How to Be a Person (14 page)

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 consensually.) 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?

Lover Is Missing Poundings

Your boyfriend is hard during oral sex and when you jerk his cock, LIMP, and only loses his erection when he’s in your ass or about to go in. Hmm. That doesn’t sound like ED to me—there’s no such thing as “act-specific ED”—but more like YBDLAS, or “your boyfriend doesn’t like anal sex.”

Your boyfriend may feel pressure to perform, LIMP, as being fucked is important to you. (Please tell me that he’s coming inside a condom when he comes inside you.) And he may feel some pressure to conform. Anal sex among gay men has been elevated
to the status of vaginal sex among straight men, LIMP, in that it’s somehow become the defining sex act, despite the fact that roughly a quarter of all gay men don’t enjoy and don’t indulge in anal sex. Your boyfriend may be one of those guys, but he’s too inhibited to tell you how he feels because, hey, it’s buttfucking and he’s gay and all gay men are buttfuckers and if he doesn’t enjoy buttfucking then he’s some sort of defective gay buttfucker.

Tell him he doesn’t have to do it if he doesn’t enjoy it and, for the time being at least, you’re taking anal off the menu—lifting the pressure off his shoulders and dick. Focus on the stuff that works for him right now: oral and JO. And remember, LIMP, if he’s coming in your mouth, he’s still coming inside you.

I MET MY GIRLFRIEND
about three months ago on a social-networking website. The pictures made her look attractive and in shape. We texted each other nonstop for the first three months. This past weekend we met, and she didn’t look anything like her pictures. However, we did still have sex twice. I’m about to start my freshman year in college, and I do not want to be tied down going into school. Breaking up with her will break her heart into pieces. I have no clue what I should do
.

Epic State Of Confusion

You didn’t meet your girlfriend three months ago, ESOC, you met this girl last weekend. And if she expects a lifetime commitment after posting misleading photos and exchanging text messages
and a single weekend of sex, she isn’t just asking to have her heart broken, her heart
needs
breaking. So you’ll have to break it for her, ESOC, unless you’re prepared to be with this woman for the next six or seven decades.

She’ll conclude that the breakup has something to do with her looks, of course, and that fact will make your rejection hurt all the worse. Good. She set herself up for rejection when she posted misleading photographs on that social-networking website and forged an emotional connection with you under what amounts to false pretenses. Your rejection may convince her to post more-representative photos—honest photos—in the future.

Anyone looking for sex partners online is free, of course, to post misleading photos of mysterious provenance. But those who do this have no one to blame for their hurt feelings but themselves. If I may paraphrase the caption under a famous
New Yorker
cartoon: On the internet, no one knows—or has to know—that you’re a dog. But when chatting becomes cyberdating, when romance may be in the offing, and a face-to-face meeting becomes inevitable, an exchange of better photos—or at least more-representative photos—is simple common sense and common courtesy.

And here’s where you went wrong, ESOC: You fucked this girl. She naturally interpreted your willingness to fuck her as a sign that you didn’t care about the discrepancy between her photos and her actual appearance. It’s going to make the rejection she has coming more devastating than it needed to be.

WHAT DOES A PERSON DO
when an LTR starts to feel stagnant or boring or dull?

Partnered But Jonesing

A person experiments (with partner), cheats (on partner), or breaks up (with partner).

So I Think I Just Cheated

I LOVE MY BOYFRIEND OF THREE YEARS
,
but I fucked up. We’ve had our ups and downs—he broke up with me for two months last summer because he said he was “young and needs to feel free”—but we’ve always worked through things. He is super supportive of me, and we’ve both really grown a lot as people together. But despite the affection and love, I just don’t feel wanted. I don’t feel like he wants to fuck my brains out like he used to. In fact, he rarely does, even when I try to initiate sex. Over the last six months, I’ve struggled with depression and not feeling sexy, and not feeling wanted is making both things worse. Last year, we talked about opening up our relationship, but I wasn’t really comfortable with it
.

Long story short, I went to visit a friend in another city who lives practically next door to a former fling of mine from four years ago, and I ended up fooling around with the former fling. It wasn’t full sex, but it was highly inappropriate. And yet … it felt so good to be wanted so badly
.

I feel like a terrible person for so many reasons. I told my boyfriend—he didn’t respond emotionally, and after 45 minutes he got up and left and said he would call me when he knew how he felt. I want him to forgive me, but I have a feeling he can’t. I don’t want to cause him any more pain than I already have, but I have no idea how to do that. Do I give him space? Do I go on with my life?