The Best of Both Worlds? F/M/F themes in Erotic Romance

Okay, let’s start with a personal note: I’m bisexual. I like it here on the fence. Not only can I see my house from here, I can look into the neighbors’ bedrooms, and who knows, maybe the neighbors are cute chicks and hot guys. (No, I don’t actually spy on my neighbors. It’s a metaphor. Work with me.)

The point is, I like women—women’s bodies, women’s soft lips, women’s minds and attitudes. And it seems the longer I’m happily married, the more likely I am to completely crush on women, whether celebrities or people I actually know. (Maybe I need the balance to stay on the fence?)

And I’m not alone in this. A survey released in 2005 by the US Centers for Disease Control* concludes that 11.5% of women 18-44 have had sex with another woman at least once; 3% had fun with both men and women in the previous twelve months. Younger women seem to be considerably more adventurous in this area than older ones. (I always knew I was ahead of my time!) Not exactly overwhelming, but seemingly, more and more women are at least willing to admit to curiosity in this area.

How many? One not-exactly-scientific poll revealed 63% of women surveyed said they’d at least fantasized about same-sex encounters and/or threesomes. (Granted, this was a survey done by the men’s magazine Club—no big surprise that women who read a magazine full of pictures of naked women might be bi-curious!) Girls who date boys but don’t rule out girls are all over the media, and don’t even get me started with bi chic in the music industry and Hollywood. (Unless it involves Angelina Jolie deciding to leave Brad Pitt for, oh, Gina Torres, or better yet, staying with Brad and dating Gina too. Then I want video. Please.) And the mere existence of books with titles such The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks, Same-Sex in the City, and Threesome: How to Fulfill Your Favorite Fantasy is enough to let you know that "mostly-straight-but…" f/f and f/f/m-threesome fantasies have become pretty accepted.

Or have they?

There’s scads of absolutely brilliant lesbian erotica out there. (Check out the annual Best Lesbian Erotica and Ultimate Lesbian Erotica for a sampling. You might see some familiar names in the table of contents…) But if female bi-curiosity is running as rampant as it sometimes looks like it is, you’d think hot girl-on-girl action and juicy f/f/m threesomes would appear more often in erotic romances aimed at the mostly straight, but potentially curious, woman.

And, to my sorrow, they’re not.

“To my sorrow” not just because I want to read them, but because I want to write them. Threesomes, though challenging to write (what with pronoun problems, flipper arms, and choreography—and the cats don’t work as stunt doubles when I’m trying to figure out if three human bodies can actually align that way) are also a lot of fun. More pretty bodies in action! More opportunities for conflict and resolution! More potential love to go around! And of course, more orgasms!

On a more serious note, writing about “first times” allows you to explore all sorts of fascinating emotions, from desire to fear to curiosity. A woman going from bi-curious to actually making love to a woman for the first time, whether alone together or as part of a threesome, gives a writer ample room to play with the character’s emotional state as well as show a good old girly good time.

But this particular “first time” just doesn’t seem to be popular in erotic romance.

Two guys and a girl in lust and love? Popping up everywhere, in the small press, in e-books, and in books from Big New York Romance Lines. Guys getting hard for, and then falling hard for, other guys? Getting more mainstream by the day. Sexy lesbian romances? Check the small presses and the e-publishers and you’ll find them.

But a romance heroine who wants the best of both worlds—a muscular male and the girl of her dreams—and gets what she wants? If she’s out there, I haven’t found her yet. I’ve found m/m/f happy endings, but except in some older Black Laces—and we seem to be moving away from it as the stories become more traditionally romantic—no two women and a guy settling down in happy tri-ogamy.

What I’ve been finding is a tease at female bisexuality, a wink and a nod, and then back to the Almighty Penis.

Don’t get me wrong. I love me my hot sexy heroes and their appendages, and I understand that the majority of our female audience is primarily if not exclusively aroused by boy-bits, and the boy they’re attached to. But I get a bit tired of throwaway scenes, not really connected with the main plot, where the hero sets up some girl-girl smooching and sits back to watch, or does it because he knows, due to some astonishing male/domly intuition, that She Wants It. And then the second woman disappears without forming any real connection with the heroine other than an orgasm or two and nothing changes. The heroine gets no insights into herself, other women, life, the universe and everything—even though you’d think it would be worthy of at least a “Well, that was fun! I should try that again sometime.”

Okay, I get very tired of these scenes, this throwing in a “bi” scene that doesn’t add anything to the plot and doesn’t engage the heroine’s emotions. (Even in a negative way. It might be interesting if she decided that on second thought it had been a bad idea and it led to a conflict with the hero. But no, she just goes along…)

It reminds me too much of male-oriented porn, or the out-of-the-blue “oh, you’re bi? Want to have a threesome with me and my girlfriend” invitations that bi women really do get (usually from vaguely creepy guys whose girlfriends have zero interest in a f/m/f threesome anyway.) Bad enough dealing with that silliness in real life—can we at least get sexually confident, self-aware women enjoying the full spectrum of their sexuality in books that are supposed to be female fantasies, written by women for other women to enjoy? I’d like to think we females are capable of getting into our own girl-girl naughtiness if we feel so inclined and then grabbing a hunk to add to the fun. That we can set up a threesome to enjoy the best of both worlds and gratify our own desires as well as those of the guy in our life. (Or at least we can enjoy a well-written heroine who’s into it, just like we can one who’s a bit kinkier than we might be, or who’s dating a vampire, or something else outside our realm of experience or just plain impossible, but fun to read about and drool over.)

Could it be that—gasp!— we can appreciate the occasional HEA that involves both Mr. Right and Ms. Right, hard cock and hot pussy, a best girlfriend who’s also a lover and a male lover who’s also a best friend? Not two women sharing a man (I can see where it wouldn’t be a big hit with most female readers) but three people sharing each other.

Lots of readers seem to eat up that ending with two guys and a woman, but would they buy the other way around? Is that version of the happy ending a little too much female queerness for erotic romance, as opposed to erotica, to handle? Conventional publishing wisdom says the market isn’t there. But until recently, conventional publishing wisdom said there was no female market for male-male love stories, and now they’re selling like chocolate at the post-Valentine’s Day sale. So what do you think, fellow writers and gentle readers? FFM triads—bring it on or don’t bother?

* Okay, we don’t want to think about why the CDC needed to do this survey, but presumably they made efforts to do it carefully and objectively.