05.28.09
I have a problem with my happiness; he is a wonderful man who has a
beauty that overwhelms me; we have a beautiful home; I am monogamous for the
first time in a decade. But I just learned that I am the spitting image of a
man who is in jail for raping my boyfriend.
He says he is not in a place to dig up his emotions about the
subject and wants to hold off on sex - fine by me. I admire him and his courage
to be with me despite my appearance. I still love him, but I feel like there is
something I could do to help him, to help us. So I guess I am asking for
suggestions.
Asking Not Begging
First
suggestion: Verify his story.
If
you have a stunt double out there rotting in jail somewhere for raping your
Wonder Boyfriend, ANB, then there are police reports and trial transcripts and
a mug shot that looks just like you. Go find ’em.
I’m
an asshole, of course, for casting doubt on your beautiful boyfriend’s dramatic
explanation for why his wonderfulness can’t have sex with you right now - or
ever, potentially, since he’s “not in a place to dig up his emotions” and wants
to “hold off” on sex. But cast I must, ANB, because one of two things is going
on. Either your boyfriend is making this rape story up or he failed to share
hugely pertinent info with you before moving in. Whichever it is, ANB, your
boyfriend is at fault.
Why
would he make it up? Well, it could be that he’s not attracted to you, ANB, and
manipulating you with a victim story allows him to reap the rewards of being
with you while earning him a “Get Out of Fucking You Free” card.
If
the story checks out - if you find that mug shot - then your boyfriend has my
sympathies. But if he wasn’t ready to resume his romantic and sexual life, ANB,
he had no right to be out there dating anyone, least of all a man who looks
exactly like his rapist. When we date, ANB, we’re telling people that we’re in
a place where we’re ready for love, romance, and sex. If we’re not, we have no
business dating anyone seriously. Period. At the very least, the onus was on
him to disclose this information - his rape, your resemblance to his rapist - before
moving in, not after.
And
finally: If you’re not having sex with your boyfriend, or anyone else, and
there’s no sex in your foreseeable future, ANB, that’s not monogamy - that’s
celibacy.
I am a high-functioning regular heroin
user (not quite an addict), and I feel constantly compelled to hide my drug
use. I feel that there are similarities between being a drug user and having an
alternate sexual orientation in the sense that both users and gays are
constantly confronting judgmental opposition from an ill-informed and
puritanical American public. I wonder whether you have any thoughts on this
matter. Do you believe that drug users are deserving of the same kind of
empowerment and liberation as gays, or do you view drug use as a “disease” that
needs to be “cured” the same way that the Carrie Prejeans of the world believe
gays need to be “cured?”
I realize that one significant difference
between heroin use and sexual tastes is that heroin use is illegal, but of
course gay relationships were illegal until relatively recently. Am I just
rationalizing? Or could drug use be the next civil-rights frontier?
Dude Requests
Understanding Gay Sensibility
Uh… gee.
I don’t believe that all drug use is abuse, and I
believe that recreational drugs can be used responsibly. And I believe a person
should be able to use a drug regularly without being labeled - by himself, by
others, by court order - an “addict.” I also wish that more people were open
about their drug use - but, in the hypocritical fashion of most Americans, only
when we’re talking about drugs that I like and have used myself, e.g.,
caffeine, sugar, pot, and my boyfriend’s pheromones.
Recreational heroin? Heroin seems kind of
extreme, DRUGS, as recreational drugs go. I’ve known a few people who’ve
self-medicated with heroin and functioned well enough to get by - just - and I think that all drugs should
be legal, your drug of choice included. We need to end the war on drugs, a
failure and a waste of money and lives. And the quickest way to end it is for
successful drug users - people like you, me, Michael Phelps, and the president
of the United States of America - to be open about our past, present, and
future drug use. But I don’t think “drug user” is an identity that’s really
comparable to sexual orientation. Using drugs is something you do,
DRUGS, it’s not something you are.
Look at it this way: If you stopped doing drugs
today, DRUGS, you’d no longer be a drug user. If I stopped inhaling my
boyfriend’s pheromones - and cock - today, DRUGS, I’d still be a big homo.
Because gay is like Cats (“now and
forever”), while heroin is like Twitter (fun at first, sure, but you’ll regret
it one day). See the difference?
But, yeah, the freedom to use drugs can certainly
be viewed as a civil-rights issue: It’s about the right to control what you do
with your own body, and that argument resonates with others advanced by
gay-rights advocates and advocates of reproductive choice. But different drugs
carry different risks - risks of harm, risks of overdose, risks of death - and,
legal or not, heroin is a highly dangerous drug. It’s a drug that’s made more
dangerous by its prohibition, sure, but it’s dangerous even when it’s pure. But
I think you have a right to use it, if you want to use it, and that you should
have access to safe, medical-grade heroin and clean needles. But I don’t think
you should use it, not when there are
other, better, safer drugs available.
Like my boyfriend’s pheromones.
I like that you told PILL, the teenage girl who didn’t like the pill
and whose boyfriend “doesn’t like” condoms, to “enjoy outercourse, oral,
masturbation, and sex toys - and tell your boyfriend that these aren’t
consolation prizes for teenagers, but honest-to-God sex acts that adults
enjoy.” But I wish that you had mentioned all the other kinds of birth control
out there. There’s the Depo-Provera shot, the patch, the implant, the ring
(which is very low dose and which many women prefer to the pill), IUDs (both
with and without hormones), and cervical caps that can be used with spermicide.
Also, there are many kinds of pills (from low to high dose, mini-pills, various
hormone combos, etc.), and PILL should talk to a professional about which pills
she was on and the specific things she didn’t like about them.
Some are much more
effective than others, there are serious cost barriers to some of these if
they’re not covered by insurance, and there can be side effects to any sort of
hormonal birth control, but it’s good to be aware that they exist.
I also had awful experiences with hormonal pills, and it took years
until I finally got a great doctor who took the time to explain all my options
- and there are so many! I now have a nonhormonal IUD; it is fantastic, and I
am grateful for my doctor’s advice. There’s a great “birth control
effectiveness chart” at Planned Parenthood’s website
(www.plannedparenthood.org).
Been There, Done That
Thanks
for sharing, BTDT.
Download the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at www.thestranger.com/savage or www.outlookcolumbus.com. mail@savagelove.net.
5.21.09
Dear Readers: I regard this column
as a sacred tryst. Your faith in my counsel and willingness to take me into
your confidence moves and humbles me on a daily basis, and the seriousness with
which I approach my chosen profession would normally prevent me from turning
your letters over to a bunch of unruly drunks in a bar. But word somehow got
around the bar where I retired to write this week’s column, and the assembled
drunks insisted that they be allowed to share their hard-earned wisdom with
you. So I printed out a few of your letters on the bar’s office printer - with
names, e-mail addresses, and identifying details removed - and passed them
around with pens and legal pads.
The American Heritage
Dictionary defines
“advice” as “an opinion about what could or should be done,” and opinions, as
Saint Paul famously observed, are like assholes: Everyone’s got one (Esophagans
14:20). Please note that I don’t endorse all of the asshole opinions below - particularly
when murder is recommended - and rest assured that I will be
drinking/writing/drinking elsewhere from now on.
My wife and I have been married for eight months, and I love her
very much. However, we don’t have sex much, maybe three times a month. We’ve
seen a therapist a few times, and it hasn’t changed anything. I still love her,
but my needs haven’t been met and I’m frustrated. Due
to my frustration, I posted an ad on Craigslist - not to cheat but to just get
some erotic interaction via the web. I only sent a few pictures back and forth.
