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In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion wrote that when her husband died, she would not throw away his shoes, because he might need them when he comes back. This is the magical thinking in the book’s title. Whenever we talk about the economy “coming back,” we are engaged in exactly the same kind of magical thinking.

That is the problem with both parties. They have been telling us for a generation that we can have something for nothing.  And we have believed them. We believe it is our most fundamental right and would trade the Constitution for this magical power in a heartbeat. When we talk about “our way of life,” that’s what we mean: something for nothing. Magic is our way of life.  We can give you a war, not ask you to serve, and not ask you to pay for it. Really?

It is impossible to have a consumer-based economy. It is so obviously unsustainable. We’ve seen that. But no one in either party will admit it. Instead, we talk about when the economy “comes back.” It shows how infantile we have become in our isolation from reality.  We are like Didion after she lost her husband, or like children when their grandmother has died, wondering when “she’ll come back.” And yet, we have done nothing to bring the economy back. We still don’t make anything.  Sure, it would be great if Marvel Comics and Netflix were enough to maintain control of the world, but they just aren’t.

During the second half of the 20^th Century, freedom was defined as the ability to buy whatever you want. I remember when I was a child during the Cold War and I asked my parents why the Russians weren’t free, I was told that they couldn’t even buy blue jeans.

The Baby Boomers, especially, have been the grand recipients of this idea—it was built around them. A consumer economy seemed possible only because their generation was so large. Now that the consequences of this false idea have come home, the Baby Boomers are angry. They can no longer buy whatever they want. Therefore they are no longer free. This is where all of that tea party anger comes from.

People are pissed that they can’t really have something for nothing and so they will vote one more time for whomever tells them that they can.  But, neither party will be able to deliver. If DeMint really let government fail and told all the tea-partiers on Medicare and Social Security that they could not get their benefits so the U.S. could cut back on its deficit, he would lose to Alvin Greene, guaranteed.

We need to reinvent ourselves. Instead, the supposed champions of the Constitution, religion, and private property have spent the summer arguing that a religious group should not be free to build a mosque on private property, and no one will even acknowledge the deadly irony.

If we don’t grow up, perhaps the government should withdraw from the economy entirely so that we actually taste the fruits of our own failure.

There is a remarkable group of writers, including Suzanne Hudson, Joe Formichella, and Everette Capps, at a place called the Waterhole Branch out in Alabama. Every year, the Waterhole Branch group has a shoe burning. They build a big bonfire and throw out all the bad juju of the previous year by burning their old shoes in the fire.

We need a national shoe burning night in order to get over the magical thinking that Didion described. Sure, we might have hangovers the next morning (just ask the Waterhole Branch crowd about that), and we shall certainly have lost our innocence. But that is what we need as a country. It is time to face reality.

talkback@columbiacitypaper.com

Since alcohol is one of the major food groups for most print journalists, it is always a joy to report on medical research that reveals the health benefits of booze. A team from the University of Texas at Austin recently found that heavy drinkers tend to outlive abstainers, regardless of socioeconomic background, exercise, and other control factors. Notice we didn’t say a small glass of Merlot with dinner, we said heavy drinkers. Booze hounds. A bottle of Merlot for dinner. (Though moderate drinkers, it should be noted, outlived the lot of them.)

We’ve harped on such research in CCP for years now, strutting the case studies around like peacocks in front of wives and bosses who believe our tendency to leave weepy 4 a.m. voicemails or vomit in the waste basket before early morning meetings is somehow indicative of an unhealthy lifestyle. To the contrary! So ponder this when you’re jogging this evening and checking your wristband heart monitor: the hooker staggering down the sidewalk a few hundred yards up ahead will probably outlive you. Cheers!

Columbia City Paper

Dear atheists,

Thanks for the continuous stream of ruffled emails related to J. Pelikan Sarcophage’s essay on religious belief. For the record, this paper –in the Bible Belt, mind you—has spent the last five years railing against the evils that religion has bestowed upon the human species. And, now, after publishing one essay to hear the other side of the story, we are now listed on “fundamentalist” watch sites? Where are you guys when we lay an open handed chop to the Religious Right?

We simply get and respect J. Pelikan’s argument that denying the existence of “God” (in whatever nebulous way you want to define it) without having scoured every nook and cranny of this vast multidimensional universe is as arrogant and misguided as believing in said existence with no absolute proof to substantiate it. At the end of the day, we’re all just hairless primates that really don’t possess the technology or higher brain function to fully comprehend what’s going on in the grand scheme of things, so we should all agree –whether we be atheist or Southern Baptist—to keep open minds; skeptical, to be sure, but at least open.

In the general editorial opinion of CCP, the cold hard facts that modern humankind has at its disposal have given science a substantial lead over myth and faith, when it comes to defining the origins of the planet. But, we aren’t so arrogant that we won’t at least keep the door cracked.

Columbia City Paper

Dear spider,

Man, you were pimpin one of the coolest, most beautiful webs I’ve seen in my back yard in a while. You really outdid yourself. But, I’ll bet you’re wondering what happened to it this morning. See, what happened was: it was all in working order, but there was this leaf stuck in it. You weren’t around, so I thought I’d pull the leaf out so it would look perfect, but, well, shit man you made that stuff too sticky! I pulled the leaf and the whole section came down and got on my arm, I freaked out, slapped at it, spilled my coffee, and stepped in the dog bowl in my flip flops and pajamas and then just pulled the whole thing down when I lost my balance and fell into the yard shrieking. You probably saw the whole thing from the azalea bush. To you it must have looked like a cross between Harvey Fierstein and Godzilla.

