A World in Us Read online

  All of that made sense to me. But still, none of these configurations covered Morten’s encounter with Celine. There was no passion, no intimacy and no commitment. It was — just as he described it — exciting and fun. Fun!

  “He says it’s like playing badminton.”

  I was conferring with my husband on Skype from a lonely hotel on a business trip in Hungary about the problem in hand. Neither Gilles nor I could understand the attraction of swinging.

  “Is that like a code name? Patch it through to my screen,” said Gilles, quoting 24.

  Whenever Gilles and I were in public and needed to be discreet, we referred to sex as “playing Ping-Pong.” It seemed to characterise the yin-yang nature of intimacy as well as the exchange of power that happened between the sheets. It also made us titter uncontrollably when other people innocently commented upon it.

  “No, he means like a hobby. It’s like going to play doubles. Something exciting they used to do together.”

  “I thought the whole point of swinging was that you were supposed to do other people,” said Gilles flippantly.

  “Yes. But just doing other people. Not living with other people or being in a relationship with other people. Like badminton is something you can do on a Thursday night and then go home. Compared to polyamory, which is a lifestyle change.”

  “So do you know the other couple you’re swinging with, or not?” asked Gilles.

  “Know and know. Not deeply, I guess. But I think they both had to like the couple. And in that case, the decision was a joint one. It was all about mutual consensual arrangement,” I said.

  “How can they like them without knowing them then?” wondered Gilles.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a more masculine thing. Would you sleep with Nicole Kidman without getting to know her?”

  Nicole had been top of Gilles’s “list of five celebrities he was allowed to sleep with without me getting mad” for three years running. Although obviously now it was just called “list of five celebrities he wanted to sleep with,” since permission and anger about infidelity were pretty much redundant in polyamory.

  “Possibly…” said Gilles, “but now that I’m really allowed to have her, she doesn’t seem so attractive anymore.”

  “Well, I would still go for Matt Damon,” I said em­phat­ic­ally. He was top of my list. “But only if he was exactly the same character as he was in Good Will Hunting. And he might not be like that in real life.”

  “Good Will Humping,” said Gilles, quoting Friends. His comic timing was, as ever, impeccable.

  If there was something that irritated me more than anything else in the world, it was not being able to understand something. I worked in finance. Not because I was good at maths. Quite the opposite. Because I was shit at maths. And the satisfaction that I gained from struggling my way through to understanding it had rewarded me beyond measure. And having applied this principle to every other area of my life, I decided that the only way to understand swinging was to try it.

  I announced my decision to Gilles, who answered in another Friends quote.

  “So you’re going to go through the tunnel?” he said.

  “To the other side!” I replied.

  Anyone who challenges society’s moral values renders themselves vulnerable. Whilst friendship between many is accepted and encouraged, intimacy between more than two people is often disparaged. Described as easy, loose and sluttish. And the majority of words are used to describe people (mostly women) who have sex on a casual basis.

  In middle-class Britain, swinging was premeditated promiscuity. And therefore something that was heavily frowned upon. Almost worse than those poor women who were forced into the sex industry. This was — gasp — sex for fun. Shocking! In order to become a swinger, you had to expose yourself (metaphorically and literally) and your desire to carry out this crime to others. But you limited your risk by knowing that others were in the same position. Behavioural economics.

  So it was that after a harrowing and (almost fully covered) photo shoot, in which I managed to grimace at the camera without looking in the slightest bit wanton, Morten and I created a profile for ourselves online. And then we started to shop. It was like Barnes & Noble for the over-eighteens. We read the dust jackets and looked at the photos. Of course I looked at Rob and Lydia’s profile first.

  “Wow! So that’s what Lydia looks like naked.”

  She was artfully posed on the bed like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, looking away from the camera with a classic silhouetted profile, a tiny little waist and full breasts squashed by one brown arm, tantalisingly looking like they were about to burst.

  “I took that photo,” Morten said proudly. “What do you think of Rob?”

  So this was the evil bastard who had broken Elena’s heart. I examined his photo carefully.

  “He’s ginger,” I said in surprise, after looking at one of the more, ahem, revealing shots. “He’s attractive. And he knows it. Which somehow makes him more attractive. But you know what? It’s useless speculating about how attractive he is. For one, they aren’t poly anymore, and for two, Elena would not be happy if I were to entertain the possibility of getting off with her ex.”

  “You’re probably right, darling,” said Morten naughtily. “But never say never. They’re still non-monogamous, after all.”

  “Let’s look at the others,” I said, flicking faster through the images and ignoring his last comment.

  “What about him?” Morten said hopefully. “The girl’s very attractive.”

  I looked at Morten disdainfully.

  “She has flab around her bum. Do you like that? Do I have it?”

  “No, darling. Your bum is perfect. Much nicer than hers.”

  “He doesn’t look very manly,” I said, mollified. “Let me read their profile.”

  “If you don’t like him, you don’t have to. I don’t want you to do any of this for me.”

