Andrea Nemerson

Wild thing

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Dear Andrea:

I’ve read your column (and other sex columns) for years, and one thing I always notice you saying is that all fantasies are OK, and fantasizing about something can’t hurt anything. But what if you don’t think your fantasy is OK? I’m a lesbian, I have a girlfriend, and we have a pretty satisfying sex life. Even so, I’d understand why if I (or my girlfriend) were fantasizing about other women, or about things that we’re just not going to do, like S&M (some of our friends are into it but it’s not for us) or threesomes. But I’m not. I’m fantasizing about guys! When she fingers me, I pretend it’s a cock. I don’t even like cocks! I haven’t sex with a guy since I was 16, and I stopped because I didn’t like it. So what’s going on? I feel really bad about it, like if my girlfriend knew she’d feel betrayed, and also like I’m betraying myself. I’m happy being a dyke. I AM a dyke! So what the hell?

Love, Confused, guilty, still a dyke

Dear Dyke:

Of course you are, dear. You are a dyke and nobody can take that away from you, so no need to be so defensive. We believe you. The question then is, do you believe you? Are you really a dyke? Really? You really think so, feel so, know so? OK then. What are you worrying about?

Right. Your girlfriend. Well yes, it is entirely likely that she would find your fantasy life appalling, especially if, while cluing her in, you emphasized the part about pretending any part of her body is … one of Those Things. If you do decide to tell her what’s going on, you’re going to want to rephrase that. Fantasizing that there is a Thing around somewhere and fantasizing that said Thing has replaced your girlfriend are not at all the same thing, and you’re going to want to try to spin it in such a way that she hears that you are super-satisfied with her and just happen, also, to fantasize about one of those bad horrible Things that of course she could not possibly have, nor would you would never wish she did have. Are we all clear on that?

You would also want to emphasize that you are not thinking about cheating or answering one of those ads from straight guys looking for the kind of "lesbians" they’re used to seeing in porn movies. You’re not looking for man, just thinking about a Thing. A Thing completely unconnected to a person. An imaginary Thing.

Your other choice is, obviously, not to tell her. This is actually the way most people go, and despite my officially endorsing relationship glasnost as much as possible, I don’t actually believe that you have to tell even your nearest and dearest everything. If everyone did publicly confess every vile thing that had ever crossed their minds anywhere along the sexual response cycle, it might have a salubrious effect on society in general — No more shame! Everybody’s kind of perverted! — but then again, it might just as well make for a lot of really nasty fights and some divorces, and to what end?

I can only think of one reason to tell her, but it’s a big one: there is a chance that she will look startled (which will terrify you) and then confess, all in a rush, that she has similar fantasies and was sure you’d freak out if you ever knew, and then you could both laugh and forgive each other and yourselves and live happily ever after. But frankly, I’m still on the side of don’t ask, don’t tell (and don’t quote me).

But how your girlfriend would react is not really the question anyway, I don’t think. I think what you really need is to feel OK about it for you. I can’t make the fantasies go away (and neither can you). I can’t reach through the screen here and therapize you, or hypnotize you and make you repeat "It is OK to fantasize about things I do not want to do" over and over until you believe it. All I can do is tell you that I have heard the same things from lesbian after lesbian. Whether it’s because the taboo is the hot, or because women appear to be, by and large, rather more flexible of sexual orientation than men are, it seems that a lot of women who would never dream of having sex with a man do, in fact, dream of having sex with men. It’s inconvenient, uncomfortable, and politically incorrect, but that doesn’t make it not true.

There. I’ve normalized it for you. I hope it helps. I did forget to ask you one thing, though, a thing about Things: if you really want to feel a Thing in there, have you considered just buying one? They’re not the same, it’s true, but then again the Things you’ve been thinking of aren’t real either. Like the song says, it’s all only make-believe.

Love,

Andrea

See Andrea’s other column at carnalnation.com.

Inflatable darling

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com


Dear Andrea:

We were watching Mythbusters and they were using inflatable dolls instead of crash test dummies. That didn’t work very well, but it did make me wonder, does anyone ever use those for actual sex?

Love,

Blow Me Down

Dear Blow:

Who knows? Any attempt to answer this scientifically would be hampered by the inevitable sample problem: would even the most dedicated enthusiast actually admit to putting the thing to its supposed intended use? If they told you, wouldn’t they have to kill you?

If I had to guess, I’d say yes. Men have been known to stick it into condoms full of warm oatmeal, into watermelons, and allegedly into a piece of liver intended for the family dinner. How could at least some tiny fraction of male mankind not be expected to stick it into what passes for a genital orifice in a vinyl novelty device? Of course some do. But mostly not, I’d assume, and mostly not often, or even twice.

Once upon a time I had a boyfriend who lived in a foul two-bedroom with a roommate of disreputable habits (it was Roommate who was principally responsible for the apartment’s foulness, or so I chose to believe at the time). Before Roommate’s birthday one year, Boyfriend and another equally disreputable friend went off to a Tenderloin sex shop and bought a … fuckhead. That’s what we called it, and that’s what it was, a softish mannequin head, like a Barbie’s Hair Salon head but horribly porny, with a round, gaping maw and frizzly blond curls that shed distressingly when you attempted to grasp the thing like a, well, a head. It was ghastly and we could not imagine anybody ever using such a creation for its intended purpose — nobody even wanted to touch the thing — so they put it in the oven, which was never used for its intended purpose, and left it there to gaze blankly, gape-mouthed, through the glass-paneled door.

No, that story did not have a point. I just wanted to tell it.

Of course, decades after the invention of the rarely-fucked Inflatable Love Doll (and by the way, they make sheep, too, but I can’t remember now if it’s actually sold as a "Love Ewe" or if my friends and I made that up), the Real Doll debuted to enormous media hullabaloo and respectable sales. Fairly or not, and nicely or not, I ascribed those respectable sales to the concurrent dot-com bubble and the sudden wealth it showered upon a lot of guys with good coding skills and not so much experience talking to girls. The Real Doll, in case you were sleeping, is a fairly realistic (only slightly less realistic than Jenna Jamison, for instance), life-sized, customizable silicone sex partner. According to their site, you can buy some models on super-special this month for less than $6,000: "order a female flat-back torso, get the head kit free." In fact, the company is, as they say, "going out for business":

In These Difficult Economic Times, Abyss Creations Is Doing Our Part To Help.

SHIPPING IS NOW FREE ON ALL NEW ACCESSORY ORDERS!

And for the month of July there is a $500 Discount Off all new Doll orders.

We also want you to know that all of our products are made in the U.S.A. As well as all materials and parts. We are doing our part to keep our country working.

They are doing their part. Are you doing yours?

The Real Doll appears to have had its moment in the sun (a good idea, actually, since silicone warms to body temperature very readily). If The New York Times, of all things, is to be believed, the coming thing in fake sex partners is not a semirealistic girl-shaped thing, or the expected, immanent online, plug-in cybermate. It’s a … pillow.

The Times article [www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all] is about Japanese "2-D lovers," a subset of obsessive anime fandom who carry on what at least feels to them like real relationships with representations of anime characters, often, ickily, prepubescent girls. The article never says what, exactly, people like the profiled "Nisan" ("big brother") do with a stuffed pillowcase printed with the image of a 10-year-old in a bikini, besides carrying it around and ordering it a bowl of soup and calling it their girlfriend.

Japan is, of course, kind of a special case. According to the Times article, "more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex." I’m hanging onto the hope that the fact that the same cannot be said of North Americans will provide us at least partial immunity to the spread of a similar craze here. But I think we can trust a certain subset of geek-hipsters to at least claim to have adopted it.

Love,

Andrea

See Andrea’s other column at carnalnation.com.

Nothing ventured

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I am straight (?), married 12 years, and have always been faithful to my husband. Before we were together, I had sex with a few boyfriends — nothing crazy. I did used to have fantasies about women, though; like, while trying to have an orgasm, I would think about a woman going down on me instead. Not any particular woman, just a kind of idea of femaleness. But I never did anything about it, or even particularly thought I wanted to.

Now, though, my husband has a lot of business trips, so I’m alone a lot, and lonely. I do have a girlfriend (a friend who’s a girl) who comes over a lot and suddenly I find myself having those kind of fantasies about her in particular. Do you think I could have been a lesbian all along, or could be becoming one now? Or am I just bored? Should I have sex with her if she’s interested?

Love,

Secret Life

Dear Life:

Since you have no idea if she’s interested and she probably isn’t (the majority of random women would not be), it’s probably moot. But let’s say you were having a glass of wine (let’s say it’s the second glass of wine) and all of a sudden she offered you a back rub and then suggested it would be better if you took your shirt off … you know how these things go, at least in fantasy. Let’s say you immediately complied, and things proceeded from there. Let’s say you were compatible and it was great and your husband’s still traveling a lot and you do it again. That’s an affair. It doesn’t matter that the other person is female — she is not your husband! You may be ready to experiment with bisexuality, or with this one friend in particular, but are you ready to cheat on and lie to your husband? They’re not the same thing.

You need to disentangle "bored and lonely" from "interested in women," and "interested in women" from "compelled to explore interest in women." It’s entirely possible, for instance, to be fully bisexual yet completely faithful to the one person you married or partnered. People do it all the time. They relegate one gender to fantasy and go on with their lives, just as other monogamous people do. When you choose one, you lose one. You deal.

Not everyone does deal, of course, or can, or even should. You could be a lesbian who was in deep denial or seduced by the promise of "heterosexual privilege" and now need to get out of there in order to live authentically. You could be a bisexual who can manage ethical non-monogamy and really need a girlfriend and not just a friendgirl, like the one you’ve got. I’m kind of guessing not, though. I’d put money on "bored and lonely." I’m betting, actually, that if that friend who drops by were male, you’d be wondering if he’d like to give you that back rub too.

I’m also wondering if your husband knows you’re feeling this neglected. Maybe he could travel less, or take you along more, or pay more attention to you when he’s home. If none of those do anything, and you ‘re still thinking, "Want woman!" you could always ask him if he’s ever entertained that fantasy, you know the one, and would he maybe like to act it out, or maybe just hear about it after the fact, if you’re not into sharing? These options would be complicated and process-intensive, and require the sort of open communication that everyone plays lip service to but few can really manage in practice, at least not without a lot of sobbing and door-slamming along the way. It can be done, though. People do it, and marriages survive it.