It stinks that I blew up my tranquil morning in nature. …And, I mean, I guess it kinda sucks from where you’re standing, too.

Columbia City Paper

Dear Calculator (the band),

We were going to write a glowing preview for your show at Bey’s Sports Bar, but realized it was occurring a week earlier than we had thought and wouldn’t jibe with our deadline. And, yes, you read that correctly: Columbia City Paper was actually going to preview a show at Bey’s. For those who’ve been following the titanic battle between City Paper publisher, Paul Blake, and Bey Rutherford over the years it might come as a shock that CCP would encourage funneling money there. It must be either be freezing in Hell or Calculator is an impressive enough local band to draw us out of our comfort zone. (Probably a little of both.) We’ll definitely get you guys next time.

Columbia City Paper

By Will Moredock

“Who’s that?”

“I dunno. Must be a king.”

“Why?”                                                                                          “He hasn’t got shit all over him.”

— from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”

Ah, feudalism. Those were the days. Life was so much simpler then. For one thing, everyone knew his place and stayed in it. And it was so easy to tell kings from everyone else in those old feudal times. The king – and a few of his friends and family – didn’t have shit all over them. And everyone else did. That’s all you had to know.

Leave it to the South Carolina Republican Party to bring back those good old days. They have been working at it for years by giving us one of the most regressive tax codes in the nation.

They scored a huge breakthrough when they herded the General Assembly into doing away with  taxes on most residential properties in 2007. The legislature eliminated the school operations portion of the property tax and capped reassessment at 15 percent for residential properties that had not changed hands. The lost revenue would be offset by a small increase in the sales tax. And to those who cried that the sales tax is regressive and falls disproportionately on the poor and middle class, the tax reformers threw us a bone, eliminating the tax on most groceries. The average household saved about $218  a year on that little benevolence. Wealthy property owners saved thousands on the property tax overhaul.

From the beginning, critics screamed that it wouldn’t work. The marginal sales tax increase could never replace lost property tax.

Today, those Cassandras have been proven right. S.C.’s schools are in desperate straights as teachers are laid off and furloughed, as class sizes swell, as extracurricular programs are cut.

Today the state Tax Realignment Commission is studying ways to increase revenue without inconveniencing the wealthy. One option they are studying would raise the sales tax on groceries back to their pre-2007 levels or higher. Other options on the table include taxing prescriptions drugs, water  and electric power — three things that have never been taxed in this state before. Yes, in a state where hundreds of our poorest residents have sought relief in paying their power bills during this scorching season, there are powerful individuals in Columbia who want to raise their power bills with a new tax.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley has demonstrated that she is on board with the TRC’s feed-the-rich agenda. She wants to raise sales tax on groceries and eliminate the corporate income tax.

More taxes on the working class and the middle class. This is the price we may soon pay to protect the feudal prerogatives of this state’s ruling class. Think I exaggerate?

The man who lead the statewide campaign to abolish property tax in 2007 is a local millionaire named Emerson Read, Sr. Though he did not completely succeed in his goal, his friends thought he had come close enough to merit special recognition. In October of that year, the French Society of Charleston met at the Carolina Yacht Club for their 191st anniversary dinner. There men in white ties and tails and women in  evening gowns applauded enthusiastically as Emerson Read received  the Society’s Humanitati Award, in recognition of his efforts  to “improve the human condition either in his community or the world at large.”

“Like a savior, he was there when we needed him,” French Society member Jack Simmons told the overdressed and overfed yacht club crowd. “And by ‘we’ I mean every single South Carolinian and potentially every United States citizen.”

That’s right! The ruling class of South Carolina considers that cutting their property taxes was nothing less than a great humanitarian triumph. Furthermore, they think they speak for “every single South Carolinian and … every United States citizen.”

Cloaked in such self-delusion, the plutocrats of this state make no apology for ruling over us with something like divine right. After all, they have been doing it for more than 300 years. Their attitude actually dates back to the age of divine right. And if Jack Simmons speaks for his class, those  wealthy bastards think we should be grateful for their wisdom and benefactions.

I have written here before that the people who run this state consider it their job to serve wealth and power. It is a medieval concept that came here on the first ships and we have never gotten over it.

It’s downright feudal in its implications for working class and middle class people. And it means we’re about to get covered with shit again. And again. And again.

talkback@columbiacitypaper.com

My boyfriend and I are straight college students, and he’s always wanting to try new things. Recently, he asked to put a finger in my ass while we were having sex. Someone did that to me before, but it felt uncomfortable and it kinda hurt. I told my boyfriend that he could do it once and then I would decide whether to let it continue. So we tried it. It still felt uncomfortable and still kinda hurt. But I never came so hard in my life!

Now the question: If it’s uncomfortable, but it made me feel amazing and come really hard, what should I do? Continue with it? Or tell him to find some other way of getting me to that point again?

Presently Obsessing Over Totally Extreme Reaction

You could ask the boyfriend to stick a finger in one of your armpits—or in an eye, a nostril, your toaster—but unless your pit/eye/nostril/toaster is wired the way your butt appears to be, POOTER, no amount of pit/eye/nostril/toaster fingering is gonna jack up your orgasms quite the way that finger in your butt did.

So here’s what you’re gonna do, POOTER: You’re gonna breathe deep, you’re gonna take things slow, you’re gonna use more lube, and you’re gonna spend more time warming up the outside of your butt before anything goes in. (Tell the boyfriend he can finger your butt for 10 minutes after he rims it for 20.) Do it right, POOTER, and pretty soon you won’t be able to look at those 10 fingers of his without thinking about the kick-ass, anal-enhanced orgasms you’ll be having when you can only see nine.

