We understand the simple way the human mind can work. It's summer, meaning it's hot. It's hot, meaning the less clothes the better. Less clothes, meaning getting naked. Getting naked ... hey, let's have sex!
OK, so maybe we're not all that primitive, but you get the drift. July is a leisure month, so we figured we'd take this opportunity to urge Charlotteans to get playful and frisky (and safe, always safe). To that end, we've assembled a package of stories all dealing in one way or another with love and lust and everything in between.
Of course, we're mindful that this is Charlotte, which has never been mistaken for a swingin' town like New York, Seattle or San Francisco. But as the city continues its evolution from Old Stifled South to New Progressive South, we figured we'd take a chance and see if we've become collectively more open-minded and accepting over the years. So here's our chance to find out.
We'd like to introduce you to Dan Savage. Savage, seen in the accompanying photo, has been the sex columnist for Seattle's weekly alternative The Stranger since 1991, but he's no, uh, stranger to other parts of the country: His popular advice column, Savage Love, currently runs in several dozen newspapers across the nation. We're considering adding him to the CL family, but we figured we'd let our loyal readers have a say in the matter. So take a look at a couple of his columns that are printed following this intro and let us know what you think. To vote, you can either go to the Cover section at www.charlotte.creativeloafing.com and e-mail us via the link under the story, or you can e-mail us directly at backtalk@creativeloafing.com. Just let us know if "Yes! Please run Savage Love as a regular feature in Creative Loafing." or "No! I never want to see Savage Love (dis)grace the pages of Creative Loafing again." (Actually, a simple "yes" or "no" response will suffice.) Unlike presidential elections of late, which tend to be fixed, this one's on the level, meaning that every vote counts.
Beyond the Savage, you'll also find the literary (a review of Alan Moore's latest graphic novel), the informative (so that's how men think!), the humorous (one guy's online porn pilgrimage) and the instructional (environmentally sound sex toys). Enjoy!
Savage Love
By Dan Savage
I am a 21-year-old male in a two-year relationship with a 20-year-old girl. The first year we dated, we were living in the same city, but now we live an hour apart. My girlfriend comes up to visit me almost every weekend, and I visit her every once in a while. Up until three or four months ago, we had a very healthy sex life. Now we barely have sex. She claims that it's not that she doesn't want me, but every time I come on to her or mention doing anything sexual, even just making out, she declines. She's tired or needs to study. She says stuff like, "We will do it tomorrow morning/tonight/when we get back from the store," but when the time comes, she has no interest.
I don't know if she's just no longer sexually interested in me or what. I know that she loves me, and she tells me she thinks I'm very attractive. We used to have sex a couple of times a day. Now I'm lucky if I get it once or twice a month. I love her very much and don't want to lose her over this, but I can feel it already coming between us.
Hopeless And Konfused
She isn't into you anymore, she's seeing someone else, or she isn't into you anymore and she's seeing someone else. So why doesn't she dump you? Because she's trying to let you down easy, HAK. Your girlfriend, being young and stupid, doesn't realize that a long, drawn-out period of constant, low-level rejection -- we'll do it later, I'm still attracted to you, you still turn me on -- only makes the ultimate, unavoidable pain of total rejection worse.
It's a mistake that a lot of people make when they're young, HAK: We worry that the boyfriend or girlfriend we want to be rid of will be devastated when we leave, so we string 'em along, making ourselves (and our bodies) less available to them, in a futile attempt to gradually wean them from our irreplaceable selves. When we finally do get around to dumping them, the hurt of being broken up with is compounded by the humiliation of having been made a fool of.
In other words, HAK, it's over. Your girlfriend doesn't have the decency to end it honestly, but you can have the self-respect to end it yourself.
I love my husband so, so much. He's so, so good to me, we have a great life together, and the sex is good. But there's another man I'm so, so attracted to. I don't want to jeopardize my marriage or hurt my husband, but I'm afraid I might give in to the attraction in a moment of weakness. At the same time, I don't want to give up the activity where I see this other man, because the activity (martial-arts study) is a really important part of my life.
