3 is not a Crowd

That’s the goddamned Protestant ethic operating, of course. No matter how liberated you think you are, old habits of thought die hard. Necessary, for Christ’s sake. None of the best things in life are really necessary. Who the hell cares if something is a necessity or not? The fact remained that swinging was something we had both always enjoyed intensely, and why on earth should we force ourselves to give up something we both enjoyed?

GRACE: I was afraid at one point that you would want me less if you went with other girls. Or that you wouldn’t want me if I went with other men. But that was just stupid. And when we realized that what we had been thinking was stupid we made a date to party with another couple that Peter knew.

PETER: This was before the wedding. I felt it would be worthwhile to find out how it went before going any further. It seemed obvious that we were going to resume swinging to one extent or another sooner or later, and if it was going to change our feelings about each other in any way, it seemed sensible to find this out before we were married, not after. I was confident that it wouldn’t change anything but it was only common sense to check it out.

GRACE: It didn’t change a thing. It got us over being anxious about the subject, that’s all. We had a good time with the other couple and then we came home and had a good time with ourselves, and nothing was changed.

PETER: I didn’t call Wanda until after we were married. We flew down to San Juan for a week-long honeymoon, and after we were back I called Wanda in Chicago. I had been putting this off longer than I should have. Obviously I was apprehensive as to how she would take it. We had been in touch from time to time since I returned to the States, mostly over the phone because neither of us has ever been much at writing letters.

I called her finally and told her.

WANDA: I was very happy for him. That was my immediate reaction. Also I was happy that he had been able to find someone with whom he could have a complete relationship, not only for his sake but for my own. It seemed to mean that I had the same thing to look forward to. In other words, if he could love someone other than me, I could perhaps love someone other than him.

I wished them well and spoke briefly with Grace and went out shopping for a wedding present. And then about ten days later a strange thing happened. I became desperately depressed. I started crying hysterically in the middle of the afternoon and had to go home from my job and take to my bed like a Victorian lady with the vapors. And for the next week I was in an amazing state. Enormous anxieties — I couldn’t cross a street without being firmly convinced that a car would careen wildly around the comer and mash me to the pavement. I worried about everything. Earthquakes, for God’s sake. I was in Chicago and I was afraid there was going to be an earthquake. This might make sense in California — everybody knows the whole place is falling into the ocean, but Chicago?

I was by no means blind to the reason for all this. It was clear enough.

It was Peter. He was in love and he was married and I didn’t have him any more.

In a sense I hadn’t had him in a long time. I hadn’t had him with me. But that was just temporary, you know, and whether I knew it consciously or not I was always certain inside that sooner or later we would get back together again. And even if we were apart we had continued to belong to each other, he was still a part of me, and now he was gone and it was like losing a part of myself. He was still the only thing I had to hang on to, the only constant in my life, and now he was gone and I didn’t know how to handle it.

I wanted to see them but I didn’t know if they would want to see me. I wasn’t sure what I should do, and I kept waiting for things to get better, and they kept getting worse instead of better.

I couldn’t function. I quit my job and stayed in my apartment day after day. It was all I could do to force myself to go out now and then and have something to eat. I had no interest, no appetite.

I wanted to kill myself. I had been vaguely suicidal from time to time in the past, but those occasions were always impulsive adolescent things. Now I was thinking about it, dwelling on it at great length. The main thing that stopped me, outside of that instinct for self-preservation which is what keeps us all taking one breath after another, was the thought of what this would do to Peter. If he knew my death was suicide he would inevitably blame himself for it and it would probably ruin his marriage, even his whole life. I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t louse up his life as well as taking my own.

There’s a saying to the effect that thoughts of suicide help people get through a lot of bad nights. This was true enough in my case. I think the solemn contemplation of suicide helped me realize that what I might as well do was go on living, and I tried to do this.