There are times in life when a discriminating rake may get the chance to live out his greatest fantasy and may, wisely, refuse it. If his fantasies can land him in jail, his reticence is generally understood. (If he's long dreamed lyrically about the redemptions of nymphet-sex and, one summer afternoon during a tedious family reunion, his sister-in-law's 14-year-old cousin follows him to the woods, removes her clothes and puts her feet on his shoulders where he sits, he should demur, grateful to have this moment to fetishize.) But if his misgivings involve pedestrianizing his fantasy rather than perpetrating statutory rape, a man's caution is usually berated. (If his boss, about whom he has interminably fantasized, becomes sufficiently inebriated during the company Christmas party to get a glazed glee and a tricklish step which forces her to lean on him accidentally and flirtatiously, he better take her home and fuck her daylights out and live with the repercussions, or his colleagues will never let him forget that he could-and-didn't score.) In theory, only a fool prefers the self-conscious sadness of one-hand-clapping (lotion on bedstand, meat on broil, porn on TV) to the riches of actual sex. In practice, millions do. The reason is one and only: masturbation is freedom. It's not laziness, timidity, repression. Fantasy is a turn-on solely because it's devoid of non-coital reality.
     Consider what may be the most common fantasy: threeway sex. One of the oldest panels on humanity's sexual mural, from the days of cave paintings on, it's nature's way of incorporating novelty into the humdrum. The only taboo it violates is the cultural ideal of the procreative nuclear couple. Its 'perversion' is laxity about numbers.(Unlike a foursome, which invites coupling off, or a daisy-chain, which is the anonymous abstract sport of repeating in-outs to seeming slippery perpetuity, the threesome is erotically original.)    
     And yet troilisme, as threeway's officially called, is fraught with hidden dangers.
     1. The terror of performance inadequacy: if you are with two women, the logistics, if not the sheer excitement, can easily overwhelm you. You can't use intimacy to cover up your anxiety. It's a ballbusting fact that women eat pussy better, so if you already worry that you won't last long enough to roger both properly, don't heed that you're the pretext enabling them to lesbianize?aesthetically, women dig each other. Unblock your inner peeping-Tom when you feel inconsequential, ignored, excluded, and entertain yourself; while you're idle, it helps to be a foot fetishist, an exhibitionist (whack off), a minutiae aficionado. Discourage any discussion of either the state of their bodies or your penis which may hurt your concentration, erotic interest, or release. Don't let them alienate you out of nervousness or feminist bravado, treat you like a plaything, talk about you as if you were out of the room. It may sound flattering, but it's demeaning and can physically deflate you when you least expect it. Hinder annoying talk surreptitiously, with kisses, sweet nothings, etc.
    2. The fear of latent queerness: if your trio involves two guys, double penetration (front-back) may be the featured attraction. You must be capable of precise piston-like co-ordination (one in, the other out) to avoid head-on impact. The same care must be given to your testicles, which can also repeatedly make contact. If this makes you go limp, you'll be mistaken for a poor lay, a prude, a 'bottom.' Any precautions mustn't come to the woman's attention or you risk becoming the victim of p.c. derision and dare-to taunts. And if simultaneous entry is limited to vaginal-oral, you must contrive to go first or resign yourself to sloppy seconds. Don't measure dicks or his-and-yours orgasmic effects.
     3. The built-in uneasiness: threesomes are based on equal-opportunity; if, in the process of practicing sexual democracy, you prefer one partner, you must compensate by servicing the other with acts you don't feel drawn to perform?half the sex in threesomes is pity-fucking. You must not praise the anatomy or performance of one without praising the other. You may not fall in love. If one partner has stricter boundaries, you may not leave her behind. If in the heat of the menage someone yells out 'Let's pee on each other' or asks to be spanked, you may feel shame, cowardice, pressure, guilt, a bruised self-esteem?all anticlimactic thrill-killers. Do not succumb. Handle this as an initiation rite.
     4. The postcoital psychological fallout: be prepared to deal with the emotional garbage of two other people. If you suggested the triangle, expect to be held responsible for morning-after insecurities, unfocussed jealousies, pettinesses. What originated as 'sex=play' may degenerate to 'sex=dialectic'?a gruesome experience. Do not show remorse, do not gloat, do not analyze or comment afterward. A threesome is not to be taken seriously; it is antiromantic, superficial, unsustainable; a group project. Do not extend it beyond its ephemeral span: have your kicks, pat behinds, grab tits, luxuriate in the geometry, and get the hell out of there. The foremost reason to have a threesome is to look back on it.
     Like any utopia, the threesome is a great idea that in action becomes weird?a dystopia. Is it worth trying? Should it stay a fantasy? Is it good or bad for you? Or ugly?
     Its potential virtues are glaring: you acquire knowledge, explore your limits, learn unpossessiveness, experience abundance, encounter the shock of the 'new' in stereo, or the shock of the new within the security of the old. Instead of having sex with one person and fantasizing about another, you can integrate mind and body. You can be someone you are not, or be yourself, with impunity. You can impress friends and attract strangers.
     Still, tread with extreme caution. Ideally, threesomes should happen spontaneously, among people who have healthy, satisfactory sexual lives and are neither best friends nor total strangers. Here are three scenarios in descending ratings of desirability:  
     -The Good: You attend a party; searching for the john, you walk into a bedroom where two coeds are making out; you mumble an apology and back out; one of them (with whom you've flirted before) invites you to join them in bed. Before you know it, you're naked, on all fours, facing flawless butts, ramming in and out of vaginas, left to right, until you ejaculate. You have no time to think about what you do, you hardly know their names, and, minutes later, you've peed and resumed your drink. And you've got a great tale to tell.
    -The Bad: You visit friends, a couple; one night they confess their cherished fantasy to try a threesome; they seduce you with the help of your exhaustion, intoxication, etc., take you to bed for a missionary-type romp, and realize that you intimidate or inspire them. One of them, or both individually, decide they want to be with you instead of one another and won't take your 'no' for answer. You have a lot of raw, horny feelings to hurt. You lose them as friends and you're a couplewrecker. Don't worry: you got off cheap. 
     -The Ugly: Your girlfriend wants a threesome with a gym-rat; you fear you don't satisfy her sexually or aesthetically, and he might elicit from her a better orgasm than you ever have; you reply that if she can share you with another girl, you'll share her with him (you count on her having such a bitter aftertaste from the first trio that her own will stay postponed). Afterward, either you or your girlfriend correctly or incorrectly suspect that she or you liked better the third person, and feel used, violated, grubby, hurt. The moment you discuss it, you play with fire. (In fact, if you're looking to ignite a relationship-blast and detonate the old nest, have a trio. Alternately, if you want to share your woman with a buddy as a token of friendship, you're over her.) If you get a surge of power and transgression from having her do your bidding, pass her on to strangers and just watch. The only safe time for a couple to enjoy a threesome is when their own sexual relations are dead, or if one is a voyeur and the other gets off on objectification. Otherwise, the best place for a threesome is away from home?preferably, in your imagination. And if you have either too much or too little imagination for reality to suffice, then you're already fulfilled.