Andrea Nemerson

Going topless

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea: My girlfriend is really into BDSM. At first I tried and played a convincing (I think) top-dom, but it just wasn’t hot for me, so I looked some stuff up to get inspired. As I was reading-watching, I would really get off on it, but the sex with my girlfriend still wasn’t hot. Then I realized that when I was masturbating to all this I was fantasizing about subbing. Oops. I am way in love with my girlfriend, but she is a bottom. Period. She might switch it around if it meant a lot to me, but I would know that it wasn’t really making her happy. I don’t know what to do. Can I become a top? Can I teach myself to like it? I’m going to do it either way but I really want to get into it, so please help! I want us to be good in bed together but two bottoms don’t make a top. Help! Love, Topless

PS We’re lesbians, if that matters.

Dear Tops: It sure doesn’t, but thanks for the info!

I was just thinking about this last night when a friend was catching me up on her latest dating adventures. She was lamenting that some potential dates seem to come equipped with a set of kinks perfectly matching her own, and though that sounds good, it is of course no use at all. As you have discovered to your frustration, one wants a date with a complementary set of kinks, not a matching one. It’s not an uncommon problem, and its most common manifestation is exactly the one that’s driving you nuts: there are too many bottoms in this world and nowhere near enough tops to keep them satisfied. Why this is (beyond the fact that topping is hard work) I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I bet any number of eager grad students are currently proposing theses on the subject to bored advisors who have read enough similar stuff already.

Here’s my theory: There are people for whom BDSM is a core part of their identity, running as deep as, say, homosexuality or monogamy. Some may always have recognized this element in themselves, even before they had the language to express it (these are the kids who always want to play pirates or whatever game involves somebody getting tied to something or intentional infliction-receiving of pain, even when the other kids are long since ready to move on). Others don’t realize it until they’re exposed to S-M in some more adult context, but then it just clicks in, key into lock, and they know. Your girlfriend sounds like one of these BDSM lifers, who tend, in my experience, to be pretty set on their preferred role even if they do switch experimentally on occasion (a good idea, if only to find out how painful-exhausting it is to experience-produce any particular sensation).

Then there are the anything-goes people, who are happy to pick up a flogger or don a dog collar, what the heck, as long as it’s fun. This type of player may not identify as an S-M person per se but may just enjoy a little power exchange on the occasional Friday night, no biggie. You may fall more on this end of the spectrum, but even what-the-heckers will usually discover some sort of preference, as you have. Most people do have a preference: Rare or well-done? Black or with milk? The perfect 50-50 switch is almost certainly as rare as the perfect 50-50 bisexual, but plenty of people find something to like in either role. I do think you can develop an appreciation for topping and get some satisfaction out of a job well done (there are resources like The New Topping Book by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy to help you with this), but you can enjoy and get good at it without every really becoming a top the way both of you are currently bottoms. Be careful about taking on a role that isn’t really you, though. Nobody loves a martyr, and you’re still going to want to bottom sometimes. I worry about you starting to resent your girlfriend for getting to have all the fun.

I have a suggestion that might save your relationship or might strike you as all sort of wrong and make you hate me, but here goes: you guys find a willing top, maybe somewhere in your extant social circle, maybe online or by joining a BDSM social organization, and bottom together sometimes. This kind of shared adventure can be hot, hot, hot and very bonding, sort of like getting lost in the woods together and surviving through mutual trust and interreliance, but a lot more fun. I think if you do that sometimes, and play top sometimes, and stick with the vanilla sometimes, you’ll probably be OK, provided you both take care of getting your itches scratched. Love conquers … much. Love, Andrea

Andrea’s on vacation this week; this column ran previously (7/05/06). But she’s still checking e-mail and eagerly awaiting your questions about love and lust!

Eye spy

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea: I’ve found myself a femmy boy who’s willing — nay, enthusiastically prepared — to wear green eye shadow in public. This is delicious. However, we live in Colorado Springs, Colo., which is for its size a wealthy and well-educated town, but also headquarters for Focus on the Family, New Life Church, Will Perkins, Fort Carson, NORAD, and the Air Force Academy. One of my femmy-boy friends was recently chased down an alley downtown by some of the local military simians for the apparently gender-treacherous crime of wearing a top hat. It was lucky for him he knew the area well and wasn’t nearly as plastered as they were.

My two questions about the eye shadow thing are these: First, and I understand if you’re not able to answer because you don’t live here, if we do go on a date while he’s wearing it, what do you think our chances are of finishing the evening without getting the shit beaten out of us? And second, what’s your opinion on where one should put one’s feet while treading the fine line between keeping yourself safe and taking a stand for the right to do what you want with your body if it’s not hurting anyone else?

I guess the question is along the same lines as, how do you feel about him wearing a ball gag and leash to the local Starbucks? Eye shadow is just a less overtly sexual signal. Well. To some people. Not to me. Love, Don’t Kick Me

Dear Kick: Gotcha. And no, I surely do not live there, nor would I, but we did blow out a tire there on a cross-country trip once and got stranded for a couple days. Pretty town. Really nice park. I knew all that stuff (Air Force, antigay groups, etc.) was there, but you can’t tell by visiting — it’s not like there are giant "Fags go home" banners flying gaily over Main Street or anything. But would I, were I a guy, dress up in my gayest glad rags and sashay down the same main drag in a pair of darling red wedge espadrilles and a panty-girdle? I would not. I suspect you would not, either, were you a guy (you’re not, right?). It would be no safer for you to accompany your new girly-boy while he did it either. There is sticking up for your inalienable right to be a weirdo, and there is stupidity. I draw the line at stupidity in any other context, so why would I make an exception for this one?

There was a time in the late ’80s and early ’90s when all the cool kids were making a spectacle of themselves in the name of political action: visibility, I think we called it. All you had to do was print up some T-shirts or stickers and show up en masse where you weren’t expected and you got to feel all brave and thrillingly transgressive and challenging to heterosexual hegemony and stuff. It was great. It was also kind of fake — when you’re surrounded by a few dozen or hundred or thousand of your closest friends and you’re in San Francisco or New York or Washington, not Jakarta or Beijing or rural Rwanda, you’re pretty safe. Even if the cops get you, you’re going to be cited and set free; protesters in the United States are rarely brought to trial, let alone found bound and beheaded in a ditch. That doesn’t mean that nothing we do here is dangerous, though, and unfortunately walking certain streets in a state of visible gender ambiguity can still get you kicked in the face.

There is no set point on the continuum from safe but stifled to "Kick me" that I can recommend you find and cleave to, never again to stray. I do not think it would be very smart to dress your boy up and parade him around near the base at bar-closing time on a Saturday night; nor do I think those of us who fail to conform in every particular to local community standards for gender performance need cower at home forever for fear of attracting a disapproving glance. Somewhere between "Don’t frighten the horses" and "Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke" lies the perfect level of public self-expression for you two as individuals of your particular place and time. Find it. Also consider finding some fellow gender traitors with whom to make your scene, even if that scene is no more trangressive than going out for fish and chips (I’m pretty sure that’s what I ate at your local brew pub while waiting for our truck to be fixed so we could get the hell out of there) and the late showing of Snakes on a Plane. I think you’ll be OK. I wouldn’t recommend the Starbucks–ball gag excursion, but that’s because it’s in bad taste, not because it could get you killed. You’ll have to use your common sense. If you haven’t got any, I really do think you’d better stay home. Love, Andrea

Andrea’s on vacation this week: this column ran previously (8/22/06). But she’s still checking e-mail and eagerly awaiting your questions about love and lust! Contact her at andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com.

Diet plate

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m in my thirties. Most of my life, my sex drive has been pretty low — not during the "honeymoon" phase, but within a year, it tends to taper off to almost nothing. This significantly, negatively impacts my relationships (my last one ended due to not enough sex; my current one has same problem).

I suspect this is pretty common. What are the typical causes of low libido in women? I don’t really believe in aphrodisiacs, but are there any proven treatments?

Love,

No There There

Dear There:

Female sexual dysfunctions are, somewhat sadly, a growth industry. With the latest research indicating that something like 40 percent of women experience something dysfunctionish (most often low desire but also anorgasmia, aversion, or pain), you can see how people who develop and sell new treatments might have their eye on you. All good, to a point. We don’t want to see the same preying on the desperate but not that bright that supports the cosmetics industry. Did you know there’s already a real product called Hope in a Jar? Let’s not have another.

Male sexual dysfunction is usually easy to recognize and fairly easy to treat. Most men who think there’s something wrong down there want sex — oh, do they want it — but are hampered by lack of or loss of erection, or by coming too fast or, sometimes, too slowly (it’s always something). We women tend to keep our dysfunctions tucked neatly away out of sight, like our genitals and our vibrators, so problems are harder to quantify and harder to treat. This is especially true of the desire disorders, which occur in men but are practically epidemic in women. Causes may be hormonal, situational, or historical, and it’s tricky even to figure out if you have one, let alone to treat it. How hypo does a hypoactive sex drive have to be before it is considered a problem? And who is it a problem for? Is there a right and proper level of desire out there, and ought women who don’t meet it feel inadequate or just different? Must women’s desire match men’s in order to be considered normal? Should a woman "fix" herself to suit a partner, even if she would be pretty much satisfied with whatever amount of sex her natural inclinations tell her is enough? See what I mean?

There is, I’m afraid, nothing yet available in the way of an aphrodisiac for women (or for men either, should they need one; the history of aphrodisiacs has mostly involved men slipping random substances into women’s drinks and crossing their fingers). There are a few things in the pipeline, very close to release, or already available off label, although most are just testosterone with assorted delivery systems. Testosterone patches will be worth trying when approved, but they’re simply not going to work for everyone (most of the trials have enrolled naturally or surgically menopausal women only) and aren’t safe for everyone. Testosterone has been shown to be effective, though — it seems to be responsible in large part for the "go out and get me some" drive that most men tend to have in greater abundance than most women do, even highly sexual women, so it’s the obvious place to look for a treatment for "just don’t feel like it" complaints. Wanting to want it is probably the most common complaint going, but you still have to ask yourself why you want to want it before it’s really worth trying to want to want it, if you know what I mean. You do know what I mean, don’t you?

I do wonder if you are really even part of Hypoactive Nation or if you might have something altogether different going on. If you’re into it at the beginning, and then it tapers off, you may just be kind of a novelty freak (I’m guessing this isn’t it but you never know), or you might be — brace yourself for this one — having kind of blah sex, or sex with kind of blah people. If, for instance, you don’t have a lot orgasms because you’re not that turned on, and you’re not that turned on because you don’t have a lot of orgasms (so why bother wasting all that good pelvic engorgement?), you’ve got yourself a nasty little cycle there. Arousal disorders may not be as common as desire disorders, but they can create desire disorders. You know why some diets work, at least at first? It’s because the food isn’t appealing enough to crave or to stuff yourself with when it gets there. A few bites will suffice.

