I Had A Foursome And It Was Weird
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This piece is part of my “thing” for the 52-Week Writing Challenge, for which I decided to complete and publish my previously unfinished drafts. I started this piece in November 2015, shortly after real-life events took place, and finally polished it up.
I don’t know the best way to start this story other than to dive right in. Sure, I could describe the background leading up to the events that unfolded, but ultimately, those are boring details that don’t really matter. So I’m going to start right in the middle of the action. Or, more accurately, at the beginning of the middle of the action. So, here it goes…
Date #1
Mike* and I arrive at the restaurant about fifteen minutes early and park on a nearby side street. (A tiny bit of backstory: At this point in time, Mike and I had been seeing each other on a very casual, friends-with-benefits type basis for about six months.)
“Perfect,” I say as I’m getting out of the car, “We can get drinks first because I’m sure gonna need at least one.”
Mike, getting out of his side of the car and walking around it toward me, says, “Are you excited?”
“Yes, I’m excited!”
He puts his hand alongside my neck and kisses me. It was the first kiss all night after a tense car ride to our double-date with a married swinger couple.
We walk around the corner toward the restaurant and I immediately see Natalie* and Adam* getting out of their car. I wave at Natalie, she waves back. Mike and I exchange hugs and hellos with the two of them.
We go inside and are immediately seated. Natalie and I each order flights of wine. Adam and Mike go for hard liquor. Thank god for booze.
Dinner is, oddly enough, not awkward. It’s really comfortable actually, considering that most of the conversation revolves around Natalie and Adam describing their polygamous marriage as Mike and I attempt to describe whatever our open relationship is.
Natalie is into Mike. She hammers him with questions and I’m not sure her eyes ever really wander too far from his, except for when they wander over to me and she comments on how “delicious” my lips look.
There’s some rapport between Adam and I. Not fireworks exploding chemistry, but it’s something. He’s attractive, funny, and smart, and if it were just the two of us on a date, I’d give him a fair chance.
There’s definitely an attraction between me and Natalie. She’s stunning, intelligent, direct, and confident. Sort of like the woman I hope I am, too, but fear I’m not.
We order a bunch of small plates and share. Later, when we order a second round of drinks, we start to discuss logistics.
“I’m curious… are you attracted to men?” Mike point blank asks Adam, “Because I’m pretty open-minded and could envision a threesome or foursome, but I’m definitely not into dudes.”
“In some very limited and specific circumstances, I have found myself turned on by men,” Adam explains, “But mostly, I enjoy seeing Natalie being pleasured.”
“Don’t you ever feel jealous?” Mike asks.
“Of course, sometimes. That’s inevitable. But that’s why communication and trust are so important,” Adam says.
Natalie and Adam tell us about their past experiences bringing other people into their bedroom. Adam snagged a hot, younger Brazilian model who they had a lot of fun with but later deemed “crazy”. Natalie had an emotional and fiery relationship with a younger man. She recently ended that when Adam became uncomfortable with things. They had threesomes and one foursome. They describe everything very positively and emphasize how it’s made their marriage better.
We end the night with hugs goodbye. From the get-go, Mike and I were considering this date a meet-and-greet. We’d feel it out, see if we all click, and then decide if this foursome thing is even the kind of thing we wanted to try.
A few days later, we agreed to pursue it. We planned a second date with Natalie and Adam to take place about two weeks after the first. Our second date unambiguously would involve dinner and then going back to Natalie and Adam’s place.
In the days leading up to rendezvous number two with polyamory, Mike and I talked about things a lot. And that’s an understatement. We talked about every possible scenario and emotion we could envision feeling. At first, Mike was uncomfortable and I reassured him everything would be fine. “We can go in with a game plan,” I told him, “And we can back out if anything feels uncomfortable.”
Three days before our second date, Mike was fully on board and I was the one suddenly feeling nervous. “We can cancel if you want,” Mike told me.
“This whole thing was my idea!” I said, “I don’t think I can back out now.”
See, he and I had talked about different threesome scenarios in the past and we were both into the idea of bringing a third into the bedroom. When the proposition of a foursome presented itself, that felt like something we could enjoy too, assuming we hit it off with the other couple, which we did. It seemed like a great idea right after Date #1, but a large dose of hesitation was taking over.
After much discussion, we eventually decided to suck it up and go with it. We both thought it might be amazing or it might suck, with little in between. “It will definitely be something,” I said about a million times.
At the very least, I figured it’d make a good story.
