By Tandy Vesyp
A few weeks ago, I walked into my corporate restaurant job, and the hostess handed me an old coaster with the corporate advertiser’s “witty” copy on one side – “If you like Coconut Shrimp so much, why don’t you marry them?” – and a note on the other.
“Your friends left this for you,” she smiled.
“What friends?” I asked. (It’s true, making friends is not my strong suit. People usually ask me to leave after my third “Your Mom” joke.)
And then I read the note – not so much a note with its bubble exclamation points, but an informal invitation to a threesome: “Hey! Great seeing you last night! Sorry we missed you today! We should definitely grab a drink sometime! Until then…” Signed with two Northern European names, a couple.
To be clear, my parents never sat me down to have “the talk” – edge of the bed with long pauses and meager descriptions – Nope. Never got it. I heard about sex from my next-door neighbor Brandon, the son of an orchid lady and a Kung Fu instructor. The same Brandon who didn’t go to a doctor, he got acupuncture. We sat in our newly constructed fort of rotted plywood and packed Alaskan dirt as he described the sex scene from “Terminator” – a montage of skin and sweeping music.
It wasn’t a great education. For the longest time, I thought you just rubbed them together – a childish idea that was crushed in seventh grade when my science teacher, Mr. Womack, showed our class sketches of “two people who love each other very much and are married” makin’ babies right before the lunch period.
“What friends?” I asked the hostess. What friends could I possibly have that liked quality steaks at a moderate price from a chain restaurant and were open to threesomes?
“They said you waited on them Saturday night,” she smiled again.
Then I remembered the couple. They ordered porterhouse steaks and Shiraz, tipped a little too well, and kept making eye contact when I asked if they wanted dessert.
So wow. My first threesome invitation. I wonder if Hallmark has a card for that occasion – “Congratulations! You’ve been invited to a night or midday celebration of three overabundant libidos! Complimentary cucumber sandwiches will be provided.” (I bet they have a variation of that for fundamentalist Mormons.)
How do threesomes even work? You can’t have them in a traditional setting like the bedroom. A den would be too informal, and the kitchen is just unsanitary. I guess the living room, with its ample space and touch of class. But then what goes where? Who does what? Do you take breaks? Turns? And after it is over, do you cuddle in a weird group hug, or do you just thank them for the cucumber sandwiches and leave?
But the biggest question is: Isn’t one person enough? Although “Terminator” isn’t the best teacher for the reality of sex, it represents the sex everyone wants – soft music, wordless, tender – a mind-melding connection of mind and body shared with another person you love. All-in-all, a fantastical experience.
A threesome would illuminate the barbaric, animal need for sex – a purely masturbatory indulgence in which your partners are inconsequential – something out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel.
Well, I like Jay McInerney better and was never good at sharing, so I won’t be giving the couple a call. Because the things that separates us from barbaric animals is our self-control. Even if we begrudgingly use it.