So, So Married
Lordy, what a predicament! The more time you spend with this other man, the likelier it becomes that you'll cheat. But you can't stop seeing this other man because you study martial arts with him and that's such an important part of your life -- unlike, say, your marriage -- and you couldn't possibly give it up! And as everyone on earth knows, there's only one martial-arts school on the whole freakin' planet, so you're pretty much condemned to spend time with this other man -- what other choice do you have? -- until the inevitable inevitability inevitably happens. Puh-leeze, SSM. If your husband doesn't rate the supreme sacrifice of switching to some other martial-arts school, then nothing I can say is going to stop you from getting what you so, so desperately want. But after you fuck this other guy, SSM, don't run around pretending that you were just a victim of cruel circumstance -- martial arts made me do it! -- and not the so, so guilty instigator.
My problem may not be as kinky as most you get, but it's currently terrorizing my thoughts. While in high school and early college, I was fairly sexually repressed (right-wing, Bible-belt upbringing and all that), so I used online chatrooms to explore my sexual curiosity. I would find random pictures of people on the Internet, normal and nude, and send them to others, pretending to be the people in the photos I had found. I used both male and female "identities," as the gender wasn't really what turned me on -- it was the exhibitionist nature of sharing photos, even if they weren't really me. I only traded with others claiming to be 18-plus, and I never met anyone. It was all seemingly harmless Internet fun.
- Curt Doughty
- Dan Savage
Now I'm a 23-year-old heterosexual male, and I just began dating a girl that I like a lot. The problem is that now I seem to have recurring negative feelings about those online experiences. Part of me feels like it was a terrible thing to do, I'm an awful person for doing it, and it makes me feel horrible. This same part compels me to "confess" this to my new girlfriend and get it off my chest, which may appease those concerns -- but I imagine that it will also make me come off as really creepy and weird. AHHH!!
Confused And Distraught
Ah, the religious upbringing -- that hellish gift that keeps on giving you hell. Before those first pubes sprout, preachers are pounding it into our heads that there's only one correct way to express ourselves sexually. We are then condemned to spend the rest of our lives measuring our actual sexual desires and experiences -- which tend to be messy and perverse, as human beings tend to be messy and perverse -- against a simplistic, unachievable, stultifying and supposedly "blessed" sexual ideal.
Rest assured, CAD, adults that have indulged in nothing but Bible-belt-approved hetero sex -- that is, penis in vagina, strictly within the bounds of matrimony, always open to conception -- are rarer than Laura Bush's orgasms. Or American goals in a World Cup match. Or sane Scientologists. It was completely innocent and, as adolescent exploration of sexuality goes, completely harmless. You managed to safely explore sexuality, fantasy and gender without getting hurt or hurting anyone. Oh, you may have raised some false hopes in the folks you were chatting with, or helped to circulate pictures that the original owners may not have wanted passed around, but those are venal sins. If you do decide to tell your girlfriend about your online games, CAD, don't present it as some deep, dark secret, but as something freaky and funny you did when you were a teenager.
And, finally, you're not alone -- your behavior online is a lot more common than you seem to think. The Internet is teeming with people pretending to be what they're not -- from straight women pretending to be gay men to hairy old fags pretending to be smooth young twinks to FBI agents pretending to be 13-year-old girls. So just chill the fuck out, OK?
In my 26 years, I've had my fair share of relationships. I'm usually the one spooning up advice to friends hungry for wisdom. Sadly, I'm helpless to aid myself in my current situation. I met this girl four months ago, and she's "the girl of my dreams." If you met her, you would know that angels exist on earth. The problem is that she's married and has four kids. Her cheating husband is abusive to her (verbally, physically, etc.). He's raped her twice (once using a "date-rape" drug), and he was tried for the rape of a girl in the first year of their marriage. His kids seesaw between loving and fearing him.
She has never reached out to anyone for help until me. If things were different, this would be my wife and kids. I know she feels the same for me as I do for her, but she is unwilling or unable to sever ties with her husband. She says she knows that one day he will kill her, and it seems as if she's resigned herself to this fate. I have offered to remove this problem, but she fears losing us both. How do I save her from this nightmare before it's too late?
Love Is Faithful Eternally
Sometimes the mail is sooooooooo depressing that I just want to think about other things.
LIFE, I don't even know where to begin. Maybe I'm just shocked that the girl of your dreams -- the girl of any man's dreams -- would be a married woman with four children and what may be the worst taste in men this side of Denise Richards. Can this angel-on-earth pick 'em or what? She married a bordering-on-homicidal asshole and now she's sneaking around with a bordering-on-homicidal dumbass, a guy so stupid that he would threaten the life of his lover's husband in a newspaper column. (You offered to "remove the problem," but she fears "losing you both.") Nice work, LIFE. Let's hope your lover's husband doesn't have a fatal accident anytime soon -- an actual accident, not an "accident" -- or LIFE isn't just going to be your acronym.
