My roommate is astoundingly hot. Her room is being repaired (the ceiling fell in), and, at her request, I’m letting her and her boyfriend sleep in my room while I take the couch. I’ve been able to contain my attraction just fine up to now, but the minute she entered my space I had this feeling that all bets are off. I’m considering spying on her with a hidden surveillance cam. If I had video of this girl naked, let alone being fucked, I could happily beat off to the footage for the rest of my life. Obviously it’s a breach of trust, and I’m a shitty roommate for considering it. I have a few concerns. Is this normal? Assuming that there’s no way she could find out and that I kept the video to myself and myself only, would it be so wrong? What is her reasonable expectation of privacy once she enters my room?
Thanks In Advance
Before we get to your tech-related queries, TIA, a word about a young man in Florida with tech-related troubles.
America’s current teen-sex panic—it’s always something—is about “sexting,” teenagers sending each other pictures of their sometimes-underage junk, their frequently underage racks, or their young and dimpled/pimpled rear ends. (Oh, if only we could return to the comparatively innocent and entirely fictional days of “rainbow parties”!) Shortly after the kids went crazy for sexting, the authorities went crazy for prosecuting kids for sexting. Take Phillip Alpert, an 18-year-old in Florida who got mad at his girlfriend and forwarded a digital photo of her naked to dozens of her friends and family.
This Alpert kid (he had only just turned 18) pulled an asshole move—the gaping asshole of moves—and he owes his girlfriend, her friends, and her family an apology, restitution, and a pound of flesh. (And I mean that pound.) A just, proportionate punishment might involve, say, nude pictures of Alpert being displayed on a billboard in Times Square. For a year. Instead, Alpert was convicted of distributing child porn and “sentenced to five years probation and required by Florida law to register as a sex offender,” CNN reports. “You will find me on the registered sex offender list next to people who have raped children, molested kids, things like that,” Alpert told CNN.
A message for concerned parents, outraged school officials, and teen-sex-obsessed prosecutors: We’re gonna have to either make it illegal for teenagers to own camsphonescomputers, or we’re gonna have to give them drugs to delay the onset of puberty until after they’re 18. If we’re unable or unwilling to do those things—technology is hard to contain, and delaying puberty could have unwelcome health consequences (although it would have spared Levi Johnston’s DNA from the ignominy of mixing with the Palins’)—then the intersection of horny teens and newer technologies is going to require us to rethink the simplistic application of laws that criminalize the possession and distribution of sexty (ugh) pictures, particularly in cases where they were created by teenagers, for teenagers.
Yes, Alpert was a douchebag; yes, it was wrong for him to forward that picture to embarrass and humiliate his girlfriend. But if Alpert is a child pornographer and a sex offender, so are millions of today’s teenagers. They’re all e-mailing each other pictures of their junk. Making an example of one unlucky asshole who got caught isn’t going to stop teenagers from sexting each other anymore than making an example of hundreds of thousands of unlucky pot smokers stopped people from smoking pot.
Okay, TIA, on to your question: While it’s normal to contemplate, even obsess about, something you know is wrong, secretly videotaping your roommate, even if she’s “in your space,” isn’t just an asshole move. It’s an illegal move in most places, and the consequences for asshole moves involving digital images, as illustrated above, can be dire. And until submitting to
videotaping is widely understood to be a known risk of sleeping in someone else’s bedroom, your roommate and her boyfriend have an entirely reasonable expectation of privacy.
As for no-way-she-could-ever-find-out, I could sneak into your house and use your toothbrush as a sound, and you’d never find out. And although it would hurt me more than it would hurt you, TIA, it would still be wrong—even if there was no way short of DNA testing that you would ever find out. And while you may intend to keep the video to yourself—such the gentleman—what if your laptop gets stolen? What if you take your computer in for repairs and someone makes a copy? Digital images—photos, video, whatever—are too easy to lose control over.
Don’t do it, TIA.
I am a 30-year-old female with a live-in boyfriend. While we’re not without our problems, the relationship is wonderful. My only big issue is that I don’t enjoy cohabitation. Before living with my boyfriend, I lived in a studio apartment, my little castle, and I relished having my own space. I would love to go back to us each having our own domicile, but I am afraid of losing him. The thought has been met with such criticism by my friends that it makes me wonder. Is it unusual to want your own space?