However, my wife found the e-mails. I apologized and said I never wanted to be
with anyone but her, but that I just wanted to feel like I was desired. My wife
has asked me to move out for a while, which I did.
Are we effed? I know what I did was horrible, but I want to make
this marriage work. I love her, and I don’t want this to end it.
Confused In Salt Lake
•
“Since you live in Salt Lake, I’m going to assume that you didn’t have sex with
your wife before you got marriaged [hic], and so it turns out that you and
your wife are incompatible. Next time, try the milk before you buy the cow.”
• “A
lot of men make the mistake of initiating sex by just being like, ‘Hey, let’s
fuck.’ Try this: Rub her shoulders, offer to make her a bath, give her a foot
massage. Then eat her out, but don’t ask for anything. Do this for two weeks.
Show her that you want her to enjoy sex. If it doesn’t work, sorry, you’re fucked.”
•
“You have four separate problems that are now, through the magic of synergy,
combined into one big one: Your wife’s not into sex, you live in Utah, your
wife made you move out, and you’re using Craigslist (what the fuck?). Time for
some radical honesty: Tell her exactly how you feel and what you want. Insist
she do the same. Don’t censor. This will either finish burning your marriage to
the ground or maybe - MAYBE - allow you to start dealing with each other like
adults.”
•
“Hey, Mormon Dumbfuck: She asked you to move out. It’s already over! HELLO?!?”
I have a submissive side. My
first dominant girlfriend would face-sit me for an hour; after she climaxed,
she would ride me until she climaxed multiple times, and only then would she
let me climax. Eventually we were doing cunnilingus after intercourse, but when
she suggested it might be fun to add “more sauce” to the mix - bring another
man into our play, and this other man’s ejaculate - I dumped her. A similar
thing happened in my next relationship. Do all dominant women think all male
submissives are interested in bisexual behavior and being a cuckold?
There is a BDSM group in
Washington, D.C., but the cohort for under-35s is tiny (I am under 30), and
it’s nothing but fat women. I don’t want to pay, I work out, I have a salary,
and I eat my lunch every day. I don’t need to be looked after. I am totally
self-reliant, but I nevertheless want to be completely dominated by a woman. If
the right woman came along now, I would marry her and make her very happy.
Should I be more patient and let
her find me, or should I find ways to put out more openly that I am a
submissive?
Where Are The Monogamous
Dominant Women?
• “Where are your social skills,
douchebag?”
• “You sound like a dick. Only sex your
way or you dump them? WTF? Try meeting someone you like and slowly introduce
the Dom/sub stuff. Right now you are SO demanding with your fantasies but
unwilling to fulfill someone else’s. That’s a dick move.”
• “When I got to ‘I have a salary and I
eat my lunch,’ I stopped reading.”
• “There is nothing less attractive
than a ‘sub’ screaming, ‘Top me, Mistress - but not if you’re too fat or too
poly or too old or if you actually have fantasies of your own or if you’re
going to order me to do something I don’t want to do.’ That’s why you’re not
getting any action, dummy.”
• “You suck. The end.”
My partner and I are in our mid-20s and have been together since our
teens. We have similar interests and compatible lifestyles. We make an awesome
pair. Unfortunately, we are not sexually compatible. Over time we’ve grown
closer regarding most things, except for sex. I’ve come to realize that I’m
kinky and nonmonogamous. My partner is decidedly not kinky, though she has said
that if I slept with others she would NEVER want to know. That leaves a door
slightly open.
I love her and am committed to the relationship, but I need some
kink to be happy, and my outing myself as kinky has led to a steady
deterioration in our vanilla sex life. Is it fair to put her on notice that
I’ll be kinking out as opportunities arise and deal with the fallout as we go?
Seeking Orderly Solution
•
“She said she would ‘never want to know.’ That is NOT an open door. That’s a
double-shielded blast door with padlocks and a sign on it that says, ‘Don’t
even think about it, motherfucker.’”
•
“Putting her ‘on notice’ sounds kind of assholish. Have the big, awful,
stomach-clenching talk about your future. It’s not fair to either of you for
you to have to stay monogamous and be unhappy. You need to figure this out.”
•
“Let her know that you are going to do it if the opportunity arises, but assure
her that you’re just looking to satisfy your kink. Be sure to respect her
desire not to know, but always be ready to divulge if she changes her mind. If
you want the relationship to work, you need to be ‘allowing.’”
•
“You’ll be unhappy for a few years if you leave her, but you’ll be unhappy for
the REST OF YOUR LIFE if you stay.”
•
“WTF? Get rid of the shit. I’m not talking about ‘leaving’ her. She’s likely to
have some of your secrets. KILL HER. Everything you need is at a convenience
store: shovel, lime, rope, large garbage bags, sympathy card for the family.”
Thanks for the input and insight,
assembled drunks. And for the record: Murder is wrong. Dump her, SOS, don’t
kill her.
Download the Savage Lovecast (my
weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage. mail@savagelove.net
05.14.09
Over the past few years, my husband and I have
realized that he has needs that I cannot meet. I do not begrudge him these
needs, and I would fill them if I could. I want him to be a happy and satisfied
person, not just for him, but for myself as well. We discussed opening our
relationship, but our therapist recoiled at the idea. If I can’t help him and
we can’t have someone else help him, what can we do? We can’t imagine breaking
up, but if we’re both unhappy, then I can only assume that we will split
eventually or one of us will act out in resentment. We have been together for
over a decade and love each other deeply. I am physically sick over this
situation, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know that I fully trust our
therapist, and I would like to hear an informed second opinion. I value your
advice.
Life Decisions
Here’s an
informed second opinion: Fuck your asshole therapist. And here’s a
better-informed bonus third opinion:
“It’s
incredibly unfortunate that some therapists either aren’t educated about open
relationships or buy into common myths about them,” says Tristan Taormino,
activist, author, pornographer, and author of Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships.
Way too many therapists, she says, “pathologize people who want to open their
relationships and try to convince them that they have intimacy or commitment
issues. The truth is you can be both intimate with and fully committed to more
than one partner, or be committed to one partner and have sex with others.”
Tristan
interviewed scores of couples in successful open relationships, and she found that
many initially opened their relationships because of an issue of sexual
incompatibility.
“The
scenario you present is not uncommon,” she continues. “If both of you really
are committed to giving it a go, I’d advise you to find a new therapist, one
who has experience with—and not a prejudice against—nonmonogamous
clients. The right therapist can help you figure out your limits, set
boundaries, and make an agreement about this new type of relationship that
works for both of you.”
You can
also check out the stories, advice, and references at Tristan’s website
www.openingup.net. Good luck, LD.
I’ve read and enjoyed your column for years and
always found you to be well reasoned and kind. That’s why your agreement with
Perez Hilton (and your reiteration of his comments) on Miss California was so
shocking. I’m a straight guy with a lifelong gay best friend. I’m totally for
gay rights in all respects. Still, it’s beneath you to call someone who
disagrees with your position a “dumb bitch.” You’re better then that, Dan!
Though Christian conservatives are either too scared or too puritanical to
accept gay marriage at this time, it doesn’t mean these millions of people are
dumb. Change takes time. Don’t you see that what you and Mr. Hilton are
promulgating is hatred against a person for that individual’s beliefs,
something you both claim to abhor?
Basically On Your Side
I don’t
think Miss California is a dumb bitch for her beliefs, BOYS, but for her
actions. (“Love the sinner/dumb bitch, hate the sin/dumb bitchery.”) For the
record: There are lots of reasonable folks out there who oppose same-sex
marriage, and I can interact with them in a civil fashion. Heck, I voted for an
opponent of marriage equality back in November.
