The show never aired. Either Geraldo or somebody higher up pulled the plug. To this day, menage a trois remains in the closet, one of the last social/sexual taboos. In America today, divorce and serial marriage thrive, gays marry, Mormon polygamists do their thing, but a legally sanctioned menage a trois of equals is somewhere over the horizon.

A three-way romance is not a fantasy out of a Bertolucci film. On a visceral level, we identify with his recently released Dreamers. The film employs the menage a trois as a vehicle to extol sex, cinema and the spirit of the sixties. On the quiet, the passion thrives from suburbia to the inner city. According to Bob Berkowitz, TV's peripatetic host on matters sexual, menage a trois is the most popular male fantasy.

According to my own sampling, women are more prone to make it happen. Threesomes are still keeping the blinds tightly shuttered, though hopefully not for long. In our case, media mania — not to mention hostility — nearly blew us away. As fate would have it, Princess Diana's auto accident riveted attention on her life and untimely death, and we were mercifully forgotten.

A soupçon of the attention the media darling had received daily was for us a bellyful. But we are reminded of a remark Diana made to the press during her tell-all phase: "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." In our case, a private arrangement was made public, and distorted, by the totemic guards paid to wield the hatchet on those who take sex and family beyond the campfire bounds.

Once, at night in Vermont, Michael caught in our headlights three deer trying to cross the road. I will never forget their look of terror before hard-driving metal slammed into their bodies and the car's airbags went off. Similarly, the spotlight scattered our menage a trois. In subtle ways, we no longer enjoyed being together as much. Our pastimes now seemed contrived, even freakish. So we moved on, began to let others into what had been an idyllic, self-sufficient domesticity. Sadly, things could never be the same.

Yet last August we made our annual menage pilgrimage to Saratoga for the legendary Travers race. As usual we bet and lost. Luckily the gamble Mike and I made on a menage a trois finished in the money. Later sitting in the plush parlor of the Adelphi Hotel, a grande dame restored to full Victorian splendor, we took snapshots of each other in outlandish poses for our menage photo album. After dinner in the garden, we tossed our diets in the hopper and ordered a full plate of whipped cream chocolate tarts. Our menage has had bitter moments along with the sweet. Fortunately the years have provided us with cherished experiences traditional families might envy.

Back in Manhattan our paths diverge. Saratoga is one of the rare occasions Mike, Letha and I reunite in our former cozy style. Mike spends most of his social time at Letha's. His suitcases are no longer strewn around my apartment. He and I are finishing up a new biography of the first superstar, Adah Isaacs Menken. These days our discussions are business-like, about how to evaluate conflicting historical sources on Menken's life. We seldom discuss personal matters. Letha and I remain addicted to thrift shops, and some Saturday afternoons raid our favorites in downtown Manhattan.

I have a new love much, much younger than I am. Shades of Colette! If Demi Moore and Cher can rob the cradle why not a frisky academic a trifle grey at the temples? My three life has run its course. Nothing lasts forever, not even the world, according to the Millennialists. Expanding my romantic horizons saved the girl once bored to death in Philadelphia from mediocrity. Perhaps too from being put through the marriage wringer that would have fattened psychiatrists' and lawyers' wallets?

I consciously chose not to join the "First Wives Club," to make compromises, sometimes dine on crow. Living a trois evolved into a support system that goaded me to become a world traveler, a writer in several genres, a public speaker and, above all, a mensch (decent human being).