Then, of course, after a while, I grew bored with her. Nothing surprising there. The urge to sexual variety in men is just as strong as the urge to bear young in women. And since our relationship was based mostly on sex, I saw no reason to draw things out. No hypocrisy, remember. I simply broke the news to her: I wanted to see other people. To my surprise, she eagerly agreed: Yes, yes, we should. In fact, through her photography contacts, she knew some other couples who were into what she called The Scene. Maybe we should get together with them. Well, yeah! I said.

I didn't understand, you see, that Lauren likely would've done anything to stop me from going, to win my love, to be the girl she thought I wanted her to be. To my idiot mind, we were just a couple of free spirits exploring the dangerous boundaries of our desires. It never occurred to me until it was too late that I was the natural leader of us, that I was in charge of her and therefore responsible for her welfare.

So we entered The Scene, becoming part of a loose company of people who enjoyed rough sex and other shenanigans. We would get together, two or sometimes three couples at a time, play out roles and scenarios, expose our most secret, most violent hungers and proceed to satisfy them on each other.

If you are wondering what that feels like-what it feels like to hurt other people for your sexual pleasure-I mean, to really bind them hard and hurt them cruelly-I will tell you: It feels good. At least it did to me. There was a dull-minded, feverish heat to having sex that way.