I am a 30-year-old woman with a strange problem. I recently started lifting weights, and every time I use the arm machines, I have an orgasm. It is not obvious to anyone else (I think), and my sex life is great outside of the gym. I don’t know if I should stop using the machines, because it’s rude and kind of weird to have that happening, but it just seems to be a physical reaction to using those muscles. What should I do?

Fitness Freaking

Another 20 reps.

I’m a bi 18 year old female. I can’t cum during sex, I never have. Boys or girls it doesnt matter. I can get off by myself but with other people its just uncomfterable. Vagional penatration feels good but head or finger fucking is Not fun. I thought that it was just the people I was sleeping with. You know, age and a small town bla bla bla. I’m off to collage now and in a much biger city and nothing is better.

I Can’t Cum

Off to collage, are we?

Here’s something you may not know about vaginal penetration—besides how to spell “vaginal” and “penetration”—because it’s not something that’s typically covered in small-town high-school sex-ed classes: You can touch yourself during vaginal intercourse. Whatever you’re doing that’s getting you off when you’re alone, ICC, do that thing—touch yourself that way—whenever a sex partner is penistrating you vaginotionally.

And when you’re enjoying sex without penistration—when someone is eating your pussy or fingering your pussy—give that person direction, i.e., put your hand over his hand, place a hand on the back of her head, and show them just how to touch you and/or eat you to create the sensations that are intense or focused enough to get you off.

I am a 24-year-old straight girl. My boyfriend is 31. We have great sex—until the last two minutes. He can’t get off without jackhammering me, so I grab something and hold on for dear life until he comes. I’m happy to do it to satisfy him, but it also means he never gets off when I’m on top, and we can’t have slow, sappy sex every now and then, and it can be painful sometimes. I’ve brought it up a couple of times, but he doesn’t seem to be able to finish any other way. Has it just been too long with a bad habit, or is there a way to bring his dick back?

Holding On Tight

There may not be anything wrong with your boyfriend’s dick, HOT. Just as some women require intense, focused stimulation in order to get off (read: vibrators cranked up high), some guys gotta jackhammer to get off. If your boyfriend is one of those guys, HOT, then there’s no bad habit to break. It’s just something you’ll have to accommodate.

But he needs to accommodate your desire for some slow, sappy sex now and then. And here’s how he can do that: The boyfriend fucks you, long and hard, nice and slow, you get on top if you like, and after you’ve gotten off once or twice or three times… he pulls out… and doesn’t come, at least not inside you. If he’s aching to come, or you want to see him come, then let him finish himself off by jackhammering away at his own clenched fist.

I am a woman in a relationship with a woman. There’s someone else. I haven’t cheated. I’m not a cheater. But I cannot get them out of my head. They are directly in my life. And yes, by “they” I mean “him.” What the F, Dan! I dream about him, think about him. I try not to. I talk about my girlfriend and how much I love her in front of him. But inside I know the truth. It’s becoming hard to be in the same room with him.

So my question: What would Dan do? What would Dan do if he were mind-cheating constantly and experiencing intense feelings of attraction to someone else?!?

What Would Dan Do?

Dan would go to his boyfriend and say, “Hey, honey, it’s been ages since we’ve had a three-way…”

But that’s easy for Dan to say because Dan’s a man and so is his boyfriend, and anyone Dan couldn’t get out of his head would be a man, too. That makes any hypothetical mind- and/or body-cheating on my part less threatening to my boyfriend and less destabilizing to our relationship.

So you probably shouldn’t do what I would do, WWDD. Instead, you should masturbate furiously, avoid being alone with this man whenever possible, and don’t take the wife to see The Kids Are All Right.

Some women like porn and some women don’t mind it. For us women who are otherwise GGG but feel like vomiting at the thought of porn, telling us to use porn—or eat cupcakes—will neither relieve the pain caused by our partners’ use of porn nor meet our emotional and sexual needs if we decide to opt out of relationships with men entirely. I’ve tried my whole life to feel okay about porn. I don’t. I feel betrayed just the same as if the cheating were “real.”

Never Okaying Porn Ever

Porn isn’t cheating, NOPE—but let’s not argue about that.

Instead, let me just say this: You shouldn’t give up on men, NOPE, because I occasionally get letters from men who think a fag sex columnist is interested in hearing them repeat what the insecure, controlling women in their lives have trained them to say (“There are men out there who don’t use porn, and I am one of them!”). If you hang in there long enough, PORN, you’ll meet either a guy who honestly doesn’t watch porn or a guy who says all the right things (“There are men out there who don’t use porn, and I am one of them!”) and is conscientious about clearing his browser history.

mail@savagelove.net

Opinion by Baynard Woods

In the 1990s I lived in Albuquerque and there was a great “pirate radio” station—Rebel Radio 90.9. The FCC busted the station—which didn’t interfere with any other frequency and could only broadcast as far as someone could climb in a tree; it didn’t extend beyond the student ghetto—and yet the FCC threatened to fine everyone involved ten thousand bucks. Eventually they relented, but the station died after the third bust. I agree with the radical country singer Steve Earle when he sings, “Fuck the FCC.”

I was surprised to see that Senator DeMint might agree with him too. At least it seemed that way when he introduced a bill that would limit the authority of the FCC, stressing the need “to protect consumers.”

