Guest Expert

January 24, 2008

By Dan Savage

I'm a 20-year-old bi girl and I've been with my boyfriend a little over a year. We've talked about having an FFM threesome, but the first time we talked about it, we realized that we were not on the same page, and now every time I try to bring up the possibilities of a threesome, we end up in an argument. I'd like to talk about some rules, just in case it happens as he imagines it—we pick up a girl at a bar—but he won't talk to me, because he claims that it would make a threesome not as spontaneous. Also, there's an unspoken worry that my desire to have a threesome is just a way for me to explore having sex with a woman while he watches. I admit that this is what I was most interested in, in the beginning, but I've since gotten pretty turned on by the idea of him fucking another girl if I tell him to. Any advice on what I should do?

No Rules For The Game

Before we get to an answer—an answer, NRFTG, not my answer—a brief note. I feel deeply honored every morning when I open my laptop and see the huge number of e-mails that poured in overnight. You, my readers, share the most intimate details of your lives with me, you open your hearts and pour out your hopes and your fears, and you often attach pictures. (Pics of your hot boyfriend? Good. Pics of your mysterious genital rash? Bad.) I am always deeply humbled by your trust. A sacred bond ties an advice columnist to his readers and I would never do anything to violate or weaken that bond.

But once a year I do allow a complete stranger to rummage through your e-mails, pluck out a few letters, and give this advice business a whirl. Meet Eric Rescorla. He paid somewhere in the vicinity of the high-mid-to-low four figures for the privilege of taking my advice column out for a spin. The money went to charity (www.farestart.org), and I didn't let Eric keep copies of your e-mail addresses or any of the photos you enclosed. (That's a hell of a rash you've got there, Doris In Dallas; go see a doctor, would you?) Eric is a computer security specialist who lives in the SF Bay Area and so, like me, is completely unqualified to advise anyone about anything. And here's his advice for you, NRFTG.

"Let me see if I have this right: You're offering your boyfriend what's probably the number-one straight-male fantasy and he's bitching because it's not spontaneous?" asks Eric, rhetorically. "Basically, there are two possibilities here: (1) Your boyfriend is too dumb to live. (2) He's sincerely worried that you just want to use this threesome as an excuse to fuck other women, and based on your letter, it sounds like you've given him some reason to.

"That said, seeing as much of the purpose of the exercise is for him to fuck other women, it's hard to see that he has any grounds for complaint on that score. So, either way, he's pretty much a moron and should grow up, quit whining, and enjoy the threesome."

I'm a 23-year-old gay male. And while I am social, I don't really hit the clubs or find myself surrounded by other gay guys, so I don't have many dates and I haven't been in many relationships. Aside from the internet and clubs, where would you suggest I go to meet some guys? Should I just suck it up and throw myself into the scene?

Eager To Meet

"I'm straight so I don't know too much about meeting gay guys in particular," says Eric. "But in my experience, meeting partners in general is pretty much a matter of sucking it up and going for it. Or you could do what I did and buy the right to meet a middle-aged gay sex columnist in next year's Strangercrombie auction."

Hmph. I have to take exception to Eric's advice for ETM. I don't consider 34 to be "middle-aged," for starters, and for enders I'm a married sex-advice columnist who happens to be gay, not a gay sex-advice columnist that ETM here could have for the price of a Savage Love guest slot. But I'd be happy to introduce you to some of my young, single, gay friends if you make the winning bid next year, ETM.

I am writing because I recently found out that my dad has a problem with online porn. My dad is clueless with technology, and he leaves tracks all over the computer, never deletes his history, opens every popup ad, etc., and it is really fucking up our at-home system and embarrasses us whenever someone else uses the computer.

He's not just an occasional user, either. This is multiple times a day, every day. I tried to brush it off until my sister walked in on him looking at—not jerking off to, thankfully—an X-rated video. On Christmas Day, right before dinner. In the computer room, which is in the main hallway of the house, with the door open.

So, what do you think? Do we ignore this? Get a filtering program? Send him an anonymous message?

Concerned Older Sister

"Finally a question I'm qualified to answer," says Eric.

"If your dad wants to cover his tracks on the computer, there are a bunch of solutions. The best is always to get a totally isolated computer, but that's a fairly large investment. You can certainly make your father a new account on this computer, but that won't stop viruses and you still have to worry about him leaving files around.

"I'm assuming you're running Windows and what I recommend here is virtualization software. This is software that lets you run a 'virtual' computer on top of your real computer. The virtual computer has its own copy of Windows, its own browser, and its own virtual disk. Your dad can do his porn surfing on the virtual machine and can even set it to reset itself whenever the virtual computer is restarted, so there's no need to worry about leaving tracks. It takes a little technical sophistication to get this working, since you need to install Windows on the virtual machine, but once it's running, any idiot can use it. There are a number of vendors of virtualization software, but I recommend VMware because you can download a free version of VMware Server for home use. Also, if you're running the business versions of XP or Vista you can download Microsoft's Virtual PC for free.

"But based on your letter, COS, I wonder whether he's just technically clueless. It doesn't take a computer expert to realize that watching porn in the main hallway with the door partly open carries a real risk of discovery—which may actually be what he wants. However, given that this is embarrassing you and your family, I don't see any alternative but to confront him and tell him he needs to do a better job of hiding his habit and that you're willing to help him with that. I'm sure that will be excruciating, but probably a lot less bad than walking in on Dad jerking off to internet porn."

