when three = free

From threesomes becoming three-way relationships to the reinvention of personal boundaries, Max Wallis writes about how millennial sexuality is reshaping the world

PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTOR HENSEL-COE

There was a thunderstorm in Tuscany and the taxi skidded through fist-deep puddles as we snaked up the hills around Palaia, parting the rain. The car bucked into the air like a bronco and it was frantic and soupy outside. I could see more of my own face in the window than anything beyond.

I watched Luc* in the front passenger seat, his angular face in relief, a little piece of paper with guitar chords sketched out on his knee. With head craned forward, his fingers winded up and down them as if it really was a guitar; it was at once baffling and sad, a sign of obsession. A stone flicked up at the windscreen and I knew I was in love, a sensation that surprised friends when I told them back in London.

I was, after all, sitting next to my boyfriend Sam on the back seat, my feelings for whom were unchanged by this sudden jolt.

An hour late, tired and hungry, we parked outside the house at half past midnight, gravel scattering like birds as we came to a stop. It was October and we were staying at an artist-retreat-cum-self-catering set-up called Villa Lena on a big hill outside Pisa. It was the first holiday me and my two boyfriends took together, and one we went on despite worrying about what my parents or mine and Luc’s mutual model agent might think. It was also the start of something wonderful that was to end very badly.