Independent But In Love
I know a nice, loving couple—married, straight, with kids—who each have an apartment in the same building. The kids’ rooms are in mom’s; the meals are prepared and eaten at dad’s. They decided to live like this because, like you, they both liked having their own spaces.
You can do it, too, IBIL. Stop worrying about what other people think and start being honest with your boyfriend about your preferred living arrangement.
As you’ve proven in the past with “santorum” and “saddlebacking,” you have considerable influence. So to reward the Vermont legislature’s recent decision to override the governor’s veto and legalize same-sex marriage in that state, why not encourage your listeners and readers to purchase products made in Vermont? And Iowa? Think of it: Your millions of fans could trade in chocolate body paint for maple syrup as the sexy edible substance of choice, all the while supporting this legislative victory and (we hope) spurring others like it.
D.J.’s Fellow Gayby
P.S. I have absolutely no stake in Vermont’s economy. I just want my dads to be able to marry
one day in the state where my family lives.
That day may come more quickly than we think, DJFG, thanks to the bravery of elected officials in Iowa and Vermont. As for rewarding those states: Like most Americans, I consume way more corn syrup than a person should (that shit’s in everything), so Iowa is covered. And I will make sure the next bottle of maple syrup I purchase is from Vermont—but I’ll be pouring it on my pancakes, thanks, not my boyfriend. Food is for after sex, people, not before, and never, ever during. Food is not a sex toy, not even chocolate.
ATTENTION JOURNALISTS: The deadline for this year’s Sexies—the Sex-Positive Journalism Awards—is approaching. The Sexies recognize writers “who stick to high journalistic standards” while reporting about sex “in a climate of repression and misinformation around human sexuality.” More info at
www.sexies.org.
What’s with the hating on erotifood? You’ve got some odd boundaries, Dan.
How about sending some Vermont Maple Syrup to the A-holes in power of the gay-marriage-hating states out there?
Best line: And although it would hurt me more than it would hurt you, TIA, it would still be wrong
gee I wouldn’t have thought Dan would be so particular on food not a sex toy
Why exactly is food+sex a bad combo?
Isn’t it pretty normal for each partner in a long-established couple to claim some personal space of their own? I.e., one partner has a shop where they work on their own projects, the other has domain over the kitchen. Or they have separate desks. I can’t actually think of any lasting couple where each person doesn’t have their own den claimed somewhere.
Maybe try getting a bigger apartment first? A two-bedroom isn’t much more expensive than a one-bedroom. Sleep in separate beds if you want, or take turns between the two rooms. It sounds like a more convenient step than having someone move out, and it might provide enough personal space for each partner.
I do not think that states should be rewarded for not discriminating. Equality should be standard, not extraordinary.
TIA
Why don’t you tell your roommate how you feel? You never know what may happen
As for IBIL, I understand completely. My boyfriend practically lives at my place, and sometimes I just want to scream. I say the standard “if he really loves you he will…” applies here
Dan, what’s so wrong with using food as foreplay? As long as you are careful where you put it, I see no problem.
I hate firsties.
What’s a “sound”?
YNH: I completely agree.
Good column. Although I’m inclined to say it’s even more shitbaggy than Dan pointed out to film a girl and her boyfriend. Her b-o-y-f-r-i-e-n-d. Step the hell off, fuckwad.
My sister is an Illinoian lesbian. Here’s hoping she and her partner can get married here so her recently-laid-off girlfriend will be able to get medical benefits through the school my sister teaches at.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_(naut…)
Any object inserted into the urethra for sexual pleasure.
Food and sex is stupid.
I first fell in love with Dan when he called sex+food: boring breeder faux kink, or something like that.
God, why would anyone want to get sticky, sweet crap all over you. yuck.
Not even turkey gravy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_(medi…)
I would never distribute nude pics of a girlfriend without her permission… except this morning on my way to work, I distractedly left my blackberry at the counter of a bakery I stopped at for breakfast. Although I’d pretty much forgotten about them up until that moment, as I raced back to the bakery, I was acutely aware of that small album of snapshots, an album I’d always meant to remove from my camera but had never gotten around to, sent to me by my girlfriend late one booze fueled evening…
for TIA:
Unless you have always had a camera setup in your room (such as a webcam broadcasting your solo spankfests 24 hours a day), and your roommate hand knowledge of this (the webcam, not the pecker strangling), and slept in your room willingly, you are out of luck, legally and morally.