Marriages survive cheating too, actually. More spouses forgive, if not forget, than you’d think. It’s one hell of a blow, though — a marriage needs special, Weeblelike powers to wobble and not fall down. I’m not sure yours has them, what with the frequent separations and, frankly, your willingness to entertain the possibility of cheating without noticing that it’s cheating. I worry.

If I were you, I’d get some girl/girl porn (you can get something funky and homemade — with pubic hair even — if you don’t like the glossy fakey stuff) and a nice vibrator. That should address at least some of the boredom. I’m all for bisexuality and non-monogamy and threesomes and hiring a professional and sex parties and all the other options out there. In theory, anyway, it’s all good. It’s all risky too, and if you’re not up for risking the loss of your nice husband and your nice marriage than you probably want to stick with the nice vibrator. It’s not that it will all blow up in your face the second you try to introduce a new person or element, it’s just that it could. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" is a good adage but it does have a corollary: "nothing ventured, nothing lost!"

And don’t cheat.

Love,

Andrea

Am I blue?

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com


Dear Andrea:

The woman I just started seeing likes fooling around for hours with all our clothes on and isn’t ready for sex. I like waiting too, except I have a medical condition called varicoceles, which means I have to wear tidy-whities whenever I walk around. After dates, I have to use heat and ice on my crotch because I’m so sore from the underwear, and I can’t achieve an erection the next day (irony: if I did manage to get her home with me, I wouldn’t have been able to get it up). I guess I just need to tell her that we can’t make out for more than a few minutes unless I can find a public bathroom to change into boxers and sweat pants, and then back into jeans when we’re done. It takes all the spontaneity and romance out of it, which I think are very important to her, but what else can I do?

Love,

Pants of Pain

Dear Pants:

You do have kind of a special case. The vericocele (a varicose vein of the testes) added to the heavy-petting-fanatic girlfriend is kind of a one-two kick in the balls. I think you’re being extremely accommodating, which may make you a very good boyfriend, but this is getting kind of ridiculous.

I think you are going to have to have a talk with her about what constitutes "sex," since she says she isn’t ready for any. What you’re doing is surely sexual, it just isn’t (a) intercourse or (b) particularly gratifying. To you. Are you absolutely sure she wouldn’t be on board with something that allowed you to move further along the sexual response cycle? I mean yours, obviously, but why not hers too while we’re at it? There’s nothing wrong with not being ready for intercourse, or with being into spontaneity and romance (although those have been known to cause an awful lot of havoc all on their own). Still, it’s unreasonable of her to expect you to go to this amount of trouble every time just because she likes to kiss. We all like to kiss, but few of us have to ice down our privates every time we get a chance do it.

I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she doesn’t know how much discomfort and inconvenience you’re putting up with for her sake. That means you have to stop martyring and start asserting yourself. Just say no to heavy petting! Say you’d like to add in some manual action, and you’d be happy to return any favors she might chose to bestow. You don’t have to go into gruesome detail about it, but you do get to say that the three-hour make-out sessions are hard on you, pun intended or not, as you wish. Alternatively, you could arrive wearing the sweatpants and the jockeys and use the escape-hatch feature in front to alleviate pressure, but I’m really more in favor of the actually telling her she’s torturing you (but be nice about it).

If that answered your question, I now have four for you: What’s with the changing into appropriate action-wear in a public restroom? Are you Superman? And isn’t it tighty-whities? Shouldn’t it be?

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

Are blue balls real? I mean, can it really hurt you? It keeps happening to me with this one girl, but I don’t know if it’s something I’m supposed to do something about or just suck it up.

Love,

BB

Dear B:

Real in what sense? I don’t believe they actually turn blue, and I know for a fact that even an advanced case is not going to hurt you. It’s just vasocongestion, all the little blood vessels and all that spongey erectile stuff getting filled up with blood that does not then go back where it came from in good time. I use the highly technical term "erectile stuff" rather than, say, "penis," because achy congestion and overwhelming frustration are hardly experiences limited to the penis-bearing population. In women, it feels a lot like the mildest menstrual cramp, or rather, the warm, heavy, vaguely achy feeling that often presages the onset of a period. It’s like being made aware of your internal organs, which are sending out "Over here, pay attention to me!" signals. It is not remotely like a kick in the balls, or ovaries, or whatever. Discomfort and frustration are not pain, and even pain does not necessarily signal damage. Blue balls may be safely ignored. Most often, they are ministered to by their owner, in private. Go to it.

Of course, there is such a thing as dangerous — emergency-level dangerous — vasocongestion. This one is pretty much a boys-only affair. It’s priapism, when an erection refuses to abate after a reasonable amount of time and a good-faith effort. This can blow out your blood vessels and leave you limp for life, but since it never ever happens just from some girl sitting in your lap, we can forget I ever even mentioned it.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

The one true way

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

WebMD sent out this slightly goofy "10 Amazing Health Benefits of Sex." Among the benefits of "healthy loving in a relationship," according to the article (summaries mine) are:

1. Less stress: Volunteers kept sex diaries and were then subjected to stressful situations. "Those who had intercourse had better responses to stress than those who engaged in other sexual behaviors or abstained."

Neat.

2. Immunity: "People who have sex once or twice a week produce more immunoglobulin A (IgA). Subjects who reported having less or a whole lot more sex have lower IgA."

Huh. Moderation in all things, right? I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to find it applies to sex. But does it, or were there other factors here?

3. Calories: "Thirty minutes of sex burns 85 calories or more," claims WebMD. "It may not sound like much, but it adds up: 42 half-hour sessions will burn 3,570 calories, more than enough to lose a pound. Doubling up, you could drop that pound in 21 hour-long sessions."

Forty-two half-hour sessions will take most couples months to achieve. You’d be better off on a treadmill.

4. Cardiovascular: Researchers found that neither having nor not-having sex was correlated with strokes. More impressive, they "also found that having sex twice or more a week reduced the risk of fatal heart attack by half for the men, compared with those who had sex less than once a month."

Both loneliness and the death of a spouse are highly correlated with dropping dead.

5. Self-esteem: "Boosting self-esteem was one of 237 reasons people have sex." Hahaha! 237 is a mighty big number. You could fit anything in there. Reason No. 235: free rent.

6. Intimacy: "Sex and orgasms raise levels of oxytocin, the famous bonding, trust, and generosity hormone." The article goes on to cite a study showing that women’s levels of oxytocin rise after "warm contact" and hugs with their husbands, but you don’t need sex to get that.

7. Pain: "In a study published in the Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine, 48 volunteers who inhaled oxytocin vapor and then had their fingers pricked lowered their pain threshold by more than half."

Coolness.

8. Prostate cancer: "Men who had five or more ejaculations weekly while in their 20s reduced their risk of getting prostate cancer later by a third."

There are a lot of similar studies supporting this.

9. Sleep: Oxytocin and exercise promote sleep, and lack of same is correlated with every bad thing from divorce to weight gain.That’s … nine. I lost one somewhere.

Of course, few of us need a specific reason to have sex, nor are we likely to be sufficiently motivated by any of the above to go get some, if not already inclined.

Love,

Andrea

If it IS broke, don’t fix it

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andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I met this guy ("Dave") a couple of years ago through other friends and we became friends. I think he was attracted to me, but we were both involved in relationships. Then both of us broke up with those other people, but not because of each other. We started running into each other more and hanging out, and got to be very good friends. One night we were kind of drunk and we kissed, and then agreed that we didn’t like each other that way. And then we did it again! So after that, we had sex. It was good and I thought, OK, so Dave and I are going out. We said the "I love you’s, and then a few weeks later, he said there was something stopping him from doing it with me any more — but he didn’t know what, it just felt wrong. He still wants to hang out and maybe have oral sex or something sometimes, though, just not sex, or being in a relationship. Then he changed his mind and we had sex and then he changed his mind AGAIN. So what is going on with him? What kind of things could be stopping him from having a relationship with me?
Love,

Flummoxed

Dear Flum:

If we’re going to talk about this at all, we have to get our terminology right, so let me get schoolmarmish on you for a sec and say that oral sex is sex, so what he doesn’t feel "right" about is intercourse. And then let me turn Andrea-ish again and just say: "Run! Run for your life!"

Oh, it’s not that he rings some "that man is criminally insane" bell with me. He doesn’t. He does sound broken, though, in a way that is common, moderately inexplicable, and tedious. And if you keep messing around with him and trying to fix him you will get, if not broken yourself, certainly hurt. Why not not do that, while you still have a choice?

Here’s where I admit that, while dating advice is ostensibly part of my job and it’s my responsibility to keep up, I never could bring myself to read either The Rules or He’s Just Not That Into You. You don’t have to, either, since you had the good sense to write to me instead of spending a lot of money on gimmicky books. Here’s the secret, the nugget, the important truth buried under all the trendy exhortations to wait so many days before returning a phone call, or never to make excuses for a Person of Interest’s caddish behavior: it does not matter why someone does not behave toward you the way you would like him to; it only matters that he doesn’t.

Way back when my friends were all in law school, they named the "reasonable man" who is posited in many contracts law hypotheticals "Dave." So Dave remains for me the perfect fill-in-the-blank name, for reasonable and unreasonable men alike, like so:

Unless your Dave finds intercourse physically uncomfortable and has failed to adequately explain this, leaving you to assume that he does not want to have intercourse with you, he has some sort of intimacy issues. The act of intercourse, generally considered pretty intimate, tweaks these. Perhaps he was poorly treated in a previous relationship and fears a repeat. Maybe he was poorly parented, and thus has never been able to develop the sense of trust necessary to let down his guard and be truly intimate with you. Perhaps he has "performed" (I hate this concept, term, and usage, but it’s kind of unavoidable) poorly in the past and been jeered at or dumped for it and fears a repeat. Perhaps he .. but, wait. What did I just say, above?

None of it matters. As soon as you start thinking of him as wounded and wondering what happened to the poor lamb and how it could be remedied, you have started making excuses for his wretched behavior toward you. Unless you are both under, say, 19 (that’s majority plus one grace year I extend grudgingly), he has no business starting things with you that he is too damaged to follow through on. As an adult, it’s his responsibility to know what he is capable of and what he needs to work on before he’s in any position to promise anything.