The FCC entirely limited my freedom as a consumer, deciding what I could hear and not hear for most of my life. What if I wasn’t happy and wanted to start up my own station? Rebel Radio tried to do it legit—it cost over a hundred grand to even apply for a license to run a station.  But I wanted there to be small stations. The FCC clearly harmed the consumer for the sake of the corporations who owned the bog stations.

When I first heard about DeMint’s bill, I thought he might want to protect anarchists and gutter punks and hippies broadcasting drunken rants from clandestine locations.  Or even, since we are really talking about the internet now, maybe DeMint wants to protect the average porn-viewer, pot-seed from Amsterdam purchaser, and paranoid conspiracy theorist browsing the web at three in the morning.

In reality, DeMint is trying to protect Comcast, Verizon and a few other companies. He is against Net Neutrality, a regulation which would prevent giant internet service providers from providing preferred or delayed service to different sites. Without net neutrality, Comcast, who now owns NBC, could block consumer access to sites like ABC or CBS.

It’s bad for the American consumer, but worse for the American citizen. If Verizon decided to support Senator DeMint, and you got your internet through their FiOS or phone lines, they could prevent you from accessing this article altogether. They could make it so slow that it wouldn’t exist for you.

Because DeMint has brilliantly redefined his terms, he is able to make the unemployed guy in Iowa think the senator is protecting his freedom. But, DeMint doesn’t mean this guy is free any more than Jefferson was talking about slaves when he said all men were created equal. DeMint hopes to help create the new, truly feudal state.

The idea of a new feudalism has been around at least since NAFTA, but it explains a great deal about the character and politics of DeMint.

In DeMint’s radical world-view, multinationals are the knights and the lords who battle it out on the (to us meaningless and abstract) field of battle—the stock market.  Instead of investing in our own communities, we bet on the jousting matches of the new super-human royalty. This is what passes for an economy.

We have been free to give money to whatever company we wanted to for the last half century. When that freedom is limited by its own failure, the Tea Baggers pop out screaming, without even noticing that the old sense of freedom is long gone. In the new feudalism, the individual is a serf who should be highly regulated. The state should imprison as many people as possible (tough on crime), closely monitor the free citizens to make sure they don’t need to be renditioned, interrogated, or incarcerated (Patriot Act), and interfere in people’s sex lives and base hiring of state employees upon the sexual acts they do or do not perform (DeMint’s claim that gay people should not be allowed to teach in public schools).

If DeMint were truly against government intervention, he would immediately introduce bills to legalize drugs, prostitution, and gambling. He would enact prison reform. He would declare smoking bans unconstitutional. He would do everything possible to protect the voice of the individual.

The voice of the lonely and uncertain individual may be warbled and imperfect. It may crack and falter. It is frail by nature, articulating words in a world of sound and fury. The entire universe seeks to drown this voice. It is vulnerable always precisely in its use, in its raising. It is endangered and needs the protection of the first amendment.

The internet is still a place where that individual voice can be heard. Rather than freeing it from government control, DeMint hopes to make the internet like television and radio were for most of his life—well-mannered behemoths, not the ragged collection of ill-mannered, idiosyncratic and individual voices that makes the internet free.

talkback@columbiacitypaper.com

A long while ago, you wrote an incredible piece of general advice for teenage boys. The advice was so excellent that I clipped it out to keep in case I ever had a son. Well, years later, I have a son. But I no longer have that precious piece of paper.

My son is only 9 months old, but I am worried that by the time he is a teenager, you will have retired to some fancy ranch where you will spend your days raising organic cattle, being nasty to the local genetically-modified-wheat farmers, and passing the afternoons on the porch sipping gin from a teacup while terrorizing the local boys with a Super Soaker.

But I digress. Any chance you could reprint your advice for teenage boys? I know that I, my partner, and my son will all appreciate it.

GGG Lady Lover And Mama

Congrats on the birth of your son, GGGLLAM, and here, at your request, is my advice for the hard-up teenage boy:

You’re having a hard time getting girls. That sucks. I remember what it was like when I was a young teenager and wanted boys and couldn’t get any. It sucked. But the sad fact is that most young teenage boys are repulsive—that is, they are half-formed works in progress. Girls mature physically more quickly than boys, which means most girls your age already look like young women and they’re generally attracted to (slightly) older boys—and there you are, aching for your first girlfriend, but still looking like a short, hairless chimp.

But don’t despair, HUTB. Your awkward/repulsive stage will pass. In the meantime, here’s what you need to do: Worry less about getting your young teenage self laid and start thinking about getting your 18- or 20-year-old self laid. Join a gym and get yourself a body that girls will find irresistible, read—read books—so that you’ll have something to say to girls (the best way to make girls think you’re interesting is to actually be interesting), and get out of the house and do shit—political shit, sporty shit, arty shit—so that you’ll meet different kinds of girls in different kinds of settings and become comfortable talking with them.

Some more orders: Get a decent haircut and use deodorant and floss your teeth and take regular showers and wear clean clothes. Go online and read about birth control and STIs, and learn enough about female anatomy that you’ll be able to find a clitoris in the dark. Masturbate in moderation—no more than 10 times a day—and vary your masturbatory routine. I can’t emphasize this last point enough. A vagina does not feel like a clenched fist, HUTB, nor does a mouth, an anus, titty fucking, dry humping, or e-stim. If you don’t want to be sending me another pathetic letter in five years complaining about your inability to come unless you’re beating your own meat, HUTB, you will vary your routine now so that you’ll be able to respond to different kinds of sexual stimulation once you do start getting the girls.

Good luck, kiddo.

