Savage Love

I’m a 34-year-old straight woman living with a
32-year-old straight man. His daughter is two, and I am the only mother
she has ever known. (Her real mother is a crack whore somewhere.) My
boyfriend tells me he loves me, but it doesn’t feel like he wants to
spend any time with me. I pay the rent and am the only person in our
household with a full-time job. When I get home, I want to relax. He
wants to go out because he has been sitting at home all day. If he
hasn’t been at home, he has been running around with his friends. This
pisses me off, and I am not afraid to tell him so. His response?
“You’re just jealous because you have to work!” Damn right I’m jealous!
Also, I do all the cooking and don’t get any help with cleanup or
housework.

Other factors include my 13-year-old son, who has had trouble
adjusting to a baby in the house; my boyfriend’s outstanding warrants;
and the fact that I have desperately wanted another baby for 10 years.
What on earth should I do?

-Back Against The Wall

Here’s one occupational hazard of the advice-column bidness: If
you’re not careful, if you’re not constantly on your guard, you can
fill your column with letters like BATW’s. Your column fills up with
letters from people asking, in essence, “DTMFA?” and you’re forced to
respond, “Yes, for fuck’s sake, DTMFA.” (For those of you just tuning
in: DTMFA stands for “dump the motherfucker already.”) You may be
helping people, sure, but your column quickly becomes a tedious slog,
people stop reading, and then you have to get a real job at an auto
plant or a hedge fund or a daily newspaper.

But there is one good reason to run DTMFA letters: You can dispose
of the letter quickly—keep the baby, if at all possible, BATW,
and DTMFA the freeloading, inconsiderate piece of shit—and move
on to more interesting topics.

For instance: A new study out from the Bradley Hasbro Children’s
Research Center found that “anal sex is on the rise” among straight
teenagers and young adults. According to a heavy-breathing report from
ABC News, straight kids are having butt sex “to please a partner, to
have sex without the risk of pregnancy, or to preserve their
virginity.”

I’m old enough to remember when getting fucked in the ass was
considered a sex act, something that virgins, almost by definition,
shied away from. But that was before kids were subjected to religious
indoctrination masquerading as sex-ed. Abstinence “educators” emphasize
the importance of virginity—but they only talk about vaginal
intercourse because they figure if we don’t tell kids about anal sex
they’ll never figure out what brown can do for them. But they do figure
it out. And lacking accurate info, kids aren’t just concluding that
anal sex isn’t really sex. (“Otherwise it would’ve been covered in our
sex-ed classes, right?”) Kids are telling researchers that anal
intercourse, unlike the premarital vaginal intercourse they were warned
about (STDs! pregnancy! eternal damnation!), carries no risk of
disease. (I can’t wait to tell all my dead friends!)

I wanted to scream and yell about this study—and a DTMFA
letter leaves plenty of room—but then I figured, you know, fuck
it. I’ve been ranting and raving about the idiocy of abstinence
education for 10 years. Obviously I can’t beat ’em, so I might as well
join ’em. All my life I’ve had to listen to fundamentalist Christian
bigots like Pat Robertson and Rick Warren—Rick Warren,
Obama?—fume about all the terrible, no good, really bad sodomy
gay men get up to. But I haven’t been sodomizing the boyfriend all
these years! I’ve been preserving his virginity.

I’ve been preserving the shit out of my boyfriend’s virginity for 14
years now. If my boyfriend ever decides to marry a woman—miracles
can happen!—he’ll be able to wear white at his wedding. Hell,
he’s so pure he can wear Saran Wrap at his wedding. And his wife will
have me to thank for delivering him to her with his virginity intact.
(Unfortunately, the boyfriend can’t preserve my virginity. As a
teenager, I had actual vaginal intercourse, under duress, with an
actual female’s actual vagina.) But until the boyfriend meets the right
girl, I’m going to keep preserving the living shit out of his
virginity. His virginity isn’t going anywhere—not on my
watch.

My girlfriend’s parents are very wealthy and are
paying for her education. They also bought her an apartment and give
her tons of spending money. My dad is dead(beat) and my mom is a
waitress, and I’m paying my way through school. My girlfriend demands
gifts and flowers. I pay for everything when we go out. Other than
this, she’s sweet and attractive. Once I graduate and start working,
I’ll be happy to pay for everything. But how do I convince her that
things have to be more egalitarian for the time being without losing
her?

-Boyfriend Reeling Over Killer Expenses

P.S. She’s only ever physically affectionate after I’ve spent
money on her.

DTMFA, BROKE. And here’s hoping that the girlfriend’s parents
invested all their money with Bernard Madoff, and that the
spoiled-rotten little whore they raised has to get a job and start
pulling her own weight.

And, hey, here’s another interesting study: While straight kids are
busily boning each other’s butts—the better to preserve their
virginities!—gay teenagers are knocking each other up. According
to a study out of the University of British Columbia, lesbian and gay
teenagers are seven times likelier to get knocked up than their
straight peers. How the hell does that happen? Well, gay teens are
having straight sex in order “to prove they are heterosexual to avoid
harassment and discrimination” by their parents and peers. In other
words, gay kids are still having heterosexual sex under duress.

So this is where abstinence education and homophobia have gotten us:
Gay kids are having vaginal intercourse and straight kids having anal
intercourse. Good work, sexphobes!

I’ve been reading your column since I was 13. I’m
20 now and dating a 41-year-old crossdresser. We were friends for six
months before he told me he wouldn’t be able to spend time with me
anymore unless we “got closer.” A couple months later, he told me he is
into pegging. Now, pegging is all he wants to do. He also told me that
he wants to transition from male to female, but he changed his mind and
stopped going to his appointments. All that is background to what has
been happening recently. When we fight lately, he makes threatening
gestures like he is going to punch me. He also pulls my hair and chokes
me. He refuses to apologize and tells me I deserve it. I don’t know
what to do.

-Worried And Sad

You’ve been reading my column since you were 13, WAS, and you don’t
know what to do? DTMFA—right fucking now, this fucking minute,
without fucking delay. Choking and hair-pulling is physical abuse;
telling you that you “deserve it” is emotional abuse. And those raised
fists—not very ladylike of him, I must say—are a prologue
to more extreme acts of abuse. DTMFA. You deserve better, and
he—well, he deserves to be pegged by a predator drone.

mail@savagelove.net