"He’s just not that into you" may be reductivist, somewhat insultingly simple-minded, and insufficiently inclusive (what about shy guys who are that into you but too paralyzed with fear to call yet?), but the core concept is very useful: if you need to wheedle, support, excuse, or manipulate a guy into giving you what you want, he doesn’t really want to give it. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter what you do. And offering yourself to him on terms that you find essentially unsatisfactory will gradually grind away at your self-esteem and joie de vivre until you don’t have any. And you’ll need those later.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Average Jane

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

I’ve known people who have sex for money, have sex as a hobby, write about (or perform about or do art about or teach about) sex as an avocation, and still have enough interest and energy left over to have the occasional bit of relaxing off-line sex at home with a partner when nobody’s watching or reading along. But I am not one of them. I get bored. There was a play about vibrators here recently and everyone asked me if I was going, but I said, "Eh, I’d rather see Up." I like to cook and read and watch shows about things that have as little to do with (my) real life as possible — high fashion, for instance, the nuttier the better. I like it when the models wear their dresses upside-down and have monkey-fur eyebrows and a teapot on their head. You don’t?

So … I’m a huge fan of Project Runway and a lesser one of its lesser successor, The Fashion Show. Every season, though, there’s some kind of challenge involving "real women" and, while it’s fun to see the contestants, used to dressing compliant stick insects, wrestle with a mouthy client who dares to voice her own, often scandalously après garde opinions (she often just wants to look nice, of all things), it’s appalling to hear what the designers have to say about the non-model bodies. Faced with the task of dressing a modeling agency admin instead of the expected model, one of the Fashion Show wannabes pouted, "She’s very normal. I don’t do normal."

Well too bad for you, darling! Let us return the favor!

So imagine my glee upon discovering a recent study which found that regular men (as opposed to fashion designers of any gender or sexual preference) not only DO do average women, they vastly prefer us. I knew it! All these years of assuring women that jutting hipbones and sunken chests are not only not required to attract guys, they aren’t even preferred, and now I have at least this one study to back me up.

This isn’t about the "something to hang onto" hypothesis, although I do think that men in general do prefer some padding on those they plan to bump up against, and not only to avoid all the bruising. Men who are attracted to women tend to be attracted to women, and women have boobs and butts and that cunning part in between, where it gets smaller.

You’ve probably heard about the alleged universally preferred waist-hip ratio: it’ s 0.7. This shows up constantly in popular-sciencey psych articles about men’s hard-wired preference for female bodies that signal youth, good health, and fertility (they also like symmetry, even skin tone, and teeth) and depresses female readers who wonder if they measure up. Some researchers in Australia decided to take a closer look, and recruited a bunch of guys to rate line drawings of female torsos for attractiveness. (I may have read too much hard-boiled crime fiction to hear about female "torsos" without mentally adding the word "dismembered," but let’s hope the test subjects had not.) From the NewScientist article:

The work, by Rob Brooks at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues, suggests that the popular notion that a waist-hip ratio of 0.7 is the most attractive only holds if the rest of the body is average (Behavioral Ecology, DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arp051 ).

"The orthodoxy says that you will be attractive with a certain waist-hip ratio no matter how the rest of your body varies. Our study shows this is not the case," says [researcher] Brooks…. The men showed a preference for women with a waist-hip ratio of 0.7 — but only if they had an average-sized waist, hips, and shoulders.

When compared with groups of real women, including Playboy centerfolds, Australian escorts advertising on the Internet and average Australian women between the ages of 25 and 44, the latter group most closely matched the preferred body shape.


Strike one for the average Sheila. Isn’t this heartening? Of course women who are substantially smaller or larger than average can still find plenty of ammunition here with which to wound themselves (the men liked average women, after all), and we don’t know for a fact that it applies to non-Aussie men. Even so, it’s something to remember when the heart sinks and the self-loathing rises upon looking in the mirror and failing, once again, to see Kate Moss pouting back at us. Suck it, Kate! Go eat some crisps.

In other heartening news, the editor of British Vogue put fashion designers on notice that she would no longer publish photos of ultra-emaciated models, so they’d better start sending larger clothes. Apparently the samples have been arriving at the magazines in ever-tinier sizes, until even the models we’re used to seeing, who are about 5’10 and 100 to 125 pounds, can’t fit into them. Not that the average size 14 Australian torso is going to be able to squeeze into those Valentinos, but at least it’s a start.

Love,

Andrea

Wet stuff

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I know you’ve written about the G-spot before, but I have to say I’m still confused. I can have orgasms when my boyfriend goes down on me but not from intercourse, which I guess is pretty common. I keep wondering maybe if he could find my G-spot? I was also wondering about female ejacuutf8g. I don’t think I’ve ever female ejaculated or had a G-spot orgasm. What can I do?
Love,

Hoping For More

Dear Hope:

You and quite an army, actually. All of your desiderata are perennials on women’s must-have lists. Sadly, though, unlike the "it" bag of the season, you can’t get just get a cheap knock-off at Target and be satisfied. Oh, wait, that’s not true — it’s actually entirely possible that the right tool might get the job done, and those, you can buy.

The G-spot, as we have discussed ad infinitum, is not so much a discrete spot as it is a convenient catch-all for a bunch of associated structures, including the erectile tissue around the urethra (paraurethral sponge), and the vast internal portions of the clitoris, the body and crurae (the external part is the glans). OK. We’ve done that. You may also remember that because all that good stuff is largely above the vagina, any fingers attempting to access it are going to need to apply a firm upward pressure. Think of it as that "You! Over here!" gesture that Carmela Soprano made to Charmaine Bucco that time when Artie and Charmaine catered her party. Fingers can do this successfully, but most often those are somebody else’s. If you want to do the preliminary exploration on your own, or want to speed things along, one of the approximately 100 million sex toys made for the purpose will likely do the trick.

Now, the wet stuff. May I just say, before we get started, that I really object to the term "female ejaculate" as a verb, even though I occasionally end up employing it? Let’s try to stick to using it as a noun, the stuff in that puddle there, and use just plain "ejaculate" for the verb, figuring we know we’re talking about the women-folk here. Good. So, ejaculation has a funny sort of recent history, going from utterly obscure and unmentioned to the subject of heated argument to feminist cause célèbre in less than 30 years, starting with Grafenberg (he of the Spot) in the 1950s. By the ’90s women (or sometimes womyn) were making theater pieces and giant marching puppets about it, while others were watching instructional videos and driving themselves and their partners frantic looking for the elusive spot and its payload, the equally elusive (female) ejaculate. By the oughts, the endless stream of articles about how to get yourself an endless stream of orgasms along with their attendant rivers of body fluids seems to be drying up, replaced largely with articles about … dryness. Low sexual desire and no sexual desire and how to spark up your marriage. The audience is getting older, I guess. The how-to books and videos produced during the boom years are all still around, though, so no reason not to give ’em a shot.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

It’s Cougartown, Jake

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m 19 and still a virgin. I’ve never been on a date, kissed a girl, held hands, hugged … you get the picture. I’ve never really had the time to take interest in girls, or the courage to ask one out. I’m now starting to feel pretty lonely, and tired of my lack of "experience." However, after talking with several different girls my age on different occasions, my question has come to this: are virgin guys really worthless for experienced women?

Most women I talk to say that’s the answer to the question. If this is true, I think I’m going to have serious nervous breakdown. Since this is apparently the case, and such a bad thing, I was wondering what I should do — if anything at all — to fix the problem?

Love,

Another Lonely Boy

Dear Boy:

In light of recent discussions of sexual opportunities found on craigslist, among the (barely) used fitness equipment and the remarkably ugly couches, I’m suddenly seeing your problem in a whole new light. In your usual fictional treatments of the "desperate male virgin seeks state-change" trope, you see the hapless hero attempt, unsuccessfully, to get age-mates interested, or to trick them with false-bottomed popcorn buckets or what-have-you. Then you have your prostitute scene, which never goes well. I have no compunctions about suggesting seeing a pro, actually — it may not be legal, but as far as I know I can recommend what I like as long as I don’t recommend whom I like, as in "See my friend Lavinia, she’ll fix you right up."*

In fact,I AM going to suggest you see a pro, since this has been going on way too long and I’m afraid you’re going to get what they used to call "a complex." But I do realize it’s not a solution that fits everyone’s tastes, morals, or pocketbook, and it isn’t much help if what you’re seeking is a boon companion and a chance to get your blank-blank-ed (I hate all those phrases and can’t even bring myself to type the one about cherries. Ick.

We’ll get back to craigslist, but first, no, I don’t think inexperienced men are "worthless" to women. I think very few people can truly be considered worthless (even the worst can be repurposed as mulch, for instance), and I’d hate for you to judge your own worth by what some chicks at a party said. Your "worth" is irreducible and inborn.

How useful you can be to other people may depend on things like skills and history, but probably not as much as you think. I think we’re having some confusion here about what question those girls thought they were answering. Would they really, at the advanced age of 19 or so, reject a serious and otherwise appealing suitor on the grounds of sexual inexperience? Or was it more a case of "I’d rather do it with guys who know what they’re doing"? The latter is understandable, the former a bit sad.

I really think young women of a slightly less hardened persuasion are your best bet, for many reasons, but there is that craigslist option (craigslist is in some senses sui generis, but it could also be considered to stand in here for any online meeting place where "casual encounters" ads are acceptable). I’m thinking that your chances of a cute 19-year-old picking up on your ad in a place like that and thinking, "Sweet! He doesn’t know a thing!" are virtually nil. But if there really is such a thing as a "cougar," then … mrowr.

I am personally still unconvinced that any such widespread social phenomenon of older, slightly stringy but glossily well-preserved ladies prowling for young man-meat yet exists, or ever will. You couldn’t prove it by the presence of the stereotype, though. Not only is there the SNL sketch and a number of ad campaigns featuring "cougars," there’s even an upcoming series staring the ancient and wizened Courteney Cox (I believe she’s 45) in something called Cougar Town. This is not good.

