State your hypothesis in the form of a prediction that can be verified by the results of the experiment.

Will the addition of another person make sex thirty-three percent hotter — or will too many cooks spoil the broth?

Please list all the materials required for this experiment (including, if applicable, how they were obtained).

Female (one)
Male (two)
Bottles of sub-par Merlot (two)
Heinekens (nine)
Condoms (four)




In this portion of your report, you must describe, step-by-step, what you did in your lab. It should be specific enough that someone who has not seen the lab can follow the directions and recreate the same lab.

It's Friday. I'm the houseguest of a young married couple and their baby in Los Angeles. I know exactly eight people who live west of the Hudson River, but my assignment is to arrange a threesome with a girl and another guy before the weekend is out. Culture shock is imminent.

Completely disregarding the disappointing results of last month's Craig's List experiment, I turned to the Internet for help. I discovered a website called Threesomefinder.com. Most of the listings were from SoCal couples "looking for sexy females to explore with" or "hot Latin studs" seeking "sizzling adventures with a pair of beautiful chicas." There were no ads from men seeking couples. I posted my own but didn't have high hopes. Oh, to be a horny bi female. They have the swinging world by the balls.

On Saturday, increasingly desperate, I called the handful of Los Angelenos I knew and asked for help. One offered the phone number of a gigolo who specialized in schtupping other men's wives and girlfriends for the bargain-basement price of $300 a night. I politely declined. Then my friend Brian called with a glimmer of hope. One of his college friends had recently moved to L.A.; in addition to being hot and blonde, she was apparently not averse to getting naughty every now and then. As it turns out, I didn't have to take Brian's word for this. I'd met Julia before, at a party two years ago. She'd been the hypotenuse in a make-out triangle with me and my soused ex-girlfriend.

In literature, this is called "foreshadowing."

I emailed Julia, telling her I was in town and asking if she knew anyone who could help me out. She picked up on my not-so-subtle hint and immediately began throwing out suggestions for our third wheel. I couldn't believe my luck. I've asked a number of female friends if they'd thought about being with two guys at once. More often than not, it was something they'd considered but never done, and all of them had conditions: "They'd both have to be total strangers," "they'd both have to be really good friends of mine," "it would have to be my boyfriend and a stranger."

Julia, however, had no qualms. She was gleefully leading the way into trouble. Our plan was to hit a lively bar, where Julia would strike up a conversation with a guy that we'd both agreed upon. This would be easy: Julia is as fun as she is cute, and any straight guy in his right mind would want to get naked with her. Much trickier would be the introduction of a disheveled-looking Englishman at the other end of the bar. I was concerned that some dude might grab the wrong end of the stick and assume I was out to grab the right end of his. Even worse was the prospect of rejection. "Honey, you're hot," I imagined a potential third slurring to Julia as I pretended to watch a game of pool. "But your friend over there . . . " I wasn't sure my ego could withstand that blow.

Julia was going to be the one fooling around with Mr. X, so she had supreme veto power. That's not to say that I didn't have my own hopes for what he might look like. I imagined somebody on the skinny side, stylish but not super-trendy, under thirty, fun and most importantly, into it.

I called my friend Liz and fretted about how our indecent proposal would be received. I feared that many guys would let their masculinity get in the way of double-teaming a girl. Even a few of my close friends questioned why I'd ever want to participate in a "sword fight." As luck would have it, Liz produced a candidate. Zach was a stand-up comedian who happened to be performing at a Melrose comedy club the next night. Not only was he fun, twenty-five and attractive, he had previous three-way experience.

We now had a firm plan: I would meet Julia at the club. Liz would be there with her friends; she would introduce us to Zach in the bar before the show. We'd see at least one performance from him that night.

Before leaving the house the next evening, I was nauseated from a bad case of Hooksexups. I could barely stuff down a granola bar for dinner. After putting the baby to bed, my hosts strolled out of the nursery and tossed me the keys to the family station wagon. "Good luck with the threesome," they grinned. For a Manhattanite, the concept of driving let alone valet parking is utterly foreign, but I handled both without major incident. At the club, I had a beer, my first and last of the evening. Julia turned up, looking even hotter than I remembered. Liz and her boyfriend arrived shortly thereafter and introduced us to Zach, who had been sitting near me at the bar the whole time. Tall, svelte and blonde, Zach brought to mind a better-looking Seth Green, with an definite Jeff Spicoli air. I couldn't tell if he had a cock-sure swagger about him, or if he was just drunk. Liz had given Zach a casual heads-up about the situation; we shook hands and the three of us tossed around an awkward glance like it was a live grenade.

Leaving the group behind, Julia and I headed for a table. "He's really cute!" said Julia and gave my bum a squeeze. (Not a phrase I'm used to hearing when it's my bum and someone else's cuteness.) Zach was slated to perform last. During the ten or so acts some side-splittingly funny, some bum-clenchingly cringetastic Julia ran her hand up my leg, suggestively squeezed my thigh and even planted little kisses on my neck. She was ready to go. "Siegfried and Roy last weekend?" said one comic, finishing his set. "Now that was a fuckin' eighty-dollar ticket!" Zach was next. In addition to being very funny, he was definitely three sheets to the wind. He later told me that many comedians perform for drink tickets, and he had been redeeming his at a fair rate since around seven.

The show ended around 11:30 and we reconvened in the bar. Zach was with a large group of friends, and it was suggested that everyone meet up at a lively bar down the street. Julia said she wanted to ride with me, and as the valet grabbed the car, we kissed. "Nice wagon!" she said quite sincerely. As we drove off, I knew this was the only opportunity we'd have to talk about the threesome before things were finally set in motion.

"Um, are you sure you're okay with all this?" I asked her.

"Yeah, pretty sure," she said, gazing languorously out the window. "Are you? I mean have you thought about what this'll be like?"

"A little," I replied. The truth is, over the past year or so, I'd thought plenty about having a male-male-female threesome. Most straight guys say they'd prefer to be in bed with two girls, but to me, an M-M-F seemed much naughtier. The input-output ratio was more logical.

"What turns you on about this?" I asked Julia.

"I guess I just like being the total center of attention. Besides, I've had a boyfriend for the past year and . . . " she made a point of staring me straight in the eye as we idled at another red light, " . . . well, it's really fucking slutty. And I like feeling that way sometimes."

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

At a packed bar on Santa Monica Boulevard, Julia, Zach and I ended up at a booth picking over a pizza that was criminally bad by New York standards. Julia and Zach didn't seem to notice. A line popped into my head: For me, sex is like pizza; even if it's bad, it's pretty good. Where did that nasty little falsehood come from? I remembered: the 1993 cinematic debacle Threesome, starring Stephen Baldwin and Lara Flynn Boyle.

After an hour of small talk about MTV, the peace of mind to be derived from pilates and rental prices in the greater Beverly Hills area, the time had come. I invited Julia and Zach back to where I was staying, just on the other side of Laurel Canyon. I promised that I would take them both back to their cars in Hollywood before dawn. As we trundled into the station wagon, Zach flopped into the backseat and passed out. He was so impossibly laid-back that I couldn't help feeling jealous. He was more like a prop than an active participant. I'd taken on the roles of team leader, production manager and designated driver, and I foresaw that this dynamic would carry on in the bedroom. I would be concerned with the logistics, the ambience, the schedule. All Zach had on his mind was fucking Julia, caveman-style. We stopped at a red light. Julia and I turned around to look at our comatose cargo. Very quietly, Julia turned to me and whispered "Yay!" She squeezed my hand and smiled as we drove up the winding hill and down into the Valley.