I am a 33-year-old married male who has a WAM—wet and messy—fetish. I’m into mud and clay. I have played with various substances in the bathroom by myself over the years. It always ends with me masturbating myself into oblivion, wishing there were someone with me so we could sensuously rub against each other, etc., until we both climax. But I’m always alone!
I was always too shy to share this fetish with anyone until three years ago, when I told the woman I’ve now been married to for two years. She assured me that I should never be ashamed of any of my fantasies and that she would be glad to help me fulfill them. But when I went and got some clay from the art store, showed it to her, and said that we were going to be having some fun, she acted uncomfortable. Once I got the bathtub full of the “mud,” got naked, and started to coax her into the room, she totally freaked out.
Needless to say, I was mortified and disappointed, and there was $50 worth of clay in the tub that I didn’t want to go to waste. So I locked her out and decided to try to make the best of it. This backfired because soon she was pounding on the door like she was jealous that I was in there pleasuring myself. I washed off, washed everything down the drain, and opened the door, but it was too late. She was angry and wouldn’t say anything the rest of the day. Neither of us has spoken of it since.
I still have my fantasies, but now I feel I have to hide them. I have magazines and videos that I masturbate to, but it goes no further than that. So my questions are:
1. Am I some kind of a freak or weirdo?
2. Have you ever heard of this fetish before?
3. If so, why doesn’t anyone else ever write to you about similar fetishes?
4. Will I ever be able to show this side of me to my wife, or should I just hide it from her forever?
Mis-Understood Dude
Let me get this straight: Three years ago you shared your fetish and fantasies with the woman you married two years ago, and your then non-wife assured you that she wanted to help you fulfill all of your fantasies—but she completely flipped out when you filled the tub with clay. And 12 months later, you married her anyway?
I’m not endorsing the way you sprang a tub full of clay on your future wife—maybe she reacted badly because the bathroom was an unholy mess? Maybe you should’ve stopped everything and talked things through when she acted uncomfortable? Maybe the sight of you half-covered in mud and fully aroused was too much, too soon?—but why on earth didn’t you get to the bottom of this before you married this woman?
Sounds to me like you really spooked the wife-to-be, MUD, both with that “Hey, here’s a tub full of clay!” move and then, when she balked, by going right ahead with one of your solo mud-and-sex sessions instead of putting your orgasm on hold to, gee, go and inquire after the future wife’s feelings about what just went down. At that moment, she may have concluded that given a choice between her and a tub full of clay, you would choose a tub full of clay—because that’s just what you did… and yet she married you anyway.
People are fucking mysteries, man.
And in answer to your questions…
1. Yes, but your kinky weirdo freakiness is charming and harmless and not anything that you need to feel ashamed of, MUD.
2. Yes, yours is a relatively common fetish, MUD, one that exists on a continuum. Wet-and-messy play can involve substances that are harmless and represent a low barrier to entry for the loving, GGG, nonfetishist partner—mud, food, condiments, etc.—or substances that are not at all harmless and represent an impossibly high barrier to entry, e.g., shit, vomit, snot. Your kink could be much, much more problematic.
3. Other people have. Yours isn’t the first letter I’ve run from/about a weirdo freak like you.
4. You already showed this side of yourself to the wife. She knows, you know she knows, but you’re both pretending not to know what you damn well do know. To avoid becoming completely sexually estranged, TALK TO YOUR WIFE. Ask her what went wrong—how did she go from “never be ashamed… glad to help [you fulfill your fantasies]” to freaking out and pounding on doors and ignoring the mud-caked elephant in the room for more than three years?
Ask her to open up—beg her to open up—and apologize to her out of the gate for botching it, for rushing her, for being so insensitive as to prioritize the clay over her feelings after she freaked. And then tell her you want to be able to work on building a healthy, honest, and mutually satisfying sexual relationship, one that meets your needs and hers, but to do that you’re going to have to start communicating with each other again.
