photo by robert ullman

Savage Love

by Dan Savage

I’m a 23-year-old woman living with my 25-year-old boyfriend. We’ve been dating for a little more than a year, and for the majority of that time we had a great sex life.

No Sex for Us

I’ve written columns stoned, I’ve written columns hammered and I’ve written columns on prescription medications—not necessarily prescribed to me—that impaired my ability to operate heavy machinery and, you know, my laptop is so old that it probably qualifies as heavy machinery. But I’ve never written a column after three straight nights of brain-killing insomnia.

So welcome to a very special sleep-deprived episode of Savage Love, and I apologize in advance if the advice you’re about to receive is suckier than the stoned, hammered, heavily medicated crap that made this column great.

Okay, NSFU, I’ve got a few suggestions.

First, grow the fuck up. You guys are 23 and 25, not 13 and 15, which means you get to make up your own minds about premarital sex.

Seeing as you two were engaging in premarital sex before you moved in together, it’s a whole lot of ridiculous to cave to the delicate sensibilities of your religious parents now. After all, kids, the same vengeful, sex-obsessed, entirely fictitious God who disapproves of premarital sex also disapproves of any and all “nonintercourse ways” of getting your boyfriend off. Spilling his seed is a sin too, NSFU, whether you’re helping him spill on the ground or on your tonsils.

Second, birth control works. If you’re not willing to assume the teeny, tiny risk of getting pregnant now that you’re living together, NSFU, why were you willing to risk it when you hardly knew each other?

Take the pill, use condoms, and if you really want to be paranoid about it, have the boyfriend pull his condom-wrapped cock out of your non-ovulating twat after you’ve come but before he does, which will reduce your risk of an unplanned pregnancy to so close to zero that zero will feel like it’s being stalked. Or something.

Finally, open your mouth. This arrangement—no vaginal intercourse for discontented you, plenty of oral and handjobs for thoroughly contented him—works for the boyfriend, NSFU, but it’s making you miserable.

Tell him you want to renegotiate terms. You stop worrying about what your parents think and stop inflating your fear of pregnancy and get back to your old intercoursin’ ways—which you don’t have to tell the parents about—or he’s going to have to buy a strap-on dildo and fuck you with that before you’ll even think about touching his dick again.

I’m a 19-year-old gay boy, and while I have tried dating guys my own age, I realized a long time ago I’m far more interested (romantically and sexually) in older men. I understand, though, that many older men out there looking for a guy my age may not have the best intentions. Do you have any tips for someone in my situation?

Timid Whelp in Needa Knowledge

Gay men in their 30s and 40s who’ll date teenage boys are almost always scum, TWINK, as you’ve surmised. But gay guys in their 30s and 40s who will date 23-year-olds? Some are scum, of course, because some of everyone is scum, but the scum makes up a far smaller percentage of the total. And these nonscummy older men are much more likely to be interested in a 23-year-old who has his shit together.

So I’d advise you to skip the older guys who’ll date you now and go get your shit together. Get your ass into a decent college, fuck the odd TA (and they’re all odd) to earn a little dating-and-mating wisdom, and then after you graduate take your gathered figurative shit to a big city where you’ll meet plenty of attractive older men interested in, um, packing your literal shit.

Oh, and all the angry middle-aged gay men out there who “date” teenage boys and don’t regard themselves as scum: Spare me the angry emails, fellas. I didn’t say that you’re all scum, guys, I wrote that you’re “almost always scum.” Unfortunately, scum never thinks it’s scum, which can make it difficult to tell the scummy ones and non-scummy ones apart, particularly for young and inexperienced guys.

My boyfriend and I met nearly three years ago when I was a call girl and he was a guy who wanted to be pegged (a big, big part of my business). We became friends, then partners, and now we’ve been together for three years. We share a home and we’re bringing up my 7-year-old son together.

Lucky in Love

Sex workers and clients do occasionally fall in love (check out the wonderful memoir Concertina by Susan Winemaker), so it does happen, LIL. But it happens so rarely that I was reluctant to print your letter, as it’ll give countless johns false hope. But I’m sleep deprived, so here it is. Congrats on finding the love of (fingers crossed) your life, LIL.

Here’s an ultravanilla one for you: It’s been about eight months since I was dumped, and every day I still think about the girl who broke my heart. I don’t speak to her and don’t want to. How do you get over a breakup?

Tired of Her

Sometimes a cliche is all I’ve got: Time heals all wounds—time and, of course, fucking other people. Did you know that every ounce of another woman’s saliva that you swallow, TOH, shaves a week off the healing process? It’s a true and totally scientific fact. I distinctly remember reading it in the Science section of The New York Times this morning.