(The above advice was for a straight teenage boy. Gay teenage boys should read “boys” where I said “girls,” “anus” where I said “vagina,” “prostate” where I said “clitoris,” and “fist” where I said “fist.”)

I am a 27-year-old male, identify as bisexual, and enjoy crossdressing—although I have only crossdressed with guys I meet online. I have no real desire to meet guys unless I’m dressed up. And when I do get together with a guy, once I cum, I’m ready to leave. I can’t see myself in a relationship with a guy.

With females, I can see myself getting married and having kids, etc., and when I have sex with a woman, I’m not in a cum-and-go mentality. But when I’m dating a girl, after about a month, I start to float back to jerking off while chatting—just chatting, not meeting up—with guys who found my online crossdressing profiles. I know I could try to get a gal to use a strap-on on me, but that doesn’t really appeal to me. I like flesh-and-blood cock.

Do I hold out for a gal who is open to me having the odd bisexual encounter or do I learn to use my imagination a bit more during strap-on play? I thought in the past that I might be gay, but I figure since I have no desire to date men and can’t see myself with a guy long-term, I must be bi. What are your thoughts?

Sorry If This Question Is A Little Scatterbrained

First, SITQIALS, I’m sorry if my response is a little scatterbrained. I’m on vacation and currently in something of an impaired-state holding pattern over the Pacific Ocean. I didn’t read all of today’s Savage Love mail—yours was the first letter I pulled from the stack—because the shit that’s impairing me is forcing me to take it easy. How easy am I taking it? So easy that I’m not going to change “cum” to “come” in your letter.

Anyway, yeah, it sure sounds like you’re into women, SITQIALS—even your fetish screams “into chicks.” Your crossdressing and role-playing fantasies are all about your bone for women and femininity. You dig women so much, you want to play the role of the woman—you want to look like a woman, be treated like a woman, get fucked like a woman. But in your fantasy scenarios, SITQIALS, men aren’t human beings and sex partners, men aren’t people with whom you could potentially have relationships, they’re props, the finishing touch that completes your ensemble.

And once you blow your load, once the game is over (once you COME), you’re done, you don’t need that prop anymore, and you just want to scram.

So what do you do? Well, I think your fetish makes you pretty damn near incapable of monogamy, and you’ve already discovered that strap-ons don’t meet your particular needs. So, yeah, I think you should hold out for a woman who’s into your fetish and turned on by the idea of sharing your ass—when it’s wearing panties—with a few good men. It’ll mean a longer search for the right woman, which you should be willing to do, because you’re worth it.

You might want to Google “autogynephilia.” Not saying that’s where you’re at or headed, don’t know enough about it to endorse it, but… it seemed relevant, food for thought, the more you know, etc.

I have two things to ask/say: (1) Could you remind people that if they’re going to cheat on their partner, to use protection? (2) Could you give me advice on getting over my ex-girlfriend? She ended things pretty terribly (see question 1), yet I’m still having a hard time letting go.

Broken Up

(1) People, if you’re going to cheat on your partner, please use protection. It’s quite literally the least you can do. (2) Fuck other people—lots of other people. But if you were the one who dumped her, with cause, after she cheated, and she wants to get back together, well, sometimes forgiving someone for cheating is easier than getting over them. Only you know if this is one of those times.

CONFIDENTIAL TO CALIFORNIA: Congratulations!

mail@savagelove.net

My boyfriend and I have “history.” We dated casually and weren’t ready to stop seeing other people, so we had an open relationship. This phase was awful: lots of fights, a couple minor breakups, and eventually I called it quits for good, cutting off all contact. A month later, we started talking again and decided to commit for reals. No fucking around this time. This is his first monogamous relationship, and while he claims to miss the variety, he says he wouldn’t trade having me for having it.

Here’s my question: I’d like to have a three-way. While I trust him, I don’t want to make it seem like it’s okay for him to fuck around again. Is this too dangerous a proposition?

One More Time

Full disclosure: I’m on an airplane, under the influence, and in coach (which means I’m typing with my computer resting on my chest). So this week’s advice is sure to be extra sucky.

Okay, OMT, if you make the mistake of having a three-way, you could wind up fighting, breaking up, and calling it quits all over again. But all of that could happen if you make the mistake of not having that three-way. And then, my God, just think of it: You would have gone through all of that again without having a three-way.

Err on the side of the three-way.

People in monogamous relationships get cheated on, OMT, even though their partners understand that it’s not okay to fuck around. So keeping the relationship officially monogamous doesn’t necessarily protect you from infidelity. Keeping it honest, keeping it communicative, and being in a relationship with someone trustworthy does.

After you discuss this with your boyfriend, OMT, if you believe him when he swears that he can be trusted—when he swears to fully understanding that he’d still be in a quasi-monogamous relationship (you only have sex with other people together)—then why not satisfy his desire for a little variety and your desire for a three-way, aka “a little variety”?

For the past six months, a very attractive, put-together auburn-haired man has come to my attention, but I have not done anything about this because he is a total stranger. He waits at the same bus stop as me in the morning. We also transfer to the same streetcar. I’ve been dating other people since I’ve noticed Hot Bus Stop Man, but no one incredible, and I can’t seem to get Hot Bus Stop Man out of my mind.

I’ve only made eye contact with this cutie a few times because I’m not in the habit of asking complete strangers out. This morning, though, I attempted a smile in his direction, although I can’t be sure he saw because, of course, I was trying my best not to look at him and give myself away. What else can I do?

