Tale of a big threesome

When I got home I was surprised to find that Ellie was already
bustling about in the kitchen. Usually I’m the first to arrive and
start the cooking. We share all our household chores, and she
often works later hours, so more often than not I do the picking up
from the night before, and make the bed we abandoned that morning,
and fix dinner. It’s a matter of convenience, but also an act of
love. I love her. I want to please her. Sometimes when she gets
home tired and sees what I’ve prepared, her smile of appreciation
lights up my whole life.

But this time Ellie was home early and cooking away, setting things
up with her usual efficiency, one hand hauling out a micro dish for
vegetables she’d already chopped, the other adjusting the oven
temperature for a roast she’d already enthroned in a pan, impaled
with cloves, and surrounded by oiled potatoes. No waste motion
with Ellie, ever. I glanced past her into the dining room and saw
the table set with our fine china. Company coming. I couldn’t
quite see how many extra places, so I walked in and looked. Only
one.

“So?” I asked her.

“Becky,” she replied, distracted by a carrot cube trapped under the
cutting board. “She’s in town again. She phoned, we had a long
talk, she wants to come over, I said sure. So she’ll be having
dinner with us.”

“Becky,” I said. “Your Becky? The one and only?”

Ellie looked up at me and smiled the warmest smile I’d seen in some
time. I melted. “My ‘Becky,’ honey. ‘Rebecca’ to you, remember.
I do hope you’ll try to be nice to her. It’ll help all around if
you try.”

Elly and Rebecca had been roommates all through college and
graduate school, absolutely inseparable the whole time. They went
everywhere together, vacationed together, and together shared
clothes and money and the deepest secrets of their hearts. Early
on they’d even dated the same guys, passing them to and fro, until
their tastes diverged. They were a two-girl sorority. When Ellie
finished her Management degree, instead of moving on to a
fast-track brokerage she did low-paid accounting for a tax firm
while waiting for Rebecca to finish a residency in Gynecology.
That was how I first met Ellie — I had some tangled tax problems
she solved so deftly my jaw dropped. The two of them were closer
than sisters — they never seemed to disagree about anything. They
meant to start a women’s health service when Rebecca became
board-certified, and then franchise it across the country. But I
began dating Ellie, and we both fell deeply in love, and Rebecca
ended up going her own way.

I absolutely adored Ellie. When I implored her to leave Rebecca
and move in with me she felt anguished, but not-too-long afterward
we got married and began to make a life together. It was a good
life. It still is.

Rebecca was happy for Ellie of course, though she never got over my
intrusion into their intimacy. Her resentment showed, now and
then. Though she was always “Becky” to Ellie she remained
“Rebecca” to me — I tried “Becky” just once, and her cold stare
ended that attempt immediately. She saw me as a rival, in a way.
That’s certainly how I thought of her. Her spirit presided over us
during our first years together, resolving all disputes: whether
toilet paper should come off the roll under or over (over), or
toilet seats should be left down (of course), or where in my bureau
my socks belonged (right front), and whether we should take camping
or resort vacations (alternate them), whether I should lose a
little more weight (yes), who cooks and cleans (either), even how
we should deal with disputes (convene a kind of family court in the
living room immediately after dinner, and never go to sleep with
the issue unresolved). Our domestic arrangements so closely
resembled Ellie’s with Rebecca that sometimes Ellie would forget
and call me “Becky” when reminding me to pay the phone bill or pick
up the dry cleaning. I wasn’t bothered by it — her tone was
always loving.

They saw each other as often as they could, and after we moved here
they phoned frequently. When either took an out of town trip they
coordinated schedules to try to meet at some midway point.
Eventually Rebecca also got married, to a pharmaceutical
manufacturer named Tim, who apparently persuaded her that two
tough-minded people like themselves had to be meant for each other.
Then the two of them stayed with us whenever they happened to be
passing through. They were welcome — our house was plenty large
enough (we’d bought it for raising a family when Ellie felt ready).
But I was always glad when they left.

I wasn’t crazy about Tim. When Ellie told me the marriage was
imminent, my first ungenerous thought was ‘maybe they deserve each
other.’ Tim also called her “Rebecca” (he tried “Reba” spitefully
once when she denied him “Becky,” he told me, but only once, never
again). If Rebecca was stubborn and suspicious, Tim was mean and
aggressive. His eyes gleamed when he explained how he’d turned some
employee or competitor into a victim, or squeezed an undeserved
advantage from some business deal. Marriage was one more deal as
he saw it, one where you give no quarter and ask none.

