I got a spate of kind e-mails last week, in response to my column about my secondary partner, the Other Guy, choosing to end our relationship. All of them asserted that any man who voluntarily ended a sexual relationship with me must be mad, and one romantic vigilante offered to avenge this slur, if only I would only place him on my List of Sexual Possibilities.
To those nice people I say: I do appreciate your desire to be supportive of me in my polyamorous adventures. While it's true that some secondary relationships are deeply emotional, and that a breakup with a secondary can be heart wrenching, that's not been the case with me and the Other Guy. I've never been fond of the term "fuck-buddy"--it just doesn't fall smoothly upon the ear--but I think that it might be the most accurate description of the relationship between us. (Not that I was only using him for sex. Really. I like him with his clothes on, too.) The Other Guy is a good man, we've had a lot of fun, and I wish him the best. And I definitely don't want to have his tires slashed, thank you anyway.
It's a good thing I'm feeling so "change is beautiful," because there's another change in the wind for me, and this one is going to affect you. Starting next week, I will not be appearing in the dead-tree version of The Stranger for a while. As of June 30, Control Tower will be appearing online exclusively. You see, The Stranger is launching its new online-personals site, and they think I'm just the girl to be one of the mascots of what promises to be a vortex of seething sexual energy. I think they imagine me as sort of a literary, leather-clad Venus flytrap, tempting the erotically adventurous with David Lynch-like vignettes of twilight sensuality. So they are putting me on that site for the time being. However, if you're a hopeless newsprint junkie, don't despair. I will definitely be coming back to the paper eventually.
I wasn't so sure about this temporary move at first. "But you can write longer columns online," said my editor persuasively. That would be nice, I thought. Anyone who reads my blog knows that I am not a girl who writes short pieces by choice. (And if you aren't reading my blog, why the hell not? Google it and start reading immediately.) In the two and half years I've been doing this column, I've gotten a lot of interesting questions and good suggestions about topics that I've been unable to address here, because I could not do them justice in a short format. So I'm pleased that I'll be able to write stories that until now, space restrictions have prevented me from writing. I just know you're longing to read my thoughts about whether dominant women should allow their submissives to fuck them, for example. I'll also tell you about the time I took my husband to the hospital for his hysterectomy and why the existence of male escorts for women is the most pervasive myth since cellulite cream, and I'll transcribe some selections from Mistress Matisse's Museum of Really Weird Phone Calls.
And I think that given greater length, I'll also be writing--oh, shall we say, more intimately? More graphically? The Stranger, as a journalistic entity, is a maverick, no doubt about it. But still, I have felt that even in a column about kinky sex, the standards of the fourth estate must be upheld, and so I have striven to be fair-minded in my judgments of others, and sensitive to my place as a point of entry for those questioning their sexual desires. I have tried to be candid enough about BDSM to be interesting without giving the kinds of details that would make the less-perverted reader throw down the paper and run away screaming.
Well, if I'm going to be writing for the web, you can forget about all that shit. Everybody knows the web is a free-for-all. There are no rules, there are no ethics, and anyone who thinks web journalism has any relationship to fair-minded judgment has obviously never heard of Matthew Drudge. And for a personals ad site? I will consider the fact that you opened your browser to be evidence of your consent to reading whatever crosses my nasty mind, and I will get right into the sweaty, slippery details of what I know best: kinky sex. So don't say you weren't warned.
