I met this girl on an “adult”
website. We exchanged a few e-mails, then we chatted over IM twice,
just the basic small talk, before exchanging numbers. It was on the
phone that she told me about her rape fantasy: She has always
fantasized about being kidnapped by a stranger from a public place,
held in a dark room over the weekend, and forced to do whatever her
captor wants.
That sounds hot, but I wouldn’t do it
without at least meeting first. Safety first. So the idea now is to
meet at a bar, have a drink, and then go back to my place and enact a
date-rape scene. Not quite her ultimate fantasy, but it just so happens
to be one of my all-time fantasies. We’re both turned on by the idea
that we will be near-strangers.
Now here comes the problem: What if she is
some wacko who will call...
...fantasies. We’re both turned on by the idea
that we will be near-strangers.
Now here comes the problem: What if she is
some wacko who will call the cops on me/blackmail me and say it was
actual rape? Can I protect myself from this somehow? We never talked
about it over IM, just on the phone. This is one of the boxes I would
like to check before I die, but I want to be safe about it. Help!
To Rape Or Not To Rape
I’m tempted to advise you—and others
with similar fantasies (not all of them men, not all of them
straight)—to Google “Oliver Jovanovic” and then move on to the
next question. But there’s the digital divide to consider: Not all
aspiring date-rape fetishists have access to the interwebs.
Oliver Jovanovic was a graduate student at
Columbia University when he met a woman named Jamie Rzucek on the
interwebs way, way back in 1996. The two bonded over a shared interest
in bondage and torture, and they met up for an evening of consensual
sex that included bondage and torture. After it was all over, Rzucek
went to the police and Jovanovic was arrested, prosecuted, found
guilty, and given 15 years to life. He spent almost two years in
prison—during which time he was brutally assaulted—before
he was released on appeal and ultimately kinda, sorta exonerated.
Guess what got Jovanovic out of prison?
E-mails that had been improperly excluded by the judge during the first
trial. The e-mails showed that Rzucek had not only consented to engage
in bondage and S&M, but that she had touched base with Jovanovic
after the fact to tell him how exhilarated she was.
The lesson for you, TRONTR, is to get it in
goddamn writing. Negotiate this scene via e-mail, keep copies of those
e-mails, and agree in advance—via e-mail—on a safe word
that, if uttered, brings the action to a screeching halt. I’d also
suggest that you—with her consent—make a digital audio
recording of the encounter. Then you wouldn’t just have e-mails proving
she consented going in, TRONTR, but a digital recording that proved you
stopped whatever it was you were doing if she used her safe word and
retracted her consent during the encounter.
Making a digital audio recording of the
encounter means you won’t have photos or video to share over the
interwebs, which should appeal to her if she is concerned about
privacy. And using the magic of the World Wide Interwebs, you can
simultaneously record this encounter on your computer and remotely on
hers. That should give her some assurance that you won’t take advantage
of her written consent to a consensual rape-role-play scenario as a
cover to actually rape her, i.e., to do things she hasn’t consented to
or to ignore her if she removes her consent during the act, because
then she’d have proof that you ignored her safe word and kept going
after she withdrew her consent.
I’ve been seeing “Radioman”
for a few weeks—the physical chemistry between us is amazing, and
we have a lot of fun. He had a vasectomy a year ago (he’s only 26), and
for me this is a deal breaker since I want to have a family. The other
surprise is that he is in relationships with two other women and the
three of them get together and have threesomes. I am a bisexual woman
recently out of a long-term relationship, and I am interested in
joining this little playgroup. However, I met one of the other women
recently, and she seemed jealous and upset. Radioman insists that she
was just tired and actually likes me. I’m not so sure. Am I asking for
drama by getting involved in this foursome?
Thinking Of Joining A Harem
Yes.
Speaking of drama: Teen mom Bristol Palin
and her fiancé, Levi Johnston, called it quits last week. So
we’ve been cheated out of the Royal Rube Wedding we were promised
during last summer’s Republican National Convention—and another
child will grow up without a father in the home, which is a tragedy for
the child, according to America’s Talibangelists.
Or that’s what they said when Mary
Cheney—remember that dyke?—had a baby with a woman she
would marry if she could marry. It’s weird that America’s
Talibangelists aren’t making the same point now.
I hate to disagree, Dan, but
you missed the mark when you wrote this: “When we marry, we’re signing
up to fuck someone at least semiregularly for decades. Not interested
in fucking? Don’t marry.”
Dan, people marry for many, many reasons.
Sex is only one of them, and sometimes it isn’t even high on the
list—or on the list at all. Family, friendship, stability, love,
someone to grow old with, and on and on. Your surprisingly narrow
description of what marriage means needs some rethinking.
Thanks for your work,
Cacilda Jethá, MD
I’m willing to concede that I left an
important subordinate clause out of the sentence that riled you, CJ:
“When we marry, we’re signing up to fuck someone at least semiregularly
for decades, among other things…”
Marriage can be about all the things you
list, but so long as sexual exclusivity is presumed to be a part
of marriage—a defining part, according to the
right-wingers—spouses have a right to expect sexual
activity within their marriages. People who are interested in
marriage but not sex—people whose lists only include family,
friendship, stability, love, someone to grow old with, and on and on,
but not sex—need to inform their prospective spouses of their
disinterest in sex before marrying, not after.
As I’ve said a million times: If you don’t
think that sex is what marriage is all about, mostly about, or even
partly about, if sex is something you can live without, that’s grand.
But you need to marry someone who feels the same way or inform your
betrothed of your disinterest in advance. And if you lose interest in
sex after you marry, but want your partner to stick around for the
family and stability and friendship, I’ll let you in on a little
secret: The spouse is likelier to stick around if you give the spouse
permission to get his or her sexual needs met elsewhere.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people
who aren’t interested in sex—who consider sex to be trivial and
unimportant—nevertheless deny their frustrated partners
permission to do this trivial, unimportant thing with others.
mail@savagelove.net