But let’s face it, you don’t want video of her boyfriend. You are more likely to want video of her walking around the room naked after a shower, or her touching herself the one night her boyfriend doesn’t come over.
The best advice would be to forget it, because if you don’t, you’re likely to get caught trying to hide a camcorder in a pile of laundry. And even if she doesn’t press charges, her boyfriend will pummel you, the friendship will be ruined, either you or her is going to have to move out, and you’ll never get anywhere near screwing her or anyone she knows for the rest of your life. And chances are, you won’t get any really good useable footage anyway, it’s not worth the risk.
It would be a better risk telling her how hot you think she is, and hoping that the next time she has a fight with her boyfriend, you have a warm, sympathetic, rock hard penis for her to cry on.
“Food is not a sex toy?” “FOOD IS NOT A SEX TOY?” Umm… Dan? Excuse me? Food is a perfectly wonderful sex toy; one of my, and many youngins’ first sex toys. I have been studying human sex and sexuality for many years and I know of nothing wrong with using a condom-covered cucumber as a pervertable insertable, let alone rubbing some jell-o on your girlfriend’s tits or your boyfriend’s wang, for a lil post-coital dessert. Jeez, Dan, if this was a joke – not funny. If you were being serious – I’m seriously disappointed!
IBIL: My fiance and I also like having our own space. We have separate bedrooms (which is also because I snore like a bulldozer). Might be a bit more economical than keeping entirely separate apartments or homes.
@BVUGrad2003 Sounds like a great idea! my family is in vermont and I’ll be there next week. Maybe I’ll pick up some little bottles for sending away!
darcy, a sound is an object inserted into the urethra
Yay, Dan. Thank you for bringing awareness about the ridiculous child porn charges being brought against “sexters”. What really tears me up about it is that these asshole prosecutors probably see no correlation with the fact that Sally Sue Jenkins showed them her titties behind the high school when they were all 14 back in 1959, and no one screamed “child porn” back then. Just because we have a digital record, the government can now punish us for what we choose to do with our bodies? No, unacceptable. Let the parents punish their children (or not) for digitally flashing their classmates; the government has no business here.
Also, I vote no on food in the bedroom, as well, though I welcome many other things. And I celebrate others’ freedoms to bring whatever the hell they want to their own bedroom!
I don’t think it’s “wrong” but I just don’t get using food in the bedroom. It’s *food.* I love it — I love eating it, I love making it — but I love it most on my plate. I mean, go ahead if you want to, but you’re not going to convince me to do it.
The chocolate syrup and whipped cream thing always mystified me.
There’s nothing wrong with you, IBIL. If you feel like you need your own space, well, that’s perfectly normal. We all have SOMETHING that we’re a little OCD about, and rarely, if ever, do our partners share that particular tick. I agree with the previous commentor that you should try a bigger apartment, and carve out your own “castle” there, first. First of all, this will probably save you on rent over two studio apartments, and, second, it’s less likely to hurt his feelings. Also, figure out if there’s anything he’s doing in your shared space that’s particularly bothering you, and TALK to him about it. The compromises get bigger as the relationship progresses. If that doesn’t work, maybe your own spaces are best. In fact, there’s some of the opinion that living apart is actually BETTER for a relationship, as you tend to value the time you DO spend together more, and, well, being apart can get you much hotter and more bothered than having him 3 inches away at all times. But you are going to have to approach this delicately, or you’re going to kill the relationship. Lesson: think first, move in together later.
What about sending Maple Syrup and Ears of Corn to our own state representatives? (For those of us who don’t live in Vermont, Iowa, or Connecticut.) I would love to see Springfield offices covered with more corn and syrup than they know what to do with!
Mmmm…. doughnuts…. boobies….
TIA- Don’t be an asshole. If you want naked pictures or you want to fuck your roommate, then see if she is game.
Conservatives: Charging kids as kiddie pornstars makes no sense. Child porn is a serious crime that exploits and harms children. If you want to make it a crime for the under 18 crowd to take pictures of their goods and then post it/send it, then fine, pass a law, put it on the books and make it a crime. Just don’t equate it with some sick, dirty old man who gets off on abusing/fucking kids. It’s not the same thing and you know it.
