How to Be a Person

by Lindy West

  ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS AT COLLEGE IS GAY. I’m a straight female with my own boyfriend. We’re going to be sophomores in the fall, and I feel like this is about the age where coming out to one’s parents is in order. However, my friend’s parents are conservative. His older brother is also gay—and when he came out, his parents cut off all funding for college and excommunicated him from the family, so my friend is understandably terrified.

  When his parents come to visit, I tag along on “dates” with him to “meet the parents.” It’s a free meal, but it feels a little dirty to lie to his mom and dad about how “in love” we are. Moreover, my friend is coming to my house in California this summer. I had said I would love for him to come visit—as a friend. But his parents think he’s going to be staying with his girlfriend, and they’re thinking of tagging along so they can finally meet their future inlaws, i.e., MY PARENTS. I feel like this is getting way out of hand. How far should we take this act?

  I Should Win An Oscar

  When you feel bad about lying, ISWAO, remind yourself that you’re doing a good deed—you’re doing God’s work—every time you pass yourself off as this boy’s girlfriend. Yes, you’re lying to his mean-spirited, emotionally abusive parents, two complete shits who deserve so much worse than simply being misled. And he only lies to them because—for the time being—he must.

  You should ask him to do three things to secure your continued cooperation in this deception. First, he has to make a solemn promise that he will come out to his parents the day after he graduates. Second, he has to reach out to his excommunicated brother and, if his brother can be trusted to keep his secret, he has to come out to his brother. Third, he has to break up with you at the end of the school year.

  The course of true love never did run smooth, as someone or other once said, so a painfully messy June breakup with his college girlfriend—right before summer break!—not only makes your friend’s Potemkin heterosexuality that much more credible, it also gets you off the hook for this ill-advised summer visit. Then when September rolls around, ISWAO, you two crazy kids get back together. Repeat as necessary, i.e., be “on again” when his parents are in town, be “off again” when your parents are in town, over summer breaks, holidays, etc.

  And help him look around for his next girlfriend—perhaps a lesbian student with similarly batshit parents—because he can’t expect you to be his beard for your entire college career.

  So I Have This Kink

  I RECENTLY READ THE NOVEL A Melon for Ecstasy for an English class, and an interesting debate came up. It’s about a guy who is attracted to trees and goes around drilling holes into trees so that he can “seal the deal.” Though he feminizes the trees, he cares nothing about actual human females. The debate centered on this question: Is this man heterosexual? Or is he really gay? Is he having vaginal sex with a woman or anal sex with a man?

  RF

  If the male protagonist in A Melon for Ecstasy is having sexual intercourse with lady-trees—“feminized” trees—then the male protagonist is a true-blue, red-blooded, lady-tree-fucking straight boy, RF.

  But it doesn’t surprise me that a room full of mostly straight college students would seek to cast doubt on this character’s heterosexuality. “Heterosexual” for many young people is practically synonymous with “normal.” Introduce college-age straight kids to a not-so-normal heterosexual character, and they’ll spend the rest of the afternoon searching for evidence that the dude is gay. He can’t be straight—he’s not normal! This explains the ability of some in your class to look at lady-tree fucking and see, of all things, “anal sex with a man.” Isn’t santorum bad enough? Do we have to worry about splinters now too? (Queer-studies kids who read homosexuality into obviously straight fictional characters are, for the record, just as annoying.)

  I’M A YOUNG HETEROFLEXIBLE GUY who has been a “sugar baby” for a handful of wealthy older guys. I love it! I get money, I have fun being with them, and the guys seem to like having me around.

  The problem is that I just got with a new guy who is really great except for one thing: He is HIV positive. I like the fact that he told me, and I am open to being with him sexually even though I am HIV negative and want to stay that way.

  He is VERY submissive—he wants to be used and abused sexually, physically, and mentally. My question is, what kinds of sex acts are okay to do with this guy? I read on one site that him rimming me is fine, and on another that him giving me a blowjob with a condom is safe, too. But I can’t find a site that specifically explains which sex acts are safe and which ones aren’t when one person is positive and one person is negative.