I have a 15-year-old daughter. I am bisexual and work in marketing for the adult industry;
both are things I explained to her when I thought she was old enough to form an understanding of what they meant.
Recently, I returned from an adult-industry convention, where I often pick up new toys. One of my gift bags contained a petite sparkly purple vibrator, and I thought, well it’s not my style but maybe I should give it to my daughter along with a lecture on masturbation being a great alternative to sex. Even though I am an open-minded and cool mom, this thought still made me uncomfortable, and I relegated the new toy to my nightstand full of gifted-from-vendors toys that aren’t my style.
I figured that no teenager wants to be given a masturbatory device by a parent. Was I wrong?
Teenage Masturbation Icky
No, TMI, you were right: No teenager wants to be given a masturbatory device by her parent. But that doesn’t mean a teenager—even your teenager—wouldn’t be delighted to have a masturbatory device. A moment of awkwardness and a little feigned teenage discomfort/disgust—perhaps even a show of discarding the device where it could be easily retrieved after Mom apologizes and retreats—is a price that most teenage girls would be willing to pay to have a brand-new sparkly purple vibrator of her very own. (Oh, and I’m thinking she knows about your drawer full of misfit sex toys. Maybe you could just tell her that anything in there that’s still in its original packaging is up for grabs.)
Some gay friends said that girls don’t ever think a penis is cute. I started asking all the chicks I know if they think cocks can be cute. Not one said yes. Gay guys think cocks are cute.
Curious Of Cock Knowledge
No man’s cock is cute—well, no man’s besides the man who got a Hello Kitty tattoo on the head. A cock can be hot, it can be beautiful, it can be vaguely threatening. But unless there’s something very, very wrong, no man’s cock is cute and no man wants to be told that his cock is cute.
Well I’m a woman, and I think they are cute. And I don’t date any guy who’s too insecure to handle having his cock called cute. They are. (Sometimes.) They look like dinosaurs! Or little gerbils with helmets! They can be hot as WELL as cute.
I also don’t date any guy who gets freaked out if I call his flaccid cock “small,” when it’s obvious I mean “in comparison to the erect state.” I mean, I say more orthodox flattering things too, but I have very little patience for macho complexes.
MUD dude, she wasn’t pounding on the door because she was jealous you were jerking off; she probably knocked in order to apologize and re-establish communication and found you’d locked her out. Also, I can’t get over choosing the tub of mud over the upset woman – I mean, really! The person with the fetish has to work really, really hard not to obsess. I once dated a guy with a foot fetish and I ended up breaking it off – not because it grossed me out – but because I ended up feeling like a pair of feet that happened to have a girl attached. Anyway, you don’t need my advice because Dan’s was excellent – but I do recommend you try and put yourself in the other person’s place. Imagine she was obsessed with something you’re indifferent to. (let’s randomly pick pencils). Now imagine she had 60 pencils in the bed, you got stuck by one and were bleeding and went to get a bandaid, saying, “sorry, can’t do the pencils” and she locked the door to be alone with her pencils and didn’t care about your injury.
maybe she was pounding at the door because she needed to use the toilet
Wow, I am really disappointed in Dan on this one.
I almost always agree with his judgment.
I am a gwm with an extremely “cute” Asian partner (together 17 years).
Everything about him is “cute”.
He is 5’0 105pounds and keeps his hwp 4 inch hard and 1 inch soft cock completely shaved.
He has a very tight to his body little ball sac, and maybe even Dan would have to admit that his genitals are “cute”.
Surely, Dan would not suggest that I should stop calling him cute, because Dan likes them hung or whatever, as we both really get off on our kind of play!
Cocks are too cute! And hot. And odd. They are marvelous and magical. (Actully, I complimented my husband for his with a “that’s a pretty cock” just a second ago.)
And, MUD – I’ think your kink is cute! I’d love to play with clay… But a bathtub full of it seems kind of frightening. So, maybe that’s what went wrong.
Cocks are too cute! And hot. And odd. They are marvelous and magical.