  “No, I have to do this for me. Because otherwise I’ll never understand you.”

  “OK yes, I know you feel you have to. But it would be the worst thing in the world if you slept with someone just because you thought I wanted to sleep with the girl. Swinging is so not as important to me as you are.”

  I had flicked through twenty-five profiles by this point.

  “They all look like crap. And look at that, this couple can’t even spell properly!”

  “God forbid!” said Morten, laughing and hugging me. “Bad spelling means they must be terrible in bed.”

  Nevertheless, I felt a curious frisson of excitement when Morten told me he had bought us two tickets to a “social” party. This was a new world that I had never dabbled in. If life was all about new experiences, this one had to be high up on the list of things to do.

  As the evening approached, I sourced advice from those more experienced than me. None of my friends were any use. Fortunately, I had Elena and Lydia as a database. The most important question was “How do I say no nicely?” Because I couldn’t actually imagine me saying yes. Elena thought it was easy.

  “Remember, swinging is about female empowerment,” she said. “You are the boss — and the rules support that. Any man who you think goes too far, he will be thrown out and banned permanently. Saying no is important, not only for you, but symbolically to stand up for women’s rights.”

  Scary.

  Lydia said, “Oh darling, I totally understand. I’m such a people pleaser. I totally get how difficult it is to tell people they aren’t sexually attractive. But just remember that they choose to put themselves on the front line of rejection by being swingers.”

  Over the months, Lydia and I had become increasingly close. After all, if there was one person who could understand my position in our quad it was her, because she’d been there before me. Falling in love with the same man. Dealing with the same conflicts. Our fri
endship was borne uneasily by Elena, but as they had both made stabs at reconciliation, some patchy piecemeal contact had resumed between them and she found it less controversial.

  “I would have loved to come and support you,” said Lydia, “but you and I would probably end up chatting all night and not have any experiences at all.”

  Another couple, Aidan and Jacinthe, was driving us to the social, and as my nerves mounted, Jacinthe gave me her top tip.

  “Keep your lipstick handy. And use it as an excuse if you can’t say no — just wave it in the air and head off to the bathroom.”

  “You mean ‘Excuse me, I need to go to the ladies’ room’ like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman?”

  Comparisons to hookers seemed particularly apt. Aidan looked at me in the rear-view mirror and said, “Don’t worry. No one will force you to do what you don’t want to. Besides, this is a social. Probably nothing will happen anyway.”

  As I entered the room, Vanilla Ice sang in my head:

  “Girls were hot wearing less than bikinis,

  Rock men lovers driving Lamborghinis…”

  It was decadent. Luxurious. The girls were hot. The men were rich. And not hot. I dived for a table because I figured that I was allowed a good ten minutes of snorkelling some Dutch courage before I had to move. TV producers, actresses and generally branded people flitted about. They seemed to know each other. And some of the trendier ones knew Morten. Obstinately, I refused to have a bling-fizz drink and opted for a good old-fashioned pint. Out of keeping with my dress, but stout enough to give me some solid moral support. When Morten managed to peel my bare thighs away from where I had glued them to the faux-leather couch, we had conversations with other couples. About thirty of them. Variations of:

  “Hi, I’m Morten. This is my girlfriend, Louisa.”

  “Hi, nice to meet you. So how long have you been in the scene?”

  “Well, this is Louisa’s first time.”

  “Oh-ho” (knowingly to Morten). “So you’re the corrupter!”

  Apparently there was always a corrupter and a corruptee.

  Morten said, “Yes, but I am also married. My wife is her husband’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, they’re not swinging at the moment.”

  So many couples to swing with, so little time. Thus there was rarely a flicker of interest at this statement.

  One swinging couple said, “This is our third party, Lisa is really into girls. And this is the best way for her to share the experience with me.”

  “So Louisa, are you into girls?” said Lisa with a gleam.

  “Um. Well I haven’t been until now,” I said, never sure of my ground. Then I thought, Shit, that could be taken two ways. Either it meant that I was not and have never been, or that I have just declared my interest in her.

  “I think we’re pretty much straight,” laughed Morten, seeing my panicky face. “But who knows!”

  “Well, just something to think about Louisa. You’re gorgeous.”

  I thought, At least someone likes me at my first swinging party. Thank God. But it’s a girl. Does it matter? Could I be bisexual, after all? Should I try it?

  I said, “Excuse me, I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

  To which they replied, “We’ll see you later, we hope!”

  After this conversation had been repeated every two minutes for an hour or so, I was exhausted. Plus I was very familiar with the ladies’ room. This was speed dating at its finest and it reminded me of YO! Sushi. Only I was the one sitting on the conveyor belt. £4.50 for a piece of the Louisa maki. Morten got me another pint and I wandered up to the second level, where they had comfy make-out chairs. A lone woman was squashed into the corner.

  “You OK?” she asked. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  “No. This is my first time. Cue swinging virgin joke!” I chuckled, as if comfortable with it all.

  With one deft movement she reached out and lifted up my skirt. As I had one hand grasped firmly around my pint and the other clutching my bag, there was not much I could do about it.

