Chapter 12: How Next-Door Threesome Started

Beth curled her naked body against me on one of the chaises as we drip-dried. We’d run, gotten sweaty, come home, and skinny-dipped in the pool. We kissed quite a few times. I asked her about how she’d connected with Jo and Doug, and then how their relationship matured.

Beth said, “About four years ago I had just ended a relationship with a guy that struck me as too immature. He was the third or fourth in a line of guys that I spent time with and that I came to realize weren’t the one for me. I had decided that I needed to try something completely different. The route of finding a guy by own age, dating, falling in love, having sex somewhere along that timeline, etcetera, etcetera, was just all wrong for me. I kept ending up with losers, at least they were for me.

“I’d become an accomplished artist, and had a couple of pieces sell for what to me were ‘big bucks’ – and by that I mean around $5,000 per item. I suddenly was rolling in dough relatively. Not only that, but I was turning out even better stuff than what I sold.

“I caught the attention of Renee Buckner in the university’s art department. She conned me into giving a couple of seminars in her classes, and then into having a two-month exhibit of my work at the university gallery. I brought thirty of my paintings over and we set up the exhibit. Renee held a gala wine and cheese reception to launch the exhibit and anybody that was anybody at the university and in the art circles around the two-county area came. I was amazed.

“The gala was very nice, and well put on. There were maybe two or three hundred people there throughout the evening, milling around and saying mostly nice things about my work. I was on a high, and suddenly I was being introduced to this nerdy looking guy who was an electrical engineering professor with a tweed jacket, pens in his shirt pocket, and a cowlick in his hair.

“Doug was what I call a sleeper. I shook hands as I’d already done a hundred times that evening, but after that every time I turned around it seemed like we were bumping into each other. He swore he wasn’t stalking me. He offered up witty and insightful critiques of my work at one point, using some words and vocabulary I’d never heard used about art. They were engineering terms – congruence, rotational axes, polynomial curves, and things like that. After that, I stuck with him the rest of the gala. We had a special resonance that I felt on several levels.

“At one point Doug introduced me to his wife Jo. She also was full of praise for my work, and she talked about what she imputed about me from the paintings. Most of what she said was accurate. Anyway, at the end of the gala, they invited me to dinner. By that time, I really liked them. I’d also given up on the brief idea I had of Doug as a boyfriend; he was married.

“We went out to dinner at The Muse, right near the university and on the Ringling Estate land. I was impressed with them the more I learned, and we shared right up until they kicked us out of the restaurant because they needed to close and go home.

“Now, over dinner they got me talking about my personal life and my busted love affairs. I even told them about how I needed to find something completely different and all that. Jo asked me several times if I was really serious, and then so did Doug.

“As we walked out of the restaurant towards our cars, Doug and Jo did a little whispering, and then I got the $64,000 question from Doug. He said, ‘Beth, Jo and I really like you. We think we have all sorts of good vibes with you on many levels. We would like to date you and woo you into a relationship with us.’”

“I remember we were just crossing the street and I stopped right in the middle frozen with disbelief and indecision. I thought, ‘Shit. They want a threesome. Am I up for that?’ They’d missed that I’d stopped, and cars were going by on both sides of me.

“Anyway, I wended my way across the traffic and they were horrified that they’d shocked and endangered me. Jo explained, ‘Look, you want a novel dating situation, and to be frank, so do we. We have been talking about what we could do to spice up and change our marriage in some way. We know we’re also looking for ‘unconventional’. Until I met you tonight I never thought about what we just proposed. I’m not even sure it’ll work, but we’d like to try if you’re willing.”

“I hugged and kissed her on the lips. I told her, ‘Yes, I’ll date you and your husband – together or apart, however you want to do it. I don’t know where it’ll go, but let’s see.

“I had my first date with Doug a week later. He took me to dinner at Lassiter’s Western Saloon of all places – very unusual. We line danced after dinner. He was so cute and solicitous. He drove me home and was a perfect gentleman. I asked whether he ‘wanted’ to make love. I mean I was feeling really affectionate towards him by them. He said he did. I asked him then whether he ‘could’ have sex without pissing off Jo. He said he could. So we went into my condo and did the dirty – twice, in fact. He went home around midnight and by then I knew I was falling in love with him.”