Theirs seemed one long hostile bargaining session — they fought
all the time, even in our presence. So I wasn’t surprised when
Ellie told me they were talking separation, this time maybe for
good. I asked Ellie if she’d seen it coming, if some specific
“irreconcilable difference” had come between them. Ellie’d nodded,
but she was too preoccupied to say what it was, and I didn’t press
it. Who knows exactly why some marriages don’t work out? I knew
ours was a good one. Ellie and I shared everything, and we kept no
secrets from each other. I certainly didn’t.

I hadn’t seen Rebecca since her last visit here with Tim, before
their current animosities, and I wondered if she’d changed. If
possibly she was a little less irritated by my existence.

“Remember! Be respectful!” Ellie warned me as she arranged a plate
of crudities and stirred a dip to be nibbled with drinks, and I
snagged a chunk of carrot to nibble then and there.

“I’ll be nice to her, don’t worry,” I replied. “She’s passing
through town on her own this time?”

“On her own. But as a matter of fact, she may be here for good
this time. She’s been offered a job here. At that huge women’s
hospital north of town. She’s here to try it out, to reorganize
their outpatient services, a really big responsibility. She phoned
to asked if she can stay here for a few days until we find
somewhere else. I told her, sure, for as long as it takes.”

Ellie bent over and put the roast into the oven and adjusted the
dials, then straightened up and turned toward me. Then she
straightened her shoulders even further.

“Joey, I’m sorry but I had to!” she said, a little defiantly.

That was odd. I’d never openly objected to Rebecca or any other of
Ellie’s friends stopping by to visit, no matter how I felt about
them personally. It helped her stay in touch with her past, her
former self, the girl I’d fallen in love with, after all. Ellie
never objected to my friends either, and mine were sometimes a lot
harder to take. But here she was feeling defensive!

“I had no choice!” Ellie added.

I looked up at her inquisitively. She looked pleased yet
embarrassed, impenitent but somehow guilty, and I saw that her eyes
were fixed on my face.

“She’ll stay here while you help her find another place to live?
I’ve got no problem with that,” I said reassuringly. “Do you?”

“Well, yes, in a way,” Ellie replied, still watching me. I began
to feel uncomfortable. “I mean, I’ve got a problem, because you’ve
got a really big problem.”

“I do?” I said. What else could I do but repeat her words? They
made no sense. “A really big problem? And what might that be?”

She turned and put the vegetables into the Micro, and pushed some
more buttons, and set out a saucepan for last minute use, maybe for
glazing gravy from the roasting pan, maybe for a Hollandaise, I
didn’t know. She began to take ingredients off the spice shelf.
A Hollandaise.

Her back still turned toward me, she said “Listen, Joseph. I’ll be
done here in a minute. Why don’t you go into the living room and
pour yourself a drink and wait for me. I’ve got something to tell
you.”

“Joseph” was my name for our formal talks. “Joey” was my pet name
for when she felt more intimate, which was most of the time. But
apparently not now.

“Here’s fine,” I said. “And I can wait for a drink, we’ll have
wine with dinner. Anything I can do here to help?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. She shot me a glance over her
shoulder, this one a little amused. Apparently she’d just settled
something in her own mind. “Go ahead, honey. Make it a stiff one.
Get sozzled. The ice is already out there. Now shooo!”

So I went into the living room. Ellie’d set out a lot of bottles
on the sideboard, just the way she and Rebecca did it in that
apartment where I’d gone to pick up Ellie for our first big date.
We both sensed immediately that this might get serious, and she’d
wanted me to meet her girlfriend Rebecca right off. I’d walked in
and there on their sideboard was a forest of liquor bottles. Not
that they drank much themselves, hardly anything. But as Rebecca’d
explained while Ellie was getting ready, they did a lot of
entertaining, lots of friends passed through. It just seemed more
hospitable for them to help themselves.

Ellie and I on the other hand kept our booze in the cabinet. We
hadn’t set it out on display like this previously ever. Not even
when Tim and Rebecca were visiting us. It seemed an odd gesture to
make now. I suppose it was to help Rebecca feel more at home.

The ice bucket was full. I made myself a drink and sat down. And
waited. Well, I said to myself, for the next few days our liquor
cabinet is rededicated to the good old days. I wondered what else.