Girl Crushing On Hot Bus Stop Man

I’m only running your insanely boring letter on the off chance—two very off chances—that HBSM is (1) a reader and (2) not a fag. Hopefully, he is and isn’t, respectively, will recognize himself, and will ask your demure little ass out. (If you’re reading and you’re gay, HBSM, compliment GCOHBSM’s new shoes the next time you see her and put her out of her misery, okay?)

If he’s not a reader, GCOHBSM, you’ll just have to risk saying something to him. Try “Hello.” Then smile at him—at him, not “in his direction”—and give yourself the fuck away, already.

Rick Santorum is definitely running for president. A member of a forum I frequent referred to him as “Senator Frothymix.” You should refer to him as such if you mention his presidential hopes in your column.

That Is All

Oh, right. Rick Santorum.

About a year ago, when Santorum first leaked… er, signaled… his intention to run, I asked if any of my readers had a desire to blog at www.spreadingsantorum.com, my long-dormant Santorum-bashing/redefining blog. It’s still the number-one internet search result for “Santorum” and “Rick Santorum.” (This has been described as Santorum’s “serious Google problem” by political reporters and bloggers.)

Anyway, people wrote in and volunteered for the gig, and I somehow lost all of the e-mails. Sorry about that. If there are still folks out there who want to blog about Santorum at the number-one site for his name—people who want to be a part of Santorum’s Google problem—and want to do it for free, please write me at santorumblog@savagelove.net.

Men enjoy porn, but women don’t. Here’s something women enjoy that men don’t: vibrators. Just as men feel threatened by vibrators (“My cock isn’t good enough for you?”), women feel threatened by porn (“My tits aren’t good enough for you?”).

And when women cry, “What if the children found those stashed in the garage?!” men can respond, “What if the children found your vibrator?!”

Desires Erotic Balance should use a vibrator while her boyfriend uses porn. They should also film it and put it up on the internet.

Vice Is Barely Erotic

Yeah, vibrators are probably a better example of something dirty that women enjoy and (most) men do not—certainly better than cupcakes with pink sprinkles. I stand corrected. (But most people don’t have incriminating porn stashes in the garage these days, VIBE, they have incriminating browser histories.)

And speaking of vibrators: Taylor Momsen—one of the stars of Gossip Girl—recently “divulged” to Disorder Magazine that her “best friend is her vibrator.” Fox News wrote up the “scandal,” of course, but got quotes only from antisex nutters: batshit Catholic reactionary Bill Donohue, conservative radio yakker Michael Medved, an elderly grandmother who runs a parenting organization, and some douchebag from the National Center for Biblical Parenting who predicted that Momsen’s actions “will result in failure in her life.”

There are no quotes—in the interest of fairness and balance—from anyone who doesn’t see vibrators as battery-operated tools of the devil. No one is allowed to point out that sex toys are common, completely mainstream, and safe for use by young women. A vibrator is a low-risk alternative to intercourse with, say, Chace Crawford. (No risk of pregnancy, disease, or Axe body spray.)

It’s true, Bill Donohue, that the young lady isn’t old enough to walk into a sex shop—or as Fox News so delicately put it: “[Momsen] is not legally of age to enter venues that sell sexual paraphernalia.” She is, however, over 17—that is, of legal age to consent to sex in New York. Anyone old enough to have a dick in her twat is old enough to have a vibrator in her nightstand. And social and cultural conservatives are apparently unaware of e-commerce—Amazon has a nice selection of vibrators.

Young ladies who want a vibrator don’t need to be of legal age to enter venues that sell sexual paraphernalia. All they need is internet access and a credit card. 

mail@savagelove.net

By Baynard Woods

Lindsey Graham has collapsed. This week, the senator proved that his actions over the last few months constitute a capitulation to the outrageous elements of his own party. It seems that in the epic battle between our two senators Jim DeMint has won. DeMint has not vanquished Graham the man, but Graham the idea—for the man has bowed to the DeMintean principle, and kissed the ring of the king of the New Right.

When Graham backed out of the very pro-business rather right-wing cap and trade bill over immigration, it seemed that he did not want his friend Senator McCain to have to face the issue in the Arizona Republican primary. Now that the Tea Party has embraced immigration as a major issue and admittedly Neo-Nazi groups are patrolling the border, Graham embraces their principle in the most anti-conservative way possible: a Constitutional Amendment.

A reader of this column may be surprised to find that—at least half of the time— I consider myself a conservative, in the sense that Edmund Burke, Peter Vierek, and even Andrew Sullivan are conservatives. I’ve studied enough history to know that all human endeavor is fraught with unforeseen consequences and so I am generally skeptical of revolution. I believe conservatism and conservationism are the same thing. DeMint—and now Graham—claim to be conservatives, but are in fact radicals who want to undo the last century and a half of American tradition.

Right wing radicals consistently claim that they want to preserve and protect the Constitution. When is the last time that someone on the Left has attempted to amend the Constitution? What about the Right? Recall the Protection of Marriage Amendment –or whatever that attempt to radically expand the reach of the federal government into the realm of religion and sex and the family was called. They wanted to tell Americans what the family must be and criminalize anyone who pursued happiness in any way that made them slightly uncomfortable. It is not, as in classical political philosophy, that your freedom ends where my nose begins. Rather, for the Right, you’re freedom ends where their imagination begins. (There are those on the left who embrace this same maxim. I pray that Al Gore divorced that hideous monster he was married to because he could not stand her puritanical attempts at censorship and thought control—I predict she’ll become a right-winger before the end of the year.)

