I’m a 34-year-old straight
woman living with a 32-year-old straight man. His daughter is
2, 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...
...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 DTMF’ing freeloading, inconsiderate piece of
shit—and move on to more interesting topics.
For instance: A new study out of 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. This is where abstinence education and
homophobia have gotten us: Gay kids are having vaginal intercourse and
straight kids are 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.
Everyone else: Get your tickets right this
fucking minute to The Stranger‘s inauguration-day brunch, hosted
by me, by visiting www.thestranger.com/inauguration
or calling 206-838-4333. The Stranger‘s on vacation next week,
but you can find a new column next Wednesday on our website.
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