I visited Royal Oak, Michigan, for Savage Love Live at the Royal Oak Music Theatre. I didnt get to all of the questions submitted by the large and tipsy crowd a crowd that skipped the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes to spend the evening with me (so honored, you guys!) so Im going to race through as many of the unanswered questions as I can in this weeks column. Here we go
Q: Is there a way of breaking my cycle of being totally sexual and into someone for the first six months and then shutting down to the point that I dont want to be sexual with them at all? Whats wrong with me?
A: Breaking a long-established pattern may require the aid of a therapist who can help you unpack your damage if, indeed, this is about damage. Because its possible this could be the way your libido works; you could be wired for a lifetime of loving, short-term relationships. While our culture reserves its praise for successful long-term relationships (think of those anniversary gifts that increase in value with each passing year), a short-term relationship can be a success. Everyone get out alive? No one traumatized? Were you able to pivot to friendship? Then you can regard that relationship as a success or all those relationships as successes.
Q: How common a kink is it to enjoy seeing your significant other having sex with someone else?
A: Common enough to have numerous different ways of manifesting itself swinging, hotwifing, cuckolding, stag-and-vixen play and an entire porn genre dedicated to it.
Q: Cis, female, 33, poly, bi. I bruise easily, am into BDSM and love to swim in my condos shared pool, where there are many seniors. Any advice for hiding bruises or getting over the embarrassment?
A: Dont assume the senior citizens in the pool are as naive and/or easily shocked as our ageist assumptions would prompt us to believe. Someone who became a senior citizen today who just turned 65 years old was 35 in 1988. I happen to know for a fact that people were doing BDSM way, way back in 1988.
Q: My husband is a sweet guy who is very good to me. But he is also a gun-toting right-wing conservative, and these days that feels like an insurmountable difference. We have been together for seven years and married for two. No kids yet. I love him and the thought of leaving him is terrifying but I honestly dont know if this is going to work.
A: If youre afraid to leave him because of those guns, you need to get out. If youre afraid to leave him because you love him and couldnt live without him, you might be able to stay. I wouldnt be able to stay, personally, but you might. Maybe if you make no political discussions about anything, ever a condition of remaining in the marriage.
Q: When you are entering into something new, how do you differentiate between infatuation and real feelings?
A: Infatuation is a real feeling. Only time will tell if other real but more lasting feelings like, like like, love, lasting love will surface when those feelings of infatuation inevitably fade.
Q: I can easily have an orgasm with toys but I cant have one with my boyfriend. What gives?
A: Your boyfriend could give you orgasms if you handed him one of those toys, showed him how you use it on yourself, and then guided his hands the first few times he used it on you.
Q: Why does my girlfriend enjoy anal sex more than I thought she would?
A: Because she does. Because anal is hot. Because the clit is a great big organ and most of its inside the body and anal penetration may stimulate the backside of your girlfriends great big clitoris in a way thats new and different and highly pleasurable and hey, wait a minute. You arent disappointed shes enjoying anal more than you thought she would, are you?
Q: Donald Trump has been impeached, and you get to decide the punishment. What sex toy gets used on him and who gets to use it?
A: Trump doesnt deserve a sex toy. Sex toys are for good boys and girls. All Trump deserves is a lump of the coal he loves so much shoved far enough up his ass to serve as a gag.
Q: Is there ever a healthy way to partake in sensual parties while in a monogamous marriage?
A: Yup.
Q: The Dirty Sanchez actually a thing?
A: Nope.
Q: Im married and finishing my PhD while working full-time. As a result, I dont get to spend as much time as I would like with my wonderful husband. I know youre a workaholic as well. How do you manage to make your husband feel he is getting the attention/time he deserves?
A: When Im totally stressed out and working on several projects, and I dont have the bandwidth to give my husband the attention/time he deserves, I take a moment now and then to reassure him that things will settle down soon and well have more time together. Ive found hes most receptive to this message when its delivered immediately after Ive taken a few minutes to blow him.
Q: Do you recommend specific prostate massage toys? Besides dick.
A: Forearm.
Q: How do you approach people about a three-way without ruining friendships?
A: I think close sexy friends and the-sex-was-great-but-everything-else-sucked exes make the best very special guest stars. But if youre worried about ruining friendships, well, dont hit on friends. Hit on strangers. (And remember: A stranger is just a friend you havent had a three-way with yet. Or something.)
Q: Do you think its unwise to give and/or receive gay oral sex without a condom?
A: When we speak of gay oral without a condom which is almost all of the gay oral out there we speak of ones that sucked not wisely but too well.
Q: Are anxiety-induced orgasms a thing? They must be, because I have them.
A: Im glad theres at least one person out there whos managing to enjoy the Trump era.
Q: Im a 21-year-old, queer, poly, cis girl who recently got into this whole thing with a coworker at my shitty fast-food job. Long story short, we were having a rad time fucking around in the freezer until he bashed International Womens Day on Facebook. I stopped getting him off by the frozen meat without an explanation, and I quit my job to go bind books instead. Is it too late to reach out and tell this dude that I dumped him because of his misogynistic online life? And how bitchy can I be?
A: The world would be a better place if (1) women refused to sleep with right-wing assholes (to say nothing of marrying them) and (2) women told right-wing assholes that right-wing assholery is the ultimate cock-block and they have only themselves to blame for it. So its not too late, and you should be as bitchy as you can be.
Thanks to everyone who came to Savage Love Live in Royal Oak and to everyone who attended my shows at the Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis and the Barrymore Theatre in Madison over the same weekend. Savage Love Live comes to the Oriental Theater in Denver on May 10, find tickets at savagelovecast.com/events.