I walked out of the hotel bathroom to see Erica, a 24-year-old beauty I’d met in person an hour earlier, and Maria, the 30-year-old ex-NBA cheerleader I’d married the previous year, completely naked in a sixty-nine position on the bed.

Maria looked up at me while gently tracing circles around Erica’s clitoris with the tip of her tongue, smiled, and, with the slightest nod of her head, invited me to get involved.

Inside, I was reacting like a cartoon wolf, whistling and stomping my feet, but I played it cool on the outside. I even took a moment — before diving in, of course — to ruminate on what, against all odds, I appeared to have done: I had engineered the perfect threesome.

Here’s how it came together: Not too long ago, I wrote a book about my life as the world’s least likely gonzo sex columnist. It was called Working Stiff: The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert, and, for the first few years after its publication, I would occasionally receive email from people saying that they’d enjoyed reading it. The email I got from Erica, who lived in Montreal, included a line about how I should look her up if I was ever coming to her town. That led to a flirtatious and long-running correspondence between the two of us.

At first, I didn’t allow myself to believe that the author of these increasingly raunchy emails and the beautiful, tall, slim brunette in the pictures she began attaching to them were one and the same. Could such a person really exist? Was I being punked? I was probably being punked.

At the time I had no plans to visit Montreal, a city inconveniently located about 2,300 miles from where Maria and I live, in Vancouver. And convincing Maria — who had also become interested in me after reading my book (good idea, that book) — that I needed to make such a self-indulgent trip would have been a tough sell at that point in our relationship. But the possibility that this dream woman existed and was interested in actually fucking the likes of me — yet was tantalizingly out of reach — was nearly too much for me to bear.

How could I make this happen?

During my very first phone conversation with Erica — a call I’d placed primarily to assuage my strong suspicion that she was too good to be true — it hit me: “So it’s my wife’s 30th birthday in a few weeks,” I began hesitantly. Erica had already seen plenty of pictures of Maria and had commented on her attractiveness, sexiness, and palpable charisma. Then I went for it: “She’s always wanted to have an experience with another woman, and I was wondering how you’d feel about me flying you out here for a weekend.”

“I’d be her birthday gift?” she asked.

Was that bad?

“Um — yeah,” I ventured, trying not to make it sound like a question.

Several dramatic beats passed, and then she finally said, “I think that’s a great idea. I’d love to.”

While my heart launched a kind of Mardi Gras parade, complete with trombones and drunken revelry, she continued, “I’ve never been in a threesome, or with another girl, either, and I’ve always wanted to.”

Now, I’m the sort of person who agonizes over necessary purchases, but, somehow, buying a stranger a plane ticket for a weekend-long ménage à trois that very instant didn’t seem rash at all; it seemed like the perfectly logical thing to do. So I did it. Erica was still on the phone when she received her flight-confirmation email, and she squealed with excitement.

I felt on top of the world. All that needed to happen now was to get the birthday girl on board.

Knowing only that I’d organized a surprise for her, Maria agreed to clear her calendar for the weekend in question. At first, I thought about greeting her with an in-the-flesh Erica, but I eventually decided to give her fair warning a couple of weeks in advance. That way, she’d be able to veto the idea in the event that I’d overestimated her interest in the situation. If, on the other hand, she was as receptive as I thought she might be, the heads-up would allow her to enjoy the anticipation as the weekend drew closer. She’d be able to prepare herself mentally and physically.

“Oh, my God, you did that for me?” she asked as I unveiled my plan. I’d printed out some of lithe, beautiful Erica’s pictures and made a sort of 2-D trailer for the upcoming tryst.

Maria pored over it. Then she teared up, put her hands over her heart, and gave me a bear hug. It was the sort of reaction you’d expect to get after giving your significant other a trip to Paris, or a Golden Retriever puppy, or a ring. If there was any lingering doubt that Maria was the woman for me, it vaporized that very moment.

“Yeah, for you,” I said as I held her tight. “And a bit for me, too.”

Indeed, the situation was an emphatic win-win-win. Maria had always wanted to have a threesome with another girl, Erica had always wanted to be a “unicorn” — the slang term for a single bi female who plays with a couple — and, in addition to getting to commingle with two beautiful naked girls all weekend, I solved the problem of how to celebrate my wife’s 30th birthday in a way we’d both remember — hopefully positively — for a long time to come.

Maria committed to the event wholeheartedly. She spent time researching the perfect venue for our rendezvous, settling on a newly opened boutique hotel in downtown Vancouver. She booked a Brazilian wax, picked out some fun, sexy underwear, and buzzed with excitement as we checked into the hotel an hour ahead of Erica’s arrival.

Our visitor had neither a webcam nor a smartphone, and so until I saw her long legs striding toward me at the arrivals area of Vancouver International Airport, I was still not sure she wasn’t a figment of my imagination. But not only was Erica real, she was also even more beautiful than she’d appeared in her pictures.

Speeding toward the hotel in the back of a cab, though, she quickly rebuffed my attempt to make out with her. A wrench in the works? Far from it: “We have to wait until we get to the hotel,” she said sternly. “Because if we start this now, I’ll end up fucking you right here.” (At this, the cabbie looked up, and he and I briefly locked eyes in the rearview mirror.) By way of proof, she hiked up her skirt, took my hand, and placed it on the damp crotch of her underwear before purposefully returning it to my side. From our emails and phone chats, I’d gathered that Erica was a highly sexual person, but her intensity was like nothing I’d ever experienced in person before.

Twenty minutes later, we met with Maria in the hotel’s posh bar and ordered a round of drinks. As the girls flirted excitedly, I looked around and wondered if anybody had the vaguest idea what the three of us were up to.

“Do you want to get something to eat?” Maria asked Erica.

“Not really,” said Erica, and pointed upward — toward the junior suite I’d stocked with champagne on ice, snacks, condoms, lube, and other party favors.

I terminated our tab with extreme prejudice.

After pouring the girls some bubbly, I walked into the bathroom and gave myself a long, hard look in the mirror. “How the fuck did you pull this off?” I asked my reflection. I didn’t know the answer then, but in hindsight I’ve come to realize that a big part of it was that I’d made this event as much about fulfilling my wife’s and our guest’s fantasies as my own. It truly is better to give than to receive, I thought as I exited the bathroom to the sight of them going down on each other with abandon.

I joined them, and we entertained our every whim; everything we’d ever previously thought of doing, as well as a host of things that occurred to us in the moment. Maria’s small hands enabled Erica to sate her curiosity about being fisted; I enjoyed the thrill of having my cock in Maria’s pussy with Erica’s hot tongue in my ass; and, with the help of a strap-on we’d purchased for the occasion, Maria experienced a reasonable approximation of what it’s like to wield a penis and slide it in and out of three sorts of very receptive holes.

And that was just the first hour or so.

The length of the engagement meant that we could stop, take breaks, and take turns snapping photos. We could also go out to eat, and show Erica, who had never been to Vancouver before, a little of our city. My favorite excursion was to a Finnish-style bathhouse in which patrons can rent completely private saunas. I risked an early death taking them both on in there, but if it had come to that, well, there certainly are worse ways to go.

A lot of little things went right over the entire 72 debauched hours, but the great success of the weekend was due to the fact that all three of us were equally excited about — and invested in — the prospect of fulfilling this fun, sexy, playful fantasy. That’s what made it come off perfectly.