I asked, “What about Jo?”

Beth laughed, “She called me the next morning, and she seemed very happy. I was expecting an irate wife thinking that we’d jumped the gun because of the sex. She was just the opposite, only she humorously demanded equal time. She and I went out to lunch two days later and then spent the afternoon in my bed making love. I was hooked. I loved the two of them, and they loved me.

“We all sat and talked and got very vocal about our feelings. We kind of negotiated a contract with each other. We ruled out jealousy as a feeling none of us should have. We talked about the situations that might provoke that feeling, and agreed them away as inconsequential.

“The next I knew I was spending three nights a week in bed with them, and then four, and then five some weeks. I had my own closet and small dresser at their place, but it was small and there was no way we could move in together. Both of our places were small. After six months, we agreed that we should do what we were doing for another year or so and then, if things were going as good as they were we’d all think about living together full time.

“I should add that we were having A LOT of sex. Figuratively, I’d jump from bed to bed, only it was the same bed. Sometimes both of them were there, and sometime just one of them. It was the best sex I’d every experienced. I was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe how horny I got. I was so happy and content.

“Well, we procrastinated a little, but not because we were unsure of things. I had a lease with a penalty clause, so we waited that out. We looked for houses we liked, and now we were trying to blend together three people’s requirements for a home. I wanted a studio. Jo had kitchen and space for yoga dance requirements. Doug wanted a den and outside stuff like the Jacuzzi. Finally, we found our house and bought it. By that time, we considered ourselves married.

“Doug took the final steps well before we found the house and got a lawyer involved. Basically, Jo and he created a legal agreement that gives me the same rights, privileges, and benefits as if I were a legal wife. We all signed, and then we also did a commitment ceremony with a minister and everything. So, we became a threesome.”

“And the sharing beyond the threesome?”

Beth laughed, “Partly my doing. I’d had Brad as a fuck buddy for years, and I admitted early on that I didn’t want to give him up. I admitted my selfishness, and said I would stop if it were a deal breaker. Well, it wasn’t. One night when he was fucking me senseless in my bed at my condo, Jo joined us and they got it on, too. She liked him, and he became part of why we declared an open marriage.

“Jo went back to a couple of the guys she’d liked before she and Doug got married, and they fired those relationships back up to fuck-buddy status. I participated in those. Doug had a couple of friends, too. We tried it, and our feelings for each other didn’t change, except our increased gratitude for the freedom and understanding. Moreover, we were having more sex with each other despite the sex we were having outside the triad. One day I fucked five men and ate out four women; I had the best of all worlds.

“All that happened and then we moved next door to Ginger and you. Wow! The first time we really met there were sparks. By that time we’d watched each other fucking our spouses and carrying on. Swapping with you, and then falling in love with you, became a logical and smooth next step. It’s the same with Megan’s involvement, and then Ethan and Jillian, and now Stacy. We love everything that’s happening. Our threesome is not in any jeopardy, and we get to extend ourselves to others. Oh, yeah, did I mention how great the sex was?” She giggled and kissed me.

Doug and Stacy spent Sunday night on a date and then in his bed while Jo and Beth consorted with Ginger and me. Around midnight we all went back to our ‘spouses’ to sleep. Stacy was very happy and her eyes were aglow because of the additional relationship and the unbridled sex with Doug.

She had spent a long time Sunday afternoon making sure that both Ginger and I were fine that she was going off on a ‘date’ with Doug that she was certain would end in sex. She confessed to liking him, but didn’t want to do anything to upset the love and relationship she had with us. We were fine with it.

Monday about noon a huge orange moving van pulled up in front of Brad and Megan’s home. Two movers made quick work of the partial load they had for the couple on the truck, whisking about a hundred cardboard boxes, mattresses, box springs, and other stuff from the van into the house.

