The Scope

Savage Love

I’m writing to you to settle a dispute between my husband and me. We have been married for six years. We’re not terribly adventurous, but we’re not totally vanilla, either. However, there is one issue that is driving me insane: My husband constantly pesters me to have anal sex. We have tried it in the past, and it is NOT my bag. I don’t enjoy it AT ALL. But my husband will not stop pestering me. He thinks if we just keep trying, eventually I’ll come around to liking it. I’m pretty GGG, Dan, but this is one thing where I draw the line. He thinks I’m being unreasonable; I think he is. Do I need to give in, or does he need to get off my back?

Needing Expert Advice

I think we should all be—as I’ve written about a hundred thousand times—good (in bed), giving (of pleasure, of indulgences), and game (for very nearly anything), aka GGG. And I frequently like to remind married people—particularly, married people who value monogamy—that they willingly assumed sole responsibility for their spouses’ sexual fulfillment.
That said, NEA, we are each entitled to our likes and dislikes.

But before I let you off the anal hook: I’m assuming that your all-caps emphasis—“NOT my bag,” “don’t enjoy it AT ALL”—means that you find anal penetration to be a physical trial and/or an emotional torment. “I could TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT” or “There’s nothing in that for ME” or “That leaves me COLD” are not good enough reasons to refuse to occasionally indulge your spouse in whatever it is that gets him/her off. While it would be wonderful if every couple’s sex life consisted entirely of acts that both partners found equally thrilling—so egalitarian! So fairzees!—a fulfilling sex life is too important, particularly for monogamous couples, to trust in coincidence alone.

Okay, NEA, getting back to your ass: You tried it, you didn’t like it, and you don’t have to keep doing it. And, yes, your husband should stop pestering you about it, NEA, but you do have to let him grieve—grieve for the ass he isn’t going to get from you and, if you’re monogamous, grieve for the ass he isn’t going to get anywhere else.

And speaking of anal…

Nancy Elliott, a state representative in New Hampshire, wants to ban same-sex marriage in that state—where it’s been legal for less than three months—and here’s her reasoning: “We’re talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wiggling it around in excrement. And you have to think… would I allow that to be done to ME?”

Where to begin? How about here…

If you’re wiggling your penis around in excrement when you’re having anal sex, Representative Elliott, you’re doing it wrong. You would think this would be obvious even to people who’ve never had anal sex, but apparently not. So let me break it down for you, Representative Elliott: You don’t have anal sex with an ass full of shit for the same reason you don’t have oral sex with a mouth full of food. It’s messy and no one wants a mess. (Except for the people who do want a mess, of course, but they’re a blessed rarity.) An empty, douched, and lubed anal cavity isn’t that much dirtier than an empty, flossed, and brushed oral cavity.

I will concede that excrement is for anal what Representative Elliott is for the New Hampshire State Legislature: a PR disaster. But excrement-free anal sex is easy. Make sure there’s some fiber in your diet, be regular, and only go for it when you’re empty—no anal during your butt menses!—and you’ll never get excrement on a single wigglin’ dick.

And now a question for you, Representative Elliott: Are you really sure you want to make it illegal for buttfuckers to get married?

“According to a 2005 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” a commenter whom I’m going to quote at length (hey, Baconcat!) wrote on a blog in reaction to Elliott’s remarks, “40 percent of men and 35 percent of women between 25 and 44 had engaged in heterosexual anal sex. Some studies put the incidence of anal sex in the heterosexual population as low as 24 percent and some as high as 56 percent. Averaging those numbers, let’s say 38.8 percent of heterosexuals engage in anal sex. Ninety-six percent of Americans are straight. There are 190,000,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 65 in the United States, so that means 70,771,200 adults are engaging in heterosexual anal sex. Four percent of the adult population is gay, or 7,600,000 people. Roughly half—3,800,000—are gay males. Polls indicate that between 55 and 80 percent of gay males participate in anal sex. Taking the average—67.5 percent—that means the number of gay men having anal sex comes to 2,565,000.”

Math is hard, Representative Elliott, but see if you can’t wiggle this into your cranial cavity: 70,771,200 is more—a whole lot more—than 2,565,000. Anal sex in America is primarily a heterosexual pursuit. So if you really want to protect the sacred sanctity of marriage from the unholy taint of penises wiggling in rectums, Representative Elliott, you need to ban straight marriage first. (We needn’t protect marriage from lesbians, of course, because lesbians don’t have anuses.)

••••

I am a 26-year-old female who likes anal sex. The problem is my boyfriend’s dick is too big. It’s about nine inches long, but the real issue is girth. I enjoyed anal sex with a previous partner, but my BF and I have done it only once. It was fairly unpleasant, even though we used copious amounts of lube. Are there ways to make anal sex possible for us?

Achingly Needs Anal Love

Stop trying to wiggle that monster into your rectum, ANAL, and focus instead on fingers and toys and orgasms for you, cheeky-fucking for the boyfriend. (Think titty-fucking, but using your ass cheeks instead of your tits.) Have lots of orgasms with toys of various sizes in your ass. Then every once in a while—when you’re feeling it, when your ass feels like it’s ready, when you’re not having your butt menses—ease the boyfriend in. He should stay absolutely still while you get yourself off with your hands or a vibrator. The next time you’re feeling it, put him in and let him move around just a little while you get yourself off.

The goal here—and it’s a long-term goal—is to make anal sex as pleasurable for you as it is, or will be one day, for the boyfriend. Take your time, ANAL, don’t rush things, and thanks for being one of the 70,771,200 straight people out there who prove every day that you can have anal sex and access to legal marriage, too.

••••

I am an 18-year-old female college freshman. My boyfriend is also 18. He recently confided in me that he wanted to wear my panties and a dress while I wore his boxers and fucked him in the ass with a dildo. I have been reading your column since I was 13. Had I never read your column, I might have assumed my boyfriend was gay or thought he was gross or thought I was gross for liking the idea. Instead, I helped pick out a dress I thought would look sweet on him, and we had a wonderful time. Thank you so much!

Loves Boys In Panties

No, thank you, LBIP, because every time a straight girl sticks something up a straight boy’s ass, a bigoted state representative dies a little inside.

Savage Love

Three?

I’m a single (mostly) gay guy who is curious about women. A hot bisexual mate is interested in a friends-with-benefits arrangement. I’m not looking for an LTR just now, so regular, no-strings sex sounds great. However, his girlfriend doesn’t know he’s bisexual, and I’d feel uncomfortable having sex with him behind her back. I’ve said no to guys in the past, bi and gay, because they wanted to go behind their partners’ backs. My mate would like his girlfriend to know about him because he’d really like to have threesomes with her (something I’m up for), but he’s worried about how she’ll react.

Personally, I’d be more concerned about how she might react if she found out about his sexuality some other way. That’s one reason why I always err on the side of honesty. However, I’m not exactly unbiased: I’d prefer threesomes to dicks-only sessions. What should I do?

HORNY HOMO

How about a little honesty mixed with a little dishonesty?

Your mate should offer his girlfriend the boy-girl-boy threesome that all of today’s modern young women fantasize about. (Blame Twilight—why can’t Bella have it all?) If your mate is worried that she’ll react negatively to the suggestion, he can open by telling her that what he’s about to propose was all your idea. She’ll want to know if his gay-but-bi-curious mate—that’s you—is going to want to get into his presumed-to-be-straight pants. Your mate should shrug and say, “Maybe…” and depending on the look on her face when the possibility of Edward-on-Jacob action is raised—disgusted or intrigued?—end with either “…but I don’t think I’m interested in going there” (leaving open the possibility of “getting carried away” and “going there” during the threesome) or “…and I might go there if that would turn you on” (making any boy-on-boy action at the threesome something he did for her).

If the threesome is a success and you two wind up playing with and in front of her, HH, your mate can come to the sudden and shocking realization that he’s bisexual. This will hopefully lead to future threesomes and, perhaps, at some point, her blessing for some boys-only time. If she objects, HH, your mate can blame her for “making” him bisexual—or making him realize it—because he fell on your sword that first time because it was what she wanted.

•••

I’m a woman whose “super-hetero” boyfriend is quite shy and needs to build trust before he can open up to someone. Since I have gained his trust, he has revealed that he fantasizes about m-m-f threesomes. I’ve asked him if he is turned on by the idea of another man’s penis, and he says no, he just wants to see me have sex with another man. Yet when he describes his dirtiest fantasies to me at the peak of arousal, he says he gets off on the idea of double penetration—one penis in my anus, another in my vagina—and wants to feel the other man’s penis bump up against his own, separated by my innards.

Do you think he is bisexual or bi-curious? We intend to enact this fantasy, and I wonder if it could shift the dynamic of our relationship.

THREESOME CURIOUS

It can be hard to predict whether a man will have an epiphany during an m-m-f threesome and come to the sudden and shocking realization that he’s bisexual. (Um… does your boyfriend refer to his male friends as “mate,” by any chance? Is he a fan of the Twilight series?) He’s obviously more aroused by male-male contact than he’s capable of admitting when he isn’t about to blow a load, TC. This fantasy of his isn’t about, or isn’t just about, wanting to gangbang a girl with a buddy. Your boyfriend wants to bump penises with another dude—but with your, um, lady “innards” providing the “no homo” absolution.

But I don’t think you need to extract a full confession of bi-curiousness or even heteroflexibility before you realize this fantasy. He may not be in denial about what his desires add up to, TC. He just may want to check his fantasies about male-male contact against the reality of male-male contact before he tells you what he suspects: He’s the tiniest bit bisexual.

•••

I have an uncle who calls me “faggot” whenever he and I are alone in the same room. He’s a conservative, straight Mormon. I’m a boy who’s had sexual encounters with guys and girls, and I’m trying to figure out my own sexuality while dealing with all of the other stuff that comes with going off to college, and frankly I don’t need his crap. Do I tell my parents? I’m kind of bi right now, so he’s half right, but what business is it of his?

UNCERTAIN NEPHEW CRAVING LEVELHEADED EXPLANATION

Your uncle is hitting on you, UNCLE, in his fashion—that is, the fashion of the tormented, self-hating, conservative/religious closet case. If you don’t wanna find yourself standing there with your uncle’s tongue stuffed in your mouth someday—you’d be surprised how quickly someone can stuff his tongue in your mouth—I would advise you not to spend another moment alone with your asshole uncle. And, yes, tell your parents what he’s been doing. Because, UNCLE, if he ever makes a pass at you and a scene ensues—you scream, you yell, you bite his tongue off and spit it out the window—your uncle is going to insist that you made the pass at him.

•••

I’m a 31-year-old gay man. My boyfriend and I have been together for five years. We have enjoyed a few threesomes with other men, so I assumed I could share a particular fantasy of mine: I’ve never had sex with a woman and I want to.

I am not questioning my sexuality, I’m not “bi,” I have zero desire to date women. But my boyfriend immediately accused me of having issues with my sexuality, and after a two-week fight I dropped it. Fast-forward to just before Christmas: I received a promotion, moved to a new floor, and have my own office now—and one of my new female coworkers has been coming on to me. First problem: She’s married, so that would be crossing a line. Second, we’re coworkers and she has even more to lose than I do.

Is there some other way—I already tried the direct approach—to bring this fantasy up to my boyfriend again, or should I just let it go?

FLIRTING WITH DANGER

I’m shocked that your boyfriend—a man who’s willing to share his boyfriend’s ass with other men—would react so violently to your curiosity about lady innards. But seeing as the direct approach prompted a two-week-long fight, FWD, I can’t imagine you would have much more success with the indirect approach. (I can’t imagine what the indirect approach would be.)

Since you’re not strictly monogamous and the boyfriend’s not strictly rational about this, FWD, a case could be made for satisfying your lady-innards curiosity on the sly and filing the affair under “what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” But I can’t think of a worse set of lady innards to satisfy your curiosity with than this woman’s. You could wind up losing your job and your boyfriend if the affair got ugly and got out.