Reservations about the designation and the ugly light it casts on women over, say, 35 who still like sex aside, this could all be good news for you. Try running an ad that says "19-year-old virgin seeks cougar for important life lessons" and see how that works out for you. While it’s true that most female grown-ups are not seeking utterly inexperienced partners half their age, there are certainly some who would find you an interesting experiment.

All this nonsense about pros and ladies on the prowl aside, I do have two other suggestions, both of which seem to have escaped you. One, you can talk to girls and even ask them out without revealing a certain embarrassing biographical fact upfront and, two, you could date virgins.

Love,

Andrea

* No, I don’t know anyone named Lavinia.

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Objects in mirror

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:
Since I can’t write this week, I thought I could at least rerun a letter germane to recent discussions.

Dear Andrea:

I met a guy through his very explicit and fun Craigslist ad describing the weird-ass kinky sex he wanted. So we e-mailed, met, and had a great time. He’s handsome, intelligent, artsy … totally my type. We end up in bed, he gives me some quality oral sex, and then he ejaculates within two minutes. He makes no move to get me off either, just makes some remark about that being "my random Craigslist hookup." I’m too flabbergasted to ask for more oral sex. And then he wants to spend the night and cuddle. I’m frustrated and confused, but let him, and don’t comment on his premature ejaculation for fear of damaging his ego. Later we have sex again, and again he ejaculates within minutes. What do I do when he calls? What should I have said at the time?

Love,

UnListed

Dear List:

I once sat on a panel with Craig from Craiglist and I’m imagining him being mortified by this entire story. He’s a shy boy. I would also dearly love to link to the offending ad, but it seems faintly unethical, although it’s often said that once you post something on the Web, it’s public, period, and ripe for linkage. He’s probably taken it down by now, anyway. I can attest that the ad was lengthy, floridly descriptive, occasionally inept ("Bring your noble breasts"), and kinky in a cutely sophomoric, let-me-mash-grapes-in-you kind of way. It certainly did not read it as an offer of a two-minute, one-night stand complete with sexual frustration and dismissive jokes.

What to do if he calls? Doesn’t that depend on whether you wish to see him again? If you do, you will have to say, "But I want to do the stuff you said in the ad! Not five minutes of sex and then goodnight. OK?" If you don’t want to see him again, you say "no thanks."

There are ways to ask for more without bruising a boy’s ego — some boys, anyway. The ones to whom one is not allowed to say anything but "Wow! That was the best sex ever!" are not worth playing with. Yours doesn’t sound at all like the brutally macho type, more like your typical under-experienced urban dweeb-boy, so you would be quite safe in expressing an opinion, especially if you’re upbeat about it: "That was hot! I’m still hot! C’mon, let’s do some more." Not: "Well, that sucked. In fact, you suck." I can’t see the point of accusing him of premature ejaculation specifically, nor was that his greatest offense. What was, then? False advertising, of course. He proposed lengthy, goofy, sexy fun to ward off the looming, glowering gloom of autumn. Did he deliver any of that? No, he did not, and you would have been within your rights to point this out. On closer reading of his ad, though, I notice that he included an escape clause: "Not looking for mind-blowing, end-of-the-world sex."

I fear we shall all end up bringing our lawyers with us on first dates. End-of-the-world sex, indeed.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I recently hooked up with an inexperienced 23-year-old man. Sex has not been great for him in the past. With his ex, he always initiated, she never seemed to enjoy anything he tried, she refused to offer suggestions, they both became resentful, and now he’s afraid of sex. He told me he’s nervous and insecure, and when we finally got to it, he lasted about 15 seconds.

I find this guy unbelievably hot. I wouldn’t have guessed he was so inexperienced, and I get turned on thinking about how some really great fucking could rock his world. So far I’ve tried to not judge him and to be patient. I’d like to show him how great sex makes life worth living. But I don’t want to coddle or condescend to him. I also have no experience dealing with quick ejaculators. (It only happened once, but I’d like to know some techniques for keeping it from happening again.)

Love,

Mama Teach

Dear Mama:

He is, for your purposes, a babe in the woods. Coddle all you want. I wouldn’t suggest actually condescending to him, if only because condescension, unlike, say, humiliation or scorn, lacks essential hotness. Assume that he is attracted to you at least in some part for your worldliness, and play it up. He is a tender, pink-eared schoolboy. You are Jeanne Moreau.

There is no instant technique applicable to premature ejaculation (and yes, 15 seconds is premature); it’s all longer-term stuff. If interested, he can apply himself to his studies and gradually train himself out of coming so quickly, especially since it is likely nothing but nerves. Far simpler, though, is the magical solution available mostly to very young men and their partners: do it again. And again. And again.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Higgamus hoggamus

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I wonder if you’ve been living in San Francisco too long? Most prostitutes are not happy grad students! Most have been abused, are addicts, or both, and it’s not a "career choice." I think the woman in your last column is a sex addict and needs therapy, not someone to be cheered on by people like you who think promiscuity is cool. I would worry that kind of behavior says something pretty bad about the emotional state of anyone who’s doing it. I usually like your column, but I do think you can get warped by living too long where being weird is cool.

Love,

I Used To Live There Too

Dear Used:

I worry about her, too! What do you think I am? The question for last week, though, was not "Is promiscuity healthy for women?" (a very complicated question indeed, and one we will get back to), but the far simpler and more specific, "Is meeting men online for sex likely to get you killed?" No matter how you feel about female promiscuity, the answer to the latter is going to have to be no. It is simply not likely, although we have seen, tragically, that it is possible.

Expensive, boutique-y prostitution practiced by sane, smart women who can afford to screen clients carefully is surprisingly unlikely to lead to ax-murder. Neither does either activity put its female practitioners at any great risk for STDs or accidental pregnancy, since these are women who own condoms and know how to use them. It’s young (and not so young) people in the fuzzy-headed throes of romantic love or lust (sure, there’s such a thing as "romantic lust") who fall prey to the "spontaneity" fallacy or simply cannot force themselves to hold back until someone has gone out and procured the necessary protective gear. Call girls don’t go "oops," and last week’s "friend" probably doesn’t either. Certainly my own friends who use the sexier personals sites (say, Nerve rather than Chemistry.com) don’t make amateur’s mistakes. They can’t afford to.

Now, "Female promiscuity — hobby or symptom?" Contemporary understanding points to neither, or both, or to questioning the entire category, since the word itself implies deviation from an assumed non-promiscuous norm. For the last 60 years or so, the basic sociobiological story has gone something like this: Men are naturally promiscuous (and interested in nubile young women) because sperm is cheap and the best route to reproductive success is to shoot (and shoot, and shoot) and run. Women, meanwhile, are naturally (if serially) monogamous because pregnancy and infancy are expensive and they will need the help of a well-to-do, physically strong male to help them achieve reproductive success. More recent research has served to completely bollux-up our tidy story, though.

"Chimpanzee males trade meat for sex!" announced pretty much every media outlet in April. No surprise there, really, but it also turned out that … female chimpanzees trade sex for meat. Lots of sex, although not on the first date, since they are not always in estrus at time of trade. Are they making bets on future help (and sperm donations) from males they are merely flirting with now? And are the males keeping a database of females who will later say yes? If they can carry on such complex sociosexual calculations, what else are they up to?

Meanwhile, our premier expert on the sociobiology of motherhood, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, posits a revolutionary difference between ape societies and early (and modern) human ones, so big that it renders ape models even more useless than they already were as revisitable reservoirs of human history. Looking at modern hunter-gatherer societies, she sees cooperative parenting, a human invention, still in operation. It takes a village, in other words, men and women both, to raise a helpless human baby. And, looking back, the more we helped each other, the better our social and communication skills grew. Group responsibility for the children, she says, made us human.

More immediately apropos, perhaps, is the research (www.scientificblogging.com/news_articles/human_sex_roles_male_promiscuity_debunked_and_women_arent_all_picky_either) by Gillian Brown and associates, widely reported this spring, which examined mating behavior and reproductive success in 18 human societies and found that what people do depends on what else is going on: population density, differing life expectancies between the sexes, sex ratios, and a bunch of other variables made a huge difference in who was doing more or less of what with whom. Why this demonstration that humans are complex and adaptable should have come as much of a surprise to anyone, I couldn’t tell you. I admit, though, that I likewise couldn’t tell you that sociobiological research supports the innate wholesomeness of picking up men on Craigslist, and I doubt it ever will. I tend to be a worrier too, and I have certainly seen people, especially women, do a fair amount of psychic damage to themselves with ill-considered sex. But it would be pretty presumptuous to assume that last weeks "friend" is broken on the basis of, well, not knowing anything.

Love,

Andrea

P.S. Readers, what about you? Care to share your adventures in promiscuity, soul-deadening, life-affirming, or just plain OK? They would make a great column.

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Don’t change a Thing

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I found this on Craigslist. Please, please stop this poor girl before it’s too late! She should hear from a professional that she’d be sacrificing nerve endings to a bunch of dickweeds who are suckers for media standards. And they won’t even like her more. God help us.

advice please re labia — w4m

so im hearing mixed reviews from guys about a female’s labia. do guys prefer the labia minora to be big or small? because tons of my friends are seeking to have them made smaller (like by a lot) so they look like playboy types etc. is that what guys want? what turns men on? and why? any advice on what to do here for me??

‘Nuff said. Thank you.

Love,

A Concerned Citizen

(Seriously.)

Dear Concerned:

Oh, okay. Maybe she’ll see this and maybe she won’t, but obviously this is a thing, or a Thing, that affects a lot of young women, just as she says. "Tons" of her friends, though? I realize she’s posting from L.A., where you have to expect this sort of thing, but the image of busloads of girls she went to high school with or worked with at Hot Topic after school lining up for surgical "correction" is unsettling even me.

So, what is going on here? I’ve long assumed (this has been going on a while now) that women used to go a lifetime without seeing their own (it takes a mirror and the will to look) or anyone else’s labia in great detail unless they had chosen to be midwives or something, in which case they were busy.