What sets
Miss CA apart from reasonable opponents of marriage equality, BOYS, is her
opportunism coupled with her stupidity.
I thought
Perez Hilton went too far when he called Miss CA a “dumb bitch” after the
pageant—and said so on my blog. But I started to come around to Hilton’s
POV after Miss CA, despite having said at the pageant that she thought it was “great
that Americans are able to choose” gay marriage or “opposite marriage,” joined
a political campaign to deny marriage rights to gays and lesbians. Miss CA is
leveraging her spat with Hilton for her own personal financial gain.
Ghostwritten books, speaking gigs at evangelical churches, a potential
guest-host gig on The View—beats
work, huh? And so what if it oppresses gays and lesbians?
And that’s
when I thought, “Hmm, I guess she is a bitch.”
And then
came her interview on Fox News: “You know what, Greta? I don’t have the answers
to everything,” Miss CA told Greta Van Susteren when she was asked about her
position on civil unions. “I’m not running for political office. I don’t have
the answers to everything, you know, in the world out there.” And when Van
Susteren followed up by asking Miss CA “what [she] thinks” about civil unions and gay people adopting children, Miss
CA responded, “I’m not a politician, so I can’t give you an answer to that.” So
seeing as she’s not a politician, Miss CA can’t be expected to know what she herself thinks about adoptions and civil unions.
And that’s
when I thought, gawd, she’s dumb, too—and that’s when I had to concede
that Hilton was right.
I’m a 17-year-old girl who just became sexually
active. My 16-year-old boyfriend doesn’t like condoms, and I don’t like what
birth control pills do to my emotions and my skin. Now what do we do?
Pregnancy Isn’t Looking Likely
I’ll be
with you in a minute, PILL. But first…
More
stupidity and opportunism: Bristol Palin is now a spokesperson for an
organization that encourages teenagers to abstain from having sex. “Regardless
of what I did personally,” Bristol advised America’s youth last week, “I just
think that abstinence is the only… 100
percent foolproof way you can prevent pregnancy.”
Here are
a few other 100 percent foolproof ways to prevent pregnancy, Bristol, right off
the top of my head: mutual masturbation, oral sex, anal sex (aka “saddlebacking”
when practiced by Christian teens), outercourse, sex toys your partner can
insert into you, sex toys you can insert your partner into, cybersex, phone
sex, GAY SEX. There are actually lots of “foolproof” ways for teenagers (and
adults) to be sexual and intimate without risking an unplanned pregnancy. It’s
possible for a teenager to have fulfilling sex, and the intimacy and closeness
and connection that comes along with it, without risking the “24-hour job and…
huge responsibility” that having a baby entails.
Instead
of telling teenagers to say no to sex—which will work about as well as
telling them to say no to drugs—we should tell them there are ways to be
sexual that carry no risk of pregnancy. But if they do decide to have sex, of
course, they’re going to need to know about and have access to contraception
and the “morning after” pill—and, yes, abortion services. But if we
continue to present being sexually active as either/or—either abstinence
or vaginal intercourse—we’re going to see more outcomes like yours,
Bristol.
When you
explain to nervous, inexperienced teenagers that they don’t have to jump right
into full intercourse—that there are degrees of intimacy, and risk, and
they can have enjoyable sexual experiences without vaginal (or anal)
penetration—they’re often relieved. (And just imagine what we could have
been spared—all of us, Bristol, from your family to Levi’s family to the
McCain campaign—if Levi had limited himself to inseminating your
tonsils.)
So, PILL,
here’s what you do: Enjoy outercourse, oral, masturbation, and sex toys—and
tell your boyfriend that these aren’t consolation prizes for teenagers, but
honest-to-God sex acts that adults enjoy—until you and your boyfriend
find the condoms and lube that work for you.
Download the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast)
every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage. mail@savagelove.net
05.07.09
My 14-year-old son just came out
to me. He has a slightly older boyfriend, and they’re going to the school dance
on Saturday night. I am adjusting to a truth I had long suspected. I am
worried, though, that my son will get hurt. We live in the South—North
Carolina—but our town has a gay community and an annual pride parade.
When I asked him if the other students at school would be cool with him
bringing a boy, he said, “Who cares?” Bullying is not a huge problem at his
school.
We have had the sex talk several
times, but I have always assumed a hetero approach. I think my son is too young
for sleepovers with his boyfriend, and I would really like him to wait a couple
more years before he gets seriously sexually active, though I expect petting
and kissing are givens. Any advice?
Still My Son
Treat
your son to some of that equal treatment we gay people are always going on
about, SMS, and treat him just like you’d treat your 14-year-old straight kid.
No responsible parent would allow his 14-year-old daughter—and that’s how
you should think of him for now (more on that in a moment)—to have
sleepovers with her slightly older boyfriend, right? So no sleepovers for your
gay kid. Remember: You can be supportive and be his advocate without signing
off on stuff you wouldn’t sign off on for a straight child—indeed, it’s
the best way to show your support.
What
else can you do? You can hover, scrutinize, interfere—all the crap that
parents typically do when their children begin to date. For instance, SMS, this
boy your son is seeing? Have you met him? Meet him. How much older is he? Find
out. Are they messing around? Ask them. Make sure your son understands that he
doesn’t have to engage in anal intercourse to be authentically gay, or all grown-up,
or out. He can take things slow—he should take things slow. Encourage
your son to date, to hold hands, to make out. And you should, as awkward as
it’s going to feel to say so aloud, encourage your son, when he does become
sexually active, to stick with mutual masturbation and oral sex for a good,
long time—until he’s sure he’s ready for intercourse, not just anxious
for it.
Getting
back to the daughter business: You should also regard your son, at least
through his adolescence, as more of a daughter to you than a son. We tend to be
more protective of our daughters—our straight daughters—than we are
of our sons. Why? A sexist desire to keep our daughters “pure”? That’s a part
of it, sure, but there’s also this: Men are pigs, and people on the receiving end
of male sexual desire/attention are in more danger than people on the receiving
end of female sexual desire/attention. (In general—individual results may
vary.) Testosterone is the crystal meth of hormones, a badass drug, and men are
more likely to be abusive and violent. The prevalence of HIV among gay men
makes the stakes higher for your son. So don’t allow him to date anyone you
don’t get to meet and approve of, and don’t confuse “being supportive” with
“letting him do whatever/whomever he wants.” Be active, be engaged, and never
stop being his meddling, interfering, hypersuspicious dad.
Good
luck, SMS. It sounds like your son lucked out having you as a parent.
I’ve been seeing this guy for
about two years in August. We’ve been living together for six months now, and
it’s been REALLY bumpy. We fight a lot, I cry a lot, and it just gets really
messy. To tell you the truth, I’m tired of it. I work two jobs, and I never get
any time to myself because he’s moody and insecure. He always wants to know where
I’m going or who I’m with. He doesn’t like to do the same things I do, and I’m
beginning to think this is all one big mistake. The problem is every time I try
to leave, it always gets ugly. Ugly to the point that he’s thrown my stuff in
the front yard, broken things of mine, and even called me names. He’s abusive.
As sad as this sounds, and as
ridiculous as I feel, I want to make this work. I want us to be happy. And the
thing is, I know that we can be. When we’re mad, it’s like World War III over
here. But when we’re happy, it’s so blissful that I know in my heart with him
is the only place I want to be. What can I do? People tell me it’s time to
sever ties, but the people who usually tell me this are the ones who can’t
stand him. How can I make a completely unbiased decision? Am I stupid for
believing in a love that feels destined to fail?