Wait, FWD, wait. In time, some other gay-outards-curious lady will come along, and perhaps by then your boyfriend will have come around.

Love is blind

I am a 34-year-old straight, single female. I have a fantasy I can’t find much about online, so I figured I’d ask you for advice.

My fantasy is to be blindfolded, bent over a table/couch/whatever, and fucked by whoever happens to walk by. I realize this would have to take place in a safe environment, but most sex clubs or parties tend to be for swingers, specifically couples. There’s a sex club nearby that looks like it might cater to my fantasy, but can I just walk in off the street and bend over? Do I need to go a few times first and talk to people? That kind of kills the fantasy of it, really. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Take A Number

You could probably walk into a sex club and bend over—lord knows some gay men do just that—but it would be a bad idea.

But you can realize your fantasy, TAN, and here’s how: Most swingers clubs permit couples and single women to attend parties (sorry, single guys). Go to a few parties, keep your pants on, introduce yourself around, find a couple or two whom you click with. Share your fantasy with your new friends and ask if they might be interested in helping you realize it.

And your fantasy is totally realizable—I’ve seen very similar ones realized once or twice—but the only way to realize your fantasy safely is with a couple of trusted friends hovering nearby. You need someone there who’s making sure that men who take advantage of you in your bent-over-and-blindfolded state have condoms on and don’t attempt to do anything other than what you’ve consented to.

Sometimes realizing a fantasy requires a little suspension of disbelief, TAN, so you’ll just have to pretend your guardian angels aren’t there watching out for you. And if part of what makes the fantasy so hot is being a helpless sex object in a room full of strangers, you can always go with your friends to a different sex club, one where you don’t know anyone but that your new friends checked out for you in advance.

•••

I’m a single, straight guy who just turned 30. Never had a serious relationship, had sex twice. Not for a lack of opportunity, but I wasn’t ready for it emotionally until I was about 25. I’m a good-looking guy with a good job. I’m funny, independent, and easygoing. But I feel like there is a wall preventing me from having a relationship. Part of it is that I like having my own space. I like solitude, but I feel like I could let someone in my life and make time for her and go from there. And another part of it is I cannot for the life of me flirt with a girl I find attractive. I can turn a girl I’m not attracted to beet red if I have to, but I get tongue-tied around girls I think are hot.

Now that I feel mature enough to have someone in my life, what can I do to break down this wall I’ve put up to protect myself?

Lonely One Seeks Ties

P.S. I should probably add that I’m a submissive. Not that I’m looking to be emotionally dominated or anything, but being tied up in a corner and only speaking when Mistress tells me it’s okay sounds pretty awesome.

I’m glad you included that postscript, LOST.

Google the term “munch,” along with “BDSM” and the name of the city where you live (or the nearest big city if you live in buttfucknowhere). Munches are informal gatherings hosted by and for straight folks into BDSM; most are hosted by reputable BDSM or sex clubs—Orlando Power Exchange, Los Angeles’s Threshold Society, Seattle’s Center for Sex Positive Culture—and nothing happens at a munch. No sex, no play, just conversation and lunch. You’ll meet other kinky straight folks who are interested in what you’re interested in, and you’ll be forced to interact with the women there—even the ones who typically leave you tongue-tied.

•••

Serious question here: Does putting toothpaste or Bengay or whatever else on one’s scrotum cause sterility or have any other negative health effects?

Lonely One Seeks Ties

AUm… nope. It would probably be for the best if the guys who’ve posted YouTube videos of themselves putting Bengay on their balls were all sterile, GBOF, but most will sadly reproduce.

•••

I’m a pretty hairy dude. I like my hairy chest. I like growing a beard in the winter. I like my hairy arms and legs. The only place that I don’t like hair is my crotch. I shave my pubes pretty regularly, but I have long, scraggly, gross hairs all over my balls, which I could really do without. The thought of accidentally cutting myself down there has been a pretty good deterrent from going at it with a razor, and just the idea of putting some hair-removal product like Nair down there makes me wince. I’ve poked around the internet and haven’t been able to find a real satisfactory answer, so I thought I’d turn to my last resort: Is there a safe, easy, relatively pain-free way to get rid of this unsightly hair?

Clever Nickname Up To You

Um… nope. Waxing is the way to go, but it smarts.

•••

Your advice for Seriously Troubled Here, the MARRIED MAN whose WIFE made out with another man (who she CLAIMS was gay) was the kind of knee-jerk anti-male bullshit and anti-male bias that straight men have come to expect from therapists, advice columnists, and “sex experts.” She gets drunk and flirts with other men and MAKES OUT WITH THEM, and he’s the douchebag?

Fuck you and your misandry. Men shouldn’t seek your advice because you’re clearly incapable of taking their side. You may not like pussy yourself, you cocksucker, but you’ll take the twat’s side every time. The world doesn’t need another asshole “advice professional” who sides with the woman no matter what she does.

Men Against Dan

Excuse me? I’m the advice columnist—I’m practically the only advice columnist—who doesn’t automatically leap to the woman’s side in a dispute. I’m the guy who tells women that all men watch porn (so get over it or get a dog), that oral comes standard (sucking cock and eating pussy), and that under certain circumstances a husband (or a wife) has a right and a responsibility to cheat (just because you’re not interested in sex anymore doesn’t mean he has to go without for the rest of his life). You won’t get that from Prudie or Amy or Carolyn.

Sorry, MAD, and everyone else who wrote in: I stand behind my advice to STH. His wife was apologetic and recognized that her behavior would have to change because it was, at the very least, deeply upsetting to her husband. She also confessed to kissing another dude, a gay dude, two years before they married, and he was having trouble forgiving her. If the roles were reversed—husband kissed lesbian two years before the wedding and wife couldn’t forgive and move on—you can bet your clenched butts that I would’ve called the wife a douchebag.

For crying out loud, MAD, I’ve told wives—and husbands—to forgive and forget infidelities. Did you really expect me to tell STH to leave his wife over a kiss?

Listen to Dan Savage’s podcast online at www.podcasts.thestranger.com/savagelove/archives.php#a045674

Ouch damn it

I’ve been married four years and have a beautiful baby boy with my husband. I enjoy sex a lot, even a bit of BDSM. My husband, on the other hand, isn’t “driven by sex,” as he likes to put it, and will try tying me up if that’s what I “really want.” You’d think if he wasn’t driven by sex, the few times we did have sex, he would last for a while, but he lasts at best five minutes. On the occasional blue moon, it’ll be about 10 minutes. My problem is, all I can think about is getting fucked by some stranger with no strings attached so I can get rid of this heartbreak, for lack of a better word. But I always back out, because I don’t want to risk my family or my husband’s happiness. I don’t want to be a cheater, Dan, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life having missed out on my “sexual prime” because my husband already experienced his. I should mention that he’s 35 and I’m 23. I also have a few poly friends who are kinky, and they preach to me that being monogamous is a mistake and I can seek out kinky play with others without it being sexual. Please be as brutal as possible.

Permission 2 Explore Please

Before I get to your question, P2EP, a programming note: FUCK OUCH DAMN IT CHRIST! I’m suffering from some sort of carpal-tunnel/repetitive-motion/too-much-beating-off injury, and it feels like my right arm is on fire. Every letter I type sends a blast of white-hot pain up my arm and into my head and FUCK OUCH DAMN IT CHRIST! Since I’m in a great deal of pain here, I thought it only appropriate that I give the column over to letters about BDSM. That way, someone—my kinkiest readers—can enjoy my suffering.

Okay, P2EP, you have my permission. Not to explore, as it’s not in my power to grant you permission to do that. You have my permission to go and demand permission to explore from your lazy, selfish, inconsiderate husband. Renegotiate your deal. You have needs, they’re not being met, and he doesn’t seem interested in meeting them. Tell him that you will remain sexually exclusive—only his cock gets near your holes (for now)—but you want and need and demand permission to at least explore erotic-but-not-fully-sexual kink with others. Sell it to him as something that relieves him of the burden of having to do this stuff—kink—with you and/or feeling bad about not doing this stuff with you.

•••

I’m a straight man, age 26. I was just dumped by a married couple. The wife was very sadistic, and the husband did not enjoy pain. When we got together, she would hurt me (TT, CBT, flogging) before fucking him. The wife asked if I wanted to play alone sometime, and I said yes. When she asked her husband and told him that she had already checked with me and I was willing, he said that I had violated our agreement. It isn’t easy finding people into SM where we live—the Bible Belt of Canada—and playing alone was her idea, not mine. What do I do?

Dumped Up North

You move. The husband is blaming you because it’s less consequential than blaming the wife. But he’s clearly not comfortable—FUCK OUCH DAMN IT CHRIST!—having your black-and-blue ass around anymore, due to the wife’s actions, and so you’re out. Unfair, yes, but there’s not a lot you can do about it. Besides move.

•••

I am a 22-year-old bisexual male who goes to a small, prestigious liberal-arts college in the Midwest. I’ve had boyfriends, girlfriends, and one-night stands, but I have never really felt like sex worked out as well as I imagine it could. I have a dominant personality, and people tend to follow me. Perhaps for this reason, I have fetishized submission. I imagine I would be into bondage and domination. I think I am a bit more attracted to women and would love to find a woman who takes a strong, dominant role in our relationship. I feel like I am always expected to make the first move with women, which has led me to prefer hooking up with men. I just wonder if there is anything I could do to find a woman who’d be into dominating me.

I don’t really like making the first move, but I’ve found just waiting and looking pretty doesn’t work too well with women. Are there some ladies I could approach, and after the initial flirting, the dynamic would change and they would take the lead? How would I know who these people are?

Not Sure What I Want

There may be one or two young women kicking around your small, prestigious liberal-arts college who fantasize about taking the lead, about tying up and dominating their boyfriends, NSWIW, but they’re not going to be tottering around campus in high-heeled boots and latex and leather. And even dominant women who are out tend to observe/succumb to the same cultural norms/practices that you find frustrating, i.e., they expect the male to make the first move, even in kinky environments.

But back to the young women you’re likely to encounter at your prestigious college: A lot of women with naturally dominant and/or sadistic streaks—women who will one day really enjoy BDSM—don’t realize it until that first submissive boyfriend draws it out of them. So if you want to get tied up, pegged, and bossed around while you’re at college, NSWIW, you need to be paradoxically assertive about your submissive tendencies. You may have to ask four or five girls, or a dozen, before you hit the jackpot (before you ask a dominant girl), but you will have to take the lead.

•••

I am a 24-year-old lesbian who has been out for five years. I am also hot, vain, in shape, and kinky as all hell. I suppose I’m what you’d call a “lipstick lesbian.” In any event, I like being thrown around, tied up, gagged, etc. One of my all-time favorite fantasies is the lesbian equivalent of pegging, i.e., being done up the ass by a hot woman with a strap-on. I like the vanilla stuff as well—holding, kissing, cuddling, dyking it up—but what I’m really into is bondage. And my last girlfriend dumped me when I mentioned that I liked to be tied up. My question is, are there other young, kinky, sexaholic feminine lesbians/bisexual women out there? Am I a complete freak? Or am I just being a sexually selfish boor? Should I just try to let go of my kinks?

Domination Yearnings Keep Encounters Stimulating

P.S. Thank you so much for all the times you’ve emphasized that straight men who are into pegging are just that—straight. It helped me to accept that my own pegging fantasies don’t make me any less a lesbian, because so much of their appeal comes from the fact that it would be a woman doing the pegging.

Only a small percentage of women are lesbians, DYKES, and an even smaller number of that already-small number are kinky. Your best strategy is to be out about your kinks from the start, so that you don’t waste any more of your time and vanity-inducing hotness on women who won’t tie your ass up.