Men used to see a few sets, all too different from each other to even form much of a preconceived notion of what they "ought" to look like. Hardly anybody used to view an endless parade of stunt labia, chosen or surgically altered to conform to a (sub)cultural standard. But since the 1990s or so, that is exactly what we are doing. The porn industry standard is tiny, close-to-the-body, and unusually symmetrical, and if that is what young men are seeing before they even get a peek at the real thing, I suppose it’s to be expected that some may be shocked or dismayed by reality’s asymmetry and wild diversity of form, and in some cases indignant that they did not get exactly what they were in the mood for. It works with YouTube and iPods!

At least with pubic hair (a similar issue with young men being shocked on first encounter), one can go with the fashion flow and change with it as it (inevitably) changes. The same cannot be said for surgical rearrangements.

Now, how do I feel about young women permanently altering themselves to suit male fancy? I think it might be a trick question, actually, since I’m not entirely sure that that many guys care that much. What if they do, though — ought a young woman scramble to put herself through a painful, expensive, dangerous (all surgery is dangerous) procedure to please guys who probably still won’t be that into her if they’re not already? Of course not. Nothing is ever that simple, though.

Most of the Web sites put up by surgeons who do these procedures talk a great deal about painful horseback-riding or bicycling or inability to wear pants, all very real if somewhat rare complications of very long or loose labia. Then they give a little nod to being displeased with the size, period, and that’s the population we’re worrying about here. A reputable surgeon is going to accept or reject patients based not only on physical factors but emotional ones as well, especially patient expectations ("this surgery will make my labia smaller" versus "this surgery will make me stop hating myself"). And I hate to say this, Concerned Dude, but there are plenty of women (and men too, of course) whose self-esteem problems really can be cleared right up with the proper application of surgical instruments. I hate to see people who undergo surgery, itself morally neutral and a personal choice, treated like brainwashed sheeple who could not possibly have had a good enough reason to go under the knife.

As for the nerve endings, while I was appalled to see this statement — There is no physiological association for sensory pleasure with the labia — that function is served by the clitoris. The only sensation elicited from labia is pain upon tearing or stretching. — on one of the surgeon’s sites, since it is obviously wrong and very condescending in that surgeon-y way as well, I think we have to concede that the labia are not the major, or even a major, route to sexual ecstasy for most women. A half-inch or so less here or there is not going to make much difference. Not that that’s any reason to go chopping them off, though, sheesh! L.A. Girl, don’t listen to your girlfriends. You’re fine. None of you knows enough yet about what men want, or, much more important, about what you want yourselves. Don’t change a thing!

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Get a dog

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

The "Lonely Guy" responses are in:

I read the letter from Lonely Guy/Nice Guy and my thought is that he sounds kind of resentful and also like he wants to "get" a woman, which isn’t the same as wanting to meet women! Maybe they can tell. — Reader A

I wondered about that too. Not really liking women yet feeling compelled to seek them out (and resenting them for it) is a common pattern for straight men (and women with men; I’m not letting anyone off the hook here), but I don’t think that’s what’s going on with LG. I was reminded, though, of the way my husband used to wonder why he always had a girlfriend and at least another female or two waiting hopefully on the sidelines in case the current one got hit by a bus. There were cooler, smoother guys, he’d point out, and guys who looked more like George Clooney, so why him? After enough different women told him why — because he genuinely likes women — he finally believed us. Lonely Guy doesn’t seem like he dislikes women, and he does say he’s genuinely interested in what they have to say. My bet’s on not so comfortable with women but likes them fine. Next?

My GF and I were discussing our previous experiences dating. She sets some key criteria for the relationship she wants, and when she meets someone who meets them, she sticks with it. Of course, a deal-breaker could pop up, but she is not poised to run. My M.O. was always to bail at the slightest uncertainty. But when some stuff came up with us, she wouldn’t let me. As we’ve worked through it, we have built trust and grown closer. I know she’ll still be there tomorrow, and she knows I’ll be there too. I’m grateful that she wouldn’t let us quit. — Reader B

Actually a great point about dating in general, but not helpful to a guy who has somehow managed to get dumped by every woman he’s seen except the one who was for some reason an immensely inappropriate choice. Or do you think a serial dumpee can learn to "not let" dumping happen, as your girlfriend did with you?

My suspicion is your letter-writers lack a large network of friends, male or female. I’ve observed that people who can make friends have the easiest times getting dates. Even "boring" people can stop being boring if they develop interests they can share. When I was single, most of my dates were referrals from my social network. There is an old adage, "To have a friend, you have to be one." That sadly, must be the character flaw. — Reader C

Mmmkay. I think you’re right that having friends helps, on a practical level in that friends have friends, and probably on some sort of meta-level as well (Who saw the recent articles on how having friends, even if you don’t see them much, makes you live longer?). I was not precisely calling for people to pinpoint LG’s "character flaw" though, sheesh. Spot the flaw, win valuable prizes!

This guy spent 10 years in an unhappy relationship. I don’t think he knows what companionship really means. He also treats dating like a chore. He dates so he can … stop dating? If you are lonely, get a dog. — Reader D

Yes, LG, stop treating meeting women as the equivalent of cleaning out your vegetable drawer. Reader D is right. Once D added "get a dog" to Reader C’s suggestion about cultivating "interesting interests," though, my mind strayed to my favorite piece of dating advice ever, culled from a Mademoiselle article I read in college: "Walk an interesting dog." I have met many dogs since them, and often wondered which of them qualified as interesting enough.

I’ve never had any problem meeting women. Unlike LG, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I’m a nice guy, because people never tell me that. Is it true then, that women go for jerks? I don’t think so. People like me, and I’m not a jerk to women any more than I am to anyone else. I’m not attracted to doormats. What I do think is that people are attracted to confidence and are generally more interested in people who are interesting. You don’t have to be an asshole to be interesting, but maybe he has become such a good listener that the interesting things about him never even come across.

If he insists on using online dating, he should 1) try Chemistry.com instead of Match.com (look up Helen Fisher’s books), and 2) never write a profile describing himself as "nice." He should talk about hobbies or interests (if he doesn’t have any, he should get some, or at least get a dog), and 3) rent The Tao of Steve. — Reader E

Haha! OK, SG, get a life, or get a dog, and write a niceness-free profile. Reader E may be a jerk, but he gave the best answer.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

What do (people) want?

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:
Have you heard of a study that analyzed biometric feedback from self-identified male bisexuals, and the notable finding was that the overwhelming majority of these men were in fact homosexual, not bisexual? The conclusion of the study was that "true" male bisexuality is extremely rare. (For what it’s worth, I consider myself a "true" male bisexual, but what do I know?)

I also heard about another study from at least 10 years ago that tracked the sexual fantasies of self-identified lesbians, and the surprising result was that some 50 percent of these women actually fantasized about men while doing it with their female partners.

Have you heard of these, and would you care to comment?
Love,

Actually Here!

Dear Here:

I have, of course, and they’re all fascinating, partly for the science (which is generally super-simple and not easily misinterpreted) and partly for the reactions in the various communities whenever one of these studies is reported, which are frankly pretty funny.

The "there’s no such thing as male bisexuality" studies have received the most press, and the biggest, most offended reactions, but it’s not like the researchers at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto set out to disprove the existence of an entire sexual orientation! All they did was hook up some volunteers to a plethysmograph and show them porn. I think the first researchers were probably as surprised as anyone when the self-identified bi men failed to respond in a recognizably "bi" manner. About three-quarters of the bi men read as completely gay according to their penises (do penises lie?), while the rest were indistinguishable from the self-identified straight guys. There was no recognizable "bi" pattern of arousal, and the subjects seemed overwhelmingly to fall on one or the other end of the Kinsey scale:

Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal" to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger… the study’s lead author.

So obviously, you think you exist but you’re wrong, Bi Guy!

Okay, no. What do I really think? I think, for one thing , it’s all funny since in my little bubble of not only San Francisco-ness but San Francisco sex educator-ness, fake bi guys who are actually straight but want hot bi chicks to think they’re cool way outnumber bi guys who are actually gay but closeted. Also, I do think you exist. Clearly truly bi men are rarer even than we thought, but I’m fairly certain that you are not a figment of your own or my imagination, and I think sexuality is a mite more complicated than penile plethysmography.

Another study, described here in a ScienceDaily article from 2003, and distinguished by including only people who identified as gay or straight, turned up more bisexual women than expected, but replicated earlier results where gay and straight (but not bi) men responded consistent with their self-identification: In contrast, both homosexual and heterosexual women showed a bisexual pattern of psychological as well as genital arousal. That is, heterosexual women were just as sexually aroused by watching female stimuli as by watching male stimuli.

The extraordinary article on female desire that ran in The New York Times Magazine (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire) introduced recent research by Meredith Chivers, who’s been following up on the research above with the added fillip of throwing some ape porn in the mix and requiring volunteers to report their own perceptions of their arousal levels, which proved wildly inaccurate: During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.

Good to know!

As for the studies (self-reported behavior, no telemetry) that show a high percentage of self-described lesbians fantasizing about men while having lesbisex, eh. People fantasize about all kinds of things, particularly things they feel uncomfortable about. Are those women fake lesbians? The furthest I can go with that is to say that we’ve seen that women are much (so much!) more likely than men to be bisexual by attraction. I’m assuming that some of the women studied are physically attracted to both, but emotionally more attached to women ("Whom do you fall in love with?" is a hugely important but oft-neglected measure of sexual orientation) and some are into women but enjoy fantasies of committing unnatural acts with men. That some must be really not that into chicks but have chosen for whatever reason to live as lesbians is undeniable but just not that important. They wouldn’t be the first people to partner with someone not of their preferred gender, or the last, and their existence does not cast doubt on anyone else’s authenticity. Can anyone do that?

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

I’m a lonely guy

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

The letter from "Forty and Frustrated" a few weeks back got a lot of interest and at least one excellent suggestion (go out alone) from a woman who has had success following her own advice. Excellent! I also heard from "F&F’s" male counterpart (and no, sorry, I can’t match them up), and here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to read this and figure out what’s wrong and come up with a better approach. Together. Here goes:

I’m a 44-year-old guy, single for most of my life. Aside from a 10-year relationship with someone I was not attracted to and got involved with for all the wrong reasons, I’ve never had a girlfriend. I have had a few flings, though none have lasted more than a month.