Hopelessly Devoted To Him
This
is not a relationship, HDTH, it’s a hostage situation. He’s a controlling,
abusive piece of shit—listen to your fucking friends, HDTH. When your
boyfriend breaks your shit, he’s making an implicit threat: I can break your
face just as easily as I’m breaking your shit, bitch, so don’t even think about
leaving me. And of course things are great when they’re great—that’s part
of an abuser’s MO. If abusers were abusive 24/7—if they weren’t capable
of doling out a little bliss now and then—no abusive relationship would
last longer than one date. Like all abusers, he parcels out the good times,
doping you up with a little bliss now and then, because he knows that these
glimpses of how great things could be convince you to stick around against your
better judgment.
The
bliss is a con, HDTH, a weapon that he uses against you, just as much a part of
the cycle of abuse as his tantrums, fits, and threats of violence are. Think of
the good times as rainbow sprinkles on a dog-shit sundae—sprinkles or no
sprinkles, you’re still standing there with a bowl full of dog shit in your
hands.
Get
a couple of friends to come over when he’s at work or out of town, box up your
shit, and leave. You can’t change him. Go.
Apropos of nothing, Savage, you
fucking suck ass.
You And Your Column Both Suck
Have
I ever claimed otherwise?
And
apropos of nothing, YAYCBS, I’m totally grooving on Garfunkel & Oates right
now (www.garfunkelandoates.com), and everyone has to check them out; Perez
Hilton was absolutely right about Miss California (she is a dumb bitch);
Seattle-based artist Kim Graham (www.kimgrahamstudios.com) is getting centaur
fetishists halfway there; and I recently visited the University of Georgia in
Athens, where the kids asked me to come up with a dirty meaning for “between
the hedges,” which is their football stadium’s nickname. Off the top of my
head, I said, “The boy in a girl-boy-girl three-way could be described as being
between the hedges.” But upon further reflection, I think the term is a better
description of going down on a woman with a particularly hairy bush—and
the tongue, not the boy/girl doing the tonguing, is “between the hedges.”
Download the Savage Lovecast (my
weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage. mail@savagelove.net
04.30.09
Savage Love
by Dan Savage
I’m a 32-year-old, very attractive, very fit SWM living in
NYC. I’m well-read and well-spoken. I march to the
beat of my own drum. Friends tell me that my personality is intense. It must be
true—everyone concurs. I’m extremely idealistic, and I count myself as a
romantic. I’m interested in an intense and consuming love affair with a woman.
But friends tell me that my approach to courtship and my energy scare women
off.
I’m tired of fouling things up and making myself lonely.
Yet, when a lady friend of mine, in response to my most recent upset, suggested
I spend a night out with her where she would act as my wingman, I recoiled.
Prowling for random women in a bar doesn’t fit my sense of romance.
Should I consider counseling to try to tame my personality?
Should I just be myself and continue being lonely and misunderstood?
Wild Horses Drag Me Away
You don’t give me much to go on, WHDMA. It would help to know, for
example, what exactly you’re doing—besides being all intensely romantic
and extremely idealistic and physically fit and stuff—that scares women
off. How does your “intensity” manifest itself? Without that info, it’s
difficult to whip up some advice for you.
But I can do a little
decoding for you: When friends say “your personality
is intense,” what they typically mean is “you are an asshole.”
Assholes who have friends sometimes conclude that there’s
something wrong with dating or bars or all the women and/or men on the planet
because, hey, I’ve got friends—and
if my friends can stand me, why couldn’t my ex-girlfriend(s)? But friending, if I may borrow Facebook’s proprietary verb, an asshole is easy; dating an asshole is hard. (Or that’s
what my boyfriend tells me, anyway.)
A friendship involves a smaller time commitment; a girlfriend, if
you could keep one, is required to spend much more time with you. Not only
that, WHDMA, but people who are romantically involved with assholes come in for
a higher degree of scrutiny. A person with an asshole friend is regarded as
tolerant and/or indulgent and/or foolish. But a person with an asshole boyfriend is viewed as having a
character flaw. Or several: lousy taste in men, the wrong kind of masochistic
streak, low self-esteem, abuse issues, etc.
So, yeah, you should consider counseling to “tame your
personality.” Your alleged virtues—extremely intense! extremely romantic! extremely idealistic!—may not
themselves be the problem. But if the people living outside your skull have
identified them as impediments to your professed romantic goals, WHDMA, then
there’s something problematic about the way you’re expressing them.
And that lady friend who offered to take you out and act as your
wingman? I suspect she was trying to pull the stick out of your ass and trying
to get you to see that dating—at least at the outset—is about
pleasure, not intensity. I assure you that bars all over the civilized world
are packed with “random women” as interested in intense and consuming love
affairs as you are. You might want to give them a chance.
A long time ago I experienced, late one nite,
roasted, drunk, blah, blah, blah!!! This brother
picked me up and drove me to his place and screwed me good. He said I was
hot!!! I really liked it, had an anal orgasm!!! It was indescribable. I loved
it!!! He gave me his number. But I was too shy to call back. Never saw him
again. So I bought dildos and proceeded to fuck myself and get drunk or high
(weed) every night!!! What does that make me? Closet drunk? Closet
English cigarette? I like pussy, too! Whatzup?!
Anonymously Me
I don’t have the faintest idea!!!
My boyfriend refuses to have any kind of intercourse with
me while my Aunt Flo is visiting. I’m not asking to have sex when I’m on my
heavy days, just at the beginning and tail ends of my period. He says it’s
disgusting, even if he wears a condom, and that it makes his stomach turn to
even think about it. I find this terribly frustrating because my period lasts a
good 10 days (according to his definition), and I have to go without any loving
the whole time. And yet he expects me to blow him on a regular basis during
that time. I love him, and I’d rather not DTMFA over this. What can I do?
Aunt Flo Terminates Erection Return
Only blow him on days when he hasn’t used his penis to urinate.
Because really, AFTER, how can he ask you to suck cock on days
when pee comes out of his thing? That’s just as disgusting—it’s more disgusting—than a little bit
of blood on the condom. And any guy who can’t handle a little bit of blood
shouldn’t be asking his girlfriend to ingest whatever trace amounts of urine
might be lurking in his urethra. But if he wants you to blow him—to keep
him content during your period—then he needs to find a way to do the same
for you. If he can’t bring himself to fuck you during your period, AFTER, then
at the very least he can help you get off with a vibrator, or engage in outercourse with you, or mutual masturbation, or eat your
pussy through a wad of Saran Wrap.
If he won’t do any of that, reconsider DTMFA.
I thought I knew what teabagging meant: to dip a man’s testicles in and out of your mouth. But during a recent
conversation about the Republican teabagging craze,
my boyfriend told me that teabagging meant to put
your balls into someone else’s mouth. A person without balls, he insists, can’t
do the teabagging. But many people I know think they
are the teabagger and their partner is the one being teabagged. An internet search
turns up both definitions. So, Dan, I’m asking you—as an expert on all
things both political and sexual—do any of us hetero females have a
chance of teabagging President Obama? Don’t get me
wrong: I want to teabag the president for all the right reasons. I’m a
supporter. I just want in on any political activity that involves Obama’s balls
in my mouth.
The Earnest Aspirant
Let’s say you were in the West Wing with Barack Obama’s sack
resting comfortably in your mouth. Perhaps you had done something meritorious—defeated
the Somalian pirates, sworn in Senator Al Franken—and
you were being awarded the Presidential Wattle of Freedom. The New York Times might report, “The
president of the United States and a Savage Love reader were spotted ‘teabagging’ in the Oval Office today.”