  Help In Virginia

  It’s pretty simple, HIV: Sex acts that expose you to his semen and/or blood are definitely unsafe, and sex acts that expose him to your semen and/or blood are mostly safe. Rimming you, blowing you (even without a condom), getting fucked by you (with a condom)—all very low risk for HIV transmission. If he’s on a drug regimen and his viral load is undetectable, HIV, your already-low risks of being exposed while, say, accepting a blowjob (and a check) are even lower. The risks aren’t nonexistent—all sex acts carry some degree of risk—but if the risks were any closer to nonexistent, they’d be sitting on nonexistent’s lap.

  And bear this in mind: Odds are good that some of the other guys you’ve babied for—some of your previous daddies—were HIV positive and either didn’t know or didn’t have the decency to disclose. This guy’s willingness to disclose is evidence not just of his honesty and decency, HIV, but of his respect for you and his commitment to keeping you safe. This guy is less likely to ask you to engage in sex acts that are higher risk or unsafe than a guy who isn’t aware that he’s positive or is actively hiding the fact that he’s positive. And his interest in being “used and abused” creates lots of hot safe-sex-play options—letting him beat off while he licks your boots or jerking him off while he’s tied to the bed with your jock in his mouth are no-risk sexual activities that he’s likely to enjoy immensely.

  I’M A YOUNG LESBIAN. I recently met a girl who’s cute, and I think we’re on the likely-to-have-sex-soon track. The thing is, she confided in me that she’s participated in needle play in dungeon-party situations. I’m not someone who is turned off by kinkiness just ’cause it’s kinky, but it seems like even “safe” needle play is a recipe for STI transmission unless you’re playing with trained medical professionals. She says she gets tested regularly, but still, would it be really risky for me to sleep with her?

  Enthusiastic Reader

  Every time I’ve watched needle play in a dungeon-party situation—watched with my hands clamped over my eyes, peeking through the small spaces between my fingers—no one was being stuck with rusty needles by dirty-handed brutes. All the public needle-play scenes I’ve witnessed were ostentatiously sterile affairs: These kinksters, some of whom were trained medical professionals, made a big show of using alcohol wipes, cotton swabs, latex gloves, and clean sharps. I think it’s fair to ask this girl for more information about her blood and needle experiences, about the safety precautions that her partners took, and about how recently she was tested. But rest assured, ER, that the most effective STI transmission routes involve sticking dicks in people in completely vanilla situations, not clean needles in dungeon-party situations.

  I AM A 22-YEAR-OLD BISEXUAL MALE who goes to a small, prestigious liberal-arts college in the Midwest. I’ve had boyfriends, girlfriends, and one-night stands, but I have never really felt like sex worked out as well as I imagine it could. I have a dominant personality, and people tend to follow me. Perhaps for this reason, I have fetishized submission. I imagine I would be into bondage and domination. I think I am a bit more attracted to women and would love to find a woman who takes a strong, dominant role in our relationship. I feel like I am always expected to make the first move with women, which has led me to prefer hooking up with men. I just wonder if there is anything I could do to find a woman who’d be into dominating me.

&
nbsp; I don’t really like making the first move, but I’ve found just waiting and looking pretty doesn’t work too well with women. Are there some ladies I could approach, and after the initial flirting, the dynamic would change and they would take the lead? How would I know who these people are?

  Not Sure What I Want

  There may be one or two young women kicking around your small, prestigious liberal-arts college who fantasize about taking the lead, about tying up and dominating their boyfriends, NSWIW, but they’re not going to be tottering around campus in high-heeled boots and latex and leather. And even dominant women who are out tend to observe/succumb to the same cultural norms/practices that you find frustrating, i.e., they expect the male to make the first move, even in kinky environments.

  But back to the young women you’re likely to encounter at your prestigious college: A lot of women with naturally dominant and/or sadistic streaks—women who will one day really enjoy BDSM—don’t realize it until that first submissive boyfriend draws it out of them. So if you want to get tied up, pegged, and bossed around while you’re at college, NSWIW, you need to be paradoxically assertive about your submissive tendencies. You may have to ask four or five girls, or a dozen, before you hit the jackpot (before you ask a dominant girl), but you will have to take the lead.