I’m wondering if perhaps the sex you are having (and have had) is of the cottage-cheese-and-tuna plate variety, and you need to work on finding your French triple-cream cheese on a fresh baguette and a pain au chocolate equivalent. Or if that doesn’t sound that appetizing either, what does, and how can you get some of that instead?

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.

Low T, no T

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Dear Andrea:

I read your column about potential causes of a husband’s lackluster performance in the bedroom [8/8/07]. You mentioned that the letter writer’s husband should talk to his doctor about low testosterone, and I thought you might be interested in more information on that. As you said, low testosterone (low T) and diabetes are linked. In fact, a recent study found that men with diabetes are more than twice as likely to have low T than other men. To educate men about the link between low T and diabetes, the American Association of Diabetes Educators created the "Take Charge. Talk T." program, which includes a pamphlet men can take to their doctors or diabetes educators if they think they are experiencing low-T symptoms.

[List of low-T facts here: an estimated 13 million American men have low testosterone; symptoms include low sex drive, erectile dysfunction and depression; treatment is available in various forms; obesity and hypertension are also risk factors, etc. — A]

If you would like more information, please visit www.TalkLowT.org. On behalf of my client, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, which markets the testosterone therapy AndroGel, I am including fact sheets. If you plan on covering low-T or T therapy in the future, I would be happy to set up an interview with a doctor or low-T patient.

Best,

PR Lady

On behalf of Solvay Pharmaceuticals

Dear PRL (be glad I didn’t call you PharmGirl):

I have to finish poking myself in the eye with these sticks first, and then I believe I’ll have lunch, but I appreciate the offer. (Seriously, I may take you up on it at a later, less summer-vacationy date.) Unlike many people I encounter while doing vaguely progressive work in a place where more people practice Tantra than go to church on Sunday, I don’t dismiss out of hand the idea that so-called "Big Pharma" can be a source of good. How can I, after all the intensive interventions that got my kids and me through a dicey beginning, not to mention my long love affair with antidepressants and a devoted fan-girl relationship with Viagra and the gang? While dispatches from Big Ph are best taken with both a grain of salt and a diuretic for the sodium sensitive, I’ll still take them. And I do like the idea of checklists the patient can take along to the doctor. What with the research being newish and the subject being vaguely sex-related, some doctors are just going to nod and smile and pretend they never heard a request for a testosterone test, and one may be able to catch their attention by waving a few brightly-colored pages about. There are some such available on the pharma-sponsored site to which Ms. Lady linked, www.talklowt.org, and I can’t see any reason not to use them, although they do contain a few quibbleworthy statements like "A simple blood test … will determine if your testosterone levels are below normal." From everything I’ve read elsewhere, this ought to be precisely untrue: testosterone may be bound by sex hormone binding globulin, so either high or low SHBG, both common, will produce inaccurate test results. You will want to wave around some pages about how to get an accurate testosterone test done along with the others.

Speaking of hormones, the other noteworthy note I got last week came from a trans woman (I assume) incensed at my — what else? — insensitive use of language. The subject was a recent "Why does my guy look at tranny porn?" question [8/1/07], and in case the one letter I got really was standing in for a thousand equally pissed-off people too lazy to write letters, I thought I’d clear up a misunderstanding or two while I’m waiting for lunch or a poke in the eye, whichever I was going to do first while avoiding a visit from a doctor or a patient with low testosterone. My correspondent took offense at the term transsexual porn, pointing out that some transsexuals are adopting the term "Harry Benjamin’s syndrome" (Benjamin created the well-known Standards of Care for patients seeking sex reassignment surgery) to avoid just such a sexualization of their identity.

Indeed, but then I have to point out that (a) people choosing this label are a very specific subset of a large and often fractious community, and (b) you may repeat "No transsexual would be comfortable being photographed displaying her private parts. And they certainly never identify as ‘chicks with dicks.’ What you are describing is something totally unrelated to transsexuals" as often and as emphatically as you like, and it’s still not going to be any truer than, say, "No Jewish American woman would ever go out wearing her husband’s underwear because she couldn’t find any of her own." The problem with umbrella terms like transsexual is that we may have to share them with people we think smell bad. My correspondent may prefer to think that all trans women don little skirts from Talbots and disappear into the genpop, but it just ain’t so. Don’t the nonops who pay for their estrogen by running ads in the back of papers like this one deserve inclusion? Where is the love?

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.

Craig, list

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Dear Andrea:

I am in love with a girl a few years younger than me. She’s in her early 20s, and before me she had never had a sexual partner. The fact that I’ve been around the block over and over again made me reluctant to become "that guy." That said, our relationship has become very serious as well as emotionally rewarding.

The fact that I’ve been recruited as the lab segment for a human sexuality course has not been lost on me. I’ve done my best to exemplify a quality educational experience. We still have a couple of problems, though. First, I am an audiophile: besides having a good record collection, I’m physically aroused by sound. Even now I’m contemputf8g how I can turn my nonsqueaky bed into a squeaky bed. She’s pretty quiet (not letting go?), which leads to the second problem: the elusive orgasm. I know many women never have orgasms or don’t start having them until later, but I’m doing my best to make sure that she beats the odds. She has them when she masturbates but refuses or ducks the issue if I ask to watch. Currently she and I are separated by the vastness of the Midwest, and I’ve been devising different strategies to break through her mental block on her return. Any additions to the list would be welcome.

Stratagem one: convince her that I am not real. This would involve blindfolding, earplugs, tying her to my soon-to-be squeaky bed, and a very slow and imaginative seduction. This will end up happening in any case because it is just hot.

Stratagem two: make a symbolic charm, imbued with sexual voodoo.

Stratagem three: learn hypnosis, then subconsciously encourage her to let the fuck go. (Has any research been done in this area?)

Stratagem four: relax and just let it happen.

Stratagem five: get advice from a sex columnist.

Love,

Audio Science

Dear Science:

Oh my. You sure do use a lot of words, don’t you? Just like to hear yourself talk, is it?

It’s funny — I had your letter mentally filed under "physical problem solving: bed squeaks" and had you filed under "freaks: audio," but now that I read back over it, it’s really just the same old same old with a lot of extra words and a very small element of interesting freakiness. So let’s look at that first, in the interest of keeping me awake (sorry, late night). So: bed not noisy enough? Immediately I think, "Yay, engineering question — who do I know who might make a good consultant for that, and how do you reverse-engineer a squeak, and what sort of hardware would produce the desired degree of squeakiness … ?" and then I thought, "Good grief, let’s not get silly." (Or squeaky either: at a former job my husband used to have to attend meetings that tended toward the discursive, and at some point someone would interrupt the proceedings with a loud "Squeeeeak!" which meant "You’re going down a rat hole.") Most people, lacking your rarified sensibilities, find bed squeakiness annoying and distracting or even mood killing, as fear of being overheard by roommates or neighbors or, God forbid, parents can do that to a person, and these less-rarified people are dying to get rid of their squeaky beds, aren’t they? Wouldn’t someone be happy to trade? Not to go down a rat hole here myself, but I was walking down the street a few days ago and my friend said, "That guy looks familiar," and I said, "That was Craig Newmark. He’s Craig!" And why is Craig famous? He’s famous because people have beds they don’t want, and other people want those beds, and Craig makes it happen for them. Don’t fix or, rather, unfix your bed, and don’t buy a new one. Use Craig!

Now, your list. Your list, with the exception of stratagem five, is just not going to work. If indeed the young lady is not having orgasms (perhaps she isn’t, but all you really seem sure of is that she is not vocalizing them to your satisfaction, which is not at all the same thing), I would not advocate either doing anything weird or doing nothing. If she maybe knows what she likes but is reluctant to spell it out for you, I do advocate talking, books (Lonnie Barbach’s are the classics, although there are newer and more sciency ones out now) to clarify things and establish a vocabulary, and something like the "Do what I tell you" game, in which you, well, do what she tells you. This allows for giggling and admissions of shyness, plus, it is hot. So is your scenario with the blindfolds and whatnot, although that one does not make a whole lot of sense under the circumstances. You are hot for sound? You like to listen? You wear the blindfold, silly.

Love,

Andrea

PS As for hypnosis and orgasm, there is … stuff on this. A great deal of stuff. I wouldn’t call most of it research.

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.

Meds and mads

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Dear Andrea:

Is there any hope for my husband, who is not able to launch since he’s on tons of meds (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.)? He’s too embarrassed to ask the doctor, and asking would mean yet another pill. Could he be depressed? Are you the one to speak to?

Love,

Nothing Happening Here

Dear Haps:

I can be spoken to, but your husband is going to have to speak up for himself. The doctors should ask, but they often don’t want to or just don’t. Specialists especially tend to be interested in the parts they’re assigned to and may not remember that your husband has a penis or a wife or anything unimportant like that. If you’re concerned about something that just isn’t that doctor’s pet thing, you may have to nag a bit or call them and ask if they’ve looked into that thing they said they’d look into. (Doctors enjoy looking into things.) You may have to get a new doctor.

There may be hope for your husband (and you! don’t forget you!), but it may take a while to unsnarl things. Diabetes can cause erectile dysfunction all by itself, as can blood pressure meds. There’s another intriguing possibility that may be worth at least a mention: both forms of diabetes, although they are otherwise dissimilar, can cause low testosterone in men. It can be hard to determine because they have to look for "free" — unbound by the protein that carries sex hormones around in the blood — testosterone, which requires a special test, and the whole issue is still a little controversial, but it’s worth a look, since it’s a pretty simple fix. I found about a zillion articles on this by looking up "diabetes testosterone," and so can he, if he ‘s so inclined.

And finally, you ask, could he be depressed? Oh, very likely, I say, but if it’s situational it’s at least worth a try to fix the situation, isn’t it? It’s possible that there is no combination of meds that will help, or it may be that there is help but it is irksome and invasive, like a penile implant or shots. One thing I know for sure, though, is that sitting around feeling broken and hopeless never gave anyone a hard-on. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Somebody, somewhere. Sigh.)

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

It was love at first sight for my husband, but not for me. I tried to dump him but realized that I couldn’t live without him — he was the most wonderful human I had ever met, period. I still wasn’t in love, and he was OK with that. Sex was great in the beginning but quickly became a chore. I meet other men to whom I am attracted but never have been tempted.

The sex is bad because (don’t scream!) he’s overweight, really has no clue about basic things like kissing, and comes after three minutes. We talk about feelings and dissatisfaction constantly. I give clear instructions, but he forgets them immediately (funnily, we have exactly the same problem with cleaning!). But in every other way, he is beautiful, kind, and the person I was looking for all my life.

I make no effort because he lacks skills and endurance and can’t or won’t fulfill my needs. He swears he will get fitter and will try harder to fulfill me psychologically and physically. I know I have become a bit castrating, but he expects me to pick up where his mom left off in other parts of our lives, which is not helping our sex life.

I’m not sure that I can rebuild a hot sex life that barely existed to begin with. Maybe he just isn’t right for me and I can’t accept it. We need a sex therapist but have no idea of how to find one who’s legitimate. How do we repair something like this when we both have already talked ourselves blue in the face for several years?