But while you can teabag with the president, TEA, you don’t have what it takes to administer a teabagging to the
president. To teabag someone, you need a scrotum with which to teabag them: The teabagger dips sack; a teabaggee receives dipped sack. It’s a little confusing, I realize, in that it’s the
opposite of a blowjob: The person with a dick in his or her mouth is giving the
blowjob; the person being sucked is receiving the blowjob. But language is
funny that way.
Download the Savage Lovecast (my
weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage. mail@savagelove.net
04.23.09
I’m a 32-year-old,
very attractive, very fit SWM living in NYC. I’m well-read and well-spoken. I march to the beat of my own drum. Friends tell me that my
personality is intense. It must be true—everyone concurs. I’m extremely
idealistic, and I count myself as a romantic. I’m interested in an intense and
consuming love affair with a woman. But friends tell me that my approach to
courtship and my energy scare women off.
I’m tired of fouling things up and making myself lonely. Yet, when a
lady friend of mine, in response to my most recent upset, suggested I spend a
night out with her where she would act as my wingman, I recoiled. Prowling for
random women in a bar doesn’t fit my sense of romance.
Should I consider counseling to try to tame my personality? Should I
just be myself and continue being lonely and misunderstood?
Wild Horses Drag Me Away
You don’t give me much to go on,
WHDMA. It would help to know, for example, what exactly you’re doing—besides
being all intensely romantic and extremely idealistic and physically fit and
stuff—that scares women off. How does your “intensity” manifest itself?
Without that info, it’s difficult to whip up some advice for you.
But I can do a little decoding for you: When
friends say “your personality is intense,” what they
typically mean is “you are an asshole.”
Assholes who have friends
sometimes conclude that there’s something wrong with dating or bars or all the
women and/or men on the planet because, hey, I’ve got friends—and if my friends
can stand me, why couldn’t my ex-girlfriend(s)? But friending,
if I may borrow Facebook’s proprietary verb, an
asshole is easy; dating an asshole is hard. (Or that’s what my boyfriend tells
me, anyway.)
A friendship involves a smaller
time commitment; a girlfriend, if you could keep one, is required to spend much
more time with you. Not only that, WHDMA, but people who are romantically
involved with assholes come in for a higher degree of scrutiny. A person with
an asshole friend is regarded as tolerant and/or indulgent and/or foolish. But
a person with an asshole boyfriend is viewed as having a character flaw. Or several: lousy
taste in men, the wrong kind of masochistic streak, low self-esteem, abuse
issues, etc.
So, yeah, you should consider
counseling to “tame your personality.” Your alleged virtues—extremely
intense! extremely romantic! extremely idealistic!—may not themselves be the problem. But if the people living
outside your skull have identified them as impediments to your professed
romantic goals, WHDMA, then there’s something problematic about the way you’re
expressing them.
And that lady friend who offered
to take you out and act as your wingman? I suspect she was trying to pull the
stick out of your ass and trying to get you to see that dating—at least
at the outset—is about pleasure, not intensity. I assure you that bars
all over the civilized world are packed with “random women” as interested in
intense and consuming love affairs as you are. You might want to give them a
chance.
A long time ago I experienced, late one nite,
roasted, drunk, blah, blah, blah!!! This brother
picked me up and drove me to his place and screwed me good. He said I was
hot!!! I really liked it, had an anal orgasm!!! It was indescribable. I loved
it!!! He gave me his number. But I was too shy to call back. Never saw him
again. So I bought dildos and proceeded to fuck myself and get drunk or high
(weed) every night!!! What does that make me? Closet drunk? Closet
English cigarette? I like pussy, too! Whatzup?!
Anonymously Me
I don’t have the faintest idea!!!
My boyfriend refuses to have any kind of intercourse with me while my
Aunt Flo is visiting. I’m not asking to have sex when I’m on my heavy days,
just at the beginning and tail ends of my period. He says it’s disgusting, even
if he wears a condom, and that it makes his stomach turn to even think about
it. I find this terribly frustrating because my period lasts a good 10 days
(according to his definition), and I have to go without any loving the whole
time. And yet he expects me to blow him on a regular basis during that time. I
love him, and I’d rather not DTMFA over this. What can I do?
Aunt Flo Terminates Erection Return
Only blow him on days when he
hasn’t used his penis to urinate.
Because really, AFTER, how can he
ask you to suck cock on days when pee comes out of his thing? That’s just as
disgusting—it’s more disgusting—than a little bit of blood on the condom. And
any guy who can’t handle a little bit of blood shouldn’t be asking his
girlfriend to ingest whatever trace amounts of urine might be lurking in his
urethra. But if he wants you to blow him—to keep him content during your
period—then he needs to find a way to do the same for you. If he can’t
bring himself to fuck you during your period, AFTER, then at the very least he
can help you get off with a vibrator, or engage in outercourse with you, or mutual masturbation, or eat your pussy through a wad of Saran
Wrap.
If he won’t do any of that,
reconsider DTMFA.
I thought I knew what teabagging meant: to
dip a man’s testicles in and out of your mouth. But during a recent
conversation about the Republican teabagging craze,
my boyfriend told me that teabagging meant to put
your balls into someone else’s mouth. A person without balls, he insists, can’t
do the teabagging. But many people I know think they
are the teabagger and their partner is the one being teabagged. An internet search
turns up both definitions. So, Dan, I’m asking you—as an expert on all
things both political and sexual—do any of us hetero females have a
chance of teabagging President Obama? Don’t get me
wrong: I want to teabag the president for all the right reasons. I’m a
supporter. I just want in on any political activity that involves Obama’s balls
in my mouth.
The Earnest Aspirant
Let’s say you were in the West
Wing with Barack Obama’s sack resting comfortably in your mouth. Perhaps you
had done something meritorious—defeated the Somalian pirates, sworn in Senator Al Franken—and you were being awarded the
Presidential Wattle of Freedom. The New York Times might report, “The president of
the United States and a Savage Love reader were spotted ‘teabagging’
in the Oval Office today.”
But while you can teabag with the
president, TEA, you don’t have what it takes to administer a teabagging to the president. To teabag someone, you need a scrotum with which
to teabag them: The teabagger dips sack; a teabaggee receives dipped sack. It’s a little confusing, I
realize, in that it’s the opposite of a blowjob: The person with a dick in his
or her mouth is giving the blowjob; the person being sucked is receiving the
blowjob. But language is funny that way.
Download the Savage Lovecast (my weekly
podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage. mail@savagelove.net
04.16.09
My roommate is
astoundingly hot. Her room is being repaired (the ceiling fell in), and, at her
request, I’m letting her and her boyfriend sleep in my room while I take the
couch. I’ve been able to contain my attraction just fine up to now, but the
minute she entered my space I had this feeling that all bets are off. I’m
considering spying on her with a hidden surveillance cam. If I had video of
this girl naked, let alone being fucked, I could happily beat off to the
footage for the rest of my life. Obviously it’s a breach of trust, and I’m a
shitty roommate for considering it. I have a few concerns. Is this normal? Assuming
that there’s no way she could find out and that I kept the video to myself and
myself only, would it be so wrong? What is her reasonable expectation of
privacy once she enters my room?
Thanks In Advance
Before we get to your tech-related
queries, TIA, a word about a young man in Florida with tech-related troubles.
America’s current teen-sex
panic—it’s always something—is about “sexting,” teenagers sending
each other pictures of their sometimes-underage junk, their frequently underage
racks, or their young and dimpled/pimpled rear ends. (Oh, if only we could
return to the comparatively innocent and entirely fictional days of “rainbow
parties”!) Shortly after the kids went crazy for sexting, the authorities went
crazy for prosecuting kids for sexting. Take Phillip Alpert, an 18-year-old in
Florida who got mad at his girlfriend and forwarded a digital photo of her
naked to dozens of her friends and family.