  MY BOYFRIEND AND I have been together for nine months. We are gay. We live in a college town. We both found jobs here after we graduated, so we stayed. Since his sophomore year, my boyfriend has had an “arrangement” with an older man, a professor at the university. Did I say older? I meant old. We are in our mid-20s; this man is in his late 60s. The old man comes to my boyfriend’s apartment once a week and cleans it. Does his laundry. Washes his dishes. He actually pays my boyfriend for the privilege. It’s not much, $50, and the old perv says it’s for my boyfriend’s “time,” since a part of their deal is that my boyfriend has to be in the apartment while the old perv cleans it. He’s particularly pervy about how he cleans my boyfriend’s bathroom. Dan, the old perv cleans my boyfriend’s toilet bowl with his own toothbrush, which he then uses to brush his teeth the rest of the week!

  There is no sex. (Presumably, the old perv goes home and beats off after cleaning my boyfriend’s apartment.) None of this would matter if my boyfriend and I weren’t talking about moving in together. I want this “arrangement” to stop. I don’t feel comfortable using a toilet that a man old enough to be my grandfather cleaned with his toothbrush. This has been going on for six years—since my boyfriend was living in student housing. My boyfriend says he likes the clean apartment more than he needs the money (and that’s true, now that he’s no longer a starving student). But I say all good things must come to an end, and if I’m moving in, we’ll have to clean up after ourselves or pay a real cleaning lady, like regular people.

  We agreed to leave it up to you. Dan: The old perv stays? The old perv goes?

  Toothbrushes Are For Teeth

  The old perv stays.

  By allowing this man to clean his apartment, TAFT, your boyfriend is making an old perv very, very happy, and that makes the world a more joyful place generally (and your boyfriend’s apartment a tidier place particularly). Your boyfriend isn’t taking advantage of the old perv—$50 is a much more reasonable fee than most sex workers would charge for the same service (yes, your boyfriend is doing very low-level sex work)—and while the toothbrush/toilet thing is a bit … creepy … and unsanitary … I’m sure you’ll get used to it and/or be able to put it out of your mind. (Although I’d be giving the toilet an additional wipe-down if anyone—young, old, hot, not—were cleaning it for me with a ratty old toothbrush.)

  Let’s recognize this arrangement for what it really is: a successful long-term relationship. How many relationships—gay or straight, monogamous or open, where toilets are scrubbed weekly with toothbrushes or cleaned sporadically with toilet brushes—last six years! Sorry, TAFT, but I’m constitutionally disinclined to dissolve a successful six-year relationship in favor of a relationship that has yet to reach the one-year mark.

  And I think you knew, TAFT. I think you knew I would side with the perv—was there ever any question?—which leads me to believe that you’re secretly okay with this arrangement and an extra $50 a week to put toward household expenses, money that you can invest in cases of Clorox Wipes. You wanted a little plausible deniability, a way for the arrangement to continue without having to give it your blessing, and needed some cover. And now you have it, TAFT.

  I AM A 19-YEAR-OLD STRAIGHT MALE who is only attracted to chubby girls, though I myself am rather skinny. It took a while, but I’ve learned to embrace this (though at first it seemed almost as scary as if I were to come out as gay). However, the problem I seem to have now is that the girls whom I find attractive—big girls—don’t think of themselves as attractive, and that is a turnoff for me. Despite what seems like constant effort on my part to raise my exes’ confidence in themselves, they never got any better and the relationships always ended. I’m not exactly bursting with confidence myself, either, but I tried my best to be a loving and supportive boyfriend. Yet time and time again, their images of themselves somehow seemed to actually turn worse, not better. I attribute a lot of their initial insecurity to the media, but I can’t help but believe I somehow screw up and exacerbate it.