Date #2
The evening of encounter number two, I text Mike while I’m getting ready: “What does one wear to a foursome? Does it even matter?”
“Haha, your guess is as good as mine,” he replies.
I write back, “Whole lotta good you are :-p”
I quickly grab the lone nip-sized bottle of rum sitting in my kitchen as I hurry out the door to Mike’s house. Mike laughs when I arrive, “You really need to pre-game, huh?” he says.
“For tonight? Yeah, I do,” I say as I down the nip and grab his bottle of tequila.
Once we get to the restaurant, I’m more relaxed. Mike and I talked through the hesitation on the car ride, and we finally both feel excited about the night. Dinner with Natalie and Adam, again, is surprisingly comfortable. Adam offers to pay for everything. “You’re our guests, so it’s our treat,” he explains. This strikes me as generous but also simultaneously makes me feel like an escort. (And I’m not putting down escorts, it’s just that that’s not what I am.)
The four of us go back to Adam and Natalie’s house, where we have another drink. This last one is too much for me. It definitely pushes me over the boundary from “buzzed” to “drunk”.
Then… events unfold…
Events I don’t think I need to describe in detail because, again, those details aren’t particularly important. A hot tub was involved, and honestly, the hot tub was probably more enjoyable than the sex. Whatever sexual experience one pictures when one thinks “foursome” is not what we had that night. Of all the dozens of scenarios Mike and I talked about in advance, I don’t think any of them covered the actual experience.
In a nutshell, having a foursome was: anticlimactic.
Post Date #2
Later that night (well, early morning), after Mike and I get back to his house, we sit in his car in the driveway and we have a long talk, a debriefing of sorts, about the night. I tell him how I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either. He, overall, had a sour experience too.
“I don’t know if I can have sex with you again after seeing you with Adam,” he says, “I think I can, but I just don’t know…”
“I knew this was gonna happen!” I’m angry. My biggest fear going in was that it would ruin me and Mike. “I told you so.”
We sit in silence for a while.
“I still want you to sleep over,” he says.
I spend the rest of the night at Mike’s place and, it turns out, the foursome thing didn’t really change things between us after all. In a weird way, it made me feel closer to him.
Mike texts me the next day: “We’re cool right?”
I reply, “I think we’re very cool. No?”
“Yes, definitely. Just checking,” he writes back.
What I Learned
What might possess someone to have a foursome with a married couple anyway? Well, for me, curiosity! Our meet-and-greet Date #1 established that we all got along well and there was some level of attraction and understanding between all of us. I thought it would be an exciting new experience! And, for the most part, it was.
I’d also been entertaining this idea that maybe humans are not meant to be monogamous. Sex at Dawn struck a chord with me. And here was a married couple practicing polyamory, interested in bringing me and Mike into their relationship or, at the very least, their bedroom. I was curious about polyamory, how it worked for them, how it felt. I think I expected to feel enlightened! Like I’d stumbled onto a level of higher sexual being all monogamous humans were missing out on. I wanted to fully enjoy the foursome and embrace it as a lifestyle. I wanted to be that person, completely uninhibited by social norms and expectations, seeking pleasure in whatever form it presents itself.
Post-foursome, I began to wonder if polyamory isn’t actually a lifestyle for me. I can’t even quite pinpoint what about the experience turned me off to it. Adam and Natalie are both great communicators, so that wasn’t the issue. At the end of the night, though, I just felt… hollow.
That’s the best word for it.
hollow — adjective — lacking in real value, sincerity, or substance.
Perhaps the connections between Natalie and I, Adam and I, and Natalie and Mike were all lacking. Polyamory literally mean “multiple loves”. We clearly didn’t have a polyamorous experience — we had a foursome experience. For me, sex without connection is not fulfilling, and apparently the number of partners involved at any given time is irrelevant.
Mike and I both went into it hoping for the best, being prepared for the worst, and coming out somewhere in between.
I, for one, came away from the experience feeling more confident in knowing what I want out of a relationship. It taught me a bit more about what I’m comfortable with, sexually. It taught me a lot about Mike, too. It was the first time I’d seen him truly vulnerable and unsure of things.
I learned that the boundaries between monogamy and polyamory, and between casual sex and love, are not solid. They’re fluid, blurry, and, perhaps, ever-changing. It’s easy to put a label on a relationship, it’s harder to define what that label means in practice because it’ll be different to every couple. The unexpected thing is that I didn’t walk out of a foursome having learned something about sex. But, instead, I learned about being human.
* names have been changed, of course, to protect the innocent.