And finally: FUCK OUCH DAMN IT CHRIST!

mail@savagelove.net

Cheat, cheat, double-cheat!

I’m a longtime reader who thought I’d never have a reason to write since I’m universally known as the “good girl,” but I’m not sure who else I can turn to. I have a close male friend. Even though I knew he was dating someone else, we became friends-with-benefits several years ago. Because of his relationship (and the fact that he lives with her!), I let him take the lead in setting up our rendezvous. Sometimes when we’d be together, it felt like a booty call; other times, it felt like it was leading to something more. He once admitted that if things were different, he could see us together. He never really talks about his girlfriend with me, and a while ago I discovered that while he was unfaithful to her, he had also been unfaithful to me.

On to the point of this letter: He recently proposed to his girlfriend. I’m happy for him if it’s what he truly wants, but I feel like he did it out of desperation. All I know is that there were some ultimatums involved. Here is my dilemma: I don’t want to out myself, I don’t want to hurt him, and I don’t want to ruin our friendship, Dan, but I feel like she has to know what her fiancé is really like before they get married. I don’t see his cheating stopping just because they’ve exchanged a few vows. Should I anonymously contact her and let her know that her man is a cheating man-whore? Thanks!
ONE OF MANY OTHER WOMEN

Gee… it must have come as a real shock when you realized that a man who was capable of cheating on his live-in girlfriend was also capable of cheating on the girl with whom he was cheating on his live-in girlfriend. No one could’ve predicted, huh?

On to your question: I hate to think of some poor woman marrying a cheating piece of shit (CPOS)—a CPOS is not to be confused with an honest nonmonogamous dude (HND)—in ignorance of his cheating-piece-of-shit-ness. It’s possible that the CPOS’s fiancée already knows and has forgiven him; perhaps one of those ultimatums touched on cheating. But odds are better that this woman doesn’t know, and someone really ought to clue her in before the wedding. But should that person be you?

I’m not comfortable with your motives, OOMOW. You may be known throughout the universe as a “good girl”—as the good girl—but your actions prove that you’re something of a “bad girl.” And there’s more: Your desire to destroy your FWB’s relationship proves that you’re something of a “vindictive girl,” your attempt to pass your vindictiveness off as concern for a woman you’ve repeatedly wronged proves that you’re a “self-deluding girl,” and your desire to accomplish all of this without paying any price yourself—you don’t want to out yourself or risk ruining your “friendship” with the man-whore—proves that you’re a “selfish girl” and a “cowardly girl.”

Back to your motives: The reason you want to do this anonymously is because your top concern is having the CPOS all to yourself, and that means sticking a knife in his current relationship without leaving any fingerprints. So it’s a good thing—a useful thing—that you weren’t the only “other woman” in his life, OOMOW, because he’ll never know for sure which one of his other women ratted him out.

Setting your highly suspect motives aside…

If I were in the fiancée’s shoes, I would want to know what was going on before the wedding. So I do think you should tell her. But if you have any shred of decency—even the tiniest bit—you will tell her personally, apologize profusely, and provide her with some proof. An anonymous tip won’t cut it: A CPOS who has successfully hidden a collection of other women from his fiancée will be able to talk his way out of an anonymous accusation of infidelity. He’ll either claim the e-mail was sent by a vindictive ex-girlfriend of his, which has the benefit of being very nearly true, or he’ll claim that an ex-boyfriend of hers is trying to destroy her happiness.

Finally, OOMOW, why do you want to be with the CPOS? He cheated on his fiancée, he cheated on you, and he probably cheated on the women who he was cheating on the both of you with. He’s a piece of shit, his fiancée is a fool, and you’re a vindictive, self-deluding, selfish coward. I’m not sure if you can all do better, or that any of you deserve better, but I do think you should all try.

•••

I’m a hetero girl in my 20s. I love masturbating and find myself really good at it, but a lot of the time I get nothing from hetero porn. Usually it’s because I can’t stand the girls’ annoying voices. So I rely on gay porn instead, even when I’m reading erotica. I tend to go for what you gay guys call “twinks.” (Who the hell is a twink, technically speaking? Please don’t tell me it’s anything statutory!) I’m not really concerned, I’m just curious: Is this a common problem? I now get really intrigued when I meet gay guys in real life because I get off to so many gay men in porn. I would love to watch two twinks in reality at some point, but I’m not sure if any gay guys would ever be into that.
TWINK LOVER

Twinks are boyish gay men—boyish men, not boyish boys—in their late teens to mid-20s with slim-to-slightly-muscular bodies and relatively hairless chins, chests, crotches, etc. So long as you’re getting your live-action porn from reputable porn sites and companies, TL, you don’t have anything to worry about on the statutory front.

As for watching a couple of twinks go at it, there are lots of bisexual twinks out there—perhaps you could date one and have the odd three-way with others? There are also, without a doubt, some twink gay couples out there as turned on by the idea of some straight girl watching them go at it as you are turned on by the idea of watching a couple of twinks go at it. And thanks to the World Wide Interfluffer, finding them—or renting them—is easier than ever. And speaking of twinks…

However much Playgirl paid Levi Johnston for that photo shoot, it wasn’t enough. Most people thought Playgirl—which ceased publishing in print a while ago—was dead and gone forever. Prior to this photo shoot with Johnston, who even knew that Playgirl had a website? Or that Playgirl had a publicist? A publicist who had this to say after the shoot: “We were talking in the greenroom about gay categories—bear, cubs—and Levi asked what his type would be. We decided a twink, but older, so we anointed him a ‘twunk.’”

I love the idea of a twunk—an older twink—but Levi Johnston is 19 years old. How old is a twink supposed to be if a 19-year-old is already an aged twunk? No, no: Johnston was never a twink. He is a high-school jock—the hockey variety, to the delight of gear fetishists everywhere—gone slightly to seed. But what’s more interesting than sorting Johnston into his exact gay etymological category is watching Johnston, once a major homophobe, become increasingly comfortable with the gays. Celebrity—and that’s what he is now—means having to hang out and work with (and work for) a certain number of out homos. One of those homos no doubt explained to Johnston that not many women would be masturbating to his pictures on Playgirl’s website. It seems that homophobia is a luxury that Levi can’t afford anymore.

And, psst, Levi? If you did that Playgirl shoot only to drive your former future mother-in-law crazy—and if that was your plan, kiddo, it seemed to work—imagine how much crazier she’ll get if you do a little gay-for-pay porn. Just sayin’.

•••

A girl won’t just appear in your bedroom

I’m a 20-year-old girl, and I’ve been dating my boyfriend, who is 23, for two years. From the get-go, he has known that I am bi, and like most straight guys, he’s happy to be with a girl who likes girls.

The thing is, I am too shy to go out and hit on a girl. Getting a man was the easy part, but getting a girl who is willing to fuck around not only with me but also with my boyfriend is a daunting task. I encourage my boyfriend to talk to women since he is good eye candy. But I get kinda sorta jealous when he actually goes and talks to other women. It’s a weird game that gives me a headache. All I want is to satisfy my cravings for a woman—is that too much to ask? Am I just being selfish? Why can’t girls just appear in my bedroom?

CRAZY ABOUT GIRLS ETERNALLY

Because you’re not Logan, CAGE, and there’s no such thing as the Circuit (www.tinyurl.com/cfj89d)—not yet, anyway, even if the internet kinda sorta comes close.

If watching your boyfriend hit on girls—ostensibly on your behalf—gives you a headache and makes you jealous, then you’re going to have to learn to hit on girls yourself, CAGE, either in person or online. And you might have more success landing a willing bisexual girl—a girl who’s interested in you and your boyfriend—if you made the passes.

Nice, sexually adventurous girls approached by 23-year-old pieces of male eye candy about two-girls/one-guy threesomes will assume that it’s about Eye Candy’s fantasies, not the girlfriend’s. And if you’re hanging back, looking uncomfortable, jealous, and headachy, even a girl who might be up for a threesome is going to read reluctance into your demeanor, presume your boyfriend is pressuring you, and politely decline. Or she’s going to think you have the swine flu and decline.

If you want pussy, CAGE, you’ll have to take the lead. Remember: It’s okay to be geeky and inept and awkward when you’re hitting on someone; some people think it’s cute, and smooth is overrated when it comes to making passes. (Your boyfriend sounds pretty smooth—what has it gotten you?) Practice a few cheesy lines, something direct and truthful, something along the lines of, “We think you’re really hot, and we’ve always wanted to have a threesome”—and just blurt it out at the next pretty, flirty girl who crosses your paths. If you can’t do that, post personal ads online and flirt via e-mail. There are a lot of couples online looking for thirds, CAGE, and you’ll increase your odds of success if you offer to be a couple’s third in exchange for the woman in the couple taking a turn as the third for you and your boyfriend.

Of course, that might make your boyfriend jealous—but it’s his turn, right?

•••

I’m a straight female in her early 20s, currently engaged to a handsome man three years older. We’re very happy and we have a strong, healthy relationship, but lately I’ve been worried about one question: Considering my limited previous sexual experience (before him, it was oral only), is it still possible to have a long, enjoyable sex life with him? I’ve gotten some (well-intentioned, I’m sure) advice that suggests that we are both making mistakes. I can’t have a satisfying sex life without being able to compare him to anyone else, I’m told, and he’s making a huge mistake by pairing up with a less experienced partner. I hope that the individuals telling me this are wrong.

I have absolutely zero interest in opening up this relationship, and I do my best to be GGG. He says I’m a great lover and a lot more confident in bed now compared to when we first made love, but I want to improve. Still, I don’t want to find out down the road that we made a mistake.

NEGLIGIBLE EXPERIENCE WITH BONING

Are you happy? Is he happy? That’s all that matters. Just keep those lines of communication open, NEWB, while you continue to explore your sexualities together. And remind yourself every once in a while that even the less experienced partner in a relationship is allowed to have likes and dislikes, offer constructive criticisms, and make suggestions—and sometimes demands. And anyone who is being GGG for her partner has every right to expect GGG from her partner.

Finally, tell the “friends” who’re offering you such unhelpful advice—tell those underminers—to go fuck themselves. Some people need to sleep around a bit before they realize what they like and whom they want. That’s not the case for everyone. And there are plenty of men and women out there in miserable, sexually dysfunctional marriages who met after both had plenty of experience.

•••

I have a small problem. My niece is 14, and the other day I met her boyfriend. He’s a sweet boy, with double-pierced ears and amazing fashion sense. My niece fell for him when she saw him sporting a pink jacket in the hallway of school, which is, of course, the reason my niece likes him. What teenage girl wouldn’t want someone to go shopping with? As a middle-aged homosexual myself, I can spot a proto-queer a mile away. Needless to say, my sister loves the boy—he’s a perfect gentleman. I’m inclined to let it be. They’re only 14; what harm could it do? Then I worry, what if this goes on for years? I don’t want her to get hurt. Then again, this boy could just grow up to be a Felix Unger–type heterosexual. Any advice?

A CARING LOVING UNCLE

It’s comforting to think that your niece is safe with this boy, seeing as he’s a perfect little gentleman now and likely to be a perfect little pillow-chomping bottom when he grows up (or one of those rare fashion-forward tops). But a study conducted by the University of British Columbia found that gay and lesbian youth—closeted or otherwise—were more likely to get pregnant/impregnate than their straight peers. Because nothing says “I’M NOT GAY!” like a knocked-up 14-year-old girlfriend.

So here’s what I’d do if I were you, ACLU: Pull the boy aside for a chat. Begin with, “You seem like a nice kid,” and then let him have it: “But if you get my niece pregnant, I will kill you.” Now pay attention to the italicized bits in what comes next: “I’d rather you didn’t fuck her—she’s 14, so are you—but if you need condoms or advice about anything, don’t hesitate to ask. I won’t repeat anything you ask me about to my sister. And don’t think I won’t kick your ass just because I’m gay. I can and I will. Oh, and love the jacket—where did you get it?”