Graham demonstrated his fealty to the radical Right on FOX News Wednesday night in an interview with Greta Van Sustern. Graham said that he’s “got to”  “change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child’s automatically not a citizen.”

Of course, the Right is probably comfortable changing this part of the Constitution because it is the 14th Amendment that gives citizenship to anyone born in the United States. It was the amendment that made the former slaves citizens. It is also the amendment that prohibits members of congress from an insurrection against the government. (By the way, all you Confederacy lovers, it was treason. You can’t fly both the Confederate flag and the United States flag in South Carolina. The U.S. National Guard ought to come and physically take the Confederate flag down, like they would for any other rebel group trying to occupy American soil.)

Graham went on the say: “I’m a practical guy, but when you go forward, I don’t want 20 million more 20 years from now.” Twenty million more what? Brown people?

The day before Graham announced that he just “got to” change the Constitution to keep brown people out, BusinessWeek.com released a survey that ranked South Carolina as the eighth laziest state. The citizens of South Carolina were reported to sleep nearly nine hours a night and to work fewer than three and a half hours a day. Sandlappers watched more television than the citizens of any other state. In fact, at three hours and seven minutes, the average South Carolinian works only 19 minutes more than he watches television on a given day. It is no surprise that seven of the top ten lazy states are Confederate “Right to Work” states—the others are West Virginia, Kentucky, and tax-free Delaware. Maybe since these are also some of the least educated states, we simply misunderstood our economics lesson. It’s laissez-faire, not a lazy chair, economics.

Imagine where South Carolina would be without immigrants. I was just talking with a small business owner who told me that illegals are the only people who want to dig the ditches he needs dug. When a white guy comes in looking for a job and the boss tells him that he can start right now if he wants to shovel, the white guy inevitably tells him he’d rather stay on unemployment.

The country is facing countless crises, Senator. Instead of fearing the Constitution and the citizens it protects, you ought to welcome any help you can get. Stop worrying about brown people and start worrying about your own brown nose, Senator Graham.

talkback@columbiacitypaper.com

Ever since hearing you say on your podcast that all men use porn, I have had a burning question: What about us women? If all men get a pass to have this whole other sex life, which is (mostly) external to their partnerships and is sexually satisfying, then all women should have a pass as well. Ideally, it would be a pass to enjoy something universally arousing to all women, something that would sexually satisfy us, but it wouldn’t be something that turns most men on, perhaps it might even repulse them. If there were something that met my criteria, I wonder how it would play out in our relationships? Also, I am not sure what it could be, as women are a little bit more complicated.
Desires Erotic Balance

Something women enjoy but men do not... something erotic... something that repulses most men...
Cupcakes?
The now-ubiquitous cupcake isn’t explicitly sexual, I realize, but our culture does encourage people—women in particular—to sublimate their erotic desires by stuffing their faces with food. And most of those squat, round, and pink-frosted things look, to my jaded eyes, like so many squat little cocks, DEB, so many growers-not-showers with pink sprinkles, and most of those cupcocks are inhaled by women. So, cupcakes.
But if cupcakes don’t do it for you, DEB, then how about a free pass to enjoy, eyedunno, maybe porn?
“We’re actually in the middle of a porn-for-women revolution as millions—yes, millions—of women are loudly, even proudly, proclaiming their interest in porn,” says Violet Blue, author, blogger, activist, and tireless foe of antiporn boneheads everywhere. If you were reading Blue’s blog—www.tinynibbles.com—you would know that one out of every three consumers of internet porn are female, according to a Nielsen NetRatings report released in 2007.
“What’s interesting isn’t just the growing number of women using porn,” says Blue, “it’s that they’re doing exactly what DEB suggests. It’s part of their own private sex lives that are mostly external to their relationships.”
What women have lacked up to now is the same “free pass” men enjoy.
“Guys are encouraged to have this other sex life with porn,” says Blue, “that’s seen as normal and healthy. But despite the numbers, our culture is having a hard time admitting that women like porn. Antiporn feminists ignore the female viewer. The only people, besides Oprah, acknowledging the female viewer are the antiporn Christians who see it (and female masturbation) as a disease they can cure!”
Blue directs female porn consumers to Our Porn, Ourselves (www.ourpornourselves.org).
“On OPO, women are talking about liking all kinds of porn, even stuff that goes too far for some guys,” says Blue. “Women are making each other feel comfortable about their newfound access to porn, openly having their desire to watch sex (and jack off to it) validated the same way that guys do.”

My kinks aren’t interesting, NR, and my marriage vows specifically forbid me from disclosing that sort of information.
Here’s something interesting: “A Palestinian man has been convicted of rape after having consensual sex with a woman who had believed him to be a fellow Jew,” the Guardian reported last week. After the dude “introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship,” the two “had consensual sex in a nearby building.” The woman went to the cops to report that she had been raped only after she learned that the man wasn’t Jewish.
Now I don’t think there’s anything wrong with fucking the shit out of a guy you’ve only just met (that’s how I met my husband), but I gotta say: When we have consensual sex with strangers—when we go to “a nearby building” with someone we’ve only just met—we’re not just taking a chance on a person we know very little about. We’re taking a chance on our own bullshit detectors. And no one’s bullshit detectors are 100 percent accurate. So someone who can’t bear the thought of accidentally fucking an Arab or a Republican or a married man or a guy who makes less than $250,000 a year really has no business fucking strangers. That person owes it to himself/herself to get to know people a bit better before visiting any nearby buildings with them.
Not because it’s okay to lie. But because people do lie. mail@savagelove.net

My boss/CEO lives and works in a different city, but most of her mail arrives at my office because it is the company’s official address. I routinely open mail and packages addressed to her. Usually they contain documents for me to handle or software for me to install, but today I opened a package with her name on it to find something completely different: a pair of vibrating panties.