Ellie came out wiping her hands on a towel, then fixed her eyes on
me again and sat down.

“So,” I said. “What’s my really big problem.” I smiled at her
encouragingly.

She folded the towel carefully and set it aside, then looked at me
again. A little pitying this time? Then she took a deep breath.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Joey. In a few days, when Becky
and I find a place and move out, it’ll be both of us moving out.
I’ll be leaving you. I’ll be going with Becky. For good.”

That’s what I thought I heard. I replayed her words in my mind,
and they came out the same. She knew I’d heard her, so she said
nothing more. She just sat there watching me absorb it.

I couldn’t speak! I tried to swallow, and couldn’t even manage
that! We’d been married long enough for me to know that she meant
everything she’d just said. Nothing uttered was ever joking or
casual. Her next words would explain things. Would try to explain
things, anyhow. I waited. Nothing.

“What?” I finally asked.

“Oh, you poor dear, you look devastated! It isn’t anything you’ve
done! And it isn’t that I don’t love you, honey! I do love you!
More than ever! I’ll always love you! I was looking forward to
having a family with you, you know that! Growing old together!”

She thought she was consoling me! “But?” I managed to croak out.

“But I love Becky more! I know that now! Much more! And I’ve
loved her for many more years! That’s all! That’s why! She wants
me, and I’ve realized that I want her, I feel more complete with
her, and I’m going back to her now that she’s free and in town and
we can live together again, the two of us, just the way we used to.
That’s all!”

I just stared at her. Staring was all I could manage. None of
this made sense! The bottom had dropped out of my stomach, out of
my universe. I was utterly bewildered!

“Joey baby! Are you still with me?”

I nodded. I was.

“Joey, listen! All those years Becky and I lived together? We
weren’t just roomies.”

Now she stood up and went over to the cluster of bottles and poured
just soda into a glass for herself, over ice. And took a sip.
Then turned to face me square on, looking down at me.

“Becky and I love each other. We always have. We’ve been as close
as two girls can get! We’re lovers! Really! We’ve always been
lovers, practically from the day we met! For years and years
before I met you. You never knew, and I’ve marveled that you never
even speculated about it. You remember just before we met how I
was going with a guy named Roger? I’ve mentioned him now and then?
Well, he found out about me and Becky, and that was how come he
broke off. He couldn’t deal with it, he freaked!. The last time
I saw him he was shrieking he’d been trapped by a pair of dykes,
and I had to slam the door in his face! I suppose the idea that we
slept together and had sex together threatened his manhood in some
way. So I certainly wasn’t going to tell you about us. Not then,
not ever! Not until now.”

I just stared, My Ellie a lesbian? How? I knew there’d been a
few men before me, but women? This woman? Rebecca? It was
unimaginable! What do women do?

“Honey, I guess you’ve been trapped by a pair of dykes. It isn’t
your fault. But now you need to know it! Becky and I love each
other. Deeply. We always have, ever since we first met. Ever
since that first day. Since then we’ve been intimate with each
other in every way imaginable! We know every inch of each other’s
feelings and bodies, inside and out. Every inch! We’ve always
been absolutely devoted to each other.”

I sat stunned.

“I don’t say we aren’t like that too, honey,” she went on. “But
it’s not the same way. Rebecca and I are affectionate, and gentle,
delicately feminine, sensitive to each other’s desires, all sorts
of things men can never be. Even when we were college kids with
raging hormones, hot and passionate and eager to get into bed and
into each other in any way imaginable, even then we were always
considerate. Never rough. Caring! We adored each other. So sex
between us has always been transcendent, kind of out-of-body,
unreal, beyond belief! Just glorious! Overwhelming! Like
climbing a mountain into a golden sunrise!”

I was still baffled.

“It still is,” she added, still watching me closely. I said
nothing.

She saw, and continued. “All through all those school years I
always assumed I’d meet some guy some day and marry him and have
kids and enjoy all those other good things too. So there were
other guys, too, for me, and then there was Roger. And no sooner
was Roger gone than there you were, calling me up night and day,
eager to get closer to me! Within a month — you remember, you
sweet darling? — you were so sure about the two of us, so
insistent that you wanted to move right in with Becky and me. So
Becky and I could maintain our friendship, but you’d be there too.
You were ready to share me! You were so sweet about the two of us
then, so accepting. I even thought for a while that maybe you knew
about us and didn’t care, or that when you found out about us you
wouldn’t mind.”

