Company’s Cumming

Forget agreeing on a china pattern. These days it’s about agreeing on who’s coming by to plow your boyfriend’s ass.

Just cruise hook-up websites or phone services. Or watch Pooh and Tigger file into a dance club on a Saturday night, emerging hours later to head home with a Piglet in tow. Never has it been more apparent the number of gay male couples openly embracing the philosophy that laying together equals staying together.

Or, as Don delicately put it to Colin when they first started getting serious three years ago: “I can’t suck the same dick for the rest of my life so I hope you’re into threesomes.”

But is opening your relationship (and other things) to different people as easy as it seems? Is it all wham, bam, thank you, next!

Nope. At least not according to a panel of local guys who will talk about their sex lives to anyone with a notepad and intoxicants (and who promises not to use their real names).

While sharing a great lay can be a fine and admirable goal to have with your boyfriend, it’s good to agree to a few policies and procedures.

“Have ground rules, but set them up beforehand,” says Don. “You can’t decide ‘no rimming’ after your boyfriend has pitched a tent at some guy’s ass. One rule for us is no kissing with the third guy. It’s just too intimate.”

As opposed having someone inside you?

“Actually, an old boyfriend of mine had that rule,” says Justin, who is single, but who has had threesomes and moresomes in past relationships. “No anal – topping or bottoming. That was his rule and the same was expected of me. I hated it. Why have people over just to give each other head? Maybe that’s why we’re not together anymore.”

No overnights is another popular rule; once the fun is done the guest must go. Tony and Gabe play that by ear, though. They’ve been together for eight years and added playing together with other guys to the menu six months into their relationship.

“If you’ve had a great time with a cool guy and you all pass out, there’s no harm,” says Gabe.

Not all rules have to be restrictive, thankfully.

“Our big rule is that each of us can express ourselves wholly when we’re playing with other guys,” says Tony. “We get more out of it if we’re not worried about being judged for something we said or did in the heat of a hot scene.”

But a hot scene requires hot scene partners, bringing us to the casting call. For Don and Colin this was a hurdle that nearly did them in.

“I like all types of men,” explains Don. “Colin’s pickier, so it took forever to agree on our first guy. After he passed on several from the ‘net who wanted to hook up, I lost it. I was like, ‘Couldn’t you lower your bar?’ And Colin got pissed off and screamed, ‘Couldn’t you raise your bar off the fucking ground?'”

Colin explains: “Cruising on the ‘net was new to me. But the ‘net and the phone lines have that element of risk you have to take.”

Those with low risk tolerance have public places like nightclubs to turn to, where the benefit of an in-person audition outweighs the luxury of selecting from headshots at home.

“Bars and clubs let you to check each other out, test the vibe with no pressure,” Tony says. “When Gabe and I meet guys off phone lines or the ‘net there’s that unknown factor until you all meet and it’s mutual decision-making time. And God help you if you’re in that position without signals.”

Ah, yes. Signals. How partners indicate their interest or, crucially, disinterest in prospective shags. Subtle signals are preferable here; a sudden explosion of American Sign Language won’t cut it. Justin learnt the hard way when first embarking on a threesome with his ex.

“We’d been e-mailing back and forth with this one guy,” Justin recollects, cringing. “His face photo was kind of fuzzy but his cock shot was very, very clear. And we were very horny, so….”

When cock shot arrived Justin and his then-boyfriend immediately understood the reason for the fuzzy face picture. “He wasn’t ugly but the more I looked the less I was attracted. But I kept remembering the cock shot….”

Big mistake. “My boy-friend was in the bathroom. The guy begins to take his shirt off and as it’s going over his head I see this awful twisted torso. Then his pants and underwear come off and I’m staring at a nightmare between his legs. I suddenly go, ‘I have to pee,’ leave and race into the bathroom telling my boyfriend to get the guy out. I sat on the can and waited. It was awful and I felt tacky, but this guy just had to go.”

Liam, who is presently single but has played around with partners in the past, swears by the stand up/sit down signal.

“Someone in the couple has to get veto power,” Liam says. “Some couples have 50-50 veto power, but I usually let my boyfriends have 100 percent power, just because if they are comfortable, so am I. With the stand up/sit down signal whoever has any veto power stands up and goes to the washroom. If he comes back and sits down, all’s cool. If he comes back and remains standing, the guy has to be asked to leave.”

Once a guest is accept-ed, is it finally onto hours of fucking like bobcats? Not necessarily. Even after a couple starts playing, the ménage could still fall apart. The couple needs to have a readymade line, preferably a pleasant one, to call an end to the festivities.

“I was once with two guys, a top and a bottom,” says Liam. “I was pounding the bottom but I needed a rest and the top couldn’t get it up to keep satisfying his boyfriend. So he gets all pissy and says to me, ‘This is over.’ That was just rude. If you end things on a friendly note you can look them in the eye and say hi when you pass each other on the street.”

Once the action is underway, things can be going great – until one member of the couple turns out to be more favoured by the guest. Unless the guest pushes someone out the bedroom door, most couples say it’s best to chill.

“It’s happened a couple of times that guys dug Don more than me,” Colin says. “It made me jealous, but it wasn’t Don’s fault. I’ve learned to enjoy Don enjoying himself. You can’t take it personally if the guy is more attracted to your boyfriend then he is to you, as long as you’re not lying there bored to tears.”

With the chance of hurt feelings and disappointments, is playing together worth it? Does sharing makes the world a better place, like mom said?

“It does ours,” says Colin. “You need to have a level of security achieved to withstand the different scenarios that will happen, but after a hot session with a playmate there’s a great sense of having shared something awesome together.”

Bonding aside, it’s also a chance to get to know your beloved that much more.

“Playing with my boyfriend has shown me sides of him sexually I don’t know I would have seen without the dynamic of sex with an outsider,” says Gabe. “Plus I get huge pleasure myself from watching his enjoyment. I’m glad I don’t mold my relationship to some dated straight model that isn’t working for most straights. And it beats making promises you’ll never keep.”