(Actually, I complimented my husband for his with a “that’s a pretty cock” just a second ago when he walked by on his way to the shower.)
And, MUD – I’ think your kink is cute! I’d love to play with clay… But a bathtub full of it seems kind of frightening. So, maybe that’s what went wrong.
I’m shocked – I think cocks are just perfectly ADORABLE when flaccid. Very cute in my book.
I’m shocked – I think cocks are just perfectly ADORABLE when flaccid. Very cute in my book!
Ooof. Sorry for the double post. Blasted sign up labyrinths.
As with other commenters, my first thought when reading MUD’s letter was something along the lines of, “Holy mother of fuck, how the hell is he going to get the mud out of the bathtub?!” You can’t wash anything and everything down the drain, and getting your bathtub clogged is so much more difficult to fix than your sink or your toilet. If I was MUD’s wife, I would be open to messing around with clay, but I still would have flipped out at his presentation for purely utilitarian reasons. I’ve done some pottery before, and let me tell you, clay can be a pain to clean up even in facilities equipped to handle it. And be assured that when we had extra clay in my pottery classes, the stuff went in the trash, not in the sink, because of the clogging issue. I’m not even sure I believe this is a real letter BECAUSE I can’t imagine him getting a tub full of clay-mud down the drain without there being a problem.
Here’s how you pull off a nice muddy date. Get a hotel room, some spa-grade theraputic mud and a BIG housekeeping tip… your wife will love it. Much better than art mud in your bathroom at home. ps, give housekeeping a headsup that the bathroom will require extra time to clean up because you will be doing some in room “spa treatments” and make sure you give enough tip to compensate.
Mud. Hmmm… I’m pretty vanilla, but a mud fetish barely makes me raise an eyebrow. I think that is pretty low-level on the kink-meter. I think MUD’s problem has more to do with his approach than the kink itself.
Okay, so the mud scene fell apart. Neither party handled it well. MUD seems to have handled it particularly badly. Regardless how they got to this point, Dan is right. You have to talk about it. It isn’t going to get better if you both maintain the silent treatment.
TMI: I second @44. Talking about sex or sex toys with mom is almost always very awkward. But when I was a teen, I had one uncle who seemed really cool, and I could talk to him much more easily than my parents. If you know of another adult in your daughter’s life that she talks to about this, the vibrator might be more acceptable from them.
Cute: No. Never. “Cute” is too often synonymous with “small”. And no guy wants to be told his dick is small.
Why the fuck isn’t there a universal guide on how to get partners acclimated to weird fetishes? And no, I’m not talking about spanking or dirty talk; I’m talking about the kind of stuff that most people haven’t even heard of, and would react very poorly to if not introduced slowly and carefully.
As someone who’s been very successful at making my weirdo fetishes part of my happy and healthy sex life, I can safely say that you kind of messed up at every step of the way, MUD.
My mother was damn-near victorian in her prim and properness; she never even swore. But she did pass on age appropriate sex-ed books by the simple expedient of leaving them on my bed AND NEVER MENTIONING THEM AGAIN. EVER. And I am eternally grateful. Vibrators are next-level, but I think for this generation the same conditions would apply. Leaving them would probably be ok, but one mention over breakfast of “hey, so how did that work out for you?” would probably scar the daughter for life.
This whole column makes me want to go watch Rocky Horror Picture Show all over again!!
OH! Rocky!
Where do people get the idea that $50 worth of clay is a huge amount? I don’t think any of you are artists who use modeling clay in your work. The stuff’s expensive. It’s not like he was buried up to his neck in a huge block of clay with only his cock in sight.
But to address the question of why she acted like she did: when he asked her about his fetish, they weren’t married. When a woman marries a guy it often changes him, in her estimation. He goes from being potential husband material to being potential father material. She may have felt that the time to explore fetishes (including his incredibly harmless fetish) was before he moved from being “potential husband to future father of my kids that I’m building a life with.” To her it represented a step backward, not a step forward toward the relationship and future she had her eye on.