In the last year, I’ve had more than two dozen dates. All but two weren’t interested in seeing me again. The most recent split was particularly painful because she seemed to be the closest match for me yet. (She apparently felt otherwise.) It’s always the same pattern. There seems to be a strong initial attraction that quickly fades after a couple of weeks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I’m a nice guy. I’m beginning to think that the few women who are interested enough to want to see me again eventually realize that I don’t have much else to offer, and lose interest. For the record, I’m healthy, fit, athletic. I have a life. I’m not aggressive, conceited, or rude. I like to think I’m a reasonably pleasant person to be around. I’m genuinely interested in what my date has to say. What am I doing wrong?

My profile on Match.com has had over 1,500 hits, I have yet to receive a single unsolicited e-mail. I’ve sent out nearly 500. I’ve had more than a few women write back, appearing interested, only to never hear from them again. When writing my profile, I made a concerted effort to not come across as pretentious or self-absorbed. I don’t have a checklist that’s a mile long. I included photos in which I’m smiling and one can clearly see my face. I would be thrilled to receive an e-mail from a woman who was interested enough to take the time to write one. I can’t speak for other guys, but having a woman ask me out on a date would be one of the most flattering things that could happen to me. And I’ve never backed out of a date at the last minute.

OK! The first thing that catches my eye is the admission, from someone who otherwise seems willing to acknowledge his own more saleable qualities, that he has "not much else to offer." Either this is evidence of a self-image badly enough distorted to cripple any attempts to connect meaningfully with women he might be interested in, or it’s true. If true, we had better hope it is fixable. What does it mean to "have something to offer"?

Well, what are those women looking for? They do want somebody solvent (did anyone else read the articles about chimpanzee chicks who have more sex with the chimp dudes who have more antelope meat?) and sane, but beyond that? Fun, yes; compatible sexually and otherwise, yes; but also, assuming he’s dating women in their 30s, a husband and kids. If women in their 40s, maybe just the former, but these days you never know. What they all probably want, though, is availability and commitment. If he is not signaling that these are on offer, and not going way too far in the other direction and offering them in his opening e-mail, he’d better get signaling, and fast.

I assume they would also like to know why he’s 44, never married, and so little-dated. He’s going to have to come up with a good spin on a sad tale. Not a lie, mind you, but a little polish.

It also occurs to me that he may be — and I hate to say this because I imagine him reading it and I shudder in empathy — boring. True, "nobody wants to date me" is not your most scintilutf8g subject and may not inspire the complainant to dazzling heights of witty word play, but come on. A little joke, some narrative flair, even a pun would help — and I hate puns. Lonely guy, spark it up. Maybe they’re not calling back because they fell asleep.

OK readers, your turn. Have at him. Female daters, would you answer his ad? And have you dated (some version of) this guy? What made you stop?

I recently bought both my kids T-shirts that say "When I Grow Up I’m Going To Save The World." (That these were available in the boys’ department only is an issue for another column.) I’m already grown up, and frankly, I don’t think I’m going to save the world, but hey, let’s save this guy.

What would it take to get him a date?

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Parts is parts

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Parts is parts

Dear Readers:

These are perennial body parts questions, and I feel I would be somewhat remiss if I didn’t re-answer them every few years. Here are some that have been hanging around waiting for me.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I once tried for half an hour putting my index finger about two inches inside my girlfriend’s vagina, pressing with a "come hither motion" and simultaneously pressing the mound from outside. Unfortunately my partner did not experience any extra pleasure. Maybe I have to try again and again?
Love,

Willing

Dear Will:

Yes, yes, very funny. I’m not entirely sure what she was experiencing, but from your phrasing, which could have been cut and pasted from any one of a thousand how-to Web sites, I think you may have been proceeding a bit by rote there. Rather than printing out some stranger’s directions, how about following hers?

There are plenty of women who don’t have much of the spongy erectile tissue surrounding the urethra and the front of the vagina that we’ve come, for convenience’s sake, to call the G-spot. These women can lie there all day receiving simultaneous come-hither motions and external pressure and only manage to get kind of annoyed with you. If your girlfriend is one of them, I would not suggest "trying again and again" unless you want her to lean forward and swat the top of your head with the TV remote.

You can probably determine whether she is G-spot enabled by letting her guide you. Since the G-spot is, inconveniently, not actually a "hot button," but a collection of tissues sensitive to the touch under certain but not all circumstances, I cannot tell you exactly how to operate it. I’d start once she’s already well turned-on, though, and without impatience or, indeed, goal-orientation. Just kind of slip in there when things are already going well and keep your eyes on her face while you try a little deeper or a little closer in, a little harder and a little softer, a little … oh, you get the picture.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My penis is curved a little. Is that normal, and if not what can I do to straighten it?

Love,

Upwards

Dear Up:

Nothing! Do not do anything! Some curvatures are caused by a previous injury that heals but puts a hitch in the sheath of sausage-casing-like material that encases the spongy, sausage-like corpora cavernosa, the working parts of your penis. I don’t think that’s what happened to you, but if you want to find out how a devastating penis fracture heals, try unbending it.

Yours probably was just made that way. If we were all made in God’s image, some of God’s avatars would have a dick just like yours. Worry not, and if you have a chance check out some G-spot toys, if the curve looks familiar, boy are you in luck.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I am just a big chicken! How come I am afraid of sticking my finger inside of me? It just terrifies me for some reason, and I refuse to stick anything inside of me ’cause I am just so afraid!!

Love,

Chicken

Dear Chick:

I’m going to assume you are a teenager, in which case it’s pretty normal. Not only do we hear a ton about how it might hurt and bleed (and, indeed, it might), this is the inside of your body. That is, emotionally speaking, some heavy stuff. We spend our very early childhood learning the limits of our bodies — where we stop and other people begin, what goes in and what comes out. It is no small trick to relearn boundaries later and start letting new things in new places.

Take it easy, take it slow, and maybe try with something smaller, like a Q-Tip and see how that goes. Also, take a mirror and see where it’s going. Either you will learn that there is more room than you thought, or you won’t. If there’s a hymen there it will be more complicated, but it’s still meant to let things in. Just let them in on your own terms, at your own pace.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My wife’s ex was a "big" guy, and she only mentioned this to me while trying to reassure me that she likes having sex with me more. I don’t believe her, though. Now all I can think about is how he was bigger than me and whether she misses that.
Love,

Average Joe

Dear Joe:

Just imagine telling her all the time how you can’t stop comparing yourself to her ex, who is out of the picture, and anyway she loves you and would rather have sex with you. How does that sound? See? Now cut it out. She was telling you the truth, as you perfectly well know.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Oprah begs for mercy

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andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

"Oprah begs for mercy" sounds so much like the title of one of the S/M fantasy stories you can read online that I just couldn’t resist it, but honestly, read this:

Dr. Berman: … and this is a little holster that the guy can wear so this goes around his penis.

Oprah: Oh, please.

Dr. Berman: Yeah. Around his penis for hands-free clitoral stimulation during intercourse.

Oprah: OK. You have just crossed the line with me.

Dr. Berman: OK. Are you ready?

Oprah: No, you have crossed the line with me. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Dr. Berman: All right, look. Here is the penis. (Makes shadow-puppet gesture.)

Oprah: I swear. I’m not ready for it. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for it. No. I am not ready for it. Let’s move on.

The doctor is Laura Berman of the Berman Institute in Los Angeles, where, between Laura’s therapy and her urologist sister Jennifer’s research, anyone female with enough money and not enough orgasms can get her bits seen to. They do excellent work. I’d be tempted to go myself out of curiosity if I lived more southerly and had more money and less doctor-phobia. Doesn’t Laura, usually so nice, seem to be getting something of a kick out of playing "torture the media mogul" there, though?

Funny, actually, since these appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show have sold gazillions of her vibrators and carried Berman’s name, credentials, and well-tended features with them into bed with viewers nationwide and further.

These are mostly not the penis-mounted marital aides the doctor is describing above, but the Berman Center brand’s workhorse, the Aphrodite. It’s a Magic Wand-type rechargeable nicknamed "the sure thing." How sure a thing is it, and is there anything about it that should automatically win the trust of an audience presumably tuning in more for makeovers, lifestyle tips, and celebrity gossip than for "Look, Oprah, here’s the penis … ?"

I’ve been getting floods of press releases for new toys meant for a mass audience of sex-toy newbies (it’s almost always the Aphrodite — good press that Goddess gets) and I politely reply that I’d be happy to examine one but they’ll have to send me something, and I finally found satisfaction. The Earth did not move, but MyPleasure.com, the rather sober-sided, therapy-oriented sex toy store that acts as Berman’s sales outlet, sent me a selection of hot new gear, including the Aphrodite.

I have to admit that my initial reaction to the Goddess of Desire’s pleasure wand was not "Oh, oh, oh!" but simply, "Oh." It is a dull opaque purple and quite large — a lot of purple — and not much to look at. (Check out the industrial design at Jimmy Jane or Lelo for contrast, or wait till they show up in MOMA’s permanent design collection.) I set it to charge and went away and forgot about it till deadline, at which point I discovered that the vaunted infrared feature does not work on the "high" setting, which seems like kind of a cheat. Does the vibrator itself (a large round head on an articulated neck with three interchangeable silicone sleeves) work? Yes. Yes, it does.

I am not at all convinced that it’s enough better than anything else to cure an Oprah viewers’ anorgasmia all on its own merits. Rather, I bet it’s the Aphrodite’s innate vibey goodness combined with Dr. Berman’s cred and that of the kind of sexy-sounding Dr. Sandor Gardoz, MyPleasure’s resident sexologist, plus Oprah herself, combined with the awareness that thousands of other relatable married-with-children afternoon TV watchers are using it too, that’s causing (or allowing) all the orgasms. It’s an excellent beginner’s vibrator, but I seriously do believe that a lot of those women are finally getting off with this one because so many other women are. If you think about it, this is sort of revolutionary in a way that the feminist-ish sex toy industry has been claiming but not quite earning for quite some time.

I also received an unpleasantly mauve (I sense a theme here) and flowery but otherwise nice-looking insertable thing called, redundantly, Blissful Pleasures, which is very pleased with itself for having five settings — but several of these are literally snore-y, taking long, slow breaths before revving up again, which … yawn.

