March 29, 2006

I am a 17-year-old straight girl with a boy problem—and as such I am fairly sure it won't be terribly interesting to read, and will thus avoid publication, but I figured it would be worth a try.

I've known this boy for three years. A year ago, he asked me out but wanted me to keep the whole thing secret. We had the prototypical movie-theater-back-row kissing extravaganzas. Alas, we eventually split. I spent months crying and sulking, openly loathing the prick. Eventually I gave up hating him, and soon after, we "hooked up," as the youths call it these days.

During a fateful conversation shortly thereafter, he informed me that I was no more than an easy, alcoholic "no big deal." This resulted in yet another period of sulking and crying. I confronted him. Soon we were at it again and I was feeling sluttish about my inability to have a platonic relationship with a straight boy. His response: "Just because two people have amazing sex doesn't mean they're not real friends." Since that conversation, we've gotten together a few times, but never as friends. I never thought of myself as someone shallow enough to go through all this just because he's good in bed—Christ, is he!—but I suppose that's really beside the point. Anyway, my questions:

1. Is it actually possible for two people to have both friendship and sex?

2. Will anything more come from this? Is there any chance at an actual relationship?

Just Another Silly Girl

1. Yes, absolutely—and I speak from experience. (Hey there, Mike.)

2. Nothing will come of this, JASG. Sorry.

Let me clue you and other youths in on something that ought to be covered in sex-ed but isn't. (Nothing useful ever is.) Some people seek out sex partners for whom they feel nothing, or worse yet, for whom they feel nothing but contempt. Why? Because some people are insecure assholes, JASG. Since it's impossible to have sex with someone without making yourself vulnerable, and since the more attracted you are to someone, the more vulnerable you have to make yourself, insecure assholes will sleep with people they don't care about. Being rejected by someone you actually like and/or being exposed as a bumbling beginner is scary, so insecure assholes avoid the emotional risk by seeking out, say, an easily manipulated person with low self-esteem.

The mistake you've made, JASG, is assuming that this guy must like you because he wants to fuck you. While that's often the case, it's not always the case, and this boy's desire to keep your relationship secret was a red flag. Now that you know he's been using you, JASG, you have a choice to make. You can go back to loathing the prick, and that's probably what most people would advise you to do. But if you're digging the amazing sex, and you can accept that nothing more will ever come of this relationship, hey, why not use him right back?

I'm a first-year student at a university in Canada. Everybody is quite accepting of homosexuals like myself, so I don't have to deal with people calling me names and things like that. However, discrimination is the least of my worries. My roommate, let's call him Stephen, has homosexual tendencies, too, though I'm having doubts that he is completely gay like me. Growing up in a rather conservative city in the U.S., it was great for me to become close to a rather free-spirited Canadian. Though tall and confident, he is still in the closet about these tendencies (the only person who knows about them is me), so the rest of the people who live near us only know me to be gay.

At the beginning of the year, it was great. We would change in front of each other, have great conversations, and once we even had an inadvertent fling. But recently, things aren't carrying on in the same uninhibited way they used to. Lately, he comes home drunk from partying with straight guys, and then crawls into my bed and has sex with me. The sex doesn't resemble the fling that happened earlier in the year—there is no sweet talk, no personal connection. I don't have the heart to make him stop once he's started, and afterward he just goes into his bed and passes out. It's hard to know how to deal with this.

There isn't anyone I can talk about this with. I feel like it was fate that the two of us were assigned as roommates, but on the other hand, he causes me a lot of unhappiness. Should I confront him about the situation? I could tell him outright that he's hurting me, but that might lead to awkwardness between us.

Sometimes Misery Doesn't Love Company

You're also being used, SMDLC. Your drunken roommate isn't ready to come out as gay or bi, and so long as you're willing to be his private come-dump, he doesn't have to. With you around, he can play it straight, get drunk with his pals, and have all the gay sex he wants after each inhibition-lowering binge. And while your predicament may sound desperately hot to others—I'm gonna get lots of mail from guys offering to trade places with you for a night—for you the hotness has worn off because you've been out long enough, and you're emotionally healthy enough, to want something more from a guy than just his loads.

So what do you do? Assert yourself. You have more power in your situation than JASG has in hers, SMDLC. While it would be relatively easy for JASG's boy to go find himself another girl, your roommate can't find another guy without taking some baby steps out of the closet. So make up your mind about what you really want, SMDLC, and what you're willing to settle for, and then confront your roommate. I doubt he's ready for a relationship, but at the very least you should be able to leverage a little more compassion, tenderness, and sweet talk out of him.

Regarding your ITMFA/impeach the motherfucker already campaign: I usually enjoy your column, but lay off Bush. You hate Bush, most of your readers hate Bush, congratufuckinglations. You liberals are so fucking pathetic. Your guys get to run Congress for 50 years and now, having been defeated, you can't just shut up. Why don't you just concentrate on dicks?

Good Luck In '06

Concentrating on dicks is easy for me—I get letters from dicks every damn day.

Speaking of ITMFA, perhaps I launched the campaign a bit prematurely. Anyone who visited impeachthemotherfuckeralready.com knows it wasn't quite ready. I didn't have the buttons or lapel pins in stock, I didn't have links up, and I didn't have the URL I wanted—ITMFA.com—because someone beat me to it. As it turns out, that person wasn't a cybersquatter, as I called him in this space, but a cool dude who gave me the URL—gave it to me!—in exchange for my making a small donation to his favorite charity, Right To Play (righttoplay.com), "an athlete-driven international humanitarian organization that uses sport and play as a tool for the development of children and youth in the most disadvantaged areas of the world."

So forget about that long URL: Visit ITMFA.com to see pictures of men, women, cats, and babies sporting ITMFA gear, order your official ITMFA buttons and lapel pins (for yourself, or send one to your congressperson!), and help spread the meme. ITMFA.com!

Got problems? Oh, yes, you do. Write [email protected]. Illustration by Misako Takashima (misakorocks.com)

© Dan Savage