Both the billing address and shipping address are the same, so I’m guessing she purchased them on her company card.

I know this is more of a business-etiquette question, but do your amazing sex-advice skills provide you with any ideas on how I should handle this? It will be very obvious that the package has been opened, even if I try to tape it back up and send it to her home address. But if I do nothing, sooner or later she’s going to wonder where her shipment is.

We’re a small, casual company and she’s a pretty confident and outgoing person, but I can’t really predict how she will react to this. Would it be weird for me to just be up-front about this situation? Should I just throw in a sticky note that says, “Whoops! Have fun! ” And send it on? Or should I pretend this embarrassing thing never happened?

Avoid the Awkward

Emoticons are never the right answer, ATA. Please make an emoticon-free note of it.

Now here’s what my amazing sex-advice Spidey sense is telling me: Vibrating panties are not a sex toy, ATA, they’re a gag gift. Check your boss’s schedule: Any bridal showers coming up? Bachelorette parties? A friend holding a bash to mourn/celebrate a recent divorce?

There’s a small chance that your boss doesn’t know much about sex toys and purchased a pair of vibrating panties for herself and intends to wear them on long flights (if she can get them past security). But you should nevertheless treat this pair of panties like a misplaced gag gift, ATA, and not an existential workplace crisis. So no notes, no emoticons, no being “up-front about this situation,” ATA, because this isn’t a “situation.” It’s a shipping error.

Tape up the box and send it off to your boss and forget about it. If she feels a need to bring it up—if she wants to apologize or let you know it was, in fact, a gag gift—she will.

Yesterday I was finishing a work conversation with my boss via instant message from my home computer. I meant to send her a legitimate link, but because I used the wrong combination of keys, I accidentally entered a several-day-old porn link that was still in the memory and hit send before I noticed my mistake. I’m a 30-year-old male, my boss is a few years younger and female, and she’s generally cool. Once I realized what I had done, I immediately told her not to click the link and I sent the right one. The URL left little to the imagination about what kind of link it was.

We work in a very professional environment that’s careful about maintaining a respectful and harassment-free workplace. I’m horribly embarrassed. How should I handle it? I’m inclined to never speak of it again unless she does first.

Jerk From Home

Workplace power dynamics being what they are—bosses can fire employees, employees can’t fire bosses—you do need to put something in writing.

First, no emoticons.

Second, send a brief e-mail to your boss detailing just how that happened—IMing from your home computer, not your work computer (making it clear that you weren’t looking at porn on your work computer without using the word “porn”)—apologize one more time, and state that you’ll take care that it doesn’t happen again. You could still get in trouble with HR if your boss decides to make a case of it, but you’ll be able to point to a contemporaneous e-mail that details your side of the story, i.e., an accident, you weren’t rubbing one out in front of a work computer.

In somewhat related news: Today I sent my straight boss a picture I found online of a guy with a wine bottle stuffed up his ass—I did it on purpose.

I wanted to thank you for drawing so much attention to Sex at Dawn. I am going to get it as soon as possible so I can better understand myself. I have always felt a certain amount of shame because I’ve never had a monogamous relationship. Having been married 14 years (married at 19, which I know is a no-no in your book), I’ve had plenty of temptation and only given in a few times. Those events felt like they were saving my sanity; they never had anything to do with me loving my husband any less. It wasn’t until I started listening to your advice that I realized that maybe I wasn’t the problem. For all these years, I felt like shit because I couldn’t be monogamous. Thanks for clueing me in to evolution, reptile brains, etc.

M

Thanks for the nice note, M.  Now go forth and cheat no more, i.e., don’t be a CPOS (cheating piece of shit). If you’re incapable of being monogamous, don’t make monogamous commitments that you’re damn well going to break.

And to all the outraged folks writing in to ask if I’m seriously suggesting that no one should ever be monogamous: That’s not what I’m saying—and it’s not what the authors of Sex at Dawn are arguing either. The point of Sex at Dawn—and my point in drawing my readers’ and listeners’ attention to it—isn’t that no one should attempt to be monogamous or that people who’ve made monogamous commitments have a license to cheat on their partners. For the record: I’m happy to acknowledge that there are lots of good reasons to be monogamous and/or very nearly monogamous, e.g., children and other sexually transmitted infections.

What the authors of Sex at Dawn believe—and what I think they prove—is that we are a naturally nonmonogamous species, despite what we’ve been told for millennia by preachers and for centuries by scientists, and that is why so many people have such a hard time remaining monogamous over the long haul. I’m not saying that everyone everywhere has to be nonmonogamous; the authors of Sex at Dawn don’t make that argument either. (Lots of monogamists, however, do run around insisting that everyone everywhere should be monogamous—and proscriptive monogamists get a pass because, hey, they mean so well and wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were?)

The point is this: People—particularly those who value monogamy—need to understand why being monogamous is so much harder than they’ve been led to believe it will be. In some cases, this understanding may help people find the courage to seek out nonmonogamous relationships and/or arrangements and/or allowances that make them—gasp!—happier and make their relationships more stable, not less, as a routine infidelity won’t doom their marriage/civilunion/commitment/slavecontract/whatever. But understanding that monogamy is a struggle for most people—and being able to be honest with our partners about experiencing it as a struggle—may actually help some people remain monogamous.

mail@savagelove.net