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. 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 scares women off. I'm tired of fouling things up and making myself lonely. Yet, when a lady friend of mine 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?

Wild Horses Drag Me Away

It would help to know, WHDMA, what exactly you're doing—besides being all intensely romantic and extremely idealistic and...

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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. 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 scares women off. I'm tired of fouling things up and making myself lonely. Yet, when a lady friend of mine 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?

Wild Horses Drag Me Away

It would help to know, WHDMA, what exactly you're doing—besides being all intensely romantic and extremely idealistic and physically fit and stuff—that scares women off. Without that info, it's difficult to advise 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 must be something wrong with 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 is required to spend much more time with you. Not only that, WHDMA, but a person with an asshole friend is regarded as perhaps too tolerant, while a person with an asshole boyfriend is viewed as having a character flaw. Or several: lousy taste, the wrong kind of masochistic streak, low self-esteem, 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. Give fun a chance.


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 women I know think they are the teabagger and their partner is the one being teabagged. So, Dan, I'm asking you—as an expert on all things political and sexual—do 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 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. A 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.


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 end 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 or mutual masturbation with you, or eat your pussy through a wad of Saran Wrap.

If he won't do any of that, reconsider DTMFA.


ATTENTION HUMP! FILMMAKERS: The Stranger is proud to announce HUMP! 5, the Pacific Northwest's biggest, best, and only amateur (and locally produced) porn festival. HUMP! 5 goes down October 9–10 at On the Boards. The deadline for HUMP! 5 submissions is September 21.

BIG NEWS: The max length for HUMP! submissions this year is five minutes. We don't want to be total assholes about this, so... if you feel your film is brilliant at 6:15 and harmed at 5:00, you are welcome to submit two versions of your film, i.e., a five-minute cut and a longer cut. But you must submit both cuts. If the HUMP! jury agrees that the longer version is superior, an exception may be made.

CASH PRIZES: HUMP! isn't just about love and sex and laughs. HUMP! is also about cash prizes. There are two award categories in HUMP!—Humor and Hottest—and a $2,000 first-place prize is awarded in both categories. There's also a $500 second-place prize and a $250 third-place prize in both categories.

EXTRA CREDIT! We ask HUMP! filmmakers to use certain props and to shoot at certain locations so that audiences will know when they're watching something made just for HUMP! This year's extra-credit props: a pink slip (layoff or undergarment), the Book of Mormon, motorcycle boots, an ErosTek e-stim unit, Aplets & Cotlets. This year's extra-credit locations: the SLUT, the P-I globe, the Statue of Liberty at Alki Beach, the giant mitt outside Safeco Field.

THE JURY WOULD LIKE TO SEE: fem-domme, CFNM, pegging. Including these themes won't get your film into HUMP! automatically, but it will give you a leg up. We've seen lots of tied up and/or submissive women over the last couple of years—not that there's anything wrong with that—and this year the HUMP! jury wants to see some women on top.

NEW TO HUMP!? We do our best to make HUMP! safe, fun, and anonymous. People make films and give them to us; we make only two screening copies and return the originals. Our only copies are destroyed onstage after the last screening. HUMP! lets you be a porn star for a weekend—not for life! And HUMP! films do not have to be hardcore. Animation, horny salt shakers, and sexy, nonexplicit shorts have all been featured at HUMP!

GET GOING! Last year we heard from several people who didn't start shooting their films until a few days before the submission deadline, and we weren't able to include their late entries. Don't procrastinate! There's no reason you can't start making your film now. It's going to be a lovely weekend—make some porn!

ALL THE INFO: thestranger.com/hump.

mail@savagelove.net

This story has been updated since it was originally published.

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