This Alpert kid (he had only just
turned 18) pulled an asshole move—the gaping asshole of moves—and
he owes his girlfriend, her friends, and her family an apology, restitution,
and a pound of flesh. (And I mean that pound.) A just, proportionate punishment
might involve, say, nude pictures of Alpert being displayed on a billboard in
Times Square. For a year. Instead, Alpert was convicted of distributing child
porn and “sentenced to five years probation and required by Florida law to
register as a sex offender,” CNN reports. “You will find me on the registered
sex offender list next to people who have raped children, molested kids, things
like that,” Alpert told CNN.
A message for concerned parents,
outraged school officials, and teen-sex-obsessed prosecutors: We’re gonna have
to either make it illegal for teenagers to own camsphonescomputers, or we’re
gonna have to give them drugs to delay the onset of puberty until after they’re
18. If we’re unable or unwilling to do those things—technology is hard to
contain, and delaying puberty could have unwelcome health consequences
(although it would have spared Levi Johnston’s DNA from the ignominy of mixing
with the Palins’)—then the intersection of horny teens and newer
technologies is going to require us to rethink the simplistic application of
laws that criminalize the possession and distribution of sexty (ugh) pictures,
particularly in cases where they were created by teenagers, for teenagers.
Yes, Alpert was a douchebag; yes,
it was wrong for him to forward that picture to embarrass and humiliate his
girlfriend. But if Alpert is a child pornographer and a sex offender, so are
millions of today’s teenagers. They’re all e-mailing each other pictures of
their junk. Making an example of one unlucky asshole who got caught isn’t going
to stop teenagers from sexting each other anymore than making an example of hundreds
of thousands of unlucky pot smokers stopped people from smoking pot.
Okay, TIA, on to your question:
While it’s normal to contemplate, even obsess about, something you know is
wrong, secretly videotaping your roommate, even if she’s “in your space,” isn’t
just an asshole move. It’s an illegal move in most places, and the consequences
for asshole moves involving digital images, as illustrated above, can be dire.
And until submitting to video surveillance is widely understood to be a known
risk of sleeping in someone else’s bedroom, your roommate and her boyfriend
have an entirely reasonable expectation of privacy.
As for
no-way-she-could-ever-find-out, I could sneak into your house and use your
toothbrush as a sound, and you’d never find out. And although it would hurt me
more than it would hurt you, TIA, it would still be wrong—even if there
was no way short of DNA testing that you would ever find out. And while you may
intend to keep the video to yourself—such the gentleman—what if
your laptop gets stolen? What if you take your computer in for repairs and
someone makes a copy? Digital images—photos, video, whatever—are
too easy to lose control over.
Don’t do it, TIA.
I am a 30-year-old female with a live-in boyfriend. While we’re not
without our problems, the relationship is wonderful. My only big issue is that
I don’t enjoy cohabitation. Before living with my boyfriend, I lived in a
studio apartment, my little castle, and I relished having my own space. I would
love to go back to us each having our own domicile, but I am afraid of losing
him. And the thought of being “with” someone then going back to your own home
has been met with such criticism by my friends that it makes me wonder if there
may be something wrong with my relationship that I just can’t detect
consciously.
But I want my own space. Is it unusual to want your own space?
Independent But In Love
I know a nice, loving
couple—married, straight, with kids—who each have an apartment in
the same building. The kids’ rooms are in mom’s; the meals are prepared and
eaten at dad’s. They decided to live like this because, like you, they both
liked having their own spaces.
You can do it, too, IBIL. But you
won’t be able to have what you want until you stop worrying about what other
people think and start being honest with your boyfriend about your preferred
living arrangement.
As you’ve proven in the past with “santorum” and “saddlebacking,” you
have considerable influence. So to reward the Vermont legislature’s recent
decision to override the governor’s veto and legalize same-sex marriage in that
state, why not encourage your listeners and readers to purchase products made
in Vermont? And Iowa? Think of it: Your millions of fans could trade in
chocolate body paint for maple syrup as the sexy edible substance of choice,
all the while supporting this legislative victory and (we hope) spurring others
like it.
D.J.’s Fellow Gayby
P.S. I have absolutely no stake in Vermont’s economy. I just want my dads
to be able to marry one day in the state where my family lives.
That day may come more quickly
than we think, DJFG, thanks to the bravery of elected officials in Iowa and
Vermont. As for rewarding Iowa and Vermont…
Like most Americans, I consume way
more corn syrup than a person should (that shit’s in everything), so Iowa is
covered; but I will make sure the next bottle of maple syrup I purchase is from
Vermont—but I’ll be pouring it on my pancakes, thanks, not my boyfriend.
Food is for after sex, people, not before, and never, ever during. Food is not
a sex toy, not even chocolate.
ATTENTION JOURNALISTS: The deadline for this year’s Sexies—the
Sex-Positive Journalism Awards—is approaching. The Sexies recognize
writers “who stick to high journalistic standards” while reporting about sex
“in a climate of repression and misinformation around human sexuality.” More
info at www.sexies.org.
04.09.09
I recently discovered, accidentally, while moving things out of my 16-year-old son’s room prior to a renovation, a cache of my sex toys that had mysteriously disappeared over the past year. While I’ve wondered how it was possible to misplace a glow-in-the-dark crucifix-shaped dildo (complete with Jesus in relief), it never dawned on me that it might be an inside job.
This raises several issues. There’s the you-stole-my-stuff problem, with responses available from the full range of the passive-aggressive scale. But the nature of the swag complicates matters. I kind of need to know whether he took them to snicker over with his friends or whether he has used them. I’m dead certain if he’s used my insertables, that he did so without putting condoms on them first.
So it seems I need to force the you-stole-my-stuff conversation in order to have the safe-toy-use conversation. Suggestions?
Discomfited Aged Deviant
You’re gonna have to have a long talk with the little shit, DAD.
First, apologize for snooping—accidentally, of course, during “a renovation.” Uh-huh. Then bring up the sex toys. Be matter-of-fact about it, DAD, but firm enough to communicate a sense of violation: He violated your privacy and your glow-in-the-dark crucifix-shaped dildo, a sex toy that was consecrated to your orifice(s) and your orifice(s) alone. (“Your orifice(s)” refers to your own personal orifice, DAD, as well as the orifices of your chosen sex partners, a position that is not—one hopes—open to your 16-year-old son.) Don’t let on that you’re embarrassed, even if you are—force a smile, if you can.
Then turn the tables on your son and embarrass the shit out of the little shit: Ask him if he was penetrating himself with your crucidildo, and ask him if he has any questions about sex toys in general or butt toys in particular. He’ll insist that he wasn’t sticking that thing in his ass—although we both know he was—because he’ll want to end this conversation as quickly as possible. Your job, DAD, is to drag… this… talk… out… to achieve maximum mortification.
Tell him that you’re aware that he might be too shy to admit to using butt toys or to ask for info about the proper use of butt toys, so… you’re going to walk him through butt-toy safety and etiquette just to be on the safe side. Then explain it all to him. Tell him about the importance of using lots of lube, of washing sex toys with hot water and a little soap after each use, of putting condoms over them for safety’s sake—and tell him about how one preps an orifice to accept a glow-in-the-dark crucifix (and just how many “Our Fathers” one has to say for penance after doing such a thing). Conclude by pointing out that sex toys aren’t something people share (particularly with their parents), so the one you’d been using, the one he stole and used himself, is going to have to be deconsecrated now, i.e., disposed of. Then offer to get him one of his own and a bottle of lube.