Inside the home Brad and Megan were aiming the boxes at one room or another as they appeared, along with the furniture items. About two o’clock, their partial load was completed, Brad signed some paperwork and the van disappeared.

We all helped further disposition some of the boxes, and Ginger, Jo, and Beth took over unpacking kitchen stuff from two different homes – Brad’s and Megan’s. I folded up empty boxes and got them ready for recycling.

Megan, Brad, and I set up their king-size bed and some makeshift bedside tables with lamps. The tables were actually inverted cardboard boxes with an extra layer of cardboard taped on top so the lamp and one radio didn’t fall through. Instead of a dresser they had a row of smaller cardboard boxes along one wall with various things in each of them: Brad’s underwear in one, Megan’s in another, shirts in one, blouses and sweaters in another, and so on. The closets were full, but not organized.

After the kitchen was in reasonable shape, Ginger and Stacy moved over and unpacked some of the bathroom stuff: towels, cosmetics, linens for a small linen closet, and more. They found a shower curtain, and got that part of things operable.

By seven o’clock the house was livable if you didn’t mind the color of cardboard. We all went out to dinner at the local pizza palace.

Over dinner, I learned a little about Brad’s new job. He was a mechanical engineer, and he had some solid manufacturing experience. He’d joined a rapidly growing company named EneRG near the Interstate in Sarasota that had a corner on some new battery technology they thought would revolutionize the world. Brad was going to work on helping them get their R&D into production. Apparently, they already had some contracts with Tesla and Apple, but needed production strength.

Megan didn’t have a job but wasn’t worried. She had a successful track record working as a nurse that gave her sterling references, especially in Florida with so many elderly people needing healthcare. For the short term she planned on working on the house and getting it painted, installing window shades and blinds, doing some landscaping, and doing other things to finish it off to their specifications.

Further, the first week Megan would be the furniture czarina. They had a list of furniture they needed in a priority order, a budget, and a credit card. Megan was going to set out the next morning to see what she could find. Brad had said he’d be willing to agree to purchases based on good photos of anything she found. He’d be at work as she roamed the furniture stores and consignment shops taking pictures, sending them to him, and asking what he thought.

We treated Tuesday morning as the start of a short workweek for all of us. Brad went to work at his new job, Megan went shopping, Jo went to her finance job, Beth sequestered herself in her art studio, Doug went to his university job, and Ginger, Stacy, and I were home working on our clients’ behalf.

Ginger and I split up Stacy’s time. I negotiated an allocation of two-thirds of her workweek because she knew the company I was working for – her mother’s company. I quickly reminded her of my perspective on what had to happen with the results from the workshop we’d had the week before, and then showed her how we created a storyboard of the final presentation for the next phase. Sure there were a lot of holes and we needed lots of content, but we knew how we were going to generate that content based on what we already had, our methodology, and our own wits and research.

By noon, Stacy was off doing a best practice and benchmark study of Tara’s operations versus other companies. I started on more of an organizational assessment, now based on the strategy work from the workshop.

Ginger was doing similar work for her White Plains client. She had a large follow-on piece of work much to our delight, as well as her getting to see Blake some more. Ginger also had a proposal out to a potential client in Raleigh based on her visit there the previous week.

Our two home offices were abuzz with activity, and now a third room that Stacy had set up to work. After lunch, Ginger heard from the company in Raleigh. She got the job. She put her new client on the phone and got Stacy in the room as they talked about starting and launching with the smaller management team.

After the call ended, Ginger got Stacy started on the storyboard for her new client. We were kind of throwing Stacy into the deep end of the consulting pool, but we’d find out whether she’d learned anything at Wharton. I knew several Harvard MBAs that couldn’t have found their way out of a paper bag without instructions, a map, and a demonstration. Credentials do not imply on-the-Job talent.

We called it quits about six o’clock and went to see what our neighbors were doing.

Megan has bought several thousand dollars worth of furniture, but had only been able to bring home two bedside tables and a pair of lamps. At least they could get rid of the cardboard boxes beside their bed. She’d be getting some furniture deliveries the next day.