Love,

Bored by the Bay

Dear BBB:

Oh, ugh, you’re not bored, you’re seething with resentment. Both of you. If this were just about skills or duration of erection, I wouldn’t be hearing about how he expects you to be his mommy or how fat he is. Nor would you ever have had great sex to hold up against the current lackluster offerings. Apparently he doesn’t clean the bathroom? And then he doesn’t keep a hard-on? And you yell at him about both of them? Stop that! Sit down together and comb over your budget until you find enough free cash to hire a housecleaner and a licensed marriage and family therapist. (You find the name of someone convenient and affordable in a referral database and ask them some questions and hire them if you get good answers or call somebody else. It isn’t rocket surgery.) Neither cleaner nor therapist needs to be a sex specialist. Husband can learn technique from books, or from you, but you don’t seriously believe he forgets every time, do you? This isn’t one of those forgetting-stuff movies. He’s mad at 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.

Curious and curiouser

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Dear Andrea:

My straight (?) man who loves women and their curves and smiles and butts and legs, who loves me and my mom and his mom and all the pretty girls who pass us on the sidewalk, also really, really likes looking at transsexual porn. He likes really feminine-looking guys who have long pretty hair and soft girly curves. He tells me he has no interest in following through with what has been for him a very, very long-term turn-on. This fetish doesn’t really play itself out in the bedroom, where we are basically old-fashioned. Since he looks at this porn often enough for it to be more than curiosity, could you give me some information on it?

Love,

So Curious

Dear So:

What can I tell you? There is a huge market for porn featuring shemales, young, pretty pre-op or nonop transsexuals, a.k.a. "chicks with dicks." The answer to what I assume is your underlying question, meanwhile, does not exist, and I can prove it. I was feeling kind of bored with my own standard answer to similar questions and, in a fit of ennui, entered "he looks at shemale porn" into a search box. I got eleventy million porn sites and this, from the archives of the late and, I guess, occasionally lamented Google Answers:

Q: Why would a man in a committed, loving, sexual relationship use shemale and transgender porn?

A: There is no answer at this time.

So there you have it.

More seriously, there really can’t be an explanation for what all those straight guys are getting out of all that shemale porn — if you asked them, you’d get various answers, including "I dunno, I just like it." A lot of "I dunno, I just like it." The most obvious and, to the wives and girlfriends looking on anxiously from the sidelines, most troubling answer is, of course, "They’re gay, gay, gay," but honestly, it isn’t likely. Gay men tend to be attracted to men — sometimes little, slim, smooth-bodied men, sometimes big, hairy, muscle-bulgy men, but men just the same. There are, of course, exceptions — there are always exceptions — but most of the audience for this stuff (and the vast majority of customers for the vast selection of shemale-type sex workers out there) are as straight as you are. Some are obviously penis curious but, not being gay, would not be turned on by porn featuring big muscley guys named Rod or Steel or Steel Rod. Some just like stuff that feels forbidden or dirty. Some, I suppose, may be fantasizing that they are the shemale (a term, by the way, best reserved for sex workers and porn models, while just-regular-folks male-to-female transsexuals generally think of themselves as trans women of various op or nonop sorts).

Actually, I know an even better way to piss off a well-educated, politically aware trans person than to call her a shemale: use the word autogynephilia. Then duck. No, don’t call her a duck — I mean duck and cover, since she will want to punch your throat out.

Autogynephila is part of an alternative (in this case, alternative to the correct one, if you ask me) model of transsexuality in which male-to-female transsexuals are not women of any sort but merely gender dysphoric males or, if postop, men without penises, and in which those trans women who aren’t attracted to men (lots, in my experience) are not lesbians, bisexuals, or asexuals but autogynephiles, men who are turned on by the image of themselves as women. In other words, they spent masses of money, went through surgeries, changed their entire lives, and often lost family members, spouses, and jobs, all for a sexual thrill. This model seems too stupid to have gained any currency at all outside the crabbed little hearts of its three or four well-known proponents, but apparently you can still find it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR, the most up-to-date version of the standard reference your psychiatrist or therapist uses to figure out what the hell is wrong with you.

So what does this have to do with your question? Oh, nothing much, I just thought it was an interesting — if slightly nongermane — footnote, and if you don’t like interesting if slightly nongermane footnotes, you probably don’t read this column.

I think your man who loves women and moms and fluffy lavender bunnies (I’m sorry, but you inadvertently made him sound a bit like, oh, remember that unaccountably heterosexual Peter Pan guy, the one with the Web site and the large collection of jerkins who’s forever looking for his Tinkerbell? That guy) has a fetish, plain and simple. The Web exists to give such people an outlet, and I may be naive, but I truly believe that a guy who loves you and is happy with you can easily satisfy his yen for exotica in the privacy of his home office and need never stray. You’ve already asked him about that. He’s already answered. I’d be inclined to shrug and believe him.

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.

Bound

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Dear Andrea:

I have been reading you forever and you are awesome! I have been too intimidated to write but decided to break the silence. I’m a 36-year-old single bisexual woman who is beautiful (or so I’m told). I’ve been attracting more than my fair share of inappropriate dudes and women. This past year, my cousin’s boyfriend came on to me, a married guy begged me to be with him, and a possessive Scorpio threatened suicide over me. I dated a 55-year-old who had eczema, a Buddha belly, and a flaccid penis after three pumps; a lesbian rage-aholic (my first); and a 32-year-old who nearly bit off my nipple (clumsy) and came after two seconds but who wants to marry me and have kids.

Part of me just wants to have some fun, get taken out to dinner, and be left to be free. Part of me wants a committed relationship, but every one so far has led to people wanting to control me. I believe that I can have it all — fun, freedom and commitment.

I notice I attract men who are in shit marriages, and I empathize and listen (which for some reason turns them on). Sometimes I think the most compassionate thing to do is to lay them. Other times I remember the pain my father’s cheating caused and feel they should make a real choice and leave, not default to me. Should I lay them or leave them alone? Is there a hormonal rage that happens after 35? Do you think that I’m attracting these sorts of people because, on some level, I don’t want a relationship?

Love,

Bad Girl

Dear Bad:

Wow, girl, you are one big messy mess. I’m seriously tempted just to sum up all your behaviors and all your questions with one big "Quit that" and go back to bed, but you were so nice to tell me I intimidate you (I never get to intimidate anyone anymore!), I feel I owe you a little more than that.

I don’t think your problems have a thing to do with being "beautiful" one way or the other, so put that part right out of your mind, if you can. (Covering the mirrors might help but might also attract lovelorn vampires, which is probably the last thing you need right now.) Also, when you said "inappropriate partners," I was, frankly, kind of expecting something sexier than the bunch of sad-sack suicidal needle-dicks catalogued above. Where are the drunken, occasionally abusive Irish poets? The girls who look like Gina Gershon did in "Bound" but throw violent fits if you so much as mention a long-ago ex? The guys who are cute and funny and fantastic in bed but refuse to meet your friends? You know: the hot, sexy, bad-for-you people? Surely if you’re such hot stuff yourself you can find a better class of losers to waste your time on.

I have a few new rules for you, since you seem, toddler-like, to be acting out rather brattily in hopes that someone will step in to set some limits and make the world make sense again. First, no sleeping with people you have no respect for. ("Buddha belly and flaccid penis"? OK then, don’t fuck him. Certainly don’t fuck him and then make fun of him.) Second, no married men (or women), period. Just because they "default" to you does not mean you must make yourself available. Third, even with better prospects than these, sorry, you cannot have it all, and not just because of where would you put it. You can’t have both complete freedom and complete commitment because, hey, they’re mutually exclusive. Once bound (note the word) to another person, even polyamorously (if you must), you will have to accommodate his-her-its needs and wants sometimes, even at the expense of your own. Anyone who does not understand this really is still operating as a sort of giant (albeit in your case very physically attractive, I’m sure) toddler. You need to grow up a bit, after which you may begin to attract more suitable partners — or at least learn, as toddlers must, that you don’t have to pick up every random thing, no matter how unsuitable, and put it in your mouth.

As for attracting whoever because you want or don’t want whatever, I think there’s a fallacy we all tend to fall for that is, like so many things, simply not as true as it sounds. I suppose that the most popular version — the one about how desperation is not attractive, so stop wanting a boyfriend or girlfriend, and one will magically appear — has a certain truthiness going for it, but it also both blames the victim and promises more than it can deliver. Personally, I believe neither that you’re attracting yucky people because you don’t want nice ones nor that the universe will deliver someone really neato as soon as you deserve him or her. It would be nice if things worked out that equitably for everyone, but in my experience, the universe is kind of shiftless and lazy and just doesn’t bother.

Love,

Andrea

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Cooties roundup

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Dear Andrea:

I get cold sores on my lips. Since I don’t want to infect my wife with the herpes virus when I have an outbreak, I don’t kiss or go down on her. Am I being too cautious? Is it safe to go down on her while I have cold sores?

Love,

Careful Hubby

PS I like the way you always end your responses with "Love."

Dear Hub:

Me too, thanks. And of course you’re not being too cautious. The mouth kind of herpes (herpes simplex one) prefers mouths and the other sort (simplex two, natch) prefers the other places. But like so many of us, it can be persuaded to switch sides under the right circumstances. Keep doing what you’re doing, since it seems to be working. The bad news may be that one can spread herpes even in the absence of obvious sores, but the good news is that you probably haven’t, and it looks like you probably won’t.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

What’s the deal with the transmission of HPV? Is it spread by contact with the blisters themselves or the area in which the blisters appear, or is it blood-borne and spread by contact between uninfected orifices? Could a man with warts on the ween transmit warts through his mouth to an uninfected vadge? What about the inverse of that scenario?

What is the safe sex protocol for genital warts?

Love,

Just a Weency Question

Dear Ween:

Um … which goes in the what now? I got lost somewhere between ween and vadge. When my kids are ready to start learning body parts, remind me to teach them the proper terms plus one cute but recognizable and also not too cute euphemism each (each kid or each part, whichever) for use in public places. And remind me not to put ween or — seriously, I mean this — vadge on the list of options while I’m at it.

OK, this part is important: HPV stands for human papilloma virus, a.k.a. genital warts. The blisters-causing thing is herpes, a.k.a. HSV, which is similar in a lot of ways (caused by a virus, treatable but incurable, and spread by contact) but not at all the same thing.

The quickie answers to your questions would go something like this: it’s spread by contact with the infected area or something that’s been in contact with same; it is not blood-borne; and the safe-sex protocol is "Don’t touch uninfected partners with your affected bits or with other body parts or random objects which have recently rubbed up against your affected bits." Since HPV is very complicated, confusing, common, and potentially deadly, I strongly urge those who know as little about these things as you do to go from here to someplace like www.ashastd.org or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site and read more before rubbing anything much of yours against anybody else’s anything, really.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend just got diagnosed with HPV after an irregular Pap. We’ve been having tons of unprotected sex for about two years. This may sound stupid, but should I start wearing a condom every time? Can’t I just assume that I’m already carrying HPV, like 75 percent of the country? Neither of us wants to go back to protected sex.