And there was a "Liv" from Lelo, the gorgeousness people. It is indeed gorgeous, slim and curvy in princess pink with chrome and iPod white accents. It also has a click wheel like an iPod, though, and a learning curve as well as a G-spot one, and I am not entirely sure that it likes me. I think it would make a great gift for a geeky femme with a lot of time on her hands, but it seems a bit high-maintenance — and also, it turned itself off. This is a sex toy’s equivalent of getting up to take a phone call, and it will not be forgiven lightly.

The homely therapeutic model would never do you like that.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

A third in the hand

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Dear Andrea:

I’ve always wanted to have a threesome and my wife is willing, but she would prefer to do it with her first boyfriend. At first I was all for it, but I’m getting more concerned that it might rekindle an old flame. Otherwise, I wouldn’t care if she had sex with a different guy every week, as long as she was safe and came home to me. I’m not jealous. I have a very high sex drive and could still have sex five or six times a day if time allowed. I love my wife and I know people are going to say if that was true, why would I let her have sex with another man? I say, variety! Spice of life!

It seems that her ex and I are similar as far as sex goes. She has only been with four partners in 20 years, including me. She has always believed in being dedicated to one person, and until I asked her about this, she never thought of straying.

She feels that if she were to do the threesome, she would prefer to do it with her ex. They didn’t part on bad terms, just grew apart with careers and family. She said she would contact him if I wanted, but I’m starting to worry. She says I’m her soulmate, but I’m not sure I should put our relationship on the line for a fantasy.

Love,

Wanting, but Worried

Dear W:

The best way to avoid having people say stupid things about your private life is to actually have a private life. People do talk, and most of what they say is pretty stupid.

I do admit to feeling a bit uneasy about partners who profess no feelings of jealousy whatsoever — do they actually, um, care? — but there’s a lot of variation in people’s baseline territoriality levels. I won’t think ill of you as a husband unless you let on that really you don’t give a damn what she’s up to, or whether she’s (re)developing feelings for the ex, or what her intentions are toward you. At that point, you get demoted from husband to acquaintance with benefits, and you lose your right to vote on what she does with anyone. Since you’re plenty engaged and plenty involved and plenty affectionate, though, I have nothing mean to say to you.

I fully understand why you might be feeling a little hesitant about the ex thing, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet. Understand that if he’d caddishly dumped her and she’d spent years madly pining for him, I would certainly feel differently, but a "just grew apart"-type break-up plus all that intervening time — much of it spent, apparently, pursuing an unusually hectic sex-having schedule with you — just doesn’t sound that risky.

Your wife wants a lot of safety and a little danger, which is pretty much what most people are going for when they start looking to act out a fantasy. The ex is, presumably, a known quantity, can be trusted to accurately report STD status and recent sexual history, is pleasantly familiar and congenial, shares a worldview and a sense of humor, and has proved compatible and worthy of her favors. How many Craigslist guys can you say that about? If it works, think about all the yuck and ew and dreariness you could get to bypass, including but not limited to horrible disgusting strangers you wish you’d never heard back from, people who seemed appealing but are dreadfully dull on closer inspection, druggies, drama kings, married cheaters, and people who are OK but want something you would never want to even think about doing yourself.

I also suspect that your wife may be what I call a love fetishist, by which I mean nothing unusual at all, particularly for women. She doesn’t want to have sex with anyone she doesn’t have feelings for. So why not this guy, safely ex but once, at least, the One? We all know that once loved, people do not automatically become unloved. We just don’t usually have any useful ways to take advantage of that often-inconvenient fact.

Of course, no matter how endlessly you and your wife process this, it’s no longer up to just you. Even if you decide to go ahead, you still can’t without the third party’s interest and availability. Nobody’s even approached him yet, right? Chances are excellent that not only is he otherwise occupied, he will be alarmed, if not appalled, to be approached after all this time. Even if he does cheerfully sign on, everyone will have to agree on when, how, what, how much, and how to stop if things get weird, all of it as explicitly as possible. Yes, it does sound like work (there’s something to be said for simply no longer having time for this sort of thing). Good luck, though, and remember you don’t actually have to do this. Everybody might be relieved if you just decided "yeah, no" after all.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Andrea at Carnal Nation.com.

Cave woman

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m ready to go live in a cave. It’s been two years since I’ve dated. Partly I backed off from the scene, and partly I’m not receiving much interest. I think I’m smart, approachable, creative, "together," nice, and passably cute. It’s starting to affect my self-confidence.

I joined eHarmony ($120!) and nerve.com, solicited friends’ input on my profiles, and followed up on every match. I got one eHarmony date (great but not local) and rarely heard back from anyone. I try to e-mail one guy a day. Either they don’t answer or our communication peters out soon after I e-mail. The ones who really get me seem very interested, ask me out, then drop it when I accept.

Why? Is this a Mars/Venus thing? Maybe online just isn’t my venue? I do several activities that attract single guys, but haven’t led to much — except maybe embarrassment on my part when I show interest and get a brush-off. Maybe try going through friends again? That worked in the past.

I just turned 40 and would like a partner. Mostly I’ve been solo, and that really sucks.
Love,

Forty & Frustrated

Dear F&F:

Before you go live in a cave, you might consider something a little less drastic, like living in a smaller, less brutally competitive city far from the coasts. It’s an idea.

Barring that, we have to subject your online interactions to the scrutiny of a girlfriend panel. Ideally these would be your girlfriends — they could make far more specific suggestions, like lose that mullet or stop telling everyone about your rectal fistula. But if you don’t have a panel, you can borrow mine. I convened one for you.

Irina: The phenomenon of guys initiating and then vanishing as soon as you try to make a date is very familiar, and probably has nothing to do with her. I could theorize all day, but when it comes down to it, they’re not ready to actually connect with people, so fuck ’em. Next!

Also, she should try free sites, like okcupid.com, which may attract guys who are more open to chicks who initiate. She should stay involved in the activities, and of course hit up her friends if that worked in the past. But she could still go online if she can let go of some of her frustration. Maybe see it as just one more tool to increase her odds of meeting guys.

Myrna: I wonder if there’s some kind of smoking-gun thing in her appearance or self-presentation that’s causing this. Maybe her desperation is showing? As far as the real-life men go, the guys may be panicking when she comes on to them, so if she doesn’t think her mutual attraction radar is good, maybe don’t do that.

Leanne: God help us all, she’s 40.

Andrea: Right, but we have seen that 40 is not an automatic dating death sentence. Also, what about the disappearing-act dudes? I assume they’ve all gone off with hotter-sounding properties, but I wonder what makes those other properties so hotter-sounding.

Lucilla: I’m fat, in my 40s, rural, and follow a weird religion — guys should be thin on the ground for me. Yet I’ve had a good many dates recently before settling on one gentleman. I also got rejected or given the silent treatment by dozens of guys. I tried to project positivity and hope, and used words like "passionate" to indicate, discretely, that I like sex. In pictures I was smiling and had my hair down. And another vote for okcupid — free and has lots of activities where you can participate and get to know people without pressure. Also Craigslist, although you have to wade through lots of awful guys to get to the good ones. As for why guys don’t follow up: They’re not into you, they’re not really committed to finding someone, or they’re married. Or all three.

Ruby: There is also a possible picker problem. My rule for online dating is "look for normal."

Andrea: I like that! FF, I do think men and women approach this a bit differently. You’re taking the rejections too personally — a lot of those guys are answering every new ad that appears. They don’t know you, so they aren’t rejecting you. Stick with the online dating if it’s at least a tiny bit fun, but pursue the circle of friends options — all the research says that we basically marry ourselves, so hang out where you already hang out, but more so. Get as much feedback as you can about your personal presentation. (Note: this is does not mean criticize every aspect of your body and find it wanting. I mean, do you seem fun, clean, sane, and at least passably light on baggage?)

You are NOT more likely to get hit by lightning while suffering a terrorist attack than you are to marry after 40. There’s nothing wrong with spending a little time alone in a cave recuperating right now if that’s what you need, though. It’s rough out there.
Love,
Andrea

Don’t forget to read Carnal Nation (carnalnation.com) for more Andrea and other cool stuff.

Shokushu Goukan!

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Readers:

It’s a dull, drippy week in California and when the weather gets like this a writer’s fancy turns to tentacles.

Manifestly untrue, I know, but mine did. Recently while researching something else (the famous Sybian ride-on sex toy, the one whose dealer claims it will "cause a female to literally explode on it" — I hate it when that happens!) I came upon a repository of tentacle porn, and boy did that take me back. Once upon a time I had somehow managed never to hear of tentacle porn until one night when I was hanging out with my friend Annalee Newitz, the high tech high-weirdness expert and she was all, "Oh, blah blah blah this weird thing and that weird thing and tentacles" and I was all, "Wait, what was that last thing again?"

It’s tentacle porn. It’s Japanese. Extremely Japanese. Innocent schoolgirl types, drawn anime/hentai fashion with giant eyes and giant boobs and teensy little bodies clad in teensy little schoolgirl uniforms, until they’re not, get non-consensually multipenetrated by … tentacles. How did you think that sentence was going to end?

Anyway, I got the idea and I stored it away and brought it out occasionally to amuse or shock people and I totally forgot I’d still never seen any myself until I went looking for something else and somehow stumbled over the tentacles (another "I hate it when that happens" thing) and it all came back to me.

It’s the dullest thing ever. I’d seen enough hentai (anime porn) to expect this (it tends to be weirdly slow and standardized and repetitive and badly dubbed). It’s not the easiest sort of porn to project yourself into, even for a person who likes porn more than I do. And that’s the stuff without tentacles. The odd thing about the tentacles, beyond the fact that they exist at all (they were invented to get around restrictions on depictions of non-tentacular intercourse), is that they are so … uninspired. They never seem to be attached to an interesting monster with any motivations besides rape, and they have a very limited repertoire of sexual acts. They’re very "bad teenage date" — stick it in, stick it in, stick it in, but unlike a bad teenage date, they can do all the sticking-in at the same time. Whoopty-do.

Here’s what I do like about tentacle porn:

1) Making fun of it has turned into a sort of online cottage industry, and if you look around you can find some hilarious examples, like the grumpy beasties at Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic: Tentacle Monsters and the Women Who Love Them (www.ghastlycomic.com) who are offended that anyone might think they’d commit an act of "bestiality." See also "How To Avoid Tentacle Rape" (uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Avoid_tentacle_rape) or Dwight Schrute’s blog (www.nbc.com/The_Office/dwights-blog/2008/05/the-curious-rise-of-tentacle-sex-in-manga).

I think Cthulhu might like it, and whatever keeps Cthulhu happy … It has its own soda (www.tentaclegrape.com).

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I found some very weird porn on my boyfriend’s computer (I swear I wasn’t snooping!) It’s bondage stuff with Japanese girls and really, I don’t know what’s going on. He’s never even mentioned an interest in anything like this! Does he want to tie me up? (Not my thing.) Does he wish I was Japanese? Help!
Love,

Tall, blonde, not tied up

Dear Blondie:

I‘m sorry! I don’t believe you weren’t snooping, mind you, but I’m still sorry. Please don’t take this too much to heart, though. Boys will be boys, and boys will look at bondage porn.

You have two ways to go here. The first is to ask him about it and (probably) feel better when he (probably) insists that he likes you just the way you are, and if he wanted a Japanese bondage girl he would have tried to date them back when he was dating, and he’s sorry he freaked you out. The second is to just shrug and go about your business. I do kind of have a preference for the latter, but I will understand if you can’t let it go and feel like you have to confront.

Just practice telling yourself that fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality and many people harbor fantasies they not only can’t act out, but wouldn’t even want to given the opportunity. Make sure you believe this yourself before you confront him. Otherwise your skepticism is sure to show, and he will get defensive and end up accusing you of not trusting him and going through his stuff — and that is not somewhere you want to be. See why I’d pick the second option, assuming you gave me ultimate power over your decision-making processes?

What? No, I don’t have creepy power fantasies about running your life, but even if I did I wouldn’t tell you about them, and I’d thank you not to go looking for them on my computer.

Love,

Andrea

Don’t forget to read Carnal Nation (carnalnation.com) for more Andrea and other cool stuff.

An interesting turn

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I am a 39-year-old straight woman having the time of my life with sex. I have two questions for you.

First, my current somewhat exclusive (28-year-old hottie — irrelevant, I’m just braggin’) sex partner and I both know that nothing that touches the anus should then touch the vagina without washing first. However, sometimes in the course of, well, intercourse, it accidentally happens, whether an accidental brush with the anus during vaginal intercourse from the back, or an accidental penetration of the vagina during anal intercourse. Is there anything that can be done to prevent weird vaginal consequences when this happens? Douche? If so what kind would be best?

Other question: My current SESP has a rather large penis (braggin’ again) with a downward bend. This makes vaginal intercourse doggy style AMAZING, but every other position from the front that we’ve tried pretty painful. Any suggestions for positions we may not have thought of that would benefit from this kink in the dink?

Love,

Ouchie

Dear Ouch:

Excellent bragging! And who could blame you?

The anus/vagina question is eternal and vexing and probably (thankfully) somewhat blown out of proportion. There is of course a subset of women (heavily correlated with that subset of women who e-mail columnists who offend them, as it happens) who have vaginas like the princess and the pea, except the pea is anything and everything that could possibly cause a vaginal infection, and the princess is a vagina. So, pace the prolifically e-mailing vaginas, who shouldn’t be taking my advice on this, many or really most vaginas simply aren’t that delicate. You should try to avoid cross-contamination, of course you should, but as long as you stick with the front-to-back wipe and other basic common-sensical hygienic measures, honestly, you’ll be fine. Has anything bad happened yet? How long have you been back-to-fronting with this wow-that’s-young-but-hey-good-for-you hot guy, anyway?

The accidental brushing-up against I imagine must happen in so many acts of intercourse that if it were a likely route to infection we’d all be … well, ew. There’s no funny, clever way to describe the state of suffering from bacterial vaginosis. Let’s just not be.

Your other accidental exposure, the "it just slipped in" part, though: really? This I don’t think I’ve ever even heard before, that he’d be going about his anal business and accidentally perform vaginal intromission now and then. That doesn’t sound like such a great idea (although, again, have you had any problems?) but I think it could be avoided. Ask him to pay attention! Maybe he could use a hand as a sort of vestibule-guard (a doorman, if you will), or you could use yours. Maybe one of you could adjust an angle to make it less likely. Maybe you could, I dunno, insert a small device to block the entrance, which could be fun anyway?

My best advice after "don’t do that," though, is just to keep everything clean. Wash before (not douche, just wash). Wash after. Pee a lot. Cleanliness is next to, well, possibly not godliness in this case, but certainly UTIlessness. If you don’t believe me, you can ask a porn star. I was looking around for one to quote on this and found one I happen to know personally (although not that personally), being interviewed at my very own home paper. It’s Lorelei Lee, in the Bay Guardian‘s sex blog www.sfbg.com/blogs/sexsf/2009/02/ask_a_porn_star: "Shower immediately after every shoot," Lorelei says. "We are probably some of the cleanest people you know. That said, sometimes we do get UTIs or yeast infections or BV, in which case we go to the doctor like everyone else. Not too sexy, but not the end of the world either."

So there you have it. Take a shower. Take two.

Now, about your bendy guy. That’s really funny, since people who talk about women’s sexual anatomy and response (that would be me) are forever pointing out that you can have things stuck up there all your life and never have an orgasm from it because that spot, you know the one, just doesn’t get enough attention unless the penetrative device has a bend in it. Fingers (crooked) work. Purpose-made toys work. That thing most obviously intended for penetrative purposes, though, that just doesn’t work. Except when it does! You’re having the time of your life? Isn’t that good enough? I’m sorry, but there really is no other fix. Your fella’s may bend, but it doesn’t want to bend back. You don’t want to be responsible for what could happen if you try to bend it back. So I think you’re going to have to count your blessings and stick with what works. At least, in your case, it works very well indeed, and that is so much better than it works for so many other couples that all I can say is keep that guy; you’d miss him.

Love,

Andrea

Check out Andrea’s new column "Now What?" in the cool new sex zine Carnal Nation (carnalnation.com). Catch Andrea’s workshop "Is There Sex After Baby?" at Recess Urban Recreation (recessurbanrecreation.com ) March 30. Andif you have wondered about San Francisco Sex Information’s famous sex educator trainings but never did anything about it, here’s your chance. Classes start soon. Info and registration at sfsi.org.

Three-way the free way

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea: My boyfriend and I have talked about doing a threesome with another woman — I’m actually the one who really wants to, but he does too. Since we can’t think of anyone we know who would work, we are thinking of placing a classified ad online. I’ve never done anything like this before, and was just wondering if you have any advice, like how to make it go smoothly and not be weird. Also, do you really think dental dams are necessary to make sure we don’t get diseases from her? I am excited but also a bit nervous.

Love,

Three’s Company

Dear Three:

How … refreshing? The threesome idea usually seems to originate with the guy and have a whole lot to do with his "two chicks" fantasies and very little to do with the chicks in question, so they end up putting on a half-hearted show based on porn scenes they’ve watched, often also half-heartedly. Way to have some half-hearted sex, and often a big fight afterwards, especially if the guy manages to enjoy himself too much despite all the half-heartedness. Of course there’ll be an even bigger fight if you enjoy yourself too much and he doesn’t, which has been known to happen, so you might want to talk this through together a whole bunch before you do anything.

We would now be moving on to the safer sex part, but I’m a bit distracted by my lack of faith in your — or anyone’s — chances of finding an appealing, willing girl online you won’t have to pay. It’s a seller’s market out there,and hot girls who want to have a threesome are rarely reduced to combing Craig’s List for takers. All they really have to do is get into the habit of making goofy jokes about threesomes every time they hang out with their more attractive partnered friends, especially when there’s drinking involved. Things happen. In fact, most group sex that actually happens just happens. The "exhaustive plans were made" kind does exist, of course, but more often there’s some drinking and goofing around and some dancing and maybe a game of Truth or Dare or something stupid like that, and … things happen.

So. Are you absolutely sure you don’t know someone? Group sex is not only more likely to happen among friends than with strangers secured for the purpose, it’s also more likely to be both safe and — let’s not forget this part — fun. If there’s no chance, like because all your friends went to church camp with you and you’re positive you’re the only ones who’ve acquired new interests since then, how about making new friends? Join an erotic writing circle or go to readings or take some classes at the local nice dildo store. Go to the edgiest nightclub in your area for Fetish Night. Most of the people you are likely meet at these things will either be deadly dull or extremely yucky, but not all! I used to go to stuff like that, and I met some nutty folks but made some … friends too. Remember the old song: "Make new friends, but keep the o-o-ld. One is silver, and the others will have sex with you."

Now let’s say that works (or doesn’t, but against all odds you find an appealing prospect on Craig’s List), do you have to use dental dams? Absolutely not, but that’s because they hardly work and are horrible. You will certainly want to use condoms (and so will she — not wanting to, under these circumstances, would be a crazy-person warning sign). You could use plastic wrap for licking things, or not. Going down on girls is never ever going to be a good method for contracting or spreading HIV, but you probably don’t want to either get herpes or spread any herpes you may already have, so you’ll either have to not do anything that brings a lot of wet parts in contact (unlikely), use plastic wrap, or rely on a pre-interview, trust, intuition, and Purell in whatever combination feels right to you. I wish I could tell you exactly what your risks will be, but barring the acquisition of a long-distance, anonymity-breaching virus-detection gun (and what would I pay for one of those), I just can’t.

As for advice on how to make it go smoothly and not be weird, well, it IS weird. But choose someone sympatico, someone with whom you can discuss both what might happen and what just did happen. Give everyone the explicit power to halt proceedings for any reason at any point. Have a drink but not six, and agree ahead of time no hard feelings all the way around if it doesn’t go perfectly. Expect it not to go perfectly. This experience may bear a superficial resemblance to porn, but porn is so … porny. You should expect real life to be bumpier, less predictable and, one hopes, more fun.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is teaching Sex After Parenthood at Day One Center (www.dayonecenter.com), Recess (info@recessurbanrecreation.com), and privately. Contact her at andrea@altsexcolumn.com for more info.

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