The Cook, the Swede, and an Extra Lover

I have never had much luck with threesomes.

My first was pre-Japan, back in San Francisco. Sean and Mark were good friends of mine, a clean-cut and stable couple with a house in the suburbs and an adopted four-year-old daughter. John, twelve years my senior, was a lawyer on the verge of being made partner, while Sean (just a year older than me) was a personal trainer and nutritionist. With their matching, no-nonsense haircuts I used to joke that they looked like a pair of Mormons. Neither of them had anything to do with the gay "scene," and were always pushing me to find a nice boy to settle down with. Of course, this never stopped them from inviting me over to sing for my supper with lurid tales of sexual misadventure.

Anna, their daughter, had retired upstairs to bed one evening as we sat up talking over a few glasses of wine. As usual, they pressed for details of my recent encounters, and I told them about an art student I had been seeing. After I finished, we sat sipping our drinks for a few moments. That was when Sean cleared his throat.

"Have you ever had a threesome?"

I raised an eyebrow. "No, actually never." I confessed.

The two looked at each other in a way that completely telegraphed what was coming next. "We've been wondering," Mark chimed in, "if maybe you would like to try one with us."

For a moment, I thought they were putting me on. The idea of either Sean or Mark propositioning me was roughly as inconceivable as Mother Theresa pole-dancing topless in a strip club. But they were, in fact, serious.

"Our tenth anniversary is coming up," Sean said, "and you know neither of us have ever done anything like that before. We were thinking it might be fun to try, just once. And when we thought about who to ask, both of us immediately thought of you."

I wasn't sure how to take that. Part of me--the kid who was always the last guy picked for the dodge ball team way back in my junior high P.E. class--was touched. The other part wondered if they just thought I was the most likely of their friends to agree.

"I mean, we both think you are hot," Mark added, as if reading my mind. "And we know you and trust you."

"Nice save," I replied, and I promised to think about it.

In the end, of course, I said "yes." It was something I had not tried yet, and on some bizarre level that bothered me. I prided myself on being adventurous, and to say "no" would have been to have missed a golden opportunity. So I figured I had nothing to lose. After all, Mark and Sean were safe, known qualities, and responsible people, the safest people I could possibly experiment with. In fact, before we "did it," we went out together to get HIV tests (at their insistence). Then the date was set. Anna would be away for the night and the house would be theirs.

At the time, I was renting a beautiful old Victorian in Oakland, California with two housemates; Maggie--a beautiful half-Chinese girl--and Denise, a firebrand from Kentucky. We had no secrets. I remembered changing my clothes several times as I got ready for the event, and Maggie asking me, "hot date?" Without missing a beat I looked at her. "Threesome." "You don't live a life like the rest of us, do you," Maggie laughed.

But it didn't matter, in the end, what I wore. By the time I showed up at their house, both Sean and Mark had dipped into the liquor cabinet to "loosen" up. Bear in mind these were not drinkers. Clearly they were nervous. And thus the night began.

My recollection of the evening is chiefly this; in porn, it always looks so easy. But as events began to unfold, I found myself wishing we had a lighting crew and a director. It was like playing "Twister" without the little spinner thing. No one had any idea to put what where. I kept wanting to look off stage to find where my mark was. Between all the jockeying for positions and confusion over what our roles were, the evening degenerated rapidly into laughter and affectionate cuddling. Hot, it was not.

Then came the Cook and the Swede.

It was several years later. I was in Tokyo in Nichome, and I met a cute Japanese chef. We started dancing, and things got hot and heavy. Later in the evening, after a number of Singapore Slings, he had yanked up his shirt so I could see and feel his washboard abs. "I have a boyfriend," he suddenly blurted. This was the source of some confusion because his hand was on an area of my jeans one did not normally associate with boyfriendom. "He's hot and he's Swedish, you know, like ABBA?"

"And meatballs," I replied.

The Cook laughed. "He keeps begging me for a threesome. How about it?"