The boy will emerge from this harrowing chat aware that his girlfriend has potentially violent family members who are watching out for her—something all 14-year-old boyfriends should be made aware of—and that he can confide in you, the involved gay uncle, privately and about anything. It’s unlikely that he’ll seize the opportunity to come out to you, ACLU, and it’s important that you accept the premise of his heterosexuality (however improbable it might seem) before, during, and after your talk. You’ll be nudging him in the direction of coming out to someone, at some point, by setting an example, ACLU, while decreasing the odds that he will do real and lasting harm—read: teen pregnancy—to your niece.

As for breaking her heart, well… you can’t protect her from that, and you shouldn’t bother to try. That’s what comes with being 14.

•••

mail@savagelove.net

•••

Listen to the Savage Lovecast here:

Savage Love: Use a real sex toy already!

Dan Savage prefers sex toys to, uh, plungers. Let alone vacuum cleaners.

I’m a straight teenage male, but I can’t climax unless I am stimulating my anus or rectum. I use various objects like cucumbers. The reason I don’t buy a toy is that I live in a very religious household and my parents would disown me if they found a sex toy in my room.

I take a toilet plunger and wrap the handle with toilet paper and tissues. Then I take a plastic bag and put it over the top. After that, I wrap a rubber band around the bottom part of the bag so it can’t slide off, lube it up, and fuck away! I really like this: I can put the suction part on the floor, sit on the handle part, and basically ride it while I use my hands to stroke my dick/balls.

ALWAYS NERVOUS UNTIL SANITIZED

For the love of God, ANUS, get your hands and ass on an actual sex toy—they make dildos with suction-cup bases—before you do some real damage to yourself. Your 10-step toilet-plunger-into-anal-sex-toy plan is ingenious, I’ll admit, and your concern for the health of your family is touching. But given a choice between explaining your masturbatory routine to your parents because they found a dildo in your room or explaining it to them because you wound up in an emergency room because your luck ran out and the bleeding didn’t stop, ANUS, I hope you would opt for the former.

If you’re worried about the repercussions of discovery—such as being disowned—then hide the dildo someplace other than your room. Got siblings? Hide your dildo in the room of your least favorite. If you’re an only child, find a beat-up-looking box, a couple of porn magazines that predate your family’s tenure in your home, and hide the box with the dildo and old mags in the crawl space or a drop ceiling or the rafters. If your folks find it, they’ll think it belonged to some perverted previous owner or tenant, not to their straight-but-needs-anal-stimulation-to-climax son.

A word to my fellow parents: If you find a penetration toy hidden in your child’s room—why were you snooping?—do not freak the fuck out, do not disown your kid, and do not discard the toy. Your child probably went to great lengths to obtain that toy—teenagers can’t just walk into sex shops—and he or she probably didn’t decide to run the risks of obtaining and concealing a sex toy until he or she had a bad experience with an improvised sex toy, e.g., plunger-related rectal bleeding, difficultly retrieving a cucumber from the vaginal canal. If you make a scene and take the toy, your child may not acquire another—but your child’s experiments with insertion will continue. He or she will just go back to using produce (swiped from the fridge for use, then returned to the fridge after use) or plunger handles or worse.

•••

My boyfriend always goes soft after he penetrates me. He’s come in me only a handful of times—and I’m a bottom! When it comes to oral, he doesn’t have trouble staying hard. Even more curious: The guy is only 21! Can someone that young really have “erectile dysfunction”? We’ve tried cock rings, and they don’t help: He can keep his hard-on for a little longer (enough time to get inside me without getting soft), but it doesn’t take long for him to get soft again. Dan, what do you think is going on? He’ll be super-hard when I’m sucking him off, then I’ll start jerking him a bit, then he’ll get inside me, and then a very short while later he’s soft. Is there anything we can do? Does he have ED?

LOVER IS MISSING POUNDINGS

Your boyfriend is hard during oral sex and when you jerk his cock, LIMP, and only loses his erection when he’s in your ass or about to go in. Hmm. That doesn’t sound like ED to me—there’s no such thing as “act-specific ED”—but more like YBDLAS, or “your boyfriend doesn’t like anal sex.”

Your boyfriend may feel pressure to perform, LIMP, as being fucked is important to you. (Please tell me that he’s coming inside a condom when he comes inside you.) And he may feel some pressure to conform. Anal sex among gay men has been elevated to the status of vaginal sex among straight men, LIMP, in that it’s somehow become the defining sex act, despite the fact that roughly a quarter of all gay men don’t enjoy and don’t indulge in anal sex. Your boyfriend may be one of those guys, but he’s too inhibited to tell you how he feels because, hey, it’s buttfucking and he’s gay and all gay men are buttfuckers and if he doesn’t enjoy buttfucking then he’s some sort of defective gay buttfucker.

Tell him he doesn’t have to do it if he doesn’t enjoy it and, for the time being at least, you’re taking anal off the menu—lifting the pressure off his shoulders and dick. Focus on the stuff that works for him right now: oral and JO. And remember, LIMP, if he’s coming in your mouth, he’s still coming inside you.

•••

When I bottom for my BF, if he can’t get it in right away, he goes flaccid. What can I do?

BOY ONLY NEEDS ERECT DICK

BONED put this question to me—via index card—at a “Savage Love Live” event at UC Santa Cruz. I was in a bad way that night—sick with the flu—and somehow misunderstood the question. I read it as the person being fucked went limp when penetration wasn’t immediate, not the person doing the fucking. Sorry about that, BONED. Here’s a useful answer:

Ask the BF what the problem is. He may be worried about you—is he hurting you?—or perhaps the pressure on his cock as he attempts to push it in is painful for him. I don’t think it’s the same problem as LIMP’s boyfriend; your letter seems to imply that there isn’t a problem when the boyfriend bottoms for you, so it’s not about disliking anal sex. It could be, though, that your boyfriend is more of a bottom, i.e., prefers the receptive role during anal intercourse. A lot of bottom guys can top, of course, but some need to quickly get in there and start pumping away, because the sensations help them maintain their erections even as they do this thing—fucking—that they would really prefer to have done to them. A delay in the action, such as an inability to get it in “right away,” could lead to the problem you describe, BONED.

Listen to Dan Savage’s podcast here:

Savage Love: Get Married

Dan Savage says get married if you can, but know that others aren’t as lucky.

My partner and I have a dilemma.

We’re a straight couple. Our lives and finances are intertwined, and we are already essentially living as a married couple. Now we want to hold a ceremony with family and friends to make public the commitment we’ve already made privately. That said, we are in favor of marriage equality and are considering joining the marriage boycott (www.unmarried.org) until DOMA is repealed and every state allows gay marriage.

Our friends and family say we should get married and fight for equality “from the other side of the fence.” On the other hand, a number of the people in attendance at our wedding would not have access to the rights we’d be signing up for, and that feels unfair to us.

We’d like to know what you think. Is boycotting legal marriage a worthwhile statement for straight couples to make? Or do you think we should put gay-rights groups on our registry and fight for marriage equality as a married couple?

HOPING TO RENDER CHANGE

Funny you should ask, HTRC, as last weekend the boyfriend-in-America/husband-in-Canada and I attended the wedding of some dear straight friends. We weren’t the only same-sex couple at the wedding; there were “a number of people in attendance [without] access to the rights” our straight friends were signing up for.

All us homos at the wedding were delighted to be there and deliriously happy for our friends, and not one of us would’ve asked them to wait to marry until gay marriage is legal in all 50 states—something that isn’t going to happen until 2024 at the earliest, according to number-crunchin’ superstar political blogger Nate Silver (tinyurl.com/cn58xy). That’s when Silver predicts that the final holdout—Mississippi—will finally legalize same-sex marriage.

Here’s what I think you should do, HTRC: get married, make a donation to the fight for marriage equality, and encourage your guests to do the same. And, hey, are you guys getting married in the next four weeks? Because there’s a ballot measure in Maine that would strip same-sex couples in that state of their newly won right to wed. Help protect marriage equality in Maine by making a donation—right now—at www.protectmaineequality.org. And religious bigots in Washington State, where I live, are attempting to repeal a domestic-partnership law at the ballot box. Protect the rights of same-sex couples in Washington by making a donation—right now—at www.approvereferendum71.org.

And in addition to throwing some money around, HTRC, I think you should consider lifting one of the readings from my friends’ ceremony.

“Marriage is a vital social institution,” the reading began. “The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.”

So touching, so true, and so universal—who could argue with those sentiments? Everyone at the wedding was nodding. And the reading continued…

“It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a ‘civil right.’ Without the right to choose to marry, one is excluded from the full range of human experience.”

After the reading—which was done by a gay friend of the couple—the officiant identified the source: It was from the 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in that state. It was a lovely gesture: The gay couples at the wedding were touched and the hetero couples were reminded of the injustice that gay couples face. It would be wonderful if this passage from the Massachusetts court’s ruling on marriage equality caught on as a wedding reading, HTRC. The gay people in the pews will be touched, and with any luck, any straight guests who oppose marriage equality will take a moment to reconsider their positions. At the very least, they’ll know where the bride and groom stand.

•••

I’m a high-school student, gay, but whenever someone asks me, I lie and say I’m not. I feel like I’m ashamed of who I am and that I’m dishonoring every openly gay person. But I don’t know what else to do. Most of the other students at my school use the words “gay” and “faggot” in a derogatory way. I’ve only been in high school for four weeks, and I’m not sure how they would react. What should I do? Should I come out?

GAY BOY SEEKING SERIOUS HELP

“I’m a big fan of telling people what to do (just ask my poor boyfriend), but coming out is a deeply personal decision, one you’re going to have to negotiate yourself,” says Benoit Denizet-Lewis, who wrote a cover story for the New York Times Magazine about gay kids coming out in middle school.

“With that said, here’s what you should do. First, the fact that you’re worrying about ‘dishonoring every gay person’ speaks volumes about your character and tells me that you have a heart and a conscience, both of which will serve you well in your life as an openly gay man. Second, consider coming out first to an adult you trust (a school counselor, your gay uncle). Third, try to come out to one friend, preferably one who loves the show Glee. Having a peer ally is critical to your mental health. Finally, when you do come out to your parents, just be sure you’re not in a moving vehicle.”

Denizet-Lewis’s first book, America Anonymous, is out now, and it’s pretty genius. But for the record: I do not love the show Glee.

•••

Greetings from Portland, Oregon. Our fair city is totally overflowing with cute, young, scruffy boys. Which is awesome, of course, for gay guys like me. The only problem is, it seems like a disproportionate number of these boys are, well, boys without dicks—trans guys. Seems like every dance party, every art-fag event, is packed with non-bio boys. But where are all the trans girls? None of my lesbo friends talk about all the new trans girls running around town.

I know that this could strictly be region-specific, but it seems to be a bigger issue. Why is it that the butch girls all seem to become dudes, yet so few of the femme boys identify as women?

GGG IN PDX

I’m just theorizing here: There seem to be fewer MTFs out there than FTMs, and the MTFs who are out there mostly seem to have been straight-identified before their transitions (they were with women), unlike most FTMs, who seem, for the most part, to have been lesbian-identified before their transitions. So MTFs weren’t integrated into the queer community prior to their transitions the same way FTMs were before theirs.

Confused? Me too.

So MTFs are less likely to frequent places—bars, clubs, art-fag events—where you, a gay guy, might encounter them.

As for why there are so many trans guys in Portland, GGGIPDX, trans guys clump up for the same reasons other sexual minorities do. It’s not just about safety in numbers—although it’s partly that—but also about the romantic odds. The more trans guys in one place, the more trans guys there are to date; and the more trans guys in one place, the likelier non-trans guys and girls are to meet, get to know, and perhaps consider dating trans guys.