Love,

Resigned

Dear Sign:

You know, that’s actually a really good question. The truth is, you and your girlfriend going about your business condom free, knowing all you know (assuming that you know that HPV can cause cervical cancer, for instance, and that you will carry it and be able to spread it forever) is pretty much the definition of "informed consent." There’s nothing stopping you from proceeding as is. Another thing at least 75 percent of the population has in common at some point, though, is that they have girlfriends or boyfriends and then they break up and get new ones. Call your attitude fatalistic, nihilistic, or just plain realistic, but your next girlfriend may not share it and may choose not to share your virions either, assuming you have any.

Love,

Andrea

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Frenemies with benefits

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Dear Andrea:

I recently broke up with my girlfriend (I’m a woman). Everything had started out peachy and remained so until about a month and a half before the breakup. It seemed that our growing emotional intimacy triggered her childhood issues (neglect, abuse, you name it … followed by addiction; she’s now thankfully in recovery), and she started pushing me away, then moved on to heavy criticism and blaming. As an abuse survivor myself, I know the signs and can empathize, but I feel that I’ve worked through most of my issues with intimacy, whereas she is, in her own words, "scared of loving." Anyway, our sex life suffered greatly. I felt that I was giving a lot and not receiving much. I tried talking with her about all this, but she insisted that I was the one at fault for everything. Finally, drained and heartbroken, I left her. Since then, she’s apologized and told me that she’s working on changing her patterns (through therapy, support groups, etc.). And she wants a second chance.

I feel relieved to be out of a tense and draining relationship, but I also miss the good stuff we had (hot sex — most of the time — and friendship, if not emotional intimacy). I know I can get over this and find love (though right now sex is first on my agenda) with someone else. That said, could her willingness to heal (and treat me with respect) make it worth taking another stab at it? Also, if the sex and friendship worked for us but not the relationship, what are the odds that we could be lovers but not partners (we’re both nonmonogamous)?

Love,

One from Column A …

Dear One:

Oh, eek, I’m a little scared of your ex, to tell you the truth. I’ll probably get in trouble for this but she immediately put me in mind of stories a friend of mine tells of working at an extremely PC community nonprofit and the way interns and other untested newbies would respond to a request that they do some — oh, I dunno, I think they call it work? — with a trembling lip and a defiant stance and a declaration that "I find that really triggering." "Oh, I’ll trigger you, all right," my friend would think, but of course you can’t say that sort of thing to that sort of person, you can only try to gently redirect them, like toddlers or puppies, if you don’t want to be accused of being abusive and hierarchical and tool of the patriarchical and end up having to endure lengthy sessions with a mediator wearing chunky ethnic jewelry and many complicated but unstructured garments woven from colorful twigs and berries.

I can’t really answer your last two questions, of course, because even if I had actual statistics to give you ("Blah percent of couples attempting friendship with benefits following a breakup ends up throwing kitchen implements at each other within six weeks, while only bleh percent of couples attempting friendship without benefits throws plates …") they would still just be statistics: interesting to read, but more descriptive than predictive.

Just going by the fairly small amount of info I’ve got, I have to admit I’m doing a little preemptive cringing and ducking myself. Things just sound a little too fresh and volatile to go trying any tricks as death-defying as getting back together but not really, which is a pretty dangerous stunt no matter where in a relationship’s history one attempts it. So while I won’t lay odds or place bets, I’m happy to make a wild prediction based on nothing more than having a good head for these things: attempting to reassemble your former relationship minus what are arguably the most important elements (emotional intimacy, not to mention luv) is doomed to failure. Before you know it you will be "triggering" her again, this time quite possibly on purpose (I was tempted to add "and with a real trigger this time," but it wouldn’t be tasteful). I think you’d do best to look elsewhere for sex and attempt friendship, cautiously if at all, with your ex. If you’re meant to be together (by which I don’t mean "fated," but merely "suited," in case you were wondering) you will find yourselves shifting back in that direction when you’re ready. It’s nice and all that she’s "willing to heal," not to mention treat you with respect, but frankly, all you have is her word on that. She hasn’t actually done either one so far, has she? And also frankly, you sound neither so hard up nor so desperately pining for her as so make it worth the probable unpleasantness. Exes are in some way the easy choice — you don’t have to go out and meet anyone, which for some of us anyway can be a powerful draw, but on the other hand you don’t get anything better than what you already had and gave away, and usually with good reason.

I just wouldn’t.

Love,

Andrea

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Up there

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Dear Andrea,

I’m a muff-diving dyke, sort of. The first few times with my new girlfriend, I enjoyed her taste. However, most recently she tasted much different — and, frankly, worse. I almost blurted out that she might have a yeast infection (luckily I caught myself before completely ruining the mood). Curious, the other day I tasted myself, and I had a similar terribly pungent, unappealing taste. I know my body well enough to know I don’t have a yeast infection! So now I’m wondering, is it related to menstrual cycles? Previous physical activity? Sharing of bacteria and yeast?

Love,

Wannabe Diver

Dear Muffy:

Could be any of those, with yeast less likely since it doesn’t like sour things itself. Of course, I could be misinterpreting "terribly pungent" to mean terribly sour, or maybe you meant … OK, stop me there. See, this is why even proper medical personnel are discouraged from attempting to diagnose things in absentia — you don’t want them to do it wrong, and frankly, you don’t want me doing it at all.

The pH of the vagina does change over the course of the menstrual cycle, getting higher (more neutral) at ovulation, when the vagina welcomes sperm whether or not its owner thinks that’s a good idea (and whether or not there are any sperm present or expected, like, ever), and more acidic at either cycle end, when any sperm that wandered by would be doomed anyway, so we might as get it over with. The thing about menstrual cycles, though, is that they’re cyclic, so whatever she tastes like on, say, day twenty, she’d have tasted that way last month too. I’m not diagnosing, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you had a mild, mutual bacterial infection, but you’ll never know unless you get it checked out. You could sneak off discreetly and get fixed up, of course, but that’s not going to help her any, so, much as you might like to gloss this over in the interest of romance and mood maintenance, I’m afraid I can’t let you off that easily. You’re going to have to do the "Hey honey, I couldn’t help but notice …" thing, but hey, so what? It’s all in a day’s relationship work, is it not? And you are in one of those, are you not?

I ask because I couldn’t help noticing something myself, and unlike you I am not loathe to bring up uncomfortable truths, no matter how conversation-stopping. So hey, dudette, how come you could recognize your girlfriend in a blind taste test, while she wouldn’t know you from, you should pardon the expression, Adam? Is this lack of reciprocity part of some larger plan, or is she being kind of a piglet about this? And if it’s the latter, well, don’t you have more to talk about than who tastes nasty all of a sudden?

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My gyno prescribed estrogen cream (Estrace) to combat chronic yeast infections apparently brought on by vaginal dryness he says may be associated with my long-term use of the pill. He said it wouldn’t have any effect on my male sex partner, but then he also said an IUD was more effective than tubal ligation, so I don’t know whether to believe him. The Rx insert says nothing; the Mayo clinic suggests that estrogen cream could have an effect on my partner, and also that it is harmful to condoms (which we use in addition to the BCPs because I really don’t want kids). Plus, you know, there was that House episode a few weeks ago where a guy ‘s hormone cream seeped through his skin and made his kids sick.

Love,

Bad Medicine

Dear Med:

Wow, really, there was nothing in the insert? Because while I couldn’t turn up anything superspecific, there is no question that the Estrace people themselves say to "avoid exposing your male sexual partner … by not having sexual intercourse right after using these medicines. Your male partner might absorb the medicine through his penis if it comes in contact with the medicine." Unless you’re both some kind of demented, round-the-clock, insatiable sex monkeys, it really shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out the time of day that you’re least likely to find yourself suddenly and spontaneously exposing your partner to conjugated estrogens, and apply the cream then. As for oral ingestion, dunno, but it should be equally avoidable. Apply in the morning, get head at night, or vice versa.

The creams are indeed harmful to condoms, just by virtue of being greasy, and I’m appalled that your doctor wouldn’t mention that, or any of this, really. He isn’t really wrong about the IUD, incidentally, but he’s very wrong not to mention sex when prescribing something you put up your lady parts. He may be wrong about more than that — any chance you could see somebody else? As for the doc on TV, well, I adore the show for the quips and the sexy crip, but you could get better medical information from This Old House or maybe Animal House. Estrace has a 1-800 line, you know.

Love,

Andrea

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Icky parts

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Dear Andrea:

I don’t like the amount of vaginal discharge I produce. It isn’t really abnormal, and it doesn’t smell, but I just don’t like seeing it in my underwear. I use the Nuvaring, which can change a woman’s discharge, but I don’t think that’s it. Is there a way to limit this stuff? The vagina’s a mucus membrane, and I’ve heard that dairy increases mucus; should I drink less milk?

Love,

Not a Drip

Dear Drippy:

Definitely, but only ’cause milk is gross. Personal taste aside, though, not only do I promise that milk is not mucus forming, I found a real, peer-reviewed journal article called "Milk Consumption Does Not Lead to Mucus Production or Occurrence of Asthma" to prove it to you. (I wasn’t even thinking about asthma, but while we’re at it, milk is apparently not asthma producing either. Good to know.)

There are many things one does do not wish to see in one’s underwear, many of which do not bear mentioning and none of which can be willed away by the power of positive thinking. I suggest not looking.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

You mentioned guys who wear "manties" as opposed to something more manly like boxer shorts [5/9/07]. I’m well aware that women generally find boxer shorts sexier than manties or briefs. My problem is, I’m susceptible to jock itch, (tinea cruris), and find that boxers don’t wick moisture away efficiently, which leaves me vulnerable. Therefore, I (gulp) usually wear briefs or manties (and yes, I use talc as well). What I wonder is, do women ever get jock itch? Even more to the point, could it be considered an STD? If a man has a moderate to severe case, it looks like you’ve got leprosy down there, and it seems like the interested party would want to know what the hell is going on. I’ve never heard a woman complain about jock itch or catching it from her partner.

Love,

Itchy Pants

Dear Pants:

Women certainly do get something similar — no doubt you’ve known at least one woman who not only feels comfortable discussing her yeast infections in public but also seems utterly uninterested in shutting up about them. One thing I can say for men — OK, I can say many things for men, but not now, I’m busy — is that they rarely bring up their crotch rot (actually ringworm, which is actually fungus) in mixed company. Yay, men.

Women can and do get all manner of "feminine" itchies but are generally less susceptible to jock itch and athlete’s foot (just lucky, I guess). It can happen, though, and ringworm is transmissible skin to skin as well as by "fomite" (shared towels and the like). Isn’t it funny, then, that it’s never classified as an STD, STC, or STI? Just another handy illustration of how the entire concept of sexually transmitted disease is socially constructed and has little biological validity, I guess. But that is another lecture, as is the one where I implore you to tell your partners what’s going on down there and not force them to politely pretend they didn’t see anything.