  Troubled Horndog In Need

  You’re young and you’ve accepted your attraction to bigger girls, THIN, and that’s great. But the girls you’ve dated—presumably close to your age—are doubtless still struggling with all the shit that’s been thrown at them about their bodies. To grow confident about something that caused you a lot of pain—to say nothing of being with someone who’s attracted to you in large part because of that something—can take time.

  That said, THIN, if all the bigger girls you’ve dated emerged from your relationship feeling worse about themselves and their bodies … you might be doing something wrong. Were you treating your girlfriends like human beings and talking about their bodies in a way that made them feel attractive? Or did you treat them like fetish objects?

  I’M A 20-YEAR-OLD GAY MALE and I entered into a relationship with a guy at the beginning of the summer. The sex has always been really good, but I’m worried about pleasing him. He disclosed early on that he has a foot fetish. Sex usually consists of him topping me while sucking my toes or me jerking him off while he’s fondling the bottoms of my feet. I don’t have any problem with him getting off to my feet. My problem with the whole ordeal is this: I don’t know diddly about foot fetishism. I tried Google, but my results weren’t much better than “Foot fetishism is the most common form of sexual fetishism from an otherwise nonsexual object or body part, and it’s different depending on who you’re fucking.” Not very helpful.

  I’ve talked to my boyfriend about what I can do to make things better and what he likes, but he’s so bashful about the subject that I haven’t gotten any information save “I prefer the soles of your feet.” I have tried experimenting with things like footjobs (which didn’t work out very well because I had no idea what I was doing), and not knowing what else to do is frustrating.

  I am currently studying in France until the end of August, and I want to surprise him with my newfound knowledge on his kink and new ways to get him off. What should I know? What would you recommend? And could you fill me in on proper footjob technique?

  Seeking Orgasm-Level Escalation

  Male foot fetishists—the straight ones, anyway—will tell you that they react to feet the way most straight guys react to tits: aroused by the sight of ’em, want to do stuff to ’em. Some wanna suck ’em, some wanna fuck ’em, and some kinksters wanna safely, sanely, and consensually “torture” ’em. In other words, SOLE, it’s different depending on who the woman with the tits in question happens to be fucking.

  Same goes for foot fetishists: Some wanna suck ’em, some wanna fuck ’em, some wanna “torture” ’em. (That’s called “bastinado,” and it should only be done safely, sanely, and cons
ensually.) To find out what a particular foot fetishist enjoys most, you’ll have to ask the foot fetishist who’s enjoying your feet.

  Your boyfriend probably finds it hard to talk about his fetish because he feels ashamed, needlessly so, and may have been rejected or mocked by previous partners when he opened up about his kink. (To avoid making his bashfulness worse, SOLE, avoid using terms like “problem” and “ordeal” when discussing his kink.) It’s possible that the stuff you’re doing for him now—sticking your toes in his mouth while he fucks you, jerking him off while he fondles your feet—fulfills all of his fantasies. Keep doing what you’re doing now, SOLE, and as his confidence levels about his kink and your relationship both grow, he’ll become less bashful about discussing his kink.

  As for a proper footjob: Bring the bottoms of your feet together and let him fuck the gap between your soles with his lubed-up cock, titty-fucking style, or have him lie on the floor while you sit on the edge of the bed and move the lubed-up sole of one of your feet back and forth across his cock until he blows his load. Have fun!

  So I’m in This Relationship and Something About the Sex Just Isn’t Right

  MY BOYFRIEND ALWAYS GOES SOFT after he penetrates me. He’s come in me only a handful of times—and I’m a bottom! When it comes to oral, he doesn’t have trouble staying hard. Even more curious: The guy is only 21! Can someone that young really have “erectile dysfunction”? We’ve tried cock rings, and they don’t help: He can keep his hard-on for a little longer (enough time to get inside me without getting soft), but it doesn’t take long for him to get soft again. Dan, what do you think is going on? He’ll be super-hard when I’m sucking him off, then I’ll start jerking him a bit, then he’ll get inside me, and then a very short while later he’s soft. Is there anything we can do? Does he have ED?