Since you will probably ignore the only sensible advice I could offer ("Run, LIFE, run!"), I'm not going to bother. Instead, I'm going to pour a little poison in your ear: Have you bothered to confirm your lover's story? Your letter makes this woman's husband seem monstrous, perfectly monstrous. In fact, he seems a little too perfectly monstrous. Have you entertained the possibility that you're being fed a massive load of shit, LIFE? Some cheaters invent elaborate tales of woe -- the frigid, manipulative shrew of a wife; the abusive, suspicious, but somehow easily fooled husband -- because the cheater wants to have her infidelities and her victim status, too.
So, LIFE, again, before you run off and kill anyone: Have you bothered to check her story out? If your lover's husband was tried for rape, then there are records out there somewhere -- trial transcripts, newspaper articles. Have you looked them up? It's something you might want to do before you "remove" anybody.
I am a straight female and have been in a loving relationship with my boyfriend for three years. I'm also a politically connected woman, a very "in control" type, and when I say "no," I mean "no." A little more about me: I was born in Alabama, play the piano and was a professor at Stanford University for a while. I currently hold a high-ranking position in Washington, DC, and I have a tattoo of George W. Bush on my right breast. Other than that, I've always been an average gal, especially in bed, but now I'm in a real "state."
My problem goes back to the beginning of the relationship. In the very beginning, my boyfriend tried to lick and finger my ass. I very firmly told him to stop and that anal sex totally disgusted me and that I would never allow anything -- his cock included -- into my butt. Needless to say, I hurt his feelings, and for a couple of years, he respected my demands.
However, during the past year, I've allowed him to perform anilingus on me, finger me there, and have even let him insert a narrow vibrator. At first I found this disgusting, but I let him play there just to avoid hurting his feelings. Soon I came to enjoy the sexual stimulation it gave me, but I didn't tell him that I liked it.
Now the problem: Last month, after way too much to drink, he tried to slip his cock in my ass and I finally let him in. OH MY GOD! What a fantastic experience. Talk about fireworks! Just thinking about it turns me on. But at the same time I feel guilty for having done it because I think it's dirty and that only sluts do that. I never told him how much I liked it. We've made love since then, but he avoids my butt like he used to. I'd love to do it again, but can't bring myself to ask for it. Is there any way that I can have the best of both worlds? Thank you, Dan.
Can't Openly Naturally Discuss Interest
P.S. If possible, could you please print this letter? He reads your column faithfully, and if he sees it, he just might get up his courage and try again.
Here's your letter, CONDI. Hopefully, your boyfriend will read it, recognize you and find the courage to bang away at your ass without making you beg for it first, thereby preventing you from having to admit what a dirty little butt-sex-obsessed slut you are.
Well! It looks like my work here is done.
Oh no, wait: Before we move on, a word of warning to others out there who think they recognize CONDI. This butt-sex-obsessed slut included tons of identifying details in her letter: age, height, weight, profession, hair color, location -- everything short of a Google map to her apartment. CONDI did this, of course, because she wanted to make damn sure her boyfriend recognized himself and her when he read the letter. What CONDI didn't anticipate, it seems, were the odds that her friends, family and coworkers might also read the letter and recognize her. Since I'm pretty certain CONDI didn't intend to out herself to everyone she knows as an ankle-grabbin', pillow-chompin', butt-sex-lovin' slut, I changed one or two identifying details in an effort to preserve her anonymity.
Unfortunately, there is now a small risk that CONDI's boyfriend won't recognize himself or her, which would defeat the whole purpose of running CONDI's letter in the first place. (Hint for CONDI's boyfriend: She doesn't really have a George W. Bush tattoo on her right breast -- I made that part up!) There's also a chance that the details I invented to throw CONDI's friends and family off her musky, musky scent might match some other woman out there, someone whose personal and professional history, by sheer coincidence, just so happens to match the one I've invented for CONDI. This could result in that person being on the receiving end of some unwanted anal attention.
But that's a risk we're just going to have to take.
Summer Loving