What I really wanted to say here is that not even you, Itchy McCrotchrot, need wear "manties" in the sleezy-shiny-skimpy bikini banana-sling way that I define them. I’m not entirely sure you ought to be wearing tighty-whities either. They may be more comfortable by virtue of being more absorbent, but are you sure absorbency is really what you’re looking for in an underpant? If I were you, I’d hike myself down to REI or some other place specializing in outfitting you for the sort of activities that require fancy moisture-wicking underwear and buy some. They even make boxers, callooh, callay!

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

You might have suggested to Itchy that Scratchy [5/9/07] grow a beard. It’s natural, and many women and men find it most exciting to have a beard between their thighs.

Love,

Hairy Krishna

Dear Hairy:

Rilly? Have you spoken to many of them personally?

There is, of course, a niche market for beards. My biggish, beardedish husband and I dragged my family of origin to the Russian River, a very, very gay resort area, last summer, at the same time the Bears (oh, look it up) were having their annual Teddy Bear’s Picnic and Hootenanny or whatever, which led to many hijinks and much hilarity and confused my father thoroughly.

There are women who specifically dig beards as well, but most either dig the guy who wears the beard, agree that a particular beard looks nice on a particular guy, or love the man but hate the beard. Few love the beard more than the man — let’s put it that way — and "it’s natural" is not altogether persuasive, considering the many things that are natural but don’t look nice stuck to your face. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

Love,

Andrea

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Hot Secs

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Dear Readers:

Since every third column I’ve run recently has harked back to one I wrote about the movie Secretary a couple of years back, I thought I’d bring it full circle, and then let’s all move on to something else. Here’s the original (published in fall 2005).

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My manager is leaving at the end of the month. I’m pretty sure from hints that he’s dropped that he’s into S-M, particularly whipping. I’m attracted to him and I believe it’s mutual. I’m not interested in pursuing a dominant–submissive relationship with him but am definitely interested in having a one-off because a) he’s my boss, b) he’s kinky, and c) he’s my boss. I’d like to initiate an encounter between us, preferably on his last day at the office, but I am new to the scene and I’m not sure how to go about it.

Love,

Ms. Secretary

Dear Sec:

Two things come to mind when I think about Secretary and its stars, the unaccountably attractive Maggie Gyllenhaal, who has a face like a none-too-bright, six-month fetus, and creepy-sexy James Spader, who is at this point indistinguishable from the waxwork simulacrum of himself that undoubtedly exists in some museum somewhere, although I kind of dig him anyway: a) it was hot, and b) it was fiction.

I was listening to a colleague-friend give one of my favorite talks this weekend, the one about acceptable and unacceptable objects of desire and how they shift over time and space, and I thought about Secretary too. "Think about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky," my friend says. "Where we are right now [San Francisco in particular, but any blue-state bastion with a women’s studies department will do], the socially acceptable response was, ‘Oh! She’s just an intern! Think of the power imbalance! Uncool! Unclean! How could she give consent when he was so powerful and she was so lowly?’ But what do you think was really going on for 22-year-old Monica, on her knees in front of Superpower Man, the one and only leader of the free world? What do you want to bet that the power imbalance was exactly what was hot for both of them?"

More fantasy, of course. We have no idea what was really going through either of their heads (well, hers, maybe, but — hey! — that’s not what I meant!), and it doesn’t really matter, since we’re just using them as puppets called "Bill" and "Monica," not seriously examining the ethics of seducing interns or flashing your thong at the leader of the free world, depending. I liked your list (he’s my boss, he’s kinky, he’s my boss) and certainly trust you to know what’s hot for you and why, but let’s remember that this is neither a quirkily erotic indie movie nor a puppet show; it’s part of your actual life, and his, and it has consequences. Hot as a last-day quickie may sound to you, chances are he will be a little busy that day, plus, until all the paperwork is done, he is still your boss, and it could still go rather poorly for him to be found in the supply closet, whaling on the clerical staff with a … what? Unless he’s far kinkier than we ever suspected, he will not have his gear with him, so unless you want to get spanked with a three-hole punch while bound with extension cords and blindfolded with Post-its (wait — this is sounding kind of hot, isn’t it?), maybe you’ll want to wait.

Look, give him a break. Let him pack up his stuff and make his good-byes like a grown-up, and then corner him very late in the afternoon, just as he’s leaving, and tell him you’re sorry to see him go and you wonder if he’d like to get together sometime. Ask if he likes indie movies. Tell him you really dug Secretary. Really, really dug it, you know? That should work. To tell you the truth, I have some reservations about a boss who would drop hints about his kinky sex life around the office — that seems kind of, well, actionable to me, really, plus just kind of indiscreet in an icky way, but hey, he’s your fantasy, not mine.

One thing people who know nothing about S-M (I’m not necessarily talking about you here, Sec) might miss about Secretary is that the way Gyllenhaal’s character, Lee, is initiated into the joys of submission isn’t exactly the way it goes down most of the time. In real life, at least where there’s an organized "scene" with rules and regs and a public image to maintain, no mysterious and compellingly attractive Mr. Grey would, all unannounced and uninvited, order our heroine to bend over for a spanking, thus unleashing her deep longing to find freedom through submission and so on. Instead, he would have invited her to a "munch," where they could negotiate their scene, choose a safe word, and exhaustively disclose their physical limitations ("I have hypoglycemia — you’ll have to feed me." "I had tennis elbow but I think it’s better now"), emotional vulnerabilities, and time constraints. Then they would shake hands and agree to meet at his place on Friday evening to "play." Safer, more ethical, and much, much more boring.

Love,

Andrea

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Take another letter

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Dear Andrea:

I just saw Secretary yesterday, and then read your column that mentions the same movie and similar sentiment ["Thwang," 5/30/07]. My situation is a bit different because I’ve known how I feel for a while but never seen or experienced it. Also, I’m a stripper and rarely have sex but am extremely sexual. I’ve got a serious lust affair with the eroscillator but think I’ve maybe given up on a love that will be feminist but dominating and aggressive, too. In the movie, Maggie is looking through classifieds for a partner, and that is way too dangerous for me. How do I quiet the arguments between feminism and being truly submissive? Also, having to be seriously up-front about wanting some serious kink might kill the whole deal for me. Do these relationships actually happen in real life? How?

Love,

Sub Grrrl

Dear Grrrl:

Right. There was a moment when every other conversation, magazine article, and academic conference was devoted to exploring the conflicts and connections between radical feminism and radical sexuality. It was called "the ’80s." You probably missed it owing to not being born yet, but that stuff is still in print, and whatever isn’t is gathering dust in the sorts of used bookstores heavily populated by overweight cats and should be easy to find. Most of the best-known pro-kink feminists of the time were very, very lesbian (see Gayle Rubin on the academic side and Pat Califia for "literotica"), but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have anything to say to straight women.

Obviously, of all the possible permutations, male dominant–female submissive is likely the most discomfiting to you. But, happily, the flip side of the "this weird sex thing goes against every political, ethical, or religious principle I consider right and true" coin is so often the Big Hot. Go to any upscale S-M party (yes, these really do exist) in San Francisco or Seattle, and at least half the women crawling around their master’s boots begging to be punished ’cause they’ve been very bad are in real life junior partners at onetime all-male law firms, or teach gender theory at small but prestigious liberal arts schools. In other words, they are quite fully "empowered," thanks, which doesn’t keep them from voluntarily surrendering said power come Saturday night, and may in fact add to the appeal. The classic, even clichéd, old-style S-M enthusiast, after all, is a member of Parliament who reports like clockwork to the bawdy house every Thursday afternoon for a brisk caning …

Um, yes. Where were we? I’m not sure where you, who perform naked for sexually aroused strangers for a living, got the idea that playing the personals is particularly dangerous. Perhaps from the same episodes of Law and Order in which a few pieces of S-M gear stashed under a suspect’s bed signal that a severed head in a shoe box cannot be far off? I would never suggest that you meet someone for coffee and immediately go home with him to check out his cool dungeon. Far from it. But the meeting-for-coffee part is perfectly safe. After that, you proceed as normal, which includes sharing your interests and aspirations … which is the next place we’re going to have some trouble, I see.

If being up-front about your weirditude is a potential deal-breaker for you, then I suspect you are a spontaneity freak. They are common, but many or most can have the need to proceed by whim or fancy beaten out of them by a stern application of reality. Spontaneity is fun and sexy, but it’s also responsible for most of your unwanted pregnancies, a vast number of STD transmissions, and who-all knows what other havoc. It’s also inconsistent with S-M at any level more technically advanced than the (admittedly often completely satisfactory) bend-over-and-spank variety. If you do go ahead with this, and you do find someone worthy of your submission, you are going to have to talk about it, whether you want to or not. Not only is it unsafe to do S-M with people you know nothing about, it isn’t even fun. What if you want to wear a neat little skirt and heels while bending prettily over nearby furniture, while he wants you to be a bad puppy and sleep in a kennel in the kitchen? What if your idea of submission is saying, "Yes, sir," a lot, while his idea of domination includes branding irons and cattle prods? Can you see how this could get ugly?

In romantic fantasy, the heroine meets the rough but passionate and shirtless master of the manor when she fetches up at his door as a penniless et cetera. In real life, I’m sorry to tell you, she meets him online or at an S-M "munch" or through kinky friends or at a party. And then they talk. I’m sure you’d rather toss your hair tempestuously while a dark and stormy stranger bends you over his knee and yanks down your pantaloons, but you’ll get over it.

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.

The suggestions

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I am writing to quibble with your response to Imagine ["You May Find Yourself …," 11/8/06], the fellow in college who complained that after "a couple of rounds a day for a few months," he had difficulty reaching orgasm without either fantasizing about another woman or taking matters into his own hands. You suggested that he might just be someone who needs a certain amount of novelty or fantasy to get up and over, and you left it at that.

The reason I felt driven to write is that he described exactly how I feel when I try to have sex too often. Even back in college, I was never voracious sexually — once a day is just dandy. If I try to have sex twice a day for several days in a row, I can still get erections but have difficulty achieving orgasm. The only way to get up and over is to introduce something novel or to switch to masturbation (because, like most men, I am the world’s foremost expert at getting myself off).

So, I would counsel Imagine to try going cold turkey for a day or two. If a sexual hiatus miraculously (but temporarily) cures the problem, then it’ll prove he may just be trying to have sex more often than his body really wants to.

Love,

Just Me

Dear Just:

Yeah, OK.

A few weeks ago I ran a column I called "The Corrections" [5/2/07], mostly because I’d finally got around to reading that book that everyone else in the universe read like five years ago. But I get as many suggestions as I do corrections, so what the heck? Here’s yours.

