A BIANNUAL LITERARY MAGAZINE
How to Have a Threeway
Kyle Getz
Work up the courage to go out to a gay club with your boyfriend on a Saturday night. Not the well-maintained brunch spot that turns into cocktails and upscale ogling after 5 p.m. You’ll need the late-night dance club that you don’t like to admit to your straight-laced gay friends you’ve been to twice before because it’s too dirty for their tastes. Don’t tell those friends you’re in an open relationship, either, because that’s too dirty for their tastes, too. You also can’t tell them you’re thinking of changing the label of your relationship to something new. Boyfriend is too traditional to fully represent what he represents to you now. Partner won’t work because it’s too committed. Main squeeze might work because it’s a phrase that’s old enough to sound quirky and hipster, and it implies that there are other squeezes out there to be squeezed. Your boyfrie—sorry, main squeeze—may hate that name, but you don’t have to ask him about it yet. He probably doesn’t know how to define your new relationship either, so you can work out the details later. For now, the only detail you need to worry about is how many drinks you need to choke down before you head out looking for a third to squeeze. You’ll find that three feels like one too many, but somehow it’s what you need to make this work.
At the skeezy, squeezy gay bar, find someone half a point less hot than you, so maybe a five and a half since you're usually a six. Sometimes you hit seven on a good hair and arms and stomach and legs day. You could gamble a gander at a seven and a half, but you're only an eight in dark rooms filled with a drunk audience, so feel out the crowd (figuratively) before trying to feel out (literally) a seven or above. You’re looking for a guy who is hot but not smoldering, inviting but not slutty, a tank top but not shirtless. It's only 11 p.m., meaning the night just started, and guys that are shirtless by 11 p.m. are either too attractive or too confident or too far gone for your purpose. You want to find the right guy whose seductive brooding strikes you like lightning without stealing your thunder.
When you find your five and a half, try not to be too subtle. You’re usually too subtle, and you need to break out of the confines of the routines you thought were working. Catch his eyes, and let yours linger. If you look away too quickly, you’ll lose him. You have seven seconds to make a first impression, which is only one second in gay time, so hold his gaze long enough that he sees the longing. When he walks by, don’t cup his ass too gently. An ass cup is not only the customary greeting in this dirty gay bar, it also says a lot about who you are between the sheets. A gentle ass-cupper is a sure sign of a boring-ass lover. Don’t hit too hard, either. Aggressive sexual moves are only the answer when consented to by all parties, or when used as a last-ditch effort to spice up a sparkless sexual connection. You’re aiming for the right amount of impact that surprises him into pausing beside you for just a little longer. You’ll be surprised, too, because even though you don’t feel quite like yourself, now you know you have it in you.
When five and a half stops beside you and looks at you, pull your main squeeze—okay, that phrase sounds silly the more you say it, but having no label is worse, so you switch back to boyfriends because something is better than nothing. So, when five and a half stops beside you and looks at you, pull your boyfriend in close. Now is the time to introduce to him the idea that you’re willing to be more than he expected, more than just a complacent twosome. That you have a tangible reason you’re different than anyone else he could find in this bar. If your boyfriend is not beside you, and is instead lost in the crowd, that’s too bad, because your prospective third will soon be lost, too. If you could keep one person’s attention on your own, you wouldn’t be here. Hold your boyfriend’s hand all night and tell him it’s important he stays close because you don’t want to leave this arrangement to Chance, even though it was his idea in the first place. If the guy sees you and Chance, arm in arm, his ass still giggling from the slap of appropriate roughness, and he introduces himself, you’re in. You’ve planted your seed (metaphorically, the dirty stuff doesn’t come until later).
He’ll walk away. Don’t worry; it’s the kind of walking away that doesn’t mean it’s over. It means you need to play the game to get what you really want. The automatic tell of novice threeway hopefuls is that they go home with the first guy that meets their four eyes. This isn’t first come, first served like the soft serve place next door that you and Chance used to frequent before he grew a distaste for the monotony. You’ll want to try a few different flavors before taking one home with you. Turn it into a game. Prove to yourself you’re hot enough to land two or three or seventeen new guys. (This is the moment you’ll consider hosting an orgy, but trust me, you’re not ready for that. Hosting responsibilities are not to be taken lightly, and you haven’t enough lube or soft serve for seventeen.) Once you’ve planted enough seeds in enough boys (again, metaphorically), you’ll need to figure out which one is the right one to be your one more.
This is the most important part of the night. Some think it’s the anal penetration, but it’s not. It’s the mental penetration. You’ve got to figure them all out in order to rule them out one by one. Rule out the ones that are just here to flirt and flake. They drink club soda and tell you it’s vodka and tell you how drunk they are, but they seem pretty sober because they are dancing like they still care what people think about them. Rule out the whores. They are the ones that leaned in too close to your ear and said, “wanna fuck me without a condom?” Even though Chance would jump at and inside this opportunity, you can’t go home with someone who would be forward enough to ask that raw question early enough in the night that the DJ has only played three Beyoncé songs so far. Rule out the ones that give you the immediate suspicion that they could be boyfriend material because the only materials you’re looking for are flesh and silicone and latex (if you’re responsible), plus a pile of cotton and denim on the floor by your bed. Boyfriend material should be the fabric that only you and Chance share, and you’d hate to find yourself excess fabric.