That concludes this very special, guest-authored, all-for-charity installment of Savage Love. You can read more advice from Eric for Savage Love readers at www.thestranger.com/savage/eric, and Eric blogs/rants daily at www.educatedguesswork.org.

Download Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at www.thestranger.com/savage.

mail@savagelove.net

Savage Love Extra

Wednesday 23, 2008

By Dan Savage

Note: All the responses to the letters below were written by Eric Rescorla, a reader who won the right to answer questions in Savage Love in a charity auction. —Dan Savage

I'm in a committed, loving relationship with a man I completely trust. We're very open to each other about our sexual desires and needs and are a GGG couple. Recently during phone sex we both started talking about a rape fantasy and became equally turned on by the idea. In a following conversation, my boyfriend brought up the idea of wielding a knife at me during the scene, which I found kinky and hot.

We want to take this fantasy off the telephone and into real life, but be safe while doing it. We've discussed safe words and limits, but what really has us hung up is the knife. He wants to make sure that I'm safe in any possible situation, as do I. Are there any kinds of props made for these kind of fantasies that don't look like a plastic Halloween nightmare? Any suggestions as to how we could play out this scene without sacrificing the kink but still keeping the safe?

Thinking About Knifes

"I would suggest first beta-testing the rape scene without the knife," says Eric. "That way you have an opportunity to find out if it's actually kinky and hot or not, without having nervousness over the knife get in the way. Once you're comfortable with the basic scene, you can introduce a knife.

"As far as the knife goes, yeah, you can get realistic rubber martial-arts training knives (just Google for "rubber knife"). They're semi-stiff, so you wouldn't really enjoy getting stabbed with one, but as long as you're careful about the face and eyes, they're relatively safe.

"Of course, you may eventually find that part of the kink is the risk of the knife itself, but this will give you a chance to practice in a safer, controlled environment first."

•••

I'm a 33-year-old man, in a three-year relationship with a 32-year-old bi woman. My concern in this case comes from your past advice to your readers. Specifically, the recurrent "if you don't satisfy your partner's fantasy, that is eventually going to make your partner unsatisfied/look somewhere else, thus the relationship is threatened." That is indeed if your partner has just ONE fantasy, or a couple, but what happens if lots of fantasies are satisfied but one?

Though my lover has a lot of fantasies that I join in on and enjoy, there is one I am not able to follow to the end: hard sado. It's not that often, not even every three months, and it happens only in some circumstances. In the fantasy, she is the torturer, but the level of the game is too high for me. She wants real screams of pain and gets them through knives and fire. Though I have tried, eventually I find myself unable to endure more pain and must give up. She tells me it's okay, and I tell myself it's just one fantasy among many, but the concern is there: Will it grow to be The Fantasy? Will this turn into unsatisfied sex for her? And if it is so, is there any way to get into this kind of sado so that I can resist my pain or transform it into pleasure like other fantasies?

Our Uses Concern Hurt

"No matter how GGG you are, you're not obligated to endure serious pain in order to satisfy your partner," says Eric—and I agree 100 percent. "What you describe sounds very much like it falls into that category. This definitely isn't something you should feel bad about not being willing or able to do for her.

"As for whether this will become a relationship-destroying issue for you two, that's harder to predict. I hope it's not true that all your fantasies need to be satisfied for you to be sexually satisfied. If not, millions of geeks who are never going to sleep with Natalie Portman are going to lead extremely unfulfilled lives. On the other hand, a kink this extreme doesn't come out of nowhere and so (1) it's probably pretty important to her, and (2) there are probably a bunch of related kinks that you won't be able to accommodate, either. So, it may not just be something she can do without. On the other hand, it sounds like you've been far more GGG than average and she knows it and is willing to try living without that one fantasy. You should take her at her word, at least for now."

•••

I'm a 21-year-old female college student whose romantic (and social) life is slowly turning into shit and I need your advice. At the beginning of the fall semester, I signed on to write the sex column in my school's daily, and I made the mistake of using my personal experiences to frame my advice (it's not a Q&A column, it's more like an "I need to tell you all something because this guy did a really poor job of eating me out last weekend" sort of thing). Since I started writing this thing, it seems like everyone I meet either wants to talk to me only about sex, wants to talk to me because they want to have sex with me, or they want to talk to my friends about whether or not they've had sex with me. Nobody has asked me out on a date in god knows how long and I just want to be treated like a normal person. I have one semester left to write this thing—is there anything I can do to get people to respect me a little bit more?

There Are Lots Of Gorges At This School

"Your letter complains about two things: that people always want to talk to you about sex, and that nobody wants to date you," says Eric.

"The first sounds to me like an occupational hazard. If you're well known for writing about something of general interest—and few things are of more general interest than sex—then you need to expect that people who read your column are going to want to talk to you about it. If you don't want people to talk to you about sex, stop writing about it.

"On the other hand, your problem with people not wanting to date you seems like a purely self-inflicted wound. If you're going around writing negative reviews of the performances of people you have sex with, I think you have to appreciate that it's going to have a negative impact on people's interest in having sex with you. You probably should have expected that. If you want to change that situation, you need to credibly commit to not writing about your personal life in your column in the future. The easy way to achieve that would be to stop writing your column, but assuming you don't want to do that, your best bet is probably to publicly apologize in your column and say that you'll refrain from discussing your personal life in your column in the future—and then stick to that.

"This will of course be embarrassing and won't totally convince people (though the reason it's convincing is that it's so embarrassing), but it ought to convince enough people to let you get the occasional date."

 

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