I agree with you actually. Dude was probably not only a little bored (yes, even college boys can get bored during sex!) but physiologically fatigued. I’m going to assume this is no longer a problem for that particular college boy, though, since it was a few months back and sadly (or happily, depending), "Help, we’re having too much sex!" tends to be one of those self-limiting relationship problems.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I have some advice for the guy who was too tall to do it doggy-style with his short partner [5/23/07]. Doggy-style is my favorite position also. I’m a tall guy, and one thing that works great is standing by the side of your bed while your woman presents to you near the edge. While it takes more energy since you’re vertical, you can bend your knees and her waist to make it a pleasurable experience for you both.

Love,

Tallboy

Dear Tall:

OK, then! Indeed, for lots of size-discordant couples a "he stands, she crouches" position will work handily. Not dignified, mind you, but any activity that allows your dangliest dangly bits to not only hang low but to wobble to and fro has little claim to dignity in the first place.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Readers:

The last thing I wanted to cover is not so much a suggestion as a follow-up, except insofar as I suggest that interested parties check it out ASAP: the Food and Drug Administration approved the "never have to have a period again" pill. The Red Tent is no more. We can have a female president now.

Well, let’s not get carried away.

While a large majority of women in a large number of recent studies (there’s a good run-down of recent research at the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals site, arhp.org) would like their menstrual cycles to be different, this includes women who’d merely like them to be less painful or more regular, and really, big duh. Still, it appears that most women asked have some interest in at least occasional menstrual suppression. Women surveyed at six sites across the United States seemed overwhelmingly, even shockingly eager to abandon the old moon goddess entirely. According to that poll, 59 percent said they "would be interested in not menstruating on a monthly basis," and one-third said they "would choose never to have a period." I don’t recall seeing them say that they’d choose never to have a baby, but presumably that exception was addressed somehow or other.

Unsurprisingly, women in the military seem most eager to jump. I was likewise unflabbergasted to see that Dutch and German women seemed a little less eager to embrace a novel, high-tech body-mod that’s radical and (perhaps excessively) clean-freakish — aren’t these the same women who were famously late (if ever) adopters of leg and pit shaving? — but even they were pretty intrigued by the possibility. And finally, just to prove menstruation’s ickiness and expendability is almost entirely a matter of cultural perspective, Nigerian women who were asked about menstrual suppression wanted nothing to do with it.

How about you?

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question!

Thwang!

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have always enjoyed having women walk all over me with lots of stomach stomping. Shoes, boots, or barefoot, this is something that I crave daily. Now my problem is that after doing this for most of my life, I just can’t seem to find women who are cruel enough. I try to select women who are 200-plus pounds, but even they leave me needing more (though it hurts like hell). I know my body can’t take much more, but I enjoy it. I just can’t get stomped hard enough. Am I out of control?

Love,

Stomp Me

Dear Stompy:

Dude.

I’d say you were a bit out of control if I believed any of this had ever escaped the realm of fantasy and stomped its way into the harsh light of day. You "try to select" women over 200 pounds, do you? From what pool of eager applicants would you be selecting them? And why would the cruelty quotient of the available pool be diminishing?

The only way you could regularly fulfill this fantasy is by engaging professionals, not that there’s anything wrong with that. There’s no shortage of large women (or reasonable facsimiles of women) who would be willing to do this for you as cruelly as desired. If that is how you’ve been scratching your itch and it really is getting harder to scratch, then you may indeed have some sort of satiety problem. If so, you’ll have to do what anyone else who’s built up too much of a tolerance to alcohol or heroin or any other abusable substance does: cut way down or quit it until you can indulge at a reasonable dosage again.

This isn’t harmless. So if you’re really doing it and not just flapping your face, I suggest that you keep an eye on how much weight you’re taking and where. I can’t believe that a gentleman with your proclivities has never heard Kirsty MacColl’s "In These Shoes?," a song that pulls off the not-inconsiderable trick of being both seductive and hilarious:

"Oh," he said.

"Won’t you walk up and down my spine,

It makes me feel strangely alive."

I said, "In these shoes?

I doubt you’d survive."

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’m 21 and female and have always felt kind of indifferent about sex. I can enjoy it OK. I get horny as much as other people my age, as far as I can tell. It just isn’t that interesting to me.

I thought maybe I was gay, but I’ve experimented with women and nothing changed. Then recently I watched the movie Secretary, and it was like a revelation! I want the kind of relationship portrayed in that film — loving but desperately kinky. Do you think it is possible for BDSM to be an inbuilt kind of sexual preference, as unchangeable as homosexuality? And what happens if you suggest it to a boyfriend who hasn’t expressed any previous interest in it? I don’t want to scare anyone off.

Love,

Take a Letter

Dear Letter:

Indeed, but neither do you want to commit the sin of false advertising — passing yourself off as normal so as not to frighten the boat or rock the horses or whatever, only to send a man off screaming when you finally get around to telling him what you’re really after. It’s far less comfortable and a hell of a lot more work just to try to find a compatible fellow kink in the first place, but trust me here — it’s worth it.

As for kink as an inborn tendency like (most) homosexuality: Oh, hell yes, I think it’s possible. We all know people who’ve gone freaky for a while because it seemed for whatever reason to be the thing to do and then reverted, but for every trendoid there’s an earnest freak who can remember being the kid who always wanted to be the captive princess or the cowboy tied to the fence by wild Indians and was never all that enthusiastic about being rescued when the time came. I believe a lot of people can enjoy a little role play or think it’s fun to get tied up prettily and tickled or teased, but people can enjoy a little of all kinds of things. If you see something like Secretary and feel the deep and unmistakable thwang of a chord being struck way deep in your soul, I think you can trust that that cord was there all along awaiting striking.

I can’t help wondering just how many such strikings that movie is singularly responsible for. I thought it was sizzling hot myself, but I think the writer and producers have a lot to answer for. I get the feeling there were a lot of people, young women in particular but not exclusively, who were just going about their lives, la la la, and then James Spader bent Maggie Gyllenhaal over that desk, and thwang! They’ll never be the same.

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.

Ends meet

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› 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.

Unwilling, unable

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

My boyfriend and I are in our late 20s. He’s unable to have sex more than once a day, nor does he want to, even when we’ve been separated. He can’t get it up again even hours later, though we rarely try. He isn’t interested as often as I am in general.

My other lovers were often rarin’ to go soon after, or at least interested. My impression is that this is normal, particularly for young men. He’s unconcerned, but I feel rather unsatisfied and worry that with age his desire will further decrease. He’s also very slender and often lacks energy in general. I’m worried something is amiss hormonally or otherwise, which he dismisses. He’s had maybe one medical checkup since we met and doesn’t get much exercise.

Am I right to be concerned or is this normal? Am I selfish?

Love,

Wanting More

Dear More:

Your boyfriend appears to be what they used to call "neurasthenic" — rather languid and wan, with a nervous temperament and a tendency toward fainting spells and melancholy. Back then, he would have been fed beef tea and lightly poached eggs on toast and sent back to bed (alone!) to sleep it off for a month or two. Sadly, this sort of rest cure is no longer available to us, so we must make do with modern substitutes: Jamba Juice and gym memberships. He really does sound somewhat undernourished, and I bet you’re right about the exercise. Take him out for hamburgers or something. Walk there, if possible. Perhaps if he got his blood pumping on occasion, other forms of pumping would ensue.

There is, inconveniently, no good reason to believe there’s anything wrong with him that could be fixed with, say, giant injections of manly androgens. While it’s possible that his lowish libido is a hormone thing, it isn’t particularly likely. My best guess is that he’s just different from (some) other guys and different from you. You probably needn’t be concerned about him dropping dead from whatever’s keeping his libido low, but you might spare a little concern for yourself and your future. You’re not being selfish — this is serious. It’s likely to be you doing the compromising, so make sure you can before you promise anything permanent.

Couples perfectly matched in appetite are fairly rare, actually. Most people are adjusting a wee bit up or down all the time, depending, and it’s hardly worth noticing until it gets to be like one of those science fiction plots where one person’s running superfast and the other’s in normal time and they can’t see each other. We must resist the temptation to declare our partners functional or deviant by the degree to which their sexual desires match our own. Nor does it matter if he’s "normal" by others’ standards. He’s fine for him. It’s up to you to decide how fine that is with you.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

I’m currently taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor called citalopram (a.k.a. Celexa), and I can’t have an orgasm. My sex drive is low compared to normal but not nonexistent. With my boyfriend in my bed, I can still get turned on. And I can get so close to orgasm it feels like it must be about to happen, but somehow it never does, no matter how hard we both try. It’s immensely frustrating.

I considered stopping the medication, but I’ve tried numerous antidepressants, and this is the only one that’s allowed me to lead a normal life. I’m reluctant to sacrifice my mental health for my sex life, but I hate having to choose between the two. Can you help? Maybe your readers have similar experiences or some way to get round this?

Love,

Not Happenin’

Dear Happenin’:

Aaaaaargggh!

So frustrating. I think you’re right to rank your general mental health above your sex life, but then again, a rotten sex life when you used to have a good one is pretty depressing in itself. On top of that, there are armies of people in exactly your situation with no definite fix, so aaaarrrgh.

I’ve got three semi-half-assed suggestions; I wish I had a better one. The first is patience, since the side effects often wear off with time. The second is Wellbutrin, either alone or in addition, which is the solution for a lot of people, but I fear you may already have tried it. And the third involves getting various degrees of weird. You could apply something or take something to increase clitoral sensitivity (provided you’re a girl; you actually didn’t say). Maybe a pump or other sensitizing toy? Or Viagra (they still say it doesn’t work for women, but many women disagree), or alprostadil if you can track any down? And then there are creams containing L-arginine or some such that purport to aid arousal — and who knows? They probably don’t but occasionally appear to. None of these will hurt you (unless contraindicated for some reason; do your homework), and they won’t make you more depressed, so what’s to lose?

Anyone had any success with other remedies?

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson teaches sex and communication skills with San Francisco Sex Information. She has been a theater artist, a women’s health educator, and a composting instructor, but not at the same time. She is considering offering a workshop on how to have and rear twins without going crazy, since she’s currently doing that too.

About-face

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I’m seeing someone who has a bad combination of fast-growing hair and sensitive skin. He has stubble an hour after shaving, but he can’t shave every day. After he spends the night, my face peels for days. When he goes down on me, the sensation is distracting and painful, which pretty much ruins it for me. I’ve mentioned it to him (surprisingly, no one else ever had!), and he does everything he can to avoid hurting me, but I’m still suffering. Right now we just see each other occasionally, but I really like him. Does this one factor mean that we aren’t compatible in the long run? Can anything be done?

Love,

Itchy Loves Scratchy

Dear Itchy:

I can’t promise this can be solved, but it can certainly be mitigated. Since he’s only recently been made aware that there even is a problem, one wonders if he’s actually tried to do anything about it. Is he the "I’ve tried nothing and I’m all out of ideas" type, or just young and slackery and literally a bit scruffy? Does he think shaving begins and ends with a disposable razor and a can of foam, and that the only alternative is a terrible little terrier beard? I hope so, actually, because then one of my ideas still has a chance of working.