Once you’ve ruled out the flirts and the whores and the boyfriend imposters, you should be left with a limited number. If you find yourself with a remainder of greater than one, you might as well opt for the one closest to you. It’s easier to grab what’s in front of you rather than searching through the crowd to re-discover someone you met once who may not even be there anymore. Even better if he has a drink in his hand that he’s halfway through. It only looks half full because there’s ice on the bottom, and you know a thing or two about being on bottom. Invite him back to your place while you hold on tightly to Chance, who dangles from your arm. You know he’s the right pick if he tells you he’s never done this before as he eases his arms onto Chance’s back. Someone this smooth has clearly done this before, but he’s polite enough to pretend like he hasn’t, and that could be just the gentleman you need for this endeavor. He abandons his remaining drink on a random table nearby, so you know he won’t become overly committed to anything. You can be relieved to know that he couldn’t kill a relationship any more than he could kill the rest of his drink. Watch out, because Chance is starting to get drunk, and you don’t need him doubling back to that random table and killing it without you looking.
When you’re back at home, you’ll kiss Rico gently on the mouth in front of Chance. Oh, you can nickname this guy Rico in your head because he’s suave, but don’t say that out loud because you don’t want to hand over that level of confidence to someone new while he is standing inside your bedroom between you and your boyfriend. You’ll kiss Rico just long enough for Chance to walk over. You’ll both go for Chance and laugh, and you can let Rico have him for a moment before you lean in to interrupt. Kiss Chance, and let your lips linger a little longer than he expects as a reminder that this is supposed to bring the two of you closer together. Enjoy this part; your clothes are still on and no one has gotten inside anyone else, so you’re not at risk yet.
You’ll remove Rico’s shirt first, which you’ll only realize after was a good idea because you can control how much time is given to his exposure. Touch him, hold him, lick him, and let Chance do the same. If you’ve done your homework right, this part will be nice but not phenomenal, enjoyable but not euphoric, firm but not rock hard. Give him ten seconds. Seventeen tops. (Again, you’re not ready for an orgy.) Then, move on to Chance, removing his shirt while keeping one finger on Rico so he knows that you’re still on him. You’re balancing the two, not just Rico and Chance, but also the touching and the feeling, the heat and the passion, the spark and the fire. Be generous; spend just the right amount of time on your boyfriend so that he feels your arm resting on him without feeling like he’s being held down. You put those same arms on Rico, and when you realize how tense your body is, make sure to relax so you look carefree. Maybe then Chance will see how comfortable you are with all of this.
Keep your eyes on Rico and Chance when they kiss. Try to look like you’re watching from a place of arousal, not alarm. Stroking yourself helps get your face in place. Watch out for warning signs. You don’t want this to run away from you. Hold on to your secret weapon. It may not feel so secret, flopping around for anyone or anyhand or anymouth to wrap around it, but keep it in check. No matter who or what it gets into or out of, or into and then out of, keep it locked and loaded. You want a pistol in your hand in case Rico becomes an intruder, thrusting his tongue and pelvis and self-assurance into the fabric you’ve patched up your relationship with. If you see them share a moment of mutual sincerity without you, without your skin on their skin or your eyes burning through their kiss, that’s when you use your weapon: tell them “I’m close.” Once those words leave your lips, they’ll return to you. Chance is by your side, giving you his full attention. Enjoy the buildup. Revel in it. It may be fleeting, but that’s why you have a witness, an objective outsider to prove that there is still passion between the two of you. This is when you shoot your gun. If you need help getting there, moan your way into it by remembering the sex you and Chance had when you first got together, when there was nothing anyone could do to pull the two of you apart from each other, and only each other. Hold on as hard as you can while you go back and forth. Even if there’s discomfort in the friction, remember that you once believed discomfort was the road that would lead you back to pleasure.
After you shoot, give them a chance to join you. Help them along with a lick or a flick or a flip or a tip. Reinsert yourself (figuratively and/or literally) into whatever it was they were sharing. Be right there in the middle so they get off of the feeling they were about to feel between them. Once he’s finished on you, you’re finished with him, so pull Rico out of the ecstasy of this three-post bed. Rico can re-dress while Chance watches with a look that says he’s gotten want he wants for now. Take Rico by the hand and lead him to the door. He’ll give you one last kiss, which you should give up with compassion because you’re about to release him back to aloneness, to the place you’ve been avoiding. Don’t repeat with Rico. Trust me, you’ll need to find a new one each time. Don’t worry about the spark you saw because sparks are temporary flashes in the night, but what you’ve got is a fire. Rico was just a twig, and all you need to do is gather twig after twig and twink after twink to keep it burning. You look over and Chance is asleep wearing nothing but a smile, and you can finally relax because, at least for tonight, he is sleeping nowhere else but beside you.
Kyle Getz is a dynamic writer who explores authentic emotions with cynical humor. He writes and performs fiction, poetry, essays, and screenplays. Kyle’s work has been published in The James Franco Review, Short Fiction Break, Choice Magazine, and across various bathroom stalls in gay nightclubs. He has performed at Gay City’s Mosaic Mirrored Showcase and Artist Trust’s Literary EDGE Showcase. Kyle has been called "a fresh new face to watch" by his parole officer. Selected work is available on his website, WhatKyleWants.com.