Listen to Dan Savage’s podcast, episode 155:

Savage Love

You are known far and wide as an arbiter of all aspects of sex and especially definitions of sex, so we are hoping that you can give your definitive opinion on an interesting conundrum.

My wife and I were recently regaling each other with anecdotes from our past, and she easily had the most interesting story: It seems that when she was a young woman in college, a fellow student invited her over for lunch. It turns out that he thought she was lunch. He quickly had her clothes off and was kissing her, although he was still dressed. Then he brought out a vibrator. He applied the vibrator, she had an orgasm, and then she called a halt to the proceedings. They went back to school, and that was the beginning and the end of their relationship.

DEFINITION ESSENTIAL FOR INTENSELY NOVEL EXPERIENCE

Let’s say you and I met in a bar, DEFINE, while the wife was out of town, and we hit it off. And let’s say I took you home, stripped you naked, made out with you, sucked your dick, ate your ass, spanked you, tossed you in a sling, fist-fucked you, and then—with my right arm buried up to my elbow in your ass—slowly stroked you with my left hand until you blew a massive load all over your stomach, chest, and face.

Now let’s say I taped the whole thing and e-mailed a copy to your wife. I think it’s highly unlikely that your wife would turn to you after watching the video—remember: I don’t get naked, you never see my dick—put a hand on your knee, and say, “Well, I’m glad you didn’t have sex with Dan Savage.”

Your wife clearly regrets going to that guy’s room; she regretted the moment she came, just as you would probably regret going home with me. These feelings prompt her to round this experience down to Not Sex, to minimize it, to exclude it from her sexual history on a technicality: He didn’t get naked; she didn’t get fucked. Your wife can attempt to rationalize away the sex she had in that dorm, DEFINE, but she had sex with that guy—and that guy’s vibrator—whether she wants to admit it or not.

—

I’m writing to you to let you know that a huge fan and reader of your column has been in a coma since Saturday, September 5. He had a bad motorcycle accident and has a severe brain injury. His name is Jon Broom, and he’s my boyfriend, the love of my life, and my best friend. Even though he still hasn’t woken up, I’ve been reading your columns out loud to him so that he never misses one. I know you’re a busy man, but I thought I’d take a chance and ask if you could pass on his Facebook support group at “Get Well Jon” in one of your columns (www.tinyurl.com/m3ngc3). I think it would be awesome for him to look back and see your column when he wakes up and is able to function again.

We appreciate your writings and support for the people who ask for your advice. Here’s to hope, faith, and community.

PENNY KIM

Oh, Penny, I’m so sorry. Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery. If you’re on Facebook—and who isn’t?—please join Jon’s support group.

—

I just had to share with you my first reaction at reading this headline: “Santorum dips toes in 2012 Iowa waters.” My first thought was “Ewwww,” followed quickly by “Is that even possible?” After all, santorum is something that is dipped into, not something that can dip. And then I remembered that before “santorum” meant santorum it actually designated a person, a senator. But it took me a few seconds.

Congratulations on a job well done. I expect I am not the only one who had this moment of cognitive dissonance upon reading this headline.

A FAITHFUL READER

Ben Smith at Politico reported last Tuesday that Republican former U.S. senator Rick Santorum plans to run for president. Political Wire linked to Smith’s post and added that “Santorum has a serious Google problem.” Truthdig linked to Political Wire’s post and spelled out Santorum’s Google problem: “The former senator’s rampant homophobia inspired sex columnist Dan Savage to launch a campaign to usurp the conservative’s name. The result: If you type ‘Santorum’ into Google, you’ll find that it refers not to a former senator, but ‘that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.’”

From uppercase Santorum making the news with the announcement that he intends to run (runs?) for president to the full definition of lowercase santorum—in just three steps.

And who deserves the credit? Not me. The credit is yours, dear readers. It’s thanks to you that SpreadingSantorum.com—a blog that I haven’t updated since July of 2004—remains the number-one hit on Google when you search “Santorum.” It was a Savage Love reader who first suggested that we usurp Rick Santorum’s name, another Savage Love reader who suggested the “frothy mixture” definition, and Savage Love readers who chose the winning definition in a free and fair election. Well done, gang.

We can’t take credit for Santorum losing his seat in the U.S. Senate to Bob Casey by 18 points. That was Rick’s doing. But we helped to make him ridiculous—there were so many headlines during his failed reelection campaign with “froth” or “frothy” in them. And for a politician, being an object of ridicule is a problem, which is why SpreadingSantorum.com and the “frothy mixture” definition of santorum are going to be a problem as Rick runs for president.

“Maybe it’s time to start updating SpreadingSantorum.com again,” writes Savage Love reader P.B., “now that Rick is running for president.”

I couldn’t agree more, P.B., but I’m a busy guy these days. Back when I was writing for SpreadingSantorum.com, I had only the column on my plate. Now I blog every day at thestranger.com/slog, I do a weekly podcast, I’ve got a bad case of talking headism, and I’m working on another stupid book. So I just don’t have the time to give SpreadingSantorum.com the attention it needs.

But maybe some Savage Love readers do?

If SpreadingSantorum.com is going to remain Google’s top hit when you search “santorum”—and it should—then the site needs to come back to life. So I’m looking for a few folks who want to torment Rick Santorum by following every twist and turn of his sure-to-be-disastrous run for the White House on SpreadingSantorum.com. (I may dip in every once in a while and post myself.) It would be helpful if one of the people posting to SpreadingSantorum.com was in Iowa, and it couldn’t hurt to have someone in New Hampshire, but you don’t have to live in either of those states. It would be labor of love—read: a nonpaying gig—but you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re driving Rick Santorum and his supporters absolutely batshit (batshittier?).

If you think you’re the right person for this gig—if you think you’re right for SpreadingSantorum.com—write me at mail@savagelove.net.

Savage Love

As a 43-year-old single gay guy, I recently had my first spanking experience and am now feeling extreme guilt and self-loathing. I was in a very long-term vanilla relationship for most of my adult life and never got to experience anything remotely kinky, but I’ve had an interest in it.

Long story short, I answered an online personal ad, went to this guy’s house, and let him paddle me (he had a lot of spanking equipment). I quickly blew and quickly left. There was no sex other than me jerking myself while getting hit. Now I feel just awful. It’s not the spanking itself, but rather the anonymous nature of what I did. This type of hookup is just not my thing, as I am used to sex in the context of a loving, committed relationship. I honestly feel like I’ve let myself down, like I dropped my standards, and I fear I’m sliding down that slippery slope into a life of anonymous, kinky encounters. I’ve never wanted to be one of “those guys.” I know that sounds judgmental, but it’s how I feel and it’s killing me.

Right now I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and I feel like puking all the time. I can’t talk to any of my friends about this—I’m too embarrassed. Please help put my mind at ease. Please tell me if getting spanked with a hand and paddles is risky for any sexually transmitted infections. Also, what can I do to deal with this guilt? I swear I’m not exaggerating here, and I really do need someone to talk to about this.

SHOULDN’T WANT ANONYMOUS THRASHINGS

There’s no way you contracted a sexually transmitted infection during that spanking session, SWAT, so just calm the fuck down, okay?

Now…

You lived a little, SWAT, you had a little sexual adventure, you took a very short walk on the mild side of the wild side. And you learned something important about yourself in the process: Just having your kink indulged isn’t enough. You need your kink indulged in the context of a loving, committed relationship. You want to be spanked by someone you love and who loves you. That’s just how you’re wired. And luckily for you, there are lots of good, decent, quality guys out there who are into spanking and interested in loving, committed relationships.

Don’t believe me?

You’re one of those guys, SWAT. You are living proof that a guy can be relationship material and also be into spanking. Put yourself out there, put your kink out there, and you’ll meet other guys just like you.

—

I want a human pet. The human pet must become a dog. Once in pup mode, my pet will wear a butt-plug tail, a collar, and paw mitts. My pet will not speak anything other than its assigned safe word. Its communications will be limited to barking, moaning, licking, wagging its tail, etc. The whole point is that, when done right, there is a dog shaped like a human but the shape is the only thing that isn’t dog about my pet. The pet becomes so completely a dog that I wonder if it is bestiality to have sex with my dog/human pet.

FUTURE DOG LOVER

“Can vegans swallow?” used to be both the most annoying question and the most frequently asked question in the sex-advice business. Now it’s just the most frequently asked.

Some people consider their pets to be “members of the family,” but there’s nothing incestuous about fucking your dog. There’s something sick and wrong about it, of course, but it’s not incest. Similarly, a human pretending to be a dog is still a human, FDL, so having sex with your dog/human pet isn’t bestiality and never will be. I hope that doesn’t ruin it for you.

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I’m a 19-year-old bisexual female, and my current girlfriend and I have been together about three months. She is pressuring me to come out to my family. I still live at home with my VERY Catholic parents, and I’m not in a good enough financial position to move out. If I were to come out to them, I would want ample distance between us and I wouldn’t want to be depending on them for a dwelling, school payments, auto insurance, etc. My girlfriend and I get along great, we are having a lot of fun together, and I wouldn’t want to lose her. But she says that she can’t be with me if I am ashamed of our relationship. I just don’t know what to do. Am I being a total cunt for hiding our relationship from my family? Or is she the total cunt?

COMFORTABLE LIVING IN TEMPORARY SECRECY

She’s the cunt, CLITS, totally.

The reasons you’ve given her for not coming out to your family right this minute—fear of being retaliated against financially, fear of losing your home, fear of derailing your education—are not only legit, CLITS, they’re the only legit reasons to postpone coming out to your family. Unless your girlfriend can feed you, clothe you, house you, and cover your tuition, she shouldn’t be pressuring you to risk your future for the sake of a three-month relationship.

Finally, CLITS, it seems to me that the last thing a young lady with a pair of controlling assholes for parents needs is a controlling asshole for a girlfriend. Just sayin’.

—

Does asexuality actually exist? My partner’s younger brother claims to be asexual, but I think he’s just a maladjusted little shit and that he’s intimidated by the thought of sex. Your thoughts?

THE SISTER-IN-LAW

Asexuality must exist, TSIL, seeing as it has its own homepage—www.asexuality.org—where you can read this:

“Asexual people have the same emotional needs as anyone else, and like [those] in the sexual community we vary widely in how we fulfill those needs. Some asexual people are happier on their own, others are happiest with a group of close friends. Other asexual people have a desire to form more intimate romantic relationships, and will date and seek long-term partnerships. Asexual people are just as likely to date sexual people as we are to date each other.”

I’ll probably be accused of asexophobia for suggesting that asexuals who date “sexual people” are obligated to disclose their asexuality preferably on the first date and certainly no later than the third date. Asexuals may have the same emotional needs as anyone else, but most of us sexuals—heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals—expect to have our emotional and sexual needs met in our “intimate romantic relationships,” thanks, and we’re going to want to know if that’s not in the cards before we get involved, not after. Someone who is incapable of meeting a sexual’s needs has no business dating a sexual in the first place, if you ask me. At the very least, asexuality must be disclosed. And I’m still trying to wrap my head around this:

“Figuring out how to flirt, to be intimate, or to be monogamous in nonsexual relationships can be challenging…”

Um… since monogamy is understood to mean sexual exclusivity—you don’t fuck other people—I’m not sure how you define monogamy in a sexless relationship. Does your asexual partner promise not to not fuck other people?

As for your brother-in-law, TSIL, I don’t see what his asexuality and/or hang-ups have to do with you. If you’re prying into your BIL’s sex life, TSIL, I’d say he’s not the only maladjusted little shit in the family.

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Listen to Dan Savage’s podcast online here:

Savage Love

There was a letter in your column recently that must have been painful for you to receive. I refer to the letter signed God Hates You. I’m sure you’re no stranger to hate mail, being an openly gay sex-advice columnist, but I hope you get fan mail too. But just in case: I wanted you to know that your column means a lot to me, and I love your bluntness, openness, and honesty. It is comforting to see a pragmatic, funny, and, for the most part, compassionate voice in print nowadays, especially when it comes to something that so many are as willfully ignorant about as sex.