The point is to make him feel bad for invading your privacy and swiping your stuff, DAD, but not for whatever it was he might have done with your stuff. A nice long talk about butt toys—safe use, storage, ethical procurement—will make him realize that violating your privacy and stealing your sex toys invites conversations that he doesn’t want to have with his dad.
My wife of three years has a problem with me masturbating. At one point, we made a deal that I wouldn’t do it while she’s in the house. That would be just fine with me, except that she is rarely out of the house without me. Our sex is really, really great, but I’m pretty horny and I like to masturbate once in a while. She says that she feels like I’m cheating on her. About a year ago, I DID cheat on her—yes, I’m an idiot—and maybe this is my punishment, but I’ve always needed to masturbate a lot. I do it to relieve stress and sometimes just because I get horny and I want to stop being horny in a minute or two so that I can concentrate on something else. This just doesn’t have very much to do with her, and I feel stupid trying to justify myself to her on this matter. How do you think I should resolve this situation?
Jerk Off
When someone you love is irrational and controlling about some aspect of your private life that doesn’t involve or affect her—say, your masturbatory routine, JO—you have two options:
First, you can waste a lot of time and energy trying to talk her out of being irrational and controlling and idiotic. That approach is unlikely to make things better, and it could make matters worse: “Gee, you must really love to beat off without me around, seeing as you’re really going to the mat for this.”
Your second, and far superior, option is to tell her what she wants to hear—“For you, I won’t masturbate”—and then beat off when you want to or when you need to and lie about it. Beat off on the kitchen table when she’s out of the house; slip away for 10 minutes to take a “crap” or a “nap” when she’s home. So long as you’re an attentive lover and you’re not neglecting her needs, and so long as you’re not inconsiderately leaving evidence all over the place (wash out your own crusty come socks), feel free to work around her irrationality with a little harmless deceit.
I dislike a lot of things about your column: I disagree with your stance on religion and I’m against homosexual marriage. But I love reading your column: It’s like a car wreck—I have to look. So I have a question for you.
I am a 32-year-old heterosexual married man. My wife and I have a great sex life. We have been married just over a year. She is pretty open to just about anything, except ONE thing: When she is blowing me, sometimes instead of coming in her mouth, I want to come all over her face. She finds that repulsive. She normally has no problem with swallowing my come or letting me come on her chest. But for some reason, the face just creeps her out. She says it’s degrading. Now, I cannot for the life of me understand how unloading on her face is any more degrading than coming in her mouth or on her chest.
Any advice?
Facials Are Causing Embarrassment
Sorry, FACE, but your wife is correct: Facials are degrading—and that’s why they’re so hot. Now, I would normally arm a married man in your predicament with some killer talking points guaranteed to convince his wife to let him blow a load on her face, FACE, but… I’m not going to help you out. While being denied a little sex advice doesn’t compare to being denied the right to wed, I reserve the right to discriminate against straight married assholes who support discrimination against me.
Now, if there’s a married straight man out there who supports marriage equality and wants some advice on talking the wife into facials, I would be more than happy to share my surefire, fail-proof, 100-percent-guaranteed pro-facial arguments with you. And if you’re a justice on the Iowa State Supreme Court—which last week ruled unanimously in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples—I’ll toss in a free phone consultation.
04.02.09
I hope you address the recent rough-play-gone-bad death of New York City radio newsman George Weber. According to reports, it appears Weber met a guy on Craigslist for “violent sex,” and the guy stabbed Weber to death.
It’s a reminder that if you have these kinds of fantasies—Weber wanted to be bound and abused—you’re better off doing it with someone you trust and not with some random trick off the internet. No one should wind up dead trying to fulfill a sexual desire.
Safety Conscious
First, I want to extend my sincerest condolences to George Weber’s family and friends.
Second, reading about Weber’s death reminded me of a joke—this has to be the worst start to a second paragraph ever—that JonStewart told on The Daily Show during the darkest days (er, years) of the insurgency in Iraq. Conservatives were complaining that a biased media wasn’t reporting any of the good news in Iraq, nothing about all those freshly painted schoolrooms or, um, all those other freshly painted schoolrooms; the news out of Iraq then was all bloodletting, beheadings, and car bombs, all the time.
“Yeah,” Stewart deadpanned. “We never hear about the cars that don’t explode.”
What happened to Weber was horrifying—what John Katehis allegedly did to Weber was horrifying—and, again, my heart goes out to his friends and family. And, yes, there are lessons in this horrific crime for anyone seeking sex and/or love online. But looking for sex online is not, as some have insisted in the wake of Weber’s murder, so inherently risky a pursuit that only a lunatic would contemplate it. Remember: We never hear about the people hooking up online who don’t get brutally murdered—and unlike cars in Iraq that haven’t exploded (yet), it’s actually relevant that most people hooking up online aren’t brutally murdered.
Every day tens of thousands of people—hundreds of thousands—find partners online. While lots of folks online are seeking relationships at sites like Match.com or Christiansingles.com, there are more people online at any given moment seeking NSA sex at sites like AdultFriendFinder.com or Recon.com. (People seeking relationships can find love the old-fashioned way, at work or by going out, and many do. And the ones who go online stop lurking online after they’ve met someone and appeared in an eHarmony commercial. NSAers, on the other hand, have better odds finding other NSAers online, and they’re always coming back for more.) If random internet hookups were even half as dangerous as crimes like this make them seem—if they were even one-one-hundredth as dangerous—there would be a dozen online-hookup murders in New York City every day, and scores more in Toronto and San Francisco and Miami and Vancouver and Chicago.
No one should be cavalier about safety when it comes to internet hookups, of course; people seeking NSA or fantasy-fulfillment sex online need to use common sense and take all reasonable precautions. Insist on a verifiable exchange of real names and real phone numbers before meeting; meet in person first, in a public place, preferably at a time when you can’t mess around immediately after your first meeting. And people seeking the services of a pro should go to one of the dozen or more established websites out there that host ads from pros along with client reviews.
And it’s always a bad idea to post an offer for $60 in exchange for sex to the crowd of fakes and freaks who have overrun Craigslist, as Weber is reported to have done. Meeting cheap whores via Craigslist ups your odds of hooking up with, say, a mentally unstable teenage “satanist” with a coke problem and a MySpace page packed with pictures of him wielding knives and swords.
Now perhaps Weber, working as a freelancer, couldn’t afford the services of $200-an-hour professional dominant; maybe he had lowballed it on Craigslist a dozen times before and always had good experiences. Most people who ignore my advice about safety, or hook up with cheap CL hookers, do live to tell the tale. But when it comes to realizing a fantasy that involves violence or helplessness, someone safe, sane, and expensive is more than worth the investment.
Finally, people take calculated risks all the time for pleasures less essential than sex. You’re assuming a certain degree of risk—of injury, of death—every time you get in a car, go skiing, or order the chicken. We do what we can to minimize those risks (buckle the fuck up, wear a helmet, don’t order your chicken rare), but we don’t hold up deaths on highways, slopes, or at the dinner table as evidence that people who even think of driving, skiing, or chickening have to be out of their minds.
The sad fact is that some of us will die at the hands of our intimate partners. Do what you can to minimize your risk of being murdered by a sex partner, because some people are dangerous lunatics—and not just internet hookups. Yes, George Weber took the wrong guy home, no question. So did Laci Peterson.
My fiancé is bisexual. I fulfill his “man-love” fantasies by strapping it on and giving it to him, but he has started talking about wanting to have sex with men. I feel like a jerk for freaking out about this, but I’m not willing to entertain the emotional and physical risks of opening our relationship to another person. Am I totally off base here, Dan?