The Swede it turned out was a banker, and a well-off one at that. The Cook lived with him in a fashionable Tokyo address. The Cook had called ahead to announce he was bringing me back, and when I arrived I found a fairly attractive European hunk waiting. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, his square-jawed head demanded a beard, horned helmet, and mead cup. But he was more than a little drunk when we arrived, and as we talked, he continued to drink.

As events moved to the bedroom, it was clear the Swede was already entering that drunken zone where the demand for passing out supersedes the desire for sex. There was a bit of promising foreplay all around before he finally collapsed.

"Thank God," the Cook replied. "He is always too drunk to fuck. God, I am starved. Let's have sex. He won't wake up."

It occurred to me that this wasn't so much a threesome as the Cook cheating on his boyfriend literally right beside him. But the idea of screwing a guy a few inches away from the passed out form of the guy he was living with was a low even I could not sink to. I told the Cook as much as I excused myself to find my discarded underwear.

"Oh fine!" Said the Cook. "Two guys who can't get it up!"

Realizing I was in the midst of something larger than me, I excused myself to go. Despite my escape, the Cook continued to call for several weeks, begging to meet up somewhere when his boyfriend was not around.

Needless to say, I have yet to try another threesome.

NEXT TIME, I'LL TRY THE SALMON...

Once upon a time, a Greek gentleman by the name of Socrates wrote, "the unexamined life is not worth living." Actually, what he really said was ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ, but close enough. I'd like to think of the philosophy of this blog as something similar, say, "a sex life too boring to blog about is not worth having," or something along those lines. With that in mind I am committed to writing about the good, the bad, and the frankly awful. This one falls into the latter category.

Masahiko was the wealthiest guy I've dated here in Japan. An architect for a major Tokyo design firm, he travelled all over Asia on building projects. His apartment was fantastic; spacious, skylights, heated floors, jacuzzi bathtub, the works (which considering rent in Tokyo, where a ten foot square closet can cost a thousand bucks a month, meant an impressive amount of yen). Just three years older than I, he seemed to have it all. He was good-looking, had a sharp sense of fashion, and his taste in men--mainly me--was exquisite. On top of all of this, he was generous. After just two months together he bought me an over-priced watch for Valentine's Day. Yes indeed, Masahiko had it all, and was willing to share it. That turned out to be the problem.

We met in GB during my first year in Japan. He was in a suit, and an expensive looking one at that. Walking into the bar he had ordered a martini, looked around, and immediately made a beeline over to me. His pick-up line ("I haven't seen you here before...I would have remembered") would have been vomit-inducing anywhere else in the world, but in Japan was earthshaking. Not only did his English sound perfect, he had broken the time-honored Japanese tradition of sitting around like a block of wood waiting for the gaijin to make all the moves. How could I resist?

We chatted awhile before he said, "I hate this place. Let's go somewhere real." "Real" turned out to be the New York Grill on the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt Hotel (if you've seen Lost in Translation, you know the place). Now, the standard move from a dive like GB was to an equally shady pay by the hour love hotel; the Park Hyatt was calculated to impress. It did.

We had several drinks...pricey drinks. As just a poor, underpaid teacher, I grew concerned. But when the time came to settle the bill, he insisted on covering all of it. "I get paid too much," was his excuse. Of course, it was too late for me to catch my last train, and a taxi back home was out of the question. That meant the night was going to go two ways; A) I was going to spend it alone in bar somewhere waiting for the first train, or B) he was going to take me back home, which, after having let him pay for all my drinks made me feel a bit like a Thai money boy (but which I would probably go along with because I really wanted to jump his bones). In the end, I was wrong on both counts.

For as we reached the lobby, I excused myself to use the restroom. When I returned, he presented me a key card to one of the rooms in the hotel. "I am not going to sleep with you yet," he said, "but it occurred to me you missed your train. My friend is the manager here and I got you a room for the night."

I was dumbfounded. I'm not sure whether the fact that he just snapped his fingers and got me a room at one of Tokyo's best hotels, or the casual way he'd just said he wasn't going to sleep with me yet was more jarring. But in the end I took the room and spent the evening alone, but in a truly fabulous bed.