You Do Good Work

—

A lot of people wrote in after reading GHY’s letter. Most wanted to reassure me that God does not, in fact, hate me. And most, like YDGW here, assumed that GHY’s letter must have hurt my feelings. I want to thank everyone for your kind words—and I mean that sincerely—but someone telling me that God hates me is about as hurtful as someone telling that the Blue Fairy thinks I look fat in these jeans. (“Really? She does? Thanks, I really needed to hear that—now I’m gonna go sit on the other side of the subway car and silently ask the Blue Fairy for fashion guidance, okay?”)

As for fan mail, YDGW, I get my fair share. But I don’t typically run fan letters because I’ve found better ways to pleasure myself. I am, however, going to make an exception this week and run a few letters from satisfied Savage Love customers. Not because I like having sunshine blown up my ass—I prefer to have other things blown up my ass, thanks—but because we know GHY is out there reading, and I’m thinking letters from people who’ve found my advice useful will annoy him way more than letters from people who wanted to let me know that God loves me. So this one’s for you, GHY…

I am a 21-year-old straight girl, and I wanted to thank you. Reading your column and listening to your podcast over the years has made my sex and love life so much better than it ever could have been without your fantastic advice. It gave me the courage to tell my partner about my interest in BDSM and to be really GGG when he shared his fantasies with me. I’ve recommended your column and podcast to friends having relationship and sex troubles, and they all come back to tell me how much your advice helped them. I wanted to thank you on behalf of shy girls everywhere who secretly want to be tied up and spanked.

Eternally Grateful

—

I owe you a thank-you. Since I began reading your column over a year ago, I have realized my sexual desires are not perverse (and if they are, certainly nothing to be ashamed of) and began talking with my girlfriend about experimenting with them. As such, the two of us have moved on from anal-sex toys and are now about to embark on full-on pegging. She’s as excited about it as I am, and we wouldn’t have gotten to such a level of sexual satisfaction if not for the work you do. I’ll be thinking of you while my girlfriend bangs my hot ass!

A Devoted Reader

—

Thanks for your advice about the “death grip” and the damage males can do when they grip themselves too tightly while masturbating. I had that problem: At age 48, a lifetime of death grip left me incapable of coming during regular intercourse. I have never had an orgasm with a partner from intercourse or oral or anal sex (my orientation is hetero). I carefully followed your advice and lightened my touch and started using my left hand (I’m right-handed) to provide the lighter stimulation that you advised. Any time I was tempted to revert to the death grip, I squeezed my thumb and index finger together, forming a ring without contracting it. This managed to fool my death-grip conditioning without increasing the pressure on my penis. It took a while, but now I’m able to come from lighter stimulation! Thank you!

Beautiful Orgasms Beat Odds

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I started reading your column toward the end of my sophomore year of high school, which was about a year after I started hooking up with girls. I was immediately drawn to it because your “moral code” is based on common sense. That, and it was about sex and I was a sophomore.

I tend to be insecure, and I tend to tell the wrong joke at the wrong time. The one area in my life where I’m not insecure, however, is in the bedroom, and it’s almost entirely thanks to your column. I’ll kick myself repeatedly for saying the wrong thing to a girl, but if I don’t perform to the best of my abilities one night, I can let it go. I’ve learned what my boundaries are and how to push them. I knew that not being 100 percent straight doesn’t make you bi or gay, so there was no identity crisis when I questioned my sexuality. Most importantly, I know how to ask and I know how to give.

Thanks, Dan. If politicians want to get serious about reducing the amount of abortions, teenage pregnancies, and divorces in this country, they should hire you to draw up a national sex-ed curriculum.

Grateful Straight Boy

—

Thank you for saying some kind words about “conveniently located and economically priced sex workers” in your column. I agree that they deserve more gratitude and respect. In my case, I am a successful, decent-looking professional and a widower with three kids. I don’t have any trouble getting dates. However, in my experience, dates either turn into relationships that I don’t have time for or long conversations that I don’t have time for about how I don’t have time for a relationship. So once every couple months or so, I see a professional. I don’t have to feel bad that I may not see her again, and I don’t get accused of misleading anyone. I would like to tell your readers that they shouldn’t feel bad if they are seeing pros. They should enjoy it for what it is, which is a great time with a pretty girl and well worth the money.

Prefers Sex Workers

—

I had been reading your column for years, and each time you told someone to DTMFA—dump the motherfucker already!—I wondered why the people sending those sad letters needed your advice at all. Couldn’t they see that they were miserable? Then one day I had an epiphany and realized, while reading your column, that I could have authored one of those DTMFA letters.

It’s now three years since I dumped the motherfucker. I got a transfer within my company and started over in a new city. It was overwhelming. But this weekend, I was lying in bed with my new boyfriend and I was thinking about my life. It is so NICE to have someone who isn’t horrified that I like porn, someone who listens to my fantasies and likes to try new things. Someone who appreciates my cooking, doesn’t pout when I beat him at video games, and tells me I’m beautiful.

I want to thank you. I was in denial, and your column was my wake-up call. I’m happier now than I ever thought possible.

Content Lady In Toronto

You’re welcome, one and all. Next week, back to the screaming, yelling, recriminations, freaks, fetishes, and fuckwits.

—

Listen to Dan Savage’s podcast online here:

Savage Love

Photo by Napalm Filled Tires.

Testosterone is gasoline and sexual frustration is the match, says Dan Savage.

Do you think post-op transgender people have any obligation to tell their lovers they were once the other sex?

On The Fence

Yes.

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I’m in my 40s and straight. My wife of nine years is no longer interested in sex. Period. She relents every few weeks, but it’s never enjoyable for either of us. As a result, I haven’t had a blowjob in about eight years, I can’t touch her beautiful tits, kissing is without tongue, and our rare sex is missionary and in the dark. I’m miserable.

I believe she’s depressed. She refuses to get help, saying that if only I would do this or that, she would be more willing. But I do this and that, and she’s still not interested. After a lot of talking, she suggested that I find a girlfriend for sex. However, she set conditions that were unrealistic: She wanted to meet and approve of her before I slept with her; and I could only see this other person late at night, with the wife’s permission, which would only be granted after ALL other family obligations were satisfied (kids in bed, bills paid, trash taken out, etc.). I preferred a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach. She then withdrew the idea entirely. I proceeded to meet and sleep with several different women anyway, and I am now seeing one regularly. Sex is enjoyable again.

My question: I know that people would say I am cheating on my wife, but am I wrong to feel just as cheated by her?

Need Some Answers

No.

—

You are a terrible person who shouldn’t be allowed to give advice to anyone about anything. Whose idea was it to give an asshole faggot like you an advice column, anyway? You’re a stupid piece of shit who doesn’t know anything about sex or the human heart, and you will regret everything you’ve ever done and every word you’ve ever written once you die and have to stand before your Creator.

God Hates You

Maybe so.

—

A couple months ago, I sent you an e-mail thanking you for doing what you do. Today, the power of your voice hit home. As you know, an angry, sexually frustrated gunman went on a killing spree at a fitness center in Pittsburgh. Reading the killer’s blog, I was struck by the similarity of his situation to that of the lonely, sexually frustrated men you counseled in your column the week before the shooting. Of course the similarity between the shooter and your correspondents ends there: George Sodini did not reach out; the men who wrote you did.

The reason this strikes so close to home is that my situation for years was very similar to Sodini’s and to the lonely men who you helped in that column. Although I wasn’t a virgin, I was “clogged up” and unable to get close to people physically and emotionally. I overcame my fears and hang-ups, and life is good now. But it wasn’t easy. I was never as angry as the man who shot up the fitness center, but I was absolutely as lonely and isolated as he was and every bit as lonely as the men whose letters you answered. Maybe if I’d been alone another 14 years—I found my life partner at 34—I might have become that angry.

Middle-Aged Family Guy

Thank you for the note, MAFG, and thanks—I think—for pointing me to George Sodini’s blog. The blog has been pulled down, but it is extensively quoted in news reports and it makes for depressing reading. It’s never pretty when chronic sexual deprivation and a lifetime of romantic rejection slam into a narcissistic personality with sociopathic tendencies who happens to live in a country awash in guns:

“I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne—yet 30 million women rejected me, over an 18- or 25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are.”
So, hey, why not go shoot up an aerobics class full of women?

A woman I knew at college—an antiviolence activist, righteous and right-on—used to say, “Testosterone is gasoline, porn the match.” I disagree. Testosterone is gasoline—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (gas makes things go)—but sexual frustration is the match.

I’m not suggesting that this tragedy could’ve been averted if only some selfless woman had “taken one for the team” and married Sodini, an asshole and a sociopath. The women who rejected him obviously saw him for what he was and were right to run in the other direction. But if someone had told Sodini, who hadn’t had sex since 1990, to see sex workers—something I advised the guys in my column two weeks ago to consider (among other things)—it might have taken the edge off his anger and kept it from curdling into homicidal rage. Maybe if we, as a society, valued sex workers and sex work, if we legalized and regulated it, and if we viewed “paying for it” as a legitimate option for guys who would otherwise go without for decades, perhaps this tragedy could have been averted.

Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t wish a client as sick as Sodini on any of my sex-worker pals. But if Sodini had started seeing sex workers back in 1991 and not, say, two weeks ago last Monday, perhaps he wouldn’t have snapped.

But Sodini wasn’t taking advice from me. He was getting it from R. Don Steele, author of How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35. The book was sitting on Sodini’s coffee table in a video he posted to the web. Steele apparently traffics in—and profits from—instilling false hopes in losers like Sodini. (“Immediately improve your success with women!” Steele says on his website www.steelballs.com. “Everything is 100% guaranteed money back.”)

Sodini felt that he was entitled not just to sex and a romantic relationship, but to sex and a romantic relationship with a much younger woman. And he was following the advice of a love-and-romance guru who encouraged him to cling to that belief. Not normally a problem, I suppose. But Sodini wasn’t just another socially maladapted schlub furious with the world—and with women—for denying him the twentysomething ass he felt he had coming. Sodini was a nut. And he couldn’t understand why, if he was doing everything right, he wasn’t finding the success that Steele guaranteed him.

Someone needed to sit Sodini down and explain that settling down requires settling for and that young women are usually interested in young men and that we can’t always have what we want and that there might be women out there who would date him—perhaps women closer to his own age, women in his own league in the looks and social-skills departments (and Sodini wasn’t bad looking)—but no woman was going to date him until after he got his shit together. And someone needed to tell him that he wasn’t going to impress the ladies by leaving How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35 on his coffee table.
And someone needed to tell him that some men—and some women—are alone all their lives and, yeah, that sucks and it’s not fair and it hurts.

Instead, Sodini had R. Don “Steel Balls” Steele telling him that if he just bought a matching sofa set—really—and the right suit, that success was guaranteed.

—

Listen to Dan Savage’s podcast here:

Savage Love

This question comes from a point of real frustration. I’m a 26-year-old straight guy. Due to my being overweight, awkward, and generally unable to attract women I’m actually interested in, I have only been sexually intimate with prostitutes and women of low caliber. I have never been able to sustain an erection during intercourse. I’ve climaxed during oral sex or handjobs. I’m not physically accustomed to getting off with anything but my hand. Worst of all, the intense fear of impotence has caused me to avoid sexual liaisons. When dating, I feel threatened by the expectation of sex within the first few dates. Any solid advice?

Sick Of Beatin’

Join a gym and lose some weight. You’ll gain some confidence and improve your health—and your circulation—which could help in the keeping-the-dick-hard department. (I’m not telling you that you have to transform yourself into a muscle god to be happy or find love.) Seeing a doctor and getting your hands on some Viagra couldn’t hurt, either. Vary your masturbatory technique.

