"Yeah. Are you OK?"

"I am."

That was it. Louise kept dating, and Owen stopped going to the swinger's club. In the beginning, they asked each other every day whether there had been any second thoughts.

Now, 27 years into their polyamorous relationship, Louise and Owen have dropped most of the rules. They still have veto power, but only Louise has used it, and only on rare occasions. Owen now has a girlfriend, and Louise typically spends two nights a week visiting her current boyfriend, Jon, and a third night sleeping at Jon's house. The tricky part is meeting people who understand their relationship. In case one of them isn't around to assure the potential date that neither of them is a cheater, they've drawn up what they call "hunting licenses."

"I can just open up my wallet and say, 'See? My wife's cool with it,'" Owen says.

The relationship has become so successful that they have decided to start teaching other people. Louise gives talks on polyamorous relationships at wicca fairs. A year ago, they began offering a class through Communiversity. (They teach the class under the pseudonyms Louise and Shaggy Man.) They'll start their third class in March. Most of the students are younger, and the classes are split about evenly between men and women. Last semester, Louise made a guest appearance in Conley's classroom to talk about polyamorous relationships. "Condoms, condoms, condoms," Louise said. "That's what I tell everyone who asks about it."

It isn't something that will work for everyone. Louise's boyfriend, Jon, had known the couple for years before starting a romantic relationship with Louise. He'd been married and in a monogamous relationship from his late 20s until his early 50s, when he attended one of Louise's talks on polyamorous relationships at a wicca fair.

"I thought, here is an attractive woman who's actually speaking intelligently about sex, and I realized that maybe I'd made the wrong choices and given up a lot for myself," Jon says. He convinced his then-wife to try to make theirs a polyamorous relationship after undergoing counseling sessions, but she never accepted it. Now they're divorcing.

When Jon, Louise and Owen are together at a coffee shop, the impression of who is with whom changes from moment to moment. For a time, Louise and Jon hold hands and laugh together. Then Jon leans back in his chair and Owen's hand is on Louise's leg. They look like any group of aging hippies, Jon with long white hair and beard, Owen in a T-shirt featuring a naked man and woman holding swords high, Louise between her partners.

"If there's one misconception we always get, it's that people think we're swingers," Louise says. "It's not like that at all. I'm not putting anyone else's lifestyle down, but this is about a lot more than sex. This is about sharing love.

"I'm not just going to jump in bed with anyone I meet. I want to go out and have the dates and get to know each other before I go to bed with someone. I'm old-fashioned. I like romance."

Pulling the Switch

Bartending brothers give us their secrets to sexy drinks, bagging drunk hos and passing as each other. Yeah, it's that kind of interview.

By JUSTIN KENDALL and BERRY ANDERSON

We here at The Pitch felt inspired by the gushing celebrity profiles in the likes of Esquire, Vogue or Vanity Fair. You know, the ones with all those questions that make a B-list celebrity sound as though he or she should get bigger billing than the Second Coming.

So, armed with questions that we ripped off from a few of those fawning interviews, we went over to the News Room, where we met up with bartending brothers Rhien and Matt Pounds. The 25-year-old twins, who look nearly identical, agreed to play along with our game. Here's an excerpt.

The Pitch: You're on a plane that's going down. It has a full bar. What do you make?

Rhien: You'd probably go for the 151. Whatever you could slam before you hit the ground. Or just a beer.

If you died and went to heaven, what drink would you serve God?

Matt: Sex on the Beach. Or a Redheaded Slut.

Rhien: Manhattan. It's my favorite. Good for libidos. Is that good for God?

What inspires your libido?

Matt: Cleavage is nice.

Rhien: I like the girls that are really trying hard. That always inspires me to put her down. That's a good one.

Like, really drunk ones?

Rhien: No, no. She is the one who has spent an hour and a half getting ready to go out, and then she made the mistake of walking into the Newsroom. It's like, "You are in the wrong place, gal." We always get the dirty art kids in here. They just wipe off the stink and pull on a pair of jeans, and they're done, you know?

Matt: Those are good.

Rhien: Another good one is the drunk chick with no inhibitions.

Matt: Yeah, that's a pretty big turn-on. The one downside to that, though, is that this is a 3 a.m. bar, and it's really hard to get a drunk chick to stay until 4 o'clock. If I could change anything, I would change it to a 1:30 bar.