Lessons from My First Threesome

The address on the text said Borivali. It made me wonder, for the briefest second, what the hell I’d got myself into, but then I thought why not? Perhaps boredom in the burbs would be compensated with a happy bonus in the bedroom.

The drive didn’t seem so long after all; maybe it was the fevered excitement that got me through it. In less than an hour, I was going to have my first threesome and I had butterflies in my stomach. I had no performance anxiety. (I have been performing fantastically since I turned 13. Thank you very much.) But I had questions. I was invited to the bedroom of a couple I’d never met before – Yash and DJ. What were their sexual boundaries? Who got to go first? How would we start? What was acceptable post-coital behaviour? I needed a primer on the etiquette that governed the movement of three people in bed and I didn’t know whom to ask. My sexual proclivities were well hidden from my straight-as-an-arrow friends, so that left me with my go-to guide for all of life’s key moments – Tatler!

Right next to a feature on the future of brogues, Tatler had helpfully put out a few basic rules for a ménage à trois – the first of them was to up the normal standards of personal grooming since the stakes had been doubled. I was STD-free, manscaped, and breath-minted to the heavens, which made me think about the second rule: Once the clothes are off, it reflects poorly on you to leave. I believed in this Bible of upper-class English tosh, so I set up an emergency call, which would be activated if beer bellies or body odour reared their ugly heads.

The apartment was in one of those impossibly tall steel towers that had cropped up in these parts of Mumbai over the last few years. Tall buildings with tiny flats all congregated around a small greenish swimming pool that nobody seemed to use. I stood outside 12B, rang the doorbell, and waited.

A guy, who I presumed was Yash, opened the door. He was bulky and had short, spiky hair. He welcomed me with a chilled beer and we sat in his simply furnished living room. We chatted about everything from my commute to the Trump presidency. We chatted away as if neither of us were thinking about the fact that our dongs would soon be in each other’s faces. I guzzled my beer, wondering if I should have had a spliff before coming.

The doorbell rang and the girlfriend arrived. DJ was dressed a sari, she wore her hair in a topknot. She checked me out and grinned as if happy with what she saw. DJ had attitude and her body, beneath the sari, suggested divinity. I would not need that emergency call-out after all, I decided.

Do we share a post-coital fag and discuss performance, or do I wear my boxers and get the hell out? Wise words from Tatler rescued me again: When in doubt, take a cue from your host.

I began to relax as the three of us shared a couple of more beers. I lit up. It didn’t take long for DJ and Yash to start kissing; I lazily watched them through the smoke. And then Yash beckoned me over. I stubbed my cigarette and took the spot next to DJ, running my hands over her body while she kissed her man. It seemed strange and yet incredibly sexy. DJ then took charge of her boys. She led us into the bedroom and put the pallu of the sari in my hand, turning seductively until it all unfurled.

From here on, we began the dance of instinctively choreographed coitus or as Tatler put it “bits began slapping against other bits”. But somehow there was less slapping and more synchronicity. Hands, fingers, tongues, and bodies moved in such perfect tandem that we felt like dancers who’d been practising this routine diligently. Yash and I took our areas of responsibility with tacit understanding and orchestrated changeovers organically. There were no awkward fumbles, no lunging for the same body part, and most importantly – no swords crossing mid-fight.

I had, of course, noticed his sword when the clothes came off, but once I’d established that mine was bigger, I’d forgotten about it, focusing entirely on DJ. And DJ, interestingly, seemed to focus on me. She made that pretty clear by giving me her pallu, keeping her eyes on me, even as she was working Yash and finally, mounting me first. She yelled blue murder when she came.

As DJ went to clean up, a slightly miffed Yash turned to me. “You know that you can’t contact her directly, don’t you? Those are the rules of the game. If you’re interested in another round, you set it up with me,” he said, looking slightly ridiculous lecturing me with a hard on.

“Sure,” I said, as DJ got back under the sheets. She began attending to Yash, while I went to the washroom. When I came out, they were done, lying spent with blissful expressions on their faces. Now what? My old questions returned. Do I join them in bed indicating my interest in Round 2? Do we share a post-coital fag and discuss performance, or do I wear my boxers and get the hell out? Wise words from Tatler rescued me again: When in doubt, take a cue from your host.

My host put on his boxers and I followed suit. While DJ invited me to stay for a beer, Yash reminded her that they had to go out. As I took my leave, I wondered if I could kiss DJ goodbye. I decided against it. The man had let me go down on his girlfriend, but I suspected a kiss would tick him off. In a ménage à trois, cunnilingus was acceptable – a cuddle was not.

As I left with my incomplete goodbyes, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing DJ again – not unless we awkwardly bumped into each other at a restaurant somewhere. I knew what had gone wrong in an otherwise perfect experience – DJ had broken the cardinal rule of a ménage à trois – she hadn’t spread the love evenly. As Tatler had said: In sex, as in life, generosity and manners are important.

Armaan talks about his first threesome. The names have been changed, as he did not wish to reveal the identity of his partners.