There was now a sweet smile on Ellie’s face. She was reminiscing
about our early days. Then she drained her glass.

“But you never did find out. Becky wanted no part of you living
with us. Then a month later her medical residency took over her
life and we scarcely saw each other, and soon after I moved in with
you. So there was never any need to say anything.”

She looked thoughtfully into her empty glass, and swirled an ice
cube with her finger.

“But now she’s back, and she wants to stay here with us until she
can find a place of her own, and then she wants me to come live
with her. To go back to what we were. And I want to! Oh, Joey
honey, don’t feel hurt! I’ve missed her so, all this time! I’m
terribly sorry for you, love. But I’ve told her ‘Yes!'”

I was silent. “Even after all these years?” I finally said.

“All these half-dozen years? Sweetheart, they’ve been good years.
I have no regrets, and I’m sorry they’re over. But remember, for
ten years before that there was always Becky! She gave me my first
real kiss, and hers were the first fingers I ever allowed into my
… between my legs. She gave me my first really mind-blowing
orgasms.”

Ellie paused, then went on. “She still knows how to reach me and
carry me into raptures beyond belief. We’ve never really been
separated! We’ve been writing and phoning each other through the
whole time you and I have been married, you know that! And you
know that whenever she’s passed through town she’s stayed overnight
with us. Every time. You’ve been a real dear about it, taking us
out to dinner and concerts and shows, entertaining her with jokes,
whatever. You were always like my new roommate trying to be nice
to my old roommate, even though it was clear you didn’t like her
much and she liked you even less. I really loved you for it, each
time.”

“But you didn’t take up with her again on any of those visits,” I
said. “I mean, physically. We’re married. You wouldn’t have!”

I recalled their occasional sly glances at each other during those
visits. The giggling in Rebecca’s room — Tim snored like a diesel
engine, so Rebecca always slept in a separate bedroom, and Ellie’d
visit her there and they’d sit up half the night. It had all
seemed rather charming. Girlish. Innocent.

Ellie didn’t say anything. Then, “You know she’s stayed with us,
Joey,” was all she said. “And I’ve just told you that we’ve always
been close. That she still knows how to blow my mind away.”

I just sat there, my mouth gaping. Ellie’s been unfaithful to me
in my own house! Was it infidelity if she did it with another
woman, not with a man? Maybe not! Women were always being
affectionate with each other!

“Honey, I’ve got strong sexual needs, as you know. Once we get
started I wear you out, every time, you know that too. We make
jokes about it, but it’s serious! I guess you never knew that I’m
really bi-sexual — I love what women can do to me and I love what
men can do, and I love doing it! Lots!”

Now she was in her own world, reminiscing.

“I guess I need both, but especially women. Becky and I each
knew other girls before we found each other, but we fell into each
other’s arms right away. For years and years we really felt
married. Right up to the day you and I got married. In fact, that
whole last night while you were doing whatever you were doing at
your bachelor party? Becky and I spent that whole night making the
sweetest, saddest love I’ve ever known. It was so poignant and
desperate! So lonely! We felt so helpless in each other’s arms!
It was so beautiful. We’d been so close! We were each other’s
body and soul, in a way! I knew then that the only way our
marriage — yours and mine — could work was if I sort of stayed
married to Becky too. I told her that, and she was so overjoyed
that she cried and then couldn’t stop crying. That’s when we
decided what we decided that last night, how we’d arrange things,
the two of us. Remember, the next morning I made that last little
change in our wedding vows? I took out the place where I promise
I’ll be ‘forsaking all others’? I wanted to keep all the promises
I made to you that day. And I have, honey! All of them! But I
never promised you sexual fidelity.”

“Our marriage was especially beautiful when I knew I didn’t need to
forsake Becky. You couldn’t possibly guess, sweetie, but on our
wedding night, when you came at me with your dear little pecker as
big as I’ve ever seen it, quivering, so eager to sanctify our
union, you couldn’t possibly have known that my pussy was still
stretched out and sore from the previous night. Becky never
stopped plunging into me with her dildoes. She really ravaged me!
She wanted me to spend my last night with her cumming continously.
And I very nearly did, orgasm after orgasm. She pushed some really
monster cocks into me! She fisted me! She wanted to ruin your fun
with me the next night altogether, and she very nearly did that
too.”