He called the next day to see if I had made it home okay, and to ask my address. He was thinking of coming out my way for the next date and wanted to know where I lived. It was a ruse, of course, and one that invited some comment from my housemates when a delivery of roses appeared for me at the door the next day. A guy had only done that once for (to?) me before, and he turned out to be a nutjob. I should have read something into that.

We didn't meet near me the next time. Instead, we met in Yokohama, where he surprised me with a dinner cruise. For dinner we had the choice of salmon or Alaskan king crabs, I went for the crabs (I can't eat enough of them). After a remarkably romantic evening, where I learned the whole of his backstory (father worked for the Japanese Ambassador in London, went to school in Britain). This explained the extreme un-Japaneseness of his overconfident approach. At the end of the evening we kissed (an amazing kiss) and went our separate ways.

The third time he asked me if I was free for the weekend. I told him I was. He informed me he had reserved a room at a resort in Hakone, a room with a private onsen. For those who don't know, Hakone is a beautiful and mountainous region outside of Tokyo, known for its onsen (Japanese hot springs), it's scenic views, and being more expensive than young teachers can afford. Of course, what he told me immediately following his hotel reservation swept thoughts of price from my head again; "I thought it would be the perfect place to make love to you for the first time."

Now, I should state for the record that usually, I do the seducing. This is not always the case, but it had been 7 times out of 10 in the States and 9 times out of 10 in Japan. The matter of fact way this guy just informed me we would be having sex should have offended me, but I found it intriguing. Maybe it was time to let someone else drive for a change?

So I agreed. We drove up to Hakone in his car, and my breath was taken away by the beauty of the jagged mountains and deep, wooded valleys. The resort itself was unbelievable, made up of small, private bungalows, each with its own natural hot spring bath. The room was spectacular, and from the hot spring tub, you had an amazing view of the mountain valley plunging down before you.

"You've been to onsen before?" He asked. I nodded. I knew the drill. First you stripped, usually in a locker room full of guys, and then hit the showers where you scrubbed yourself thoroughly from head to foot. Only after you rinsed off did you actually enter the bath.

Masahiko smiled. "You realize this was all just a way to get you naked?" I told him he didn't have to work that hard.

The sex was, simply, spectacular. Masahiko washed me from top to bottom, and then we made love right there on the floor of the shower. Every lover, like a dance partner, has their own moves, their own rhythm. The trick is to fall into step with them. With Masahiko, I did what I usually never do...totally let go. And it was like standing naked before a thunderstorm, or waist-deep in the sea letting the waves wash over you. It was an experience.

This was followed by soaking in the blisteringly hot water, followed by more mind-blowing sex on the floor. After stepping out for an exquisite dinner, we had more sex in a chair, on the wardrobe, and in bed. He had told me he used to run marathons and I believed it. His stamina was incredible.

As was his libido. Over the next few weeks, we would meet two or three times a week and have sex two or three times a date. He took me often to his place, which between its magnificent view and beautiful paintings, was exactly the kid of place I aspired to have one day.

Three months into sleeping together, and nothing seemed to slow down. Masahiko was insatiable. We were spending more and more time together, but as i was about to discover, it wasn't enough.

For those of you who have had the experience, the signs are unmistakable. But the time, it was all new to me. As spring warmed into summer, I found myself...well...scratching areas of my anatomy best left unscratched. It was a minor itch at first, but it soon became maddening. It wasn't until after a shower, when I saw one of the tiny little bastards in my hand, that I knew what was happening. I immediately flashed back to our second date. I should never have ordered the crabs.

Judging from the fact that we had been sleeping together for three and a half months, and that I was not seeing anyone else, it was pretty clear that Masahiko's sexual appetites were not satisfied with just little old me. I confronted him without any teary-eyed drama. Yes, he had gotten the crabs. He had been too embarrassed to mention it. But he had only had sex with someone else "once" since we started seriously dating, yada yada yada.

The last time I saw Masahiko (the only character in this blog whose name has not been changed; give someone crabs, expect your name to get used) I showed up at his place with my newly shaved genital region to collect my things. It took a week or so, but I was finally able to wash that man right out of my hair.

Not to mention my bedding.