CASE NUMBER FIVE
Richard Knox
38 years of age
Married
Mr. Knox is a banker and quite wealthy. He came to me because he finds that he can no longer sleep at night. I have prescribed tranquilizers for him, and they seem to be helping him.
Mr. Knox and his wife have been engaged in wife-swapping for the past ten years, and recently it has become more intensive. Before, when they first began this practice, it happened only once a month. Now it occurs on the average of twice a week, and sometimes three and four times a week.
Mr. Knox is a very nervous person, and with the tranquilizers, it is hard for him to remain calm.
I think you will detect this nervousness in his transcript, which now follows.
I'm sure you talk to a lot of people who do this sort of thing, but that doesn't make it easier for me to talk to you about it.
No, I didn't want to come to you in the first place, but my wife thought it might be a good idea. She's going to a psychiatrist herself, only she's going to someone else. We thought it would be best if we both went to someone different, and not to the same person.
My wife and I have known each other all our lives practically. Well, ever since we Were about six or seven. Our parents were good friends, and they spent a lot of time together. It wasn't until we were much older-around sixteen or so-that we discovered why they spent so much time together.
It seems like all those years they were swapping. My father and her mother were fucking, and her father and my mother were fucking. I was really shocked when I found out about it, and so was she. Of course we never let our parents know that we knew. We just couldn't.
Carol-that's my wife-and I started fucking when we were just thirteen. We really liked each other-or so we thought-and for the next four years or so, we did about everything that two people can do with each other. We fucked in all the different positions, and we did everything else as well.
Then we had this huge fight when we were about nineteen and we didn't speak to each other for another five years. By then we were both twenty-four and out of college. I was working in my father's bank, and Carol was just studying art at some private studio.
We got together again, and about a week later we decided to get married. After the wedding we went to Europe and we spent a few months there, and when we got back to the city we moved into our own apartment.
Everything went along fine for the first few years, and then Carol began to have this affair with her old art teacher. He was in his forties, and he was a good-looking man, and she said he was much more sensitive than I was. She said I was crude and base.
We had all kinds of fights over her affair, and more than once I threatened to throw her out on the street.
“You belong in the gutter with all the other trash,” I would tell her when I got good and angry.
A few times I even beat her up with my fists, and once I beat her with my belt. All the time she was telling me that I should have an affair with some cunt who was as crude as I was.
“I'm sure you can find some insensitive cunt who will put up with you,” she said more than once.
Well, this went on for some time, but I never once went out looking for another woman. Well, once I did fuck a whore, but I paid her, and it wasn't the same thing as having an affair. My wife found out about it and she was always throwing it up to me.
“So you did it with a common slut, and you had to pay for it too,” she would say. “Well, I guess that's all you could get anyway.”
By then I was really confused, and I didn't know what to make of the situation. Then my wife told me one day that she wanted me to meet her lover and her lover's wife. It seems her lover was also married, and that was something she had never told me before.
At first I didn't want to do it, but she goaded me into it. She just taunted me about it all the time.
“Afraid you'll find out what a real man looks like?” she would say. “You know he even has a bigger cock than you, and he knows how to use it a lot better than you do.” Finally I just couldn't take it any more, and I agreed to meet her lover and his wife. Actually they had set this whole thing all up, and I was the only one who didn't know what was going on. They all knew that this was meant to be a sort of swapping party for the four of us. I didn't find out about that part until it was all over.
Anyway, the artist and his wife came for supper one Saturday evening and I found them to be very charming. His name was Oscar, and her name was Marie. After supper we were having brandy in the parlor, and that's where the whole subject of sex came up. It was Carol that started the whole thing. But as I found out later, that was also part of their plan.
Well, I just sat there and listened while Carol went on and on about how people shouldn't limit themselves to one sex partner, or even two for that matter. That's when I found out that there had been other men in her life.
“Yes,” she said, “a woman owes it to herself to fuck as many men as she can. I do, and I know a lot of other women who do the same.”
“Yes,” said Marie, “I think you're quite right. I can't begin to tell you how many affairs I've had. There have been many.”
“Well,” Oscar then said, “I think it's just as important for a man to fuck as many cunts as he can.” And then he looked right at me and said, “Don't you agree?”
They were all looking at me right then, and that made me very nervous. I really didn't know what to say.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Well,” Oscar then spoke up, “I can see that you're a man who has never fucked anyone besides your wife. Isn't that right?”
I must have turned bright red at that point.
Finally I managed to say, “I'm sure you've fucked her more than I have.”
“I'm sure I have too,” he agreed, “but that wasn't my point.”
“Just what was your point?” I asked very roughly.
He just smiled and ignored my tone of voice.
“My point was that you don't know the joys of a strange cunt,” he continued.
“I see,” was the only thing I could say.
“Now take my wife,” he said, pointing to her, “she would be a strange cunt to you, wouldn't she?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“And yet you wouldn't dream of fucking her, would you?” he asked.
“I suppose not,” I said.
“And why not?” she asked, getting to her feet.
“Well,” I said, “I guess it's because you're married.”
At that point they all broke out laughing.
“Why, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Marie said, unable to stop laughing.
“It certainly is,” Carol agreed.