What The Fuck Is Wrong With Men These Days
Do not marry this man.
Lots of bisexual guys are capable of monogamy, as are lots of bisexual girls. (That’s what angry bisexuals are always telling me, at any rate, in their angry e-mails.) But this bisexual guy is not, and he’s made that clear. He gets points for being honest—and I mean that sincerely. He gets points for telling you now, before the wedding, that being pegged, while wonderful in its own right, isn’t enough and that he’s going to need a little man-love reality now and then. You might be able to extract a promise from him under duress, WTFIWWMTD, and get him to agree to sexual exclusivity as a condition of going ahead with the marriage. But that will just result in you facing the emotional and physical risks of an open relationship without the honesty and accountability that can mitigate those risks.
And to the angry bisexuals: You know I don’t think monosexuals are any good at monogamy either, right?
My partner and I have been together for four years. Last year we sought to experiment with another couple via an adult website. We eventually found a sexy pair who we met up with, but the experience left me feeling unsure about how comfortable I am with the idea of the “swinging” lifestyle. I know my partner loves me and is loyal, and he’s messed around a bit with others since we’ve been together and that’s okay (so have I, also okay), but getting together with another couple was a lot more personally challenging than I thought. How can I get more comfortable and open-minded about this?
Swinger Wannabe
The problem might have been the other couple, SW, and not the swinging lifestyle per se. You could give it another shot, with another couple, and see if you feel differently. If you do and you don’t, well, then you may have to accept—or, more to the point, the boyfriend will have to accept—that synchronized infidelity just isn’t for you.
03.26.09
The two things that I dig most on a woman are a nice big pair of… swim fins. Some of my earliest sexual fantasies revolve around Jacqueline Bisset in The Deep. It’s frustrating to have such a bizarre fetish. There is a small subculture devoted to scuba fetishism on the internet, but it’s a total sausage/snorkel fest. One day I’m heading somewhere tropical like Hawaii, where I hope to meet scuba divas. Until then, what do you suggest? Give up my fetish and embrace vanilla? Or redouble my efforts to find one of the maybe half-dozen women in the world into this?
Fin Fun Fan
It’s amazing how the sight of something as innocuous-yet-titillating as the poster for The Deep can, if a young man lays eyes on it at just the right moment, endow that boy with a lifelong/love-life-complicating fetish. I ponder this phenomenon every time I see that ad for Old Spice’s new Live Wire body wash featuring an impossibly hot centaur soaping up in the shower. (While you regard your fetish as a burden, FFF, at least you can find scuba gear. Where are all the fetishists being created by Old Spice supposed to find centaurs?)
The odds that you will one day meet one of the very few women out there who share your fetish are slim, FFF. But let’s say you manage to track one down. What are the odds that you’ll be attracted to her physically? And emotionally? Slim and slimmer. Your best bet is to date women you find attractive, demonstrate that you’re a decent and loving guy who can enjoy vanilla sex, and then roll out your fetish.
Some would argue that withholding info about your fetish is dishonest. I would argue, however, that “withholding” info about a harmless fetish—FF just wants to play dress-up, he’s not into shit or shunts or shin splints—demonstrates a certain degree of emotional intelligence. Waiting until about three months in says to prospective scuba babes, “Hey, I wanted you to get to know me before I told you this, because I realize that it might strike you as odd. And while I’m kinky, I’m not obtuse or insensitive.”
I am a straight 22-year-old male who identifies as a crossdresser. I enjoy it, and I’m okay with myself. But my ex-girlfriend revealed to me that it made her feel like less of a woman and that I was doing the female version of emasculation to her. (Ask.com says the word is “femasculation.”) How can I work through this with my ex so we can get back together?
Bashfully Oblivious Ovary Buster
Either your ex was honestly threatened by your crossdressing, BOOB, or she’s doing what a lot of us do when a seemingly decent relationship comes to shit for no good reason: She’s looking for an explanation, and your crossdressing is the low-hanging fruit. Blaming the crossdressing allows her to rationalize the breakup in a way that leaves you both blameless, i.e., the relationship was done in by your panties and not by something that she did or by something that you had any real control over.
Can you help her work through this? Probably not, BOOB, particularly if she was actually feeling “femasculated.” You could agree to stop crossdressing, but you’ll only wind up doing it on the sly. You’ll get caught in panties and end up dumped all over again. And if pointing to your crossdressing was just a rationalization, BOOB, then there’s nothing to solve here, no way of working through this. Find a new girlfriend.
I’m a 24-year-old guy, and I just got a blowjob from (and gave a half-assed one to) a transsexual male-to-female prostitute. It was no accident: I’d spent about two years looking at TS porn (as well as regular guys-doing-it-with-girls porn), and the whole thing seemed like a hot idea. But the plastic-surgery scars around her tits and her cock in my mouth kind of made me nauseated. I went through the motions only because I didn’t have the guts to walk out. (We both had condoms on.
I’m not sure if I can face my girlfriend of a year. I’ve been faithful to her until now, and I feel like crying. I don’t know if it’s because it was illegal (prostitution), because I was cheating on her (unfaithful), or because I can’t say I’m totally straight anymore (cock in my mouth). I don’t know how to tell my girlfriend. She knows I look at porn, but she doesn’t know I look at TS porn—no one does.
Regrets About Gay Experience
Paradoxically, RAGE, going down on a shemale escort shores up your heterosexual bona fides. Gay guys don’t frequent and/or fellate shemale escorts (on purpose or by accident); getting with shemales is an entirely straight-male pursuit. So you can go right on identifying as straight, RAGE. Of course you aren’t totally straight—try thinking of yourself as something more than straight, not less—but you’re close enough that you can round yourself down to straight with a clear conscience. (Offer void the day you start blowing hemale escorts.)
As for the rest of your angst: If you’re serious about this woman, then cheating on her like this was a shitty thing to do. But you’re not married yet, RAGE, and now’s the time to get out there and satisfy any outstanding sexual curiosities—before marriage and before kids. And while unburdening yourself to the girlfriend may sound like the noble thing to do—honestly being the best policy and all—each of us gets to take at least one big secret to the grave. If this truly was a one-time, lesson-learned, never-again experience, let it be the secret you’re buried with.
Finally, RAGE, good on you and your escort for using condoms. But there are a whole host of sexually transmitted infections you could’ve picked up from her, condom or no condom. Make whatever excuse you need to in order to get out of having sex with the girlfriend, go get a full STI screening, and refrain from having sex until you get the all clear from your doctor.
While your response for To Rape Or Not To Rape is great advice to keep a horny guy out of a legal jam, you failed to consider whether the woman TRONTR is corresponding with is an actual consenting person. Just because TRONTR has couple of IMs, a photo, and e-mail consent to rape one janedoe@geemale.com doesn’t mean he’s actually corresponding with a person who shares his fantasy. He could be corresponding with a person impersonating Jane Doe. I have friends who’ve had personal ads placed online with their names, photos, and addresses imploring someone to abduct and rape them. The situation reeks of a setup, and your advice is irresponsible.
Poster Bitch
TRONTR indicated in his letter that he wouldn’t do anything with this person until he met her in person for drinks and verified her identity and interests. I encouraged him to get it in writing in addition to getting a verbal and visual confirmation, not in place of either. There are people out there maliciously posting personal ads; there are also people out there sincerely interested in rape and abduction role-play scenes. Anyone thinking about realizing a fantasy as extreme and edgy as abduction/rape role-play needs to get it in writing and from the lips of the person or persons with whom he or she intends to play.
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