Finally, food: I like giving blowjobs. I like whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Put them together….mmmmmmm….delicious 😉 Nothing wrong with the occasional carrot, bannana or zucchini insertion, either. It beats using your roommates toothbrush as a “sound”, haha.
A sound is something you put into your urethra.
I’m with Dan on the food-and-sex-don’t-mix thing. I’m so happy to hear you say it. All these years I thought I was a prude… just don’t like the mixing of aromas. Always has grossed me out. The only thing i want on his penis is my mouth!
If we’re not going to punish teenagers for distributing child porn, then we need to get rid of the strict liability laws regarding child porn, where someone who has no idea that the amateur porn depicts a minor can be arrested and put away for years (and registered as a sex offender). Otherwise, we’re allowing the teens to impose harsh consequences on others without having to worry about any for themselves — not a good way to raise the next generation of responsible adults.
No food + sex??? I guess that means the Brussels sprouts are out, then. Bummer.
FYI – It was Iowa’s Supreme Court that ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, not the elected officials/legislature. Not that some extremely ugly-sounding people aren’t wailing and gnashing and trying to force it to a head, so to speak, in the legislature. To change our State Constitution is at least a three year process, so we’re good for now.
Hey TIA,
My b/f videotaped me having sex with him w/o my knowledge or permission the week before I moved out of our shared apt. We’d decided to breakup and this was some sad, last time breakup sex that he, for some reason, wanted to record for beating off posterity. He told me about it after we’d been broken up for some time – I’d gone back to the apt to get my half of the deposit when he finally moved out of there. I was pissed, hurt, felt violated, disgusted etc. He said he destroyed the tape but who knows? Any guy who’d be shitty enough to tape someone w/o their consent is a guy who’d be shitty enough to lie about getting rid of the tape. Don’t be shitty TIA. Don’t break the law. Don’t violate this woman’s privacy. About a decade later I still feel hurt and betrayed and am still wondering if that tape is out there. Don’t do this to your roommate. She’s a person not just a “hottie.” Try being a person, too.
I have no idea what a ‘sound’ is…please someone explain??
A Sound is a metal rod with balls on the ends inserted into a man’s urethra. Allegedly, when using the ones of increasing size (like guaging and stretching a body piercing) one can expand the size of one’s urethra to the point that it can fit another penis inside it.
Thanks Dan for standing up for all of us who feel like food/sex is silly. I always think it seems like one of those thing that people who want to “spice up their marriage” do because they’ve seen it in movies. Not that I have never eaten a piece of string cheese out of my boyfriend’s ass, but I did it to be silly. If you enjoy getting all sticky with something other than your god-given bodily fluids, rock on, but there are so many kinds of sensation play that **don’t** lead to ant infestations. Hot wax, ice, electricity, and rubber bands are far more sanitary in the bedroom than chocolate syrup and fruit salad.
Yeah, I don’t know what a “sound” is, either. Urban Dictionary wasn’t any help.
And seriously, why can’t food be for during-sex play? I think it’s too sticky and gross, but I thought that consent/safety were the only axiom in Dan’s sexual ethics. You can be safe with a little bit of chocolate, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t mind.
oh, ok, now I know what a sound is. Hmmm…
Anti-child porn laws are to protect children. So his girlfriend no longer get protected just because she humored her boyfriend with nudie pics, and then later on decided to break up? Alpert distributed naked pictures of an underage girl. Pictures that are now out of his control. If the pictures didn’t spread beyond the initial recipients, it’s because his friends are more decent than he is. Her pictures could be all over cyber-space, and she is not an adult. That is wrong, and child porn. That is something that shouldn’t happen to a child, no matter the circumstances. What she did doesn’t merit random creeps jacking off to your image for years to come, or even having school admins discovering them on some confiscated phone. Once someone forwards something like that, then you cannot control who sees it.
I agree that getting a bigger place can help a lot. My boyfriend and I recently moved to a smaller town. I was really upset to leave the beautiful metropolis in which I used to live. So one thing we did when we moved here is get a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house, which cost us practically nothing because of the general shittiness of the town. We both work from home, so it was pretty important that we each have “offices” and space.
Now we can go all day without seeing each other if we feel like it. We can have loads of house-guests. And we haven’t had any co-habitation blues.
I read a Savage Love letter a long time ago where a girl talked about how, when she was a little kid, her mom stole her electronic toothbrush. The mom blamed her friends, but then the girl found out that her mom was using it as a sex toy!