Learning to masterbate is not brain surgery. The 15 year old has either already explored her body w/her hands or the shower massage – or she will soon. Why anyone thinks she needs her MOM to provide her w/a vibrator and a book is beyond me. I haven’t bought my 15 year old son Penthouse – nor am I planning on buying my 13 year old daughter any sort of masterbatory devices, visual or otherwise. Especially if this girl’s mom is open about sex, her sexuality, and her job, the girl is fine about her own sexuality and will get it figured out.
BTW…new here – what on earth does GGG mean?????
It was just a little mud! Holy crap, I can’t believe anyone really has a problem with this. You’d think savage love readers would be a little more open minded than they apparently are.
Thank god I have a real GGG partner, I’d hate to have sex with anyone who finds a problem with this scenario. In fact, I might use this as a litmus test in te future for a new partner should I need one. Freak out about this — no getting in my pants. All of you up there failed the test, and trust me, you’re missing out.
@173: Seriously?
In the LW’s own words: First “she acted uncomfortable” when presented with the reality of his fetish, then when he pressed on with things “she totally freaked out.”
Did he stop, check in with her, walk her back from the edge? Er, no. Again, his words: “There was $50 worth of clay in the tub that I didn’t want to go to waste. So I locked her out and decided to try to make the best of it.”
That is the EXACT OPPOSITE of GGG behaviour on his part. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about his partner – he had $50 worth of clay and a hard-on, and goddamnit he was going to put them to use.
Could his partner have been more open-minded? Sure. Could other women have responded more favourably? Absolutely. But in the moment, the woman he was with was finding it difficult to indulge his kink – his kink, not hers. He was asking her to step outside her comfort zone, but he clearly wasn’t willing to take the time she needed to feel safe in doing so.
He wasn’t selfish in asking her to engage with him in his fetish. He wasn’t selfish in taking steps to make it happen. But when she flipped out, he had a choice between satisfying himself or taking care of his partner. And he made the selfish choice.
If you don’t see something wrong with that, then trust me, we’re not missing out on anything.
@171, I’m not an artist, but this inspired me to look up prices for clay, and most internet retailers offer modeling clay for around $25 for 50 lbs. There are fancier types of modeling clay that cost a bit more, but why would he use those?
Hey, uptight bitch @ 174, I’m pretty sure the wife said she was up for anything. Why should he play all nicey-nice after she freaked out and humiliated him? I’d let her go fuck herself too. Wifey is a LIAR.
Uptight bitch? Wrong on several counts (not the least of which is that I do not have the necessary equipment to qualify) but thanks anyway for making it clear that you are a misogynist asshole.
But hey, I don’t envy all those uptight bitches who sure are missing out by not getting into your pants.
To the mud guy: Watch Ghost with your wife.
Clay sounds chafey.
Aww uptight bitch got her feelings hurt. Good to know I’m a woman hating woman. Way to throw out $2 words! Makes you sound like a 19 year old sociology major.
@180: I seem to have touched a nerve.
Speaking as a straight girl, cocks are DEFINITELY adorable when completely flaccid. As Erika Moen says (http://www.darcomic.org/2008/08/06/shrin…), “I feel like a benevolent giant protecting the villagers.”
i’ve seen some beautiful penises, but not many ‘cute’ ones.
@175: “There are fancier types of modeling clay that cost a bit more, but why would he use those?”
Maybe it’s just his personal preference for how it feels, etc. It’s like how people spend more on, well, pretty much anything.
@172: Good, game, giving.
One more vote for cocks being “cute”.
I find that I’m more attracted to “cute” guys than to “hot” guys. “Hot” can be intimidating. “Cute” is more in line with guys in the real world. Plus, “cute” guys aren’t pursued like “hot” guys are, so the “cute” guys tend to be more appreciative when they do get pursued.
