Savage Love

My boyfriend and I both like porn and toys, and we’re
obviously open about everything and often play with them together. But
recently he posed an interesting question that left me feeling like a
prudish conservative: If virtual-reality technology is developed such
that one can have a sexual encounter with a computerized person (insert
favorite famous wanna-fuck object here: Brad Pitt, Jessica Alba,
whoever), would that be too close to cheating? He says that it’s just a
face attached to a sex toy and nothing more. If porn is okay and sex
toys are okay, he reasons, why not combine the two? But I’m feeling a
little jealous of my boyfriend’s virtual fuck buddy of the future.
What’s your take?

Worried About Virtual Promiscuity

We can spend all day worrying about
terrifying new sex technologies that have yet to be
developed—virtual fuck buddies, horse-hung sexbots, Laura
Ingraham’s vaginal canal—or we can make up our minds to cross
those terrifying bridges when we come to, on, or in them.

As for what constitutes infidelity, well,
that is and always will remain a highly subjective matter, WAVP. Every
couple gets to decide for themselves just what constitutes infidelity
within their own relationship. One couple may draw that line at
pornography—well, it’s usually the batshitcrazy half that draws
the line at pornography and the sane half concedes the point under
duress and “consumes porn” in secret—while the couple next door
draws the line at quadruple penetration.

And speaking of infidelity: I’m gonna slap
the next big, dumb gay opponent of marriage equality who whines about
gay marriage being a plot to impose stultifying monogamy on us and
destroy gay sex as we’ve come to blow and glove it. Straights don’t
have to be monogamous to be married (or married to be monogamous) and
neither do we. We can have our civil rights, full marriage equality,
and our sexual adventures, too—just like straight people do.

Gay people who say, “We shouldn’t want to get married because then
we’ll all have to be monoooooooogamous!” are just as
dishonest—and just as full of shit—as Bible thumpers who
say, “They shouldn’t be allowed to get married because they’re not
capable of being monogamous!” Drop it, douchebags.

Okay! I’m a bisexual woman who dated this amazing,
beautiful, bisexual guy who was a bartender at the Gay 90’s in
Minneapolis. (Shout out!) Obviously it didn’t bother me that he liked
men, but the thing I just could not tolerate was that after he would
come on my stomach he would lick it alllllllllllllll up!!! OMFG I
almost threw up every time!

I never said anything, because I’m not one to knock someone’s kinks.
But I’m dying to know if this is a gay thing or did he have some type
of protein deficiency?

Jizzed Upon In Minneapolis

A gay thing? Not according to my
mail—or your example, JUIM, seeing as this guy was bi.

Getting back to my mail: All the panicky
e-mail I get from people whose boyfriends, husbands, or FWBs suddenly
lapped up their own come is from women. Either gay men don’t do this or
they don’t regard the act as so troubling that they feel a need to ask
me about it. But in my own personal sex life, JUIM, I’ve never seen a
gay man lap up his own come—well, not unless he was ordered
to.

So where did this kink come from? Who knows?
Who cares? We can look back through this bartender’s life and
speculate—maybe his dad forced him to lick his plate clean, maybe
he started eating his come as a teenager to destroy evidence of
masturbation from disapproving parents, maybe he’s deeply concerned
(and deeply confused) about his carbon emissions—but, generally
speaking, attempting to identify the root cause of an adult person’s
fetishes, turn-ons, kinks, etc., is a waste of time.

It’s a much better use of our time, JUIM, to accept and enjoy our
fetishes and our partners’ fetishes with good grace and a sense of
humor. What turns us on turns us on, and angsting about it endlessly
doesn’t change anything.

I’m writing on behalf of a friend of mine who is too
tired and disgusted to write. The advice is too late for her, but I was
wondering if you could send out a few hints to those who partake in
golden showers.

My friend is a nice landlady. She rented her basement apartment to a
young woman whose boyfriend visited on weekends. After a couple months,
the tenant moved out and my friend went down to clean. The place
smelled disgusting. The rugs in every room were soaked through and the
walls were covered with dried urine. She had to rip out all the
carpeting.

I just assumed people had the sense to do golden showers in the tub.
So, Dan, what are the golden rules?

Irked Lady Landlord

What proof do you have that these two were piss freaks, ILL? Pissing
all over carpets and walls is a time-honored way for disgruntled
tenants to fuck over perceived-to-be-evil landlords; it is not,
generally speaking, a piss freak’s modus operandi. It’s been my
experience—ahem—that piss freaks are neat freaks
(outside of the tub), the turn-on being the violation of their own
taboos and hang-ups around cleanliness.

I’ve been reading your column pretty much since you
started writing it in the early 1990s. When I moved to New Orleans,
pre-interwebs, and discovered you weren’t represented in any local
papers, I had a friend clip and mail your column every week so I
wouldn’t miss out.

The reasons for the longevity of my interest are not only because
you write good ‘n’ stuff, but because your advice always nails it. But
while I feel that you’re correct 100 percent of the time, I’m curious
if you feel that you’ve ever made a mistake.

Are you infallible? Any regrets?

Curious In Louisiana

P’shaw, CIL, I’ve made my fair share of
mistakes. I remember one in particular: After giving out some erroneous
information about the location of the clitoris (it’s not on the
tailbone, as it turns out) and being called out for it, I explained
that, on the few occasions that I slept with women, I didn’t make a
close study of their vaginas, as that would have made it harder to
pretend that their vaginas were, in actual fact, Keanu Reeves’s
distressed ass crack. Then I added, for no good reason, that to me a
vagina would always look like “a canned ham dropped from a great
height.”

I regret writing that, as people screamed and yelled, and I was even
refused service in a lesbian bar over it. But luckily for me, the
column in which I made that gynophobic but eerily apt crack—I
mean, picture it: A canned ham falls from a great height, hits the
ground hard, the weakest seam of the can splits, the meat product
inside is pressed out through the long, narrow opening as the impact
compresses the can, and pink meat unfolds like a delicate, if
nonkosher, flower—is so old that it doesn’t exist on a web
archive anywhere and I can plausibly deny ever having written any such
thing.

mail@savagelove.net