All respect that is due, nonudiepics4u, some creepy dude could be beating off to the images found in a Teen Vogue and you don’t see the authorities coming after the editors or photographers for that magazine, even though it is a publication mainly of scantily-clad underage girls. Just because “some random creeps could jack off” to an image DOES NOT make Alpert guilty of distributing child pornography. There are always random creeps out there, and they will find a way to satisfy their creepy urges. Alpert had no intent whatsoever, he did a shitty thing that his friends and family should (and hopefully did) punish him over. He does not deserve to be locked up or registered a sex offender for this. Nor do the people at Teen Vogue, just so we’re clear. I’m not saying that the magazine is doing wrong, I just think the government is going way overboard on prosecuting the sexters.
Food with sugar in it can cause yeast infections if it gets in/near your vagina/vulva. You’ve been warned!
So: previous generations (including my own) bring on STDs; patents tether their kids/teens to cellphones (considering ‘cellphones’ 50 years ago meant “within earshot of mom yelling”; swimmin’ holes laden with lead and mercury and nitrates, ads bombarding/brainwashing kids with messages; countries attacking us through no fault of the kids growing up experiencing it; fewer and fewer trees to scrawl initials of they and their crush with ‘heart-arrow’; food making them obese for reasons unbeknownst to them; castor oil has been replaced by barbituates to control invented maladies such as ADD et al.; and so now too we have Big Brother suppressing their sexuality further, as if threat of AIDS death wasn’t enough; also computers replacing most of what would have been skills/jobs a generation ago, certainly leaving some, I’m sure, feeling irrelevant (innate archetypes don’t change, just their need in society)
Sounds to me like we’re raising a generation of Ted Kozinskys folks.
Next time a 60-90 yr old starts with the “you kids nowadays have it so easy! Why, when I was a kid..” .. It’s getting harder and harder not to laugh in their face
Cohabitation: I too hate cohabiting with my lovers. It’s almost pathologically bad if I do. I just start to feel like a trapped rat, no matter what… and a bigger apartment won’t help. It’s about control, not space.
Reasoning: no matter how compatible, each partner is going to have some wildly annoying habit or activity that they adore but their partner can’t stand being around. Could be watching football with beer buddies at top volume on a Sunday afternoon, could be smoking cigs, or pot, or cooking meat, or singing at top volume in the shower at 1am on a school night, or maybe gossiping and talking about clothes ad nauseum, filling the house with papier mache, whatever.
Sometimes one partner has friends that the other partner just can’t stand. And yet, my home is my castle – who are you to say who I can and can’t have over, and when? And who are you to say that I have to endure the company of idiots in my own home?
Or maybe one person just gets obnoxious from time to time – either from drinking or just because they’re exuberant and loud. I’d really like the power to kick them out of my place until they settle down again, and I’d really like the ability to leave their place if they start acting annoying or they try to tell me what to do. That way I don’t have to “make” them stop or “force” myself to put up with it, or squelch myself if I’m the one who doesn’t feel like being quiet. And I don’t have to be judgmental – I can just say, “I’m going home now, have fun” and let them do their thing.
So for me, having my own place is a matter of territoriality, control, and security.
Strangely I don’t mind living with roommates, in fact I prefer it – I’m too introverted and rigid otherwise – but my roomies and I don’t have all these “relationship” expectations, although we enjoy hanging out and doing things together.
So don’t feel bad about needing your own space! I wouldn’t do it any other way.
Maybe I’d reconsider if I had a very long time to get used to a lover being around. Sometimes even with separate apartments, you can just grow together, and it doesn’t matter so much where you spend your time together – you’re kind of “living together” in a collective space that includes two separate apartments. Then by the time you do finally consolidate, it’s really anticlimactic and not that big a change.
Yeah I too don’t know what a “sound” is, though it brings to mind “sounding the depths,” which is totally gross in this context, and no doubt exactly what Dan meant.
To YNH:
I’d agree with your comment in theory, unfortunately, we don’t live in theory nor do we live in a perfect world. And if the suggestion is to support (not reward) states that don’t discriminate, then I’m all for it.
I’m from Canada, so I buy Canadian maple syrup. What else does Vermont have :
Love the column!
and let’s not forget Chinese eggplant. Uhmm yummy eggplant.