Young men are often reluctant to fuss with their bodies, and, to be fair, a shower, a toothbrush, and a fresh shirt are all it really takes to render oneself kissable, if not, say, hireable. Many women even find a bit of scruff kind of (or wildly) sexy, and too much male primping and polishing a distinct turnoff. I often wondered, for instance, what the wives and girlfriends on Queer Eye really thought about having to share bathroom space with two moisturizers, a scrub, cuticle cream, sunless tanner, leave-in conditioner, and hair product, the insistently masculine packaging of which could not disguise the fact that they were all basically makeup for boys. I know how I’d feel, but the one time I confessed to a personal lack of attraction to fancy, flyless panties for men (manties) in the column, I got whined at for weeks. By men in panties. But I digress.

It is possible — not definite, but possible — that he could indeed shave every day if he used a product made for supersensitive skin, and this is a common enough problem that there are plenty such items on the market. The first one I found contains vitamin E and "a special dermatological lubricant." I wondered about that lubricant, since the first thing I thought of for you was "boyfriend needs silicone." I’d never thought about silicone and shaving before, I don’t think, but I’ve been extolling silicone lube for so long — it’s just the slipperiest, unfrictioniest stuff out there, plus it’s hypoallergenic and makes your hair shiny — how could it not help smooth over your difficulties? Sure enough, a search on "silicone shaving cream" brought up a slew of products. Buy him some (unscented, of course). He also needs either a good razor or a huge bag of very bad razors, although I’m not sure I can countenance the carbon footprint left by disposables. By far the sexiest solution, of course, is a straight razor, but not everyone welcomes the gift of edged weapons.

Finally, I have a suggestion for your second problem, secondary razor burn. This won’t work for the kissing part, and it’s perhaps not immediately appealing, but do bear with me: if the silicone does not sufficiently soften the bristles, try a barrier. If you’re not worrying about disease transmission, said barrier needn’t be anything serious — silky underwear will do. Not ideal, perhaps, but thin, slippery fabric does transmit sensation well and doesn’t cut off all other sensory input-output, either. And anything’s better than a dental dam. Or manties.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

My girlfriend before I was married loved it when I would ejaculate on her face and breasts and in her mouth while I watched. It was never demeaning, just a fun dirty thing once in a while. My wife is a little more conservative. She does let me come in her mouth, and I also pull out on her stomach, but I would like to take it a step further. She said fine, as long as it doesn’t get in her eyes. However, I don’t know how to go about it so she is not surprised and so she can be comfortable with it.

Love,

Squirty

Dear Squirt:

If you can’t figure this out yourself, I suppose I should be relieved we’re not talking about procreative sex here. Good grief, man.

If you’re going to do something for which you have received consent but which has the possibility of surprising the recipient unpleasantly anyway, you say something first. "I’m coming" is traditional, although "incoming!" and "think fast!" have been known to work. Then let her adjust her (or your) angle appropriately. Once again I say, good grief, man.

Love,

Andrea

The corrections

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> andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Love your column. That said, at the risk of sounding like a p.c. crap-spewing psycho, I am going to take an issue with your sentence, "Kind of the way that the single mothers at the playground cannot stop themselves from crawling all over married men who show up there with a baby" ["Quid Pro Shmo," 1/10/07]. I see your point, and obviously there are such women, and they are perhaps plentiful enough to make their own category. I’m a single mom, though, and I’d never, ever, ever do such a thing, and I’m sure there are many others like me. I think I would have appreciated the word "some" prior to "single mothers" in your response. I know it might seem like semantics. But really, my life as a single mom – including the socializing on the playgrounds with married women – is hard enough without my favorite columnist perpetuating myths of all single moms wanting other women’s men just because they oh so easily fall for nurture-exhibiting dads.

Love,

Sad Fan

Dear Fan:

You don’t sound psycho at all! I sounded sloppy. I have to admit that after first reading your letter I just assumed you had to be wrong – no way could I have written that line and failed to modify "single mothers" with "some" or "You know the ones I mean." I meant to imply the "some," but apparently I didn’t ply it well enough.

I was actually writing not about single mothers but about women who are attracted to nurturing men, which is not at all a bad thing, especially when you consider the sort of men some other women are attracted to. Just to be clear, the playground thing really does happen. The men I know who’ve reported getting hit on while out with their babies were all wearing wedding rings too, and all were bemused to find that anyone would take them for anything like available in any way. If there are also married guys who take off their rings to take the baby to the park or single guys who borrow a baby and hit the playground circuit and aren’t fictional characters probably played by Hugh Grant, they don’t want to meet me. I stopped carrying pepper spray a while back, but I could start.

Love,

Andrea

Dear Andrea:

Regarding your answer to your reader who has trouble maintaining an erection while wearing a condom, you made a number of useful suggestions but omitted what I think is an important one: try a bigger condom. For years I struggled to get a condom on and maintain an erection, fumbling, stretching, squeezing, and fretting when I just wanted to be fucking. It wasn’t until my late 20s that a girlfriend suggested I try the bigger variety. I was skeptical, as the only other erections I’d seen were massive porno cocks, and I knew at a little over six inches I was nothing special in the length department. They don’t tell you in sex ed that it’s really girth that matters, at least when considering condom candidates. I’ve since tried every large-wide condom that they carry, and I highly recommend Lifestyles Large (they happen to fit me perfectly, but it’s obviously going to depend on details of size and shape). I wish somebody had told me this a long time ago, as it literally changed my life. Not only can I get the condom on easily and stay hard until the job is done, the increased blood flow means I have way more sensation too. Hope this helps.

Love,

Wide Load

Dear Wide:

It’s true! They don’t tell you it’s the width that matters, and I wish they would. I don’t know where my brain was when I was listing all the options and forgetting the condom-width issue, since "it’s the width that counts" is kind of a pet fact of mine. Length may get more press, and it does have its uses, but they are somewhat rarefied. It’s width that does most of the heavy lifting, and it’s width that’s most likely to be missed if absent.

Sex educators, myself included, love to surprise people by emphasizing just how numb to touch the supposedly supersensitive vagina is once you get past the vestibule and, um, front parlor. Even up front, we have more receptors for stretching than for stroking. Then there are all the goodies collectively thought of as the G-spot – paraurethral sponge, Skene’s glands, "crurae" of the clitoris, and so on – which often languish in obscurity or just lie there thinking of England until something curved or just plain thick enough to arouse a response out of them arrives. Width roolz! (Length, by contrast, necessarily droolz.) I hope you realize, now that your equipment problem has been solved, what you’ve got there is, as they say, not a bug but a feature.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson teaches sex and communication skills with San Francisco Sex Information. She has been a theater artist, a women’s health educator, and a composting instructor, but not at the same time. She is considering offering a workshop on how to have and rear twins without going crazy, since she’s currently doing that too.

Give it a hand

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> andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear readers:

Every few months some harried freelancer charged with coming up with a novel spin on something sexual or other contacts me for a pithy quote. And since I am all about the pith, I will oblige if at all possible. Most recently, the writer was a staffer at Details, which I used to read when it was sort of sceney and kinda gay back in the ’80s but which sunk beneath my radar when it morphed into some sort of younger, more metro GQ. What did I think, the writer wanted to know, about the demise of the hand job? Had the rise of more exotic pursuits among American teenagers sealed its fate, or was good old manual release doomed to fade into obscurity by dint of its own lack of pizzazz? What was the hand job’s appeal, if any? And by the way, did I know any really good horror stories, Indian burns, that sort of thing?

It got me thinking, first about horror stories. As a collector of (other people’s) horrible sex accident stories, I know that hand jobs hardly figure. Skin-to-skin virus transmission is possible, sure, but nobody ever seems to accidentally yank anybody’s equipment clean off or anything. Not even close. Even CBT, cock and ball torture, is rarely as grizzly as it sounds. I did once demonstrate my most successful technique, a two-fisted opposite swivel, for a friendgirl who’d had only girlfriends but was considering branching out. Damned if my little pantomime didn’t look very much like I was administering an Indian (sorry, Native American is it?) burn, something I’d never noticed when doing it for real. Of course, hand jobs are best administered with a generous shot of lube or, at the very least, a palmful of spit. It’s really hard to hurt somebody with a palmful of spit.

So, hand jobs are safe, I concluded, but are they sexy? Is nobody doing them anymore because there’s so much hotter stuff to do, or is it simply that they’re not worth doing? These I couldn’t answer because I’m not sure I buy the premise. There’s no question that there has been a steady trickle (ew) of articles and TV scare pieces about the oral sex "epidemic" among young people, going back at least 10 years. But not only do these fail to convince me that more young people (well, women – these articles are never about a cunnilingus epidemic) are going down, they never say a thing about them eschewing hand jobs in favor of blow jobs. If you compare The National Survey of Family Growth, the best recent research on Americans’ sex habits, published in 2005, with Sex in America, the last decent survey, done in the early ’90s, there isn’t much increase in the incidence of oral sex. Period. There is, intriguingly, an increase in the incidence of anal sex, potentially a much greater health risk. But it doesn’t say a thing about hand jobs, which are, presumably, relegated to the catchall category "any" sex. So no matter how many articles are published insisting that life for the typical American teen these days is one big blow job party (the parts that aren’t taken up with pornographically violent video games and being obese, anyway), I haven’t seen anything supporting it. And before people start freaking out about all those teenagers having anal sex, the increase there was among people in their 20s.

My own take is that hand jobs aren’t dead, they’re just boring. Or at least, boringish. Boringish to receive, depending upon the recipient’s level of desperation and the donor’s skill, of course; boringish to perform (at least compared to the raunchier, more dramatic blow job), and above all boringish to write TV magazine scare pieces about. Nobody dies from them, so nobody cares. Also, while the hand job may figure prominently in some gay male scenes, most straight people kind of forget about them as they leave their teenage groping days behind. This leaves me, an inveterate champion of the underdog, in the position of having to defend the poor, disrespected hand job. Besides the obvious safety issue, they’re, um, easy. They don’t make you gag, not unless something nearly unimaginable disgusting is going on. They’re a good way to learn about penises. This last is true, actually, since for some reason most girls start out believing that a penis ought to be patted gently on the head, like an elderly lap dog, while in truth they can, and ought, to be wrangled, roped, and thrown like a rodeo doggie. Only hands-on learning will do.

So this is what I told the writer from Details: "After its high school glory days, the hand job may go underground, but it’s rarely completely missing from a couple’s repertoire. It’s just that it becomes a tool, or a tool of a tool, rather than an act in its own right. Foreplay without any hand play, for instance, would become sort of a special trick, like writing a paragraph without using any e‘s."

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson teaches sex and communication skills with San Francisco Sex Information. She has been a theater artist, a women’s health educator, and a composting instructor, but not at the same time. She is considering offering a workshop on how to have and rear twins without going crazy, since she’s currently doing that too.