“That next night I was so grateful that you’re so much smaller than
the jelly and rubber cocks Becky kept shoving into me! I was still
so sore! But your penis snugged up inside me so gently I hardly
felt it! It was so precious, so comforting! You remember how we
hugged while you humped away on me as fast as you knew how? You
were more a feeling than a solid cock, the way you felt inside me!
It was almost as if you weren’t there at all!”

“Of course Becky and I have made love a lot since then. Whenever
we could! Sometimes we’ve met out of town at some convention, and
sometimes in town in motels, afternoons. Sometimes nights when Tim
and you were in neighboring rooms! We couldn’t not! We love each
other!”

“Oh, darling, just look at that expression on your face! You never
knew? Of course not! How could you know? Or even suspect, you’re
so straight, so trusting! Well, Rebecca’s husband was a lot more
suspicious. Tim suspected something almost right away, and during
their last visit here he finally found out what it was, and that
was that! He couldn’t handle it, no more than Roger could! Nor
any man, I suppose! No, there was no way I could tell you!”

She paused, then went on with a certain smug sadness, “But now you
know. And now it doesn’t matter whether you know or not. I need
Rebecca. She needs me. We want each other. We mean to share the
rest of our lives with each other. I’m sorry for you, I really am.
But that’s the way it is!”

She looked at me. It was said. She turned back toward that
collection of bottles and this time made herself a really stiff
drink. While her back was toward me and she was clinking ice and
pouring whisky she said in a small voice, “Honey, you really never
suspected? Really? All that screaming we did in the guest bedroom
sometimes, orgasm after orgasm, peak after peak, hers, mine, ours
together, all night long sometimes? Sometimes it was so
magnificent we didn’t care who heard! You never woke up and saw I
wasn’t in bed with you? You never figured it out?”

I looked at my own glass. Somehow it had emptied itself. I
couldn’t look up at her. “I heard screaming now and then. I
thought you were just being girls laughing together, is all,” I
said. “Having fun. Now you tell me….”

“That’s right, honey. We were being girls together. Having fun.”

She paused, and took a breath. Then went on. “Sex with you is
different, Joey dear. Really good, sweetheart, but not really
great! Even after I taught you how to lick me out and push into my
pussy with your tongue, you remember that, and suck on my clit,
sort of how Becky does it, it’s never the same. You’re caring, and
devoted, a sweetheart, but somehow you never get really frenzied
down there, not the way Becky does. Never! You don’t set me on
fire! You don’t go crazy because your face has entered heaven!
You don’t play dangerous games with me! There’s nothing kinky
about you!”

“You never once wanted to tie me up, remember, even when I asked
you? And there was that time I tried to tie you up so I could sit
on your face and force you to eat me out with your cum still in me,
and you thought that was just too yuckie? So we never got to find
each other’s deeper places. Or open up our darker feelings to each
other! You wouldn’t even wear a lacy nightgown to bed that time I
asked you to, remember, when I wanted to close my eyes and hug you
and imagine you were Becky? Of course you didn’t know that was
what I wanted, but you wouldn’t do it anyhow! “I’m not a girl,” was
all you said. I knew that, honey. I just wanted you to pretend.
But you wouldn’t be a girl for me. I guess your manhood felt
threatened. By a lacy little nightgown. By nothing at all!
Remember?”

I remembered. We sat silent. I smelled the roast browning in the
oven. My last supper? I had to stall this thing! How?
Persuasion was useless. Go with it and steer her back to me, that
was the only way! But how? Rebecca would never share Ellie with
me in a threesome — she’d rejected that notion way back! But an
idea began to form. I reached out desperately! I needed time to
fight for my wife, somehow! I had what, three days at most.

I tried my most mature manager’s voice on her, calm, reasonable.
“Ellie, let me understand. You’ve been happy with both of us, but
you want Rebecca more than you want me?”

She just looked at me. What else had we been talking about?

“Do you have to choose?”

She continued to look at me, and I could see in her the first
stirrings of impatience.

“Couldn’t you live with both of us?”

Now she was listening. “I could,” she said carefully. “But you
know Becky couldn’t.”

She looked at me attentively, her thin eyebrows raised slightly,
waiting. “In fact, could you? Could you share me with Becky?
Knowing what you know now?” she asked.

I didn’t hesitate. “Yes!” I said as forcefully as I could. If
that was my only option. If that would buy me time, a chance to
overwhelm Ellie and reclaim her for myself.

She smiled sympathetically, and gathered her skirt to stand up.
Dinner was nearly ready. Our conversation was over.