Stop sleeping with women unless you’re attracted to them on some level, and recognize that holding the women who will sleep with you in contempt is an expression of self-hatred and knock it the fuck off. Since sex within the first few dates makes you feel anxious, inform anyone you date that you’re not up for having sex within the first few dates. And the next time you find yourself in bed with someone or sense that things are headed there, SOB, tell her that you’re really only interested in oral and mutual masturbation—at least at first—and that you generally take a long time to come. Then you don’t have to stress out about failing to meet her expectations, because she won’t be expecting anything other than what you’re capable of delivering.

Finally, there are sex workers out there who will not only get you off in exchange for your money, SOB, but will work with you on improving your skills and building up your confidence. You may have slept with one already without realizing it because you so resented having to pay for it that you dismissed her as a cheap whore to protect your ego. Dumb mistake.

—

I’m a heterosexual male. I’ve never been in a long-term relationship, I’ve never been in a short-term relationship, I’ve never been in a relationship. Four make-out sessions in my youth and paid sex with cheap street prostitutes is all the physical intimacy I’ve ever known. And sometime before the end of this year, I’ll be turning 45. I have no explanation for how I fucked up something this important this badly for this long, but here are my best clues:

1. Deep down, I don’t think I’ve ever really believed women could possibly find me attractive.

2. For me, being rejected and/or humiliated after approaching someone is an almost paralyzing fear.

3. My professional/career/financial situation is only slightly better than my romantic/sexual situation: I’m always either barely getting by or in some crisis where staying non-homeless is my only priority.

I want to understand what the fuck is wrong with me and why I’m staring at a lifetime of totally unfulfilled romantic and sexual hopes and dreams. The last thing I need right now is some Pollyanna bullshit. I want brutal honesty.

Dan Savage’s podcast for this week:

Savage Love

Sex and love columnist Dan Savage prays it away.

You were recommended to me by an acquaintance familiar with your column and podcast. Lacking other resources at this particular moment, I have decided to write to you. I am a 20-year-old male, and as such have certain desires that almost all 20-year-old males have (desires of a sexual nature). However, I am deeply religious. Religion has been for me a source of strength in my times of weakness, a rock in the times of storm, and above all a home to return to when I have lost my path. In the teachings of my particular religion, to indulge the particular desires I am experiencing will condemn me to fates too grotesque to mention. I am rational enough to realize that there is no way that I can “pray away” these desires. My question is this: How does one prepare for a life of celibacy and solitude (as that is what is required of me to remain a member of this particular faith)? Based off of what my friend has told me, I know you have little respect for religious practices and beliefs. However, these desires are not exactly something I can talk about with other members of my spiritual community. And while I am currently seeking counseling related to other issues, I was wondering what a so-called expert on sex and sexuality would have to say.

Clever Acronyms Escape Me

Get over yourself, faggot.

If it’s possible for you to act on your unnamed-but-easily-identified desires in an ethical manner—if you desire to do whatever it is you desire to do with consenting adults who desire to take their turn doing it to you—this so-called expert on sexuality thinks you should crawl down off that cross and find yourself a boyfriend already. (“Pray away” the gay? I’m guessing you’re Christian, probably Catholic.) And if you experience a moment’s anxiety the first time you stick your ass in the air—pull the Jesus stick out first!—just remind yourself that things have been crawling on top of each other and madly humping away for 850 million years. Sex came first, then humanity (200,000ish years ago), then religion came along tens of thousands of years after that. Which may explain why religion, when pitted against sex (really old) and human nature (pretty old), always loses. Always.

If you’re on the cross, CAEM, it’s because you put yourself up there. Which means you’re not some poor mortal trapped between a cosmic rock and an existential hard place; you’re just another closeted cocksucker with a martyr complex.

Look, kiddo, you get one life, one chance at happiness. If it gives you a spiritual semi to fantasize about a God who created you gay but forbids you to act on your emotional and sexual attraction to men, knock your damn self out. But you can have a boyfriend and Jesus, too—look at the pope—you just have to do what people have been doing since the first terrified idiot invented the first bullshit religion: improvise. Find yourself a brand-new religion or sect, or jettison the bits of your current faith that don’t work for you. If you know anything about the history of Christianity—and it sounds like you don’t—then you know that the revisions began before the body was cold. No reason to stop now.

And finally, CAEM, there is no God—you do realize that, right? No hell below us, above us only sky, etc.

—

I’m an only child, male, born to a single mom. I’m about to turn 21, and I’ve been with a great guy for over a year. I may be in love. We both have steady jobs, and we want to move in together. He came out to his parents after we started dating, and now I think it’s my turn. Problem is, I don’t know how to break it to my mother. She’s a tiny Mexican woman who isn’t afraid of smacking me. I’m afraid to tell her. She always talks bad about the gay lifestyle because she considers herself Christian, although not the churchgoing kind. When and how do I break the news that she’s not getting grandkids from me?

Her Only Male Offspring

Your mom is my favorite kind of “Christian.” She’s not the “churchgoing kind,” as that would require some personal sacrifice on her part (of her Sunday mornings, at least). And she certainly didn’t let her faith interfere with her sex life (I’m assuming your conception was something short of immaculate*). But when it comes to other people’s lives, when it comes to your sexuality and mine, HOMO, then her Christian values kick into high gear.

How convenient.

Okay, HOMO, lots of us have come out to hostile moms and dads and watched in awe as they morphed into the loving, supportive parents we didn’t know they were capable of being. For some parents the process is quick, for others it’s slow, but it can’t start until you come out.

Now here’s when you come out: The sooner the better—but don’t come out to your mother while she has the power to harm you, i.e., if you’re dependent on her for a place to live or if she’s paying for your education. And here’s how: by U.S. mail. Don’t give your mother the chance to smack you. Write her a letter, include the contact info for the PFLAG chapter in your area, and tell her you’ll discuss this with her after she attends a meeting, not before.

Finally, when I came out to my mother, the first thing out of her mouth was, “I don’t ever want to meet any boyfriends.” She said the word “boyfriend” like it had been dipped in shit. On her deathbed, my mother told me to tell my boyfriend that she loved him (“like a daughter”). My mom came around, HOMO, and so can yours.

But not until you tell her.

—

My husband and I got married recently. His first pick for best man was his older brother, “St. Paul,” a seminary student studying to become a priest. When my husband asked, he started crying and said he had hoped my husband would return to the church. We are both liberal ex-Catholics. For a wedding gift, Paul gave us a book called Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, 700 pages of dogma by JP2. In the five years I’ve known him, he has rarely said more than one sentence to me, yet he speaks boldly in favor of the church’s most conservative doctrines at family gatherings. How much of his bullshit do I have to deal with? I’m a huge fan of yours, and I know that you’ve had some issues reconciling your own life with loved ones within the Catholic Church. Your advice would be appreciated.

The Schismatic

Man… so intolerant.

I’m talking about you, TS, not your brother-in-law. Don’t get me wrong: Your brother-in-law sounds like total douchedrizzle. But he has a right to his opinions and a right to express them. You have a right to your opinions, too, of course, and just as much a right to express them. When St. Paul goes off on premarital sex or the ordination of women or the gays and their Prada loafers, smile and tell him he’s full of shit. But unless you live with him—and I can’t imagine you would’ve omitted that detail—you don’t see him too often, right? Tolerate his bullshit—that’s what family does—and count your blessings.

And don’t complain about every word that comes out of his mouth and then gripe about how little he has to say to you.

mail@savagelove.net

Download Dan’s podcast every Tuesday at www.thestranger.com/savage

Savage Love

Maybe he’s not right for you, says sex and love columnist Dan Savage.

I’m going to say up front that I know I am a complete and total asshole.

I have been with my present boyfriend for about three years and we are living together. About a year ago, our relationship started to go bad when I found out I was pregnant and ended up having an abortion. Every time I look at him, all I see is this baby I didn’t have and I feel horrible to the point where now I don’t like him to even touch me anymore. I don’t want to hurt him. I just don’t see how I can carry on in this relationship anymore.

Compounding all of that, an old flame from Europe is back in my life, and I am still in love with him and I know he still loves me. This guy was my knight in shining armor in college but he had to return to the UK, so we couldn’t really have anything. But now the possibility is there because our lives are at a stage where we could move and make it work. I have no idea how to deal with any of this. The old flame looks better and better all the time and I am doing so badly here, but I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t see any route at this point that won’t end with at least one person in tears. Please help!

Definitely Out Of My Depth

Presumably there was a good reason why you decided against having a child with the boyfriend. Perhaps you told yourselves that it wasn’t the right time, DOOMD, but it seems more than likely you realized, consciously or subconsciously, that he wasn’t the right person: He wasn’t the man with whom you wanted to have children. Or perhaps the boyfriend was so strongly opposed to becoming a father that you decided to have an abortion—an abortion you instantly regretted and resent him for.

Either way, DOOMD, I don’t see how your current relationship survives.

And we haven’t even addressed the existence of the Euro. You still have strong feelings for your old college flame—clearly—and if you stay with the boyfriend for the rest of your life just to spare his feelings, DOOMD, your resentments will metastasize.

Again, I don’t see how this relationship survives.

But none of that answers your question, does it? You’ve asked me to identify a way out—a route out—that spares everyone’s feelings. Sorry, DOOMD, but I can’t help you. If you pass on the Euro because you can’t stand the thought of hurting the boyfriend, you’ll be miserable. And if you stay with the boyfriend, you’re only postponing his misery. Your resentments will grow and spread, like so many tumors, until they ultimately kill this relationship. If the Euro has moved on by that point, then all three of you will wind up miserable and alone.

—

I’ve been married for 12 years. Six months ago, I separated from my wife, and during that time I had an affair. Ultimately, I figured out that I couldn’t make a long-term relationship work with this “other woman,” and I am now working to reconcile with my wife. But the sex with the affair partner was incredible—not just because she was new, but because we were highly compatible sexually. The sex was energetic and adventurous in ways that it never was with my wife.

So now I’m worried that though I think my wife and I can rebuild all the other parts of our marriage, I’ll always unfavorably be comparing my wife to this other partner. (I should say that I fantasize often about the affair partner.) Sex for my wife and me was okay but not great before our separation, but I know we both want it to be a rewarding part of our marriage going forward. Any thoughts? Will the memories of my affair partner fade with time? Can I somehow use my affair experience to build a better sex life with my wife?

Can’t Shake The Other Woman

Maybe you and the wife just aren’t as sexually compatible as you and this other woman, and never will be. Maybe the only thing you can do, CSTOW, is focus on the other things the wife brings to the table, the emotional if not sexual satisfactions.

Or…

Sometimes we feel freer sexually when we’re with people we care about less. When we’re with someone we’re never going to see again (a one-night stand) or someone we probably shouldn’t see again (another woman), we’re not as concerned about scaring that person off. When we’re with someone who has “potential”—someone with long-term prospects—we tend to be a little more cautious. The stakes feel higher, and that can be inhibiting. We’re less willing to take risks, we’re less open, we’re less likely to act on our fantasies.

So it’s possible that your problem with the wife isn’t sexual incompatibility, CSTOW, but sexual inhibition. Have you tried fucking the wife like you fucked the other woman? Have you ever risked fucking the wife like you’ve fucked women who you’re never going to see again?

—

Sixteen months is way too soon to be discussing marriage? Really. Really?? How long are we supposed to drag out the courtship, Dan? While I agree with you that three months is much too soon, I’d argue my own personal case: My wife and I married almost a year to the day of our first date, and that was 26 years ago. So while your advice to Lady In A Relationship was sound, your blanket assessment of the relationship landscape overlooks those of us who have a brain. Jussayin’…

Mr. Right

Good thing I give advice for a living, MR, and don’t do binding arbitration. People are free to disregard my rants if they think I got it wrong and make up their own minds. And maybe I went a little overboard: Depending on the couple, 16 months could be the right time, or a right time, to start discussing marriage. Still, a long engagement is always a good idea, regardless of how long you’ve been dating. If you’re positive he or she is “the one” at three months—or eight months, or sixteen months—he or she will still be the one at three years.

