to find but as the four of us seemed to be growing closer and closer Michael was transferred by his company to another office in another state.

"It can't be, can it, that we are bored with sex?" I asked Lizbeth.

"I don't see how, after all our own sex life had never been better." She answered me.

"That's true, but right now I don't think I could stand another orgy. They are just as monotonous as bad cocktail parties. Lots of great fucking, that's for sure, but precious little talking. I walk out of there with my body satisfied but my mind is still hungry."

"It's sort of like having an itch in your elbow and scratching your knee instead," Lizbeth said, "It distracts you for a while but it doesn't help much in the long run."

"You know sweetheart, I love what we have between us, I love the honest, open relationship, I wish we could have more relationships like that with other people."

"Well, there is always Art, Betsy and Barbara." Lizbeth put in.

"True, but that relationship will never include sex. The necessary attractions just aren't there. What I'm looking for is a friendship as close as the one we have with Art and Betsy but one where the intimacy isn't limited either just to talk or just sex."

"That sounds ideal." Lizbeth sighed.

"Trouble is I don't think we'll ever find it in swinging. Everyone in swinging is perfectly willing to have physical intimacy and completely unwilling to have emotional intimacy. Most of the couples here even view it as a threat."

Lizbeth nodded "There is still some things in swinging we haven't tried, you know."

"Like what?"

"Rick don't challenge me, it's not my fault; well, we have never advertised. Perhaps if we worded our ad carefully we'd attract other people like us. There must be some people in swinging who are looking for the kind of relationship we are."

"It's a thought," I admitted, "Let's try it and see."

"We advertised with a passion. I took some wonderful pictures of Lizbeth and we wrote an ad that made it clear what we were looking for, sex with friendship, not just sex. Then we advertised in every way.

We got in two months at least three dozen letters answering our ad. And what a mixed batch they were. The ad had specifically called for – attractive couples or single women only between the ages of 21 and 35, no B&S no D--; more than half the letters ignored these specifications. There were several letters from single men, attracted no doubt by Lizbeth photographs; there were several letters from people so far away that we had no hope of visiting them except on vacation and that would not allow us to reach a solid friendship.

There were also letters that could have been interesting without the pictures enclosed.

"There are a lot of attractive people in swinging, but this couple surely isn't among them." I said after opening one such reply.

Lizbeth just looked and laughed.

We collected the letters for the fun of it, we sent back the pictures of those who wanted their pictures returned and we wrote a polite –no thank you—where appropriate.

All told the ads brought seven letters of more than routine interest and we dutifully met each couple. Most of them had, in our way of thinking, something wrong with them. It could be politics "I won't attempt to form a friendship with someone who likes Bush and always had" I said my wife later. On two occasions the husbands seemed great but the wives in my opinion were pigs, on two other occasions the reverse were true.

We saw two of the couples more than once and we even had sex with them but there was not the spark to ignite and develop a friendship as we wanted.

"Maybe we are asking too much," I said my wife dejectedly one day, "Maybe it just isn't possible."

"It has to be." Lizbeth insisted.

"I'm not so sure, it takes years to develop a friendship. Maybe starting out with sex ends any possibility of a deep relationship."

Lizbeth shrugged, "Want to give up?"

"Not yet and you?"

"Not yet."

We tried everything following our almost impossible dream. We went several times to swinging nightclubs in New York, in this places people gather to meet—and go off together without the time consuming delays involving the advertisement in magazines or even the net and the responding to ads. But the crowds in these establishments just were not appealing to us.

Our last attempt to find a couple we were looking for in the swinging world was at a nudist colony in New Jersey called The Shadowandrest Nudist Org. It was run by swingers for swingers only.

For many people a nudist colony is the first time a new and shocking experience not so to us, after all, the orgies we had attended had extracted all the embarrassment of being in the nude in front of other people from our minds. In fact after all the sucking and fucking, nudism was pretty tame. So it turned to be Shadowandrest; it was like a swinging nightclub except there were children present. And that presented no small problem. There was no kind of sexual activity, not with them neither with any of them present.

So the sex between adults was hurried and uncomfortable often taking place in car back seats, after dark and with the children sleeping in the cabins. And we, my wife and me were not interested in car back seat fucking, so we returned home and to our particular quest.

A few says after we had returned Lizbeth spotted and ad in a rag called the Village Voice. "Listen to this," she told me," Join the Expanded Family. Non swinging group devoted to discussions of alternatives to conventional marriage; now open to new members. Call 555-7264 evenings and weekends"

"Now, that sounds more like it, do you want to call?" I asked Lizbeth.

That Friday night we attended our first meeting of the Expanded Family. It was a small group, about fifteen couples and every couple seemed to be looking exactly the same as us. The night we attended was –new member's night—and the old couples explained the purpose of the group.

"We are here" said the leader, a young man with charisma, "because we no longer believe that the conventional two-party marriage is valid in Today's society. We think that no one person can fulfill the total necessities of another person. That doesn't mean that primary marriage arrangements won't work anymore, but it does mean that both marriage partners should be able to have friends of the opposite sex and that there should be no limits to that relationship, sexually or otherwise."

We exchanged glances, Lizbeth and me; this was sounding belter and better.

"Furthermore," the leader continued, "we encourage three, four and five persons 'marriages' or whatever you might call them. We believe in openness as the only road to intimacy."

"This sounds great," I said," but has all this gone beyond he discussion stage?"

"In some cases yes" he answered, "some of the couples tonight have workings arrangements with some of the other couples. But you'll find out about that as the evening progress. Let me tell you that its my hope you can find what you are looking for here."