After my partner and I wrapped up a year-long sex ed curriculum for our church’s teen group, we wanted to get nice little presents for the kids, and considered vibrators for the girls (all 15-17 years old [the girls, not the vibrators]). Then we found out we could go to JAIL — apparently it’s illegal in this state to give a minor a sex toy. Also to mail-order one, even if you’re of age. It’s literally easier to buy a gun than a dildo in Texas — how fucked-up is that?
However, “personal massagers” can be found in any Walgreens. And if you want to give the teen girl in your life a little push toward sexual health, just gift her a vibrating hairbrush or electric toothbrush. She’ll figure it out.
OMG it’s f*ing CLAY! He didn’t ask her to sh*t down his mouth while he wore women’s clothes! Did he pick this lady up at a latter day saint’s meeting or what? Savage you blew it.
@187 Like everyone else is saying here, it’s not the fetish that’s the problem (I personally find it quite hot, if a bit risky- muddy vajay-jay, not fun), it’s the way in which MUD dealt with his partner’s discomfort. He chose to go fully into indulging his own fetish, neglecting the needs of his wife (not to mention their plumbing). Dan’s just pointing out the obvious- there’s a right way and a wrong way to introduce a fetish to your partner, and MUD did it the wrong way.
aww… I like few things better than an ADORABLE cock.
I hope I’m not too late for the MUD fetish guy, but you and all others who are into Mud should travel to the Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada. The Bay has the highest tides in the world and it is a stunningly beautiful area for all. However, the Bay is full of a very soft, silky and sensual mud that covers your body. In my University days I would takes groups to the Bay for mud sliding and it was an awesome feeling. I was too repressed at the time to make it sexual, but for someone into such a thing, this would be heaven. Link here to see a photo of the mudflats and learn more about the Bay
http://bayoffundy.com/articles/intertida…
Sorry Dan, some cocks are cute – especially when they are soft and clean. A lot of straight girls have not seen the number of cocks that most gay guys have – and therefore don’t know the difference. I love touching and playing with a cute cock, tonguing and then blowing a cute cock. After the foreplay it becomes something else and that is great too. Cute cocks don’t have to stay cute after arousal..(I also like cocks that aren’t clean – and they are called something else.). Cute cocks are usually on cute guys.
I have to disagree on that last one! My very first vibrator was given to me by my mother when I was a teenager. I’ve worked in the adult industry and bought many since then, but it is still the only one I keep next to my bed and use at least once a day! As creepy as it sounds, I owe my first orgasm to my mom. Weird, huh?
My advice? Do it like my mom did: She put the vibrator on my bed. She didn’t hand it to me; I never saw her with it. She briefly explained the “gift” to me after I discovered it: no big production, no discomfort. Just a quick explaination and then move on to something else. It’ll be weird for a minute, but just fine in the long run!
I have to disagree on that last one! My very first vibrator was given to me by my mother when I was a teenager. I’ve worked in the adult industry and bought many since then, but it is still the only one I keep next to my bed and use at least once a day! As creepy as it sounds, I owe my first orgasm to my mom. Weird, huh?
My advice? Do it like my mom did: She put the vibrator on my bed. She didn’t hand it to me; I never saw her with it. She briefly explained the “gift” to me after I discovered it: no big production, no discomfort. Just a quick explaination and then move on to something else. It’ll be weird for a minute, but just fine in the long run!
You know, I’m pretty GGG according to my husband and girlfriend but if he told me he had a mud thing, and we were going to get into it, I’d be all envisioning Ghost right? Then he gets a bunch of clay that takes up more volume that both our bodies combined while I’m wondering “wtf does he want to do with all that shit?!” and he doesn’t notice I’m wondering “wtf?” and then he comes out covered in mud all I am thinking is “what a goddamn mess what kind of freak are you yuck this is disgusting what are you some kind of porcine you’re not sticking your muddy dick anywhere near my cho cho ewwwww!”
That said… I think this letter is fake. Someone that into playing in mud would know by now not to wash that much down the drain.