—

My fiancé and I—we’re a straight couple—are getting married in July. We’ve lived together for four years, and as such we don’t need any more then we already have. We’re asking friends and family to make donations to nonprofits that are dear to us in lieu of traditional gifts. We’re both grade-school teachers, so the bulk of our requests are related to the needs of our students. (Shameless plug: Refugee Women’s Alliance and New Futures are two amazing programs that specifically serve students where we live.) We’re including Planned Parenthood on our list, and we would like to include a nonprofit that advocates for marriage equality. Which one would you suggest?

Soon To Be Married

Thanks for thinking of us, STBM, which is more than President Obama is willing to do: I would recommend that you put Lambda Legal (they’re lawyers, they sue) and Freedom to Marry (they’re advocates, they woo) on your list. Unlike most national gay organizations, Lambda Legal and Freedom to Marry do good work and get results. Thanks and congratulations!

mail@savagelove.net

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Savage Love

My boyfriend and I have been together over eight months. We really love each other, and I see us spending our lives together. At least I did, until something he said a few days ago.

Lady In A Relationship

You were discussing marriage at three months?

The fact that he would bring up marriage so early, and the fact that you didn’t laugh in his face, disqualifies you both from obtaining a marriage license. (Okay, it doesn’t—but it should.) Three months—eight months, sixteen months—is way too soon to be discussing marriage. Sure, you can allow yourself to be swept away by new love, you can crush out on each other, you can sheepishly admit that you’ve allowed yourself to daydream about marriage—so long as that admission is immediately followed by this statement: “But I realize it’s way too soon to even think about it seriously…” But you absolutely, positively should NOT be making plans to marry, small ceremonies or large, courthouse or St. Paul’s Cathedral, at eight fucking months; nor should you attempt to hold him—or anyone else—to a premature “commitment” to wed.

Your boyfriend doesn’t have a bad case of “male-ese,” LIAR, he has a good case of came-to-his-senses-ese. If you’re lucky, the strain is contagious, perhaps sexually transmitted, and you’ll soon be showing symptoms yourself.
And a bit of bonus advice: Get a therapist who doesn’t believe that cashing your checks obligates him to tell you whatever idiot thing you want to hear.

—

In a recent column you wrote, “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 have been with my girlfriend for almost nine years, living together for seven. We have never had sex. At the beginning we fooled around a lot, but for various reasons never went too far. Now, like many couples who have been together for a while, the frequency has decreased.

Sexless And Seemingly Content

If you’re happy and your girlfriend’s happy, SASC, then I’m happy. Two people in a bad relationship can have plenty of great sex; two people in a great relationship can have little sex or no sex. Sex is a metric for assessing the health of a relationship, but it’s not the only one. When two people come together who love each other and are compatible sexually—which can mean a shared interest in sex or a shared disinterest in sex—the angels sing, SASC. All that matters, again, is that you’re both happy.

But are you happy, SASC? You say that you are, and I’ll take your word for it, but there’s a lot of wiggle room in the “mostly” in this sentence: “I am mostly okay with this.” You owe it to yourself to determine if you are really and truly okay with living without sex—and if the girlfriend is too.

—

I’ll add this to the debate over the threat that gay people pose to marriage: A fag saved my “opposite marriage.”
My wife and I had a huge argument about sex after she rebuffed me one night. She was shouting that she couldn’t stand the idea of me inside her because she felt like I was just masturbating in her. I shouted that we could stop having vaginal intercourse altogether for all I care because it was boring me, too, and besides, there was lots of other stuff we could do. She screamed, “Like what?!?” And I screamed, “Like oral! Masturbation! Role-playing! Whatever kinky shit you want!” There was a pause, and we both started laughing.

Married O And Newly Surging

You’re welcome, MOANS, and thanks for sharing.

And speaking of marriage: Last week’s decision by the California Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8 was expected but, in the wake of so many recent victories, still saddening, and I’m getting mail from lots of unhappy people. I’m unhappy about it, too. But we have to remember that this is a long game, folks, and despite this setback, we are winning. We’ve heard a lot about Prop 8 over the last week, and we’re going to hear a lot about the fight to overturn it over the coming months, but let’s not forget about Proposition 22.

In 2000, California voters approved a law banning same-sex marriage. It was a ballot initiative, like Prop 8, but just a law, not a constitutional amendment. And it was that law, Prop 22, that the California Supremes struck down in 2008, in their historic ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. And voters in 2000 approved Prop 22 by a 22-point margin. Eight years later the same voters approved Prop 8 by just four points. That’s an 18-point shift in favor of marriage equality in just eight years. That’s extraordinary progress. A loss is still a loss, and a loss sucks, but the trend is so strongly in our favor that we cannot lose hope. The anti-gay bigots know that they’re losing this debate, and it’s why they’re so hot to amend state constitutions now, while they still can, while they can still count on the votes of the old, the bigoted, and the easily manipulated.

But they are losing and they know it.

Gay marriage will be back to the ballot box in California in 2010 or 2012, and voters are going to repeal Prop 8. Fundamental civil rights should not be subject to a popular vote, of course, and the California Supremes had an opportunity to reaffirm that ideal. They chose not to, they buckled, and so gays and lesbians, unlike other minority groups, face the challenge of securing our rights at the ballot box. That seems like a daunting prospect until you recall Prop 22 and compare its margin of victory to that of Prop 8. Again, we witnessed an 18-point shift in favor of gay marriage in California in just eight years. We can gain another two points in two. We just have to stay in the fight and constantly remind ourselves and each other—and Maggie Gallagher—that we are winning.

Savage Love

Sex and love columnist Dan Savage puts your advice in the hands of strangers. Comic by Jennifer Barrett.

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.

—

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Savage Love

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.”

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Savage Love

Photo by Randy Scribner Jr.

Sex and love columnist Dan Savage, whatzup?!

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.

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Savage Love

Don’t steal sex toys from sex and love columnist Dan Savage.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

mail@savagelove.net
Download a new Savage Lovecast (Dan’s weekly podcast) every Tuesday at
podcasts.thestranger.com

Savage Love

“At least you can find scuba gear,” says sex and love columnist Dan Savage.

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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

mail@savagelove.net
Download a new Savage Lovecast (Dan’s weekly podcast) every Tuesday at podcasts.thestranger.com

Savage Love

Sex and love columnist Dan Savage beats the system.

My husband and I have been together for about four years and have been married for a little over a year. He’s 31; I’m 27. We started out as friends and soon began a long-distance relationship, until I got pregnant. We have a great friendship, and honestly I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else. Here’s our problem: I have the sex drive of a 16-year-old boy, whereas he’s practically asexual. The fact that we even got pregnant is quite shocking.

Early on, it didn’t bother me much—infrequent sex is common in long-distance relationships—but now that we’re married, he would still rather jack off to porn. I’m not hideous. I’m in great shape, my “amazing ass” gets hit on all the time, and I’m an open-minded, porn-loving girl—but my husband isn’t interested. LAME. The sex he does give me is quasi-forced, strictly missionary, and at most three times a year. But the solo sex he has in front of the computer while I’m at work happens three times a week at least. LAMER.

Sexless And Desperate

Your husband—who is beating off three times a week in front of the computer—is interested in sex, SAD. He’s just not interested in sex with you or anyone else he’s ever been with. But ultimately, the issue here isn’t sex. It’s about neglect and selfishness and false advertising. (When we marry, we’re signing up to fuck someone at least semiregularly for decades. Not interested in fucking? Don’t marry.) Since he’s unlikely to change his ways—his stunted, sexually selfish ways—you have just two options: an open relationship or a new relationship.

Considering your compatibility and the fact that you have a child, I’d encourage you to stay together. So an open relationship it is—and he shouldn’t have a problem with that. If sex doesn’t matter to him, if he’s indifferent to sex and/or you, then it shouldn’t matter to him if you occasionally do this supremely unimportant thing with other people and/or minor-league soccer teams. So long as you’re a good and loving partner and coparent, and so long as your family is your first priority, you should be free to seek safe, sane, and nondisruptive sex elsewhere. Added perk for him: no more quasi-forced sex with you.

And who knows? Maybe knowing that you’re having sex with other dudes—or just knowing that you can have sex with other dudes—will cause your husband to develop a bad case of sperm-competition syndrome (Google it), and the husband will be inspired, fucking you three times a week instead of his fist.

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I’m 21, female, and pretty experienced. The guy I’m dating now is 23 and a virgin. I’d really like to avoid some of the awkwardness that I’m sure is going to arise, seeing as I’m his first. (And has arisen—the first time we attempted to do the deed, he was so nervous he couldn’t stay hard; he also thought he was “in” when, in reality, he was humping my leg.) I’m at a loss. Obviously this is going to take a lot of communication in the moment; aside from that, do you have any advice for how to make this less awkward for both of us?

First Isn’t Really Sexy Time

Mess around a few times—at least a half a dozen times—with vaginal penetration off the menu, ratcheting down the performance anxiety for your boy. Once he’s seen that, yes, his dick does work—yes we can get hard, yes we can stay hard, yes we can blow a load with a woman in the room—then you can move on to vaginal intercourse. And take control, FIRST: Tell him—as sexily as possible—what you’re going to doing before you get started, tell him what you’re doing while you’re doing it, and then you can tell him when he’s “in” instead of letting him guess.

And, finally, a little required reading for the virgins out there and the people who’re about to fuck some sense into them: The Virgin Project. Illustrators K. D. Boze and Stasia Kato interviewed all sorts of people—gay, straight, bi; young, old, ancient—about their loss-of-virginity experiences. The illustrated stories in The Virgin Project are moving, hilarious, and heartbreaking in turn—sometimes all three at once—and knowing that everyone’s first time is awkward, and that some folks’ first times are unpleasant, and that most of us survive them, might be good for your virgin, FIRST. It couldn’t hurt you to be reminded of those things, either.

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I appreciated your responses to Missing Kisses and Loses Interest Quickly, and I would like to share what worked for me some years ago when I wanted to taste my own come but was hesitant—and I’ve got two follow-up questions for you.

My girlfriend (now wife), like LIQ’s wife, was frustrated that my come-eating ambitions would disappear after climax. So we figured out a way for me to eat it before I climaxed: I masturbate into a ziplock bag and put it in the freezer. Then during our lovemaking session we retrieve the baggie—she feeds it to me in frozen chunks, or she lays the frozen pieces on her body and I lick it up as it melts, preclimax of course. Because of these baby steps, now on special occasions I even eat it “fresh” after I’ve come in her.

Coming Around To Cream Pies

Frozen spermcicles gross me out, CATCP, and I arrive at this debate with a real affection for the stuff. So I can’t imagine your idea will catch on, even among guys like you and LIQ. Another reader had a better idea: a little tantric woo-woo. “Through specific breathing patterns and concentration, you can make yourself come without ejaculating; or, you can ejaculate a little and still be hard,” writes Mr. F. “I can bring myself to a ‘mini-orgasm’ where I just slightly come on my girlfriend’s tits, go right back to riding her again, and tease her by licking a bit off. She loves it.”
As for your questions…

“Sperm frozen in a household freezer would probably be useless for insemination,” says David E. Battaglia, an associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University and a fertility consultant. “The issue isn’t genetic damage (there probably wouldn’t be any). The issue is sperm survival. Sperm has to be frozen in special solutions in order to survive, and we freeze it in liquid-nitrogen temperatures.”

And while I’ve never cooked with sperm—if it’s not in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, it was either meant to be eaten raw or not at all—there’s a cookbook out there for you: Natural Harvest: A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes.