› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m married to the woman of my dreams and the love of my life. My problem is that with women in the past I’ve always really enjoyed doing it doggy-style. I find it a total visual-animal turn-on, and of course there’s the physical pleasure of the position itself … need I say more? My problem is that my wife and I have never been able to get into the position because of our configuration (I’m tall; she’s short). And though it doesn’t bother her, I definitely miss being able to do it that way. I wonder if other couples have this problem and if you have any suggestions.
Love,
Mismatched
Dear Mis:
Yes, they do (of course!), and yes, I do (likewise). Size-discordant couples are common enough — just look around you — that people make products for precisely this problem. Do your part for the economy and go buy something.
I don’t know what happened to the people who made me accept samples of the quite nicely made but incredibly bulky foam wedges and blocks (about the size of my apartment’s closet) meant to enhance one’s sex life by better aligning tab A with slot B, but there are other such products out there. I could never really get into the set I had, anyway, after we used them to prop up a massively wounded leg we happened to have in the family at the time, so I gave them away.
A search on "sex pillows" or "sex position pillows" brings up a number of products, some of them inflatable, which would solve the storage problem. Most sites advertise by draping a pneumatic blond upside down over the product so her hair responds to gravity but her breasts do not, but that can’t be helped. Well, it can, actually: the other place to get wedges, blocks, and bolsters meant to prop up body parts at particular angles is the medical supply warehouse, which is depressing in quite a different way. Your call. Either source should get you something you can work with. Good doggie! I mean, good luck.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
My boyfriend isn’t circumcised, and we can’t get a condom to stay on. It’s not for lack of trying: we went through a whole box and even consulted Internet diagrams, with no success. They just wouldn’t go or stay on. So we both got tested, and I went on the pill. While I was there, my doctor lectured me on why I should use condoms, and I explained my situation. He said any condom should fit on any penis at anytime. Are we stupid? Is there a trick?
Love,
Misfit
Dear Mis:
Does "find a new doctor" count as a trick? Anyone who’s ever been a child can remember how it felt to be lectured without being listened to and how one either tuned out ("wah wah wah," went the grown-ups in the Peanuts specials) or made sure to do whatever was exactly opposite the ordered behavior. It’s kind of funny when doctors act this way harmlessly (for example, insisting that my lesbian friend use a condom every time and take a pregnancy test before getting a new prescription), but what about when someone really might be at risk and doesn’t want to tell the doctor because he or she hates getting lectured? How about that, huh?
Anyway. Your question didn’t end up where I thought it was going, considering where it started. Most uncirc’d men who have problems with condoms either can’t get the thing on to begin with or complain of getting bits of themselves caught in a fold of the rubber and going thwap like a window shade in a Warner Bros. cartoon. I’m not even sure how, exactly, a condom is supposed to fall off of something as essentially beflanged as an uncut penis, unless … unless … it’s just too big all round.
You’ve obviously tried long and hard, as it were, and I hate not to give you credit for your efforts, but if all the condoms came from the same box, it doesn’t count. He needs to order a sampler and start trying things on. We women have to do that every time we want to buy a stupid T-shirt, and the guys have it easy with their small, medium, and large. Think of it as his turn having to mess with sizes and styles. Start with something labeled "snugger fit," which on the condom sites is always carefully couched as a matter of preference and not brute biological necessity, so it shouldn’t be too dispiriting.
Then again, counterintuitive but not out of the question: they’re not too big; they’re too tight, like a pair of ill-fitting panty hose that can’t quite make it past your hips to snug in at your waist, so they keep rolling down, and you have to spend the entire day semisurreptitiously yanking them back up. Not that such a thing would ever happen to me or, I hope, you.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.