The shiznit

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

Two years ago I met a guy who was a friend of a friend. I got to know him and realized that he was the most fascinating, intelligent person I’d ever met. Despite not being initially attracted to him, I soon got over this and fell in love with him.

We skirted discussing a romantic relationship because he had deep emotional problems precipitated by a number of traumatic things that happened to him in his childhood. He could often be unfriendly to the point of cruelty. I made too many allowances for this and probably let him get away with things I wouldn’t have tolerated in anyone else.

We remained friends even though we now live in different cities. I have had involvements with numerous other people but have always known that if this guy suddenly wanted me, I would drop everything. It’s against my feminist sensibility, but no one can compare. I can’t see myself ever meeting another person who understands me so completely. Will I ever get over it? Am I being totally pathetic?

Love,

Hung Up and Hung Over

Dear Hung:

Yep. Pathetic in a way I have no problem understanding and even reutf8g to, but pathetic nonetheless. And yes, you’ll get over it, but I can’t promise it will be quick or painless. Extractions and amputations so rarely are.

Look, we’ve all been there. Most people who value (I’m tempted to say "overvalue") qualities such as intelligence and quick wit in a partner have been there. Sadly, there is no rule that says a big brain has to come with a big heart or any heart at all, for that matter. A big, fast, fascinating brain is no guarantor of sanity either. Your friend sounds like he might have been more than a little dinged up by his crappy childhood — he’s probably broken beyond reasonable hope of repair. I’m sure he’s also devastatingly sexy or whatever, but who cares? Not you. Not anymore. Not if I have anything to say about it, anyway.

Here’s another lesson it’s hard to learn: getting your jokes is not the same thing as getting you. He may be wonderful to talk to, and you may have endless "Oh my gawd, nobody else ever got that!!!!" moments with him, but that doesn’t mean he knows (or cares) what you need, what makes you happy, or even what’s so great about you. Even more disappointing, understanding you is not at all the same thing as being your friend. If he’s the kind of charming, destructive bastard I think he is, he’s nobody’s friend, not even his own.

While I’m rabbiting on about how you don’t have to be this to be that or that to be this and so on, here’s another one: you don’t have to be nice to be exciting in bed. Not for certain values of exciting, anyway. So let’s just be thankful that you never did it with him. You didn’t, right? Realizing just how deadly a bullet you might have dodged there, let’s give you credit for making at least one terribly smart decision, even if it’s because you never got the chance to do him and still regret it. I’ll never tell.

So, let’s summarize. This guy, alluring as he is, is pretty much a shit. Happily for you, he’s currently a long-distance shit (good lord, what an image). Unhappily for you, he has probably acquired something of that long-distance glow since you’ve been apart. Look, for instance, at the time dilation you’ve apparently undergone since you started letting him warp your space-time continuum: you say you’ve "always known" you’d drop everything and go to him should he ever express interest, yet it’s been all of two years since you met and probably much less since you started mooning around over him (and that marks the last of the cheesy space metaphors, I promise). Don’t let him warp your sense of the future — will you "ever get over" him? Of course you will. You’ll even find someone just as much to your liking eventually, but he won’t be just a nice version of the shit, so don’t waste your time looking for that. Such a quest is doomed to fail, not to mention make the not-shitty guys you do meet think you’re kind of messed up in a not-all-that-appealing way.

Oh, and one last thing — there’s nothing gender-politics related about your situation, so don’t go getting your feminist sensibility in a wad. You think guys don’t lose their fool hearts to girls who are perfect for them in every way except for being cold and cruel and maybe a little crazy? Where would great art be without the Cruel Mistress or La Belle Dame sans Merci? In Barneyland, that’s where. "I love you, you love me" makes for a very nice LTR, but you can’t dance to it.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she’s raising twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Dear Diary …

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I was on antidepressants for a year and just came off them recently. It was a situational depression — my close sister had died. I have no other psych history. Now, since I’ve been off the medication, I’ve experienced an intense surge of sexual desire and have developed an online relationship with someone where I am his sex slave–toy. I’ve always fantasized about being submissive but never seriously acted on it until now. I find it so erotic!

I feel I’m about to go out of control, though. Out of control is bad, but is being a sex slave bad? My friends and family have no idea. I need to find a safe place to act out my fantasies or go to counseling. How do women who want to be submissive slaves become so safely? What the hell is wrong with me?

Love,

Bewildered

Dear Bea:

Nothing that isn’t wrong with a few million of your fellow perverts, so I wouldn’t get too exercised about it if I were you. Furthermore, I’m sorry to hear about your sister and not particularly alarmed to hear about your long-distance slavery thing. Good for you for finding him, actually. Perv World abounds with would-be submissive sex toys, while tops are always in short supply. (Topping is labor-intensive and requires skill, while bottoming can be done in one’s sleep. Then again, I suppose it is so much easier to type, "I flog you. I flog you some more. I am still flogging you …," than it is to actually flog someone.) Anyway, have fun, but do me a favor: don’t forget that you actually don’t know this guy, no matter how intimate your online connection feels, and also don’t forget that you never really know where an embarrassing picture might turn up once you’ve hit "send."

Don’t fret that your newly awakened libido is going to grow to monster proportions, break free, and stomp all over town like Godzilla, swallowing subway trains and getting all tangled up in the overhead power lines. It’s normal for a sex-drive suppressed by sadness and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to come roaring back to life when exposed to air again. Moreover, S-M, well, it does that. Early in one’s career as a self-professed kink, one tends to go a little overboard, thinking about it constantly, reading everything, joining everything, buying everything, posting unwisely to the Internet, and insisting on oversharing with anyone foolish enough to have briefly expressed even polite interest in your new hobby. You, by contrast, are remaining admirably discreet (it’s not that I think there’s anything to be ashamed of, just that there’s no reason to tell your dentist and your grandmother’s bridge club about it). You are taking it fairly slowly, keeping yourself to yourself, and having the safest supposedly dangerous sex imaginable, the kind that isn’t even really happening. Either you’re not out of control in the slightest or you aren’t telling me the whole story. I’ll have to go with the former.

Of course, there are safe ways to be somebody’s submissive sex toy, just as there are safe ways to go deep-sea diving or take up the flying trapeze — good equipment is key, but finding a good instructor comes first. It doesn’t sound like the online guy is going to become your off-line guy anytime soon, nor need he. You’re in the joining things phase (this usually passes, so you might as well take advantage now), so join something. Not so easy, I know, if you live in a small town or no town, but seriously, the exurbs are no place to be a sex slave (S-M porn abounds with isolated castles full of depraved aristocrats and isolated farms full of sick, sadistic rednecks with barns full of cowed sex slaves, but real life does not). You need to join one of the social-educational clubs you’ll find in most big cities now. They have meetings and get-togethers and swap meets. Hell, some have brunch, which always makes me laugh because I just can’t think of anything less edgy than brunch, but what could it hurt to have some coffee and a muffin and meet some nice people who like to do nasty things? This is how your modern freakazoid finds a tribe.

There may be nobody there you’d ever consider submitting to, body and soul (there almost certainly won’t be), but somebody will know somebody you will want. And even better, they’ll know if he’s safe, and even if he’s fun.

Besides urging you out into the daylight, I also support you in staying home and lurking about the more louche corners of the Internet. Acting out your fantasies online is actually a great way to find out what interests you, and there are no hard feelings if you just don’t feel like finishing a certain session because you don’t like his manner. Or his grammar.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Oh dad, poor dad

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› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

I have a bit of a problem. It’s not a huge one, but I’d like to get past it. A long time ago (maybe 15 years ago or more), I had a dream that my dad was molesting me. Now, I love my dad, and I have nothing but respect for him. I know he would never do anything like that to me. But right after the dream I started to feel uncomfortable around him. If I sat next to him on the couch, I’d sit at the other end and keep a pillow between us. If he went to hug me, I’d want to pull away. I would especially hate it when he’d kiss my cheek. On my wedding day (I’m divorced now — that’s another story), he kissed me on my mouth so as not to mess my makeup, he said. I pulled away and tried to make the kiss land on my cheek. I know he didn’t mean anything by it, but it bothered me. The situation has gotten a little better over the years, but I’m still bothered if he sits too close to me or tries to hug me.

It’s a problem because my dad is a very affectionate person by nature. All my life I’ve always been a daddy’s girl (my mom died when I was young). Now that I’m an adult, he and I are like good friends. I want it to stay that way, but I need to get over this dislike of being touched. What can I do?

Love,

In Dreams

Dear Dreams:

Wow. I don’t get to say this often, but I don’t believe I’ve heard this one before. There’s a similar phenomenon — the friend or coworker sex dream, usually starring someone completely inappropriate or out-of-the-question — that does come up pretty often. Unlike your supercreepy version, of course, the coworker sex dream is at least kind of funny, although it can have oddly lingering effects: you find yourself glancing speculatively at the dream object, against all common sense, or blushing furiously when said coworker brushes your shoulder in the corridor on the way to the break room.

Yours, though, is more like a dream I had when I was five or so, in which my grandmother (in real life, batty and irritating but harmless) was trying to poison me. I gave her a wide berth for weeks, and I distinctly remember refusing food she offered (not a bad idea in general, come to think of it, with that particular grandma). But lady, 15 years of feeling weird about your poor old dad? That’s plenty, already. Good god, let it go.

I know, I know, you want to. If giving yourself a stern talking-to before a visit with dad — reminding yourself that nothing bad ever happened between you and therefore nothing bad will happen if you let him hug you — doesn’t work and neither does deep breathing or stiff drinking, it’s time to call in the pros. I’m pretty sure a short course of cognitive-behavioral therapy would be of use to you. CBT (this abbreviation always startles me, since I doubt very much you’d be interested in cock and ball torture) is based on the belief that the way we think determines the way we feel: change the thoughts and you change the feelings. You seem like a good candidate, given that what’s going on with you is 100 percent internal and that nothing your father has done or could do could affect things in the slightest. You really do need to change the way you think, don’t you think?

If CBT sounds too, I dunno, therapy-y to you, you might consider hypnotherapy, guided relaxation-meditation, or even EMDR, which I spent half a column making fun of just a few weeks back (3/7/07). It doesn’t matter, really. They all work OK. Just do something. This is a really stupid way to be broken, so get it fixed.

There is one word of caution I don’t feel like including here but suppose I must: be very sure of whom you’re talking to before you tell a therapist that you feel creeped out at the slightest physical contact with your father. Recovered memory may no longer be the "it" diagnosis (serious memory research having put the kibosh on that hogwash), but a therapist would not have to be an ’80s-style witch-hunting hysteric to wonder if there might be anything going on here besides a 15-year-old dream with no more basis in reality than the one I had about my grammy in the basement with a sandwich. I believe you that nothing bad happened, but when you add in the early widowerhood and all, you’ve got to admit that there are people who would hear this story and look at you funny. Just don’t be shocked if they do.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.