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re wearing panties.”

  What the fuck?

  She lifted up her own skirt to reveal a distinct lack of under­wear and said in a matter-of-fact way, “I never wear panties to these events. I’ve lost so many pairs, it’s just too expensive.”

  As I stared incredulously at this woman stroking her trimmed pubic hair and wondered into what parallel universe I had just jumped, it occurred to me: Was she expecting a compliment? Was there some swinging etiquette I didn’t know about?

  So I laughed falsely and loudly.

  “Ha, ha, ha! Well, jolly good on you!” She stroked some more. I obviously hadn’t said enough. “That’s a very nice haircut, by the way. Oh Morten, there you are!”

  Morten, of course, was nowhere to be seen. But she didn’t know that. I escaped downstairs and gratefully sank onto the couch with Aidan. He laughed at my expression and said, “You look all in. See anyone interesting?”

  “Plenty interest-ing. But I’m not interest-ed.”

  “Ah well,” he said. “Better luck next time. But you could always come home with us. I’d be up for a fuck with you.”

  I mustered what was left of my dignity. Then I waved my lipstick in his face and said, “Excuse me, but I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

  He de-friended me on Facebook the next day.

  18

  But polyamory was not all sex and swinging. Far from it. There were more important things in life. Like shared housework.

  “Your cleaner really isn’t doing a very good job, Louisa,” said Elena one day as I walked in the door from work.

  “Oh?” Breathe slowly. Cleaning wasn’t my favourite subject even at the best of times. And was really low down the list when I got in from a full day’s work.

  “Come here and have a look,” Elena commanded. What I wanted to do was sit on the sofa and look at an episode of Friends. What I did was go with Elena to the kitchen. And resented all seven of my steps. She knelt down and pointed to a gap between the door and the fridge. Where there was a stripe of black goo.

  It was filthy. Very obviously so. And so obviously so that one must have been blind not to have seen it. Gilles and I had of course never seen it. Shame bubbled up.

  After our Christmas together and until the time that I managed to pull off the move to England, Elena had been true to her word. She could barely live a week without Gilles. She regularly came over to Paris, and when she got there she could hardly tear herself away. On several occasions plane tickets were discarded. The price of love was steep. And not only in money.

  My limits were being severely tested. I felt invaded. My whole house had been turned upside down by Elena’s X-ray vision. It appeared that we didn’t have the right products to clean, we washed our clothes neither at the right temperatures nor with the right kinds of environmentally friendly detergents, and our state of hygiene was generally very poor. It was like having my mother in the house. Which was the worst possible situation I could think of.

  “That’s nasty,” I said honestly. It really was.

  “Ah well, don’t worry. The rest of your house is fine. You just need to talk to your cleaner and show her what do to. Why don’t we go down and see her?”

  My cleaner was the wife of the concierge. A man on whose good side it was imperative to stay. And now I was going to go and criticise his wife’s cleaning skills. Which admittedly were not good. I tried my last desperate attempt to resist without being rude.

  “I’m really quite tired.”

  “Oh it’ll only take a minute,” she said. “Why don’t we do it now?”

  By now I was growling quite fiercely. Not out loud, of course. That would be rude. I could feel razors growing on my tongue, and it was only by biting
my lip very hard that the shame I felt from my inability to keep my house clean and the antagonism I felt towards Elena for her judgement was kept firmly under wraps. And so I went with her.

  She was my guest. She was Morten’s wife. She was Gilles’s girlfriend. But in my world, guests did not comment on their hostess’ ability, or rather lack of ability, to clean. Now the question was whether it was the place of my boyfriend’s wife to do so. I didn’t feel it was. But it may have been the place of my husband’s girlfriend. After all, it was his home and his inability as well.

  “I’m so glad I can contribute to the household like this. You don’t seem to have time to look at things like this and well…” She looked over at Gilles, whose shoulders told me that he wasn’t in a good mood. “Gilles, bless him, has no idea. Oh, and I bought you some beautiful antique dusty pink roses. We all know Gilles’s block with flowers.”

  Gilles’s shoulders looked distinctly unhappy. He turned round and his face told the same story. Her laughter tinkled. “Gilles got in a tantrum today because I asked him to make the bed for you. You like the bed to be made, don’t you?”

  It was true. Only yesterday I had grumbled that the bed was yet again unmade. Gilles hadn’t listened, as usual. He had a Gallic attitude to life and to mess. Everything was met with a shrug of his shoulders. Bed making. Bof! But it had not been my intention to impose upon Elena. Or indeed give her fuel to use with Gilles.

  The flowers sat in the middle of the dining table, which was set for three. Two on one side, one on the other. The best silver, the best crockery, the best glassware, the best, the best, the best. She had done this all for me. And I felt like an honoured guest. In my own fucking house.

  As we settled around the table, she said sweetly, “Do you want to sit next to Gilles?”

  Grrrrrrrr. And now I felt obliged to be polite. She was my guest.