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School Me Once

Joe Newton

I’m a 38-year-old cis het woman who is also a public high school teacher in a small town. After a string of unsatisfying relationships in my 20s, I realized that I’ve only experienced sexual pleasure without a partner. Despite being excited by the idea of partnered sex, once there’s a dick inside me, I hate it. Only one thing still seemed appealing: receiving oral sex. I’d love that with someone skilled. By age 33, I gave up dating since finding a partner only interested in going down on me seemed both impossible and selfish. I put all my energy into my career, my family, and my community. After years of fighting the fascism that is gaining hold in our public schools, I’m burnt out and my standard self-care routines aren’t cutting it. I’m considering seeking companionship once again. Is there an easy way to find a partner...

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... find a partner interested in eating me out but not (or only rarely) anything else? I know the best options are the apps but there are parents as well as former students on those. I already have a target on my back as a liberal teacher. I can’t afford to get caught seeking sex online and the time and energy to date before disclosing my sexual preference sounds exhausting. I don’t want another apple-themed gift. I want my pussy licked. Teacher After Cunnilingus Only Why would anyone want to be a teacher these days? Outraged parents, shit pay, shittier governors, racist demagoguery, book bans, “don’t say gay” laws… and on top of all that, not being free to look for sex where everyone else does these days—on the apps—because you might get spotted by a parent who is also looking for sex on the apps and then get attacked at a school board meeting that makes the local news and goes viral and then have to endure a month of death threats after getting dragged on Libs of TikTok and Fox News. According to ABC News, fewer and fewer people these days do want to be teachers. There are 300,000 teacher and school staff vacancies in the United States right now, a situation the Washington Post describes as “catastrophic,” with red states and Trump counties experiencing the worst shortages. Which should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, as red states and rural areas are overrun with precisely the kind of deranged Trump supporters and other assorted conspiracy theorists who keep attacking teachers and school librarians and administrators. But there are shortages of teachers in more progressive places too, TACO, which means you could easily get a job in a big city in a blue state. Not only would you be less likely to be spotted on the apps by a parent with a kid in your school in a blue state (because there a lot more people on the apps in big cities), you would also be far less likely to be attacked by a parent who did spot you on an app. (Less likely to get attacked, more likely to get licked.) And just as the governors of blue states think you should be able to teach about, oh, slavery and redlining and segregation and Jim Crow (and the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese internment camps during WWII and the Trail of Tears and on and on), most blue state governors would be fine with you getting your pussy licked—on your own time, by other consenting adults—if that’s what you want. Hoping to get some tips from other teachers, I shared your email on Twitter. Suggestions ranged from getting on FetLife, which can be a problematic place, to checking out—and perhaps posting on—the r/RandomActsOfMuffDive subreddit on Reddit. And more than a few of my followers wondered whether you might prefer a woman to a man, seeing as you never really cared for dick. Being a gay dude, however, I know plenty of people who are attracted to men but don’t enjoy getting fucked. (Some guys are tops, some guys are sides.) Luckily for you, TACO, there are straight and bi men out there who only want to eat pussy. I’ve heard from scores of them over the years. Some had severe erectile dysfunction and preferred succeeding at cunnilingus to failing at vaginal intercourse; others were straight male submissives who wanted to orally service a woman without getting anything in return; and more than a few were men who loved eating pussy and somehow wound up married to women who hated oral sex and these men wanted to find women to go down on—and just go down on—outside their relationships, with their wives’ permission (in some cases) or without it (in most cases). But to find them you’re going to have to get on the apps, TACO, which may mean getting out of your small town. Gay kinky sub here and after quite a few years of meeting guys in bars, online, apps, etc., I’m questioning if there are authentically Dominant gay men in the gay kink scene. And by “authentically Dominant,” I mean guys who don’t secretly wish/fantasize about being in the sub role. I’ve met quite a few guys who claim to be Dominant but after some probing (no pun intended) I learn their “real” desire is to be in the submissive role. Sometimes they just seem to be claiming the Dom role because it’s easier to find someone that way. Scroll through any hookup app that is even remotely kink-positive and you’ll see that the supply/demand ratio is skewed: there are way more subs than Doms. Is it dishonest for a sub to market himself as a Dom solely to increase his odds of getting laid? Or are these guys ashamed of being subs? As an additional frustration, I very clearly state in my profiles that I’m a sub and guys will totally ignore that and hit me up asking me to dominate them! Discouraged Lost Puppy “Kink is a spectrum—like so many things,” said GearMedic, a Boston-based kinky gay Dominant (mostly) who has been active in the gay kink scene for 17 years. “At far ends of the spectrum you find ‘absolutes,’ guys who are 100% submissive or 100% Dominant. Somewhere toward the middle you might find a person who’s a perfect ‘switch.’ But just like other spectrums in life, most people fall somewhere near the middle, like any standard bell curve.” Now, if you were to interview a thousand kinky gay men about their sexual interests and create a bell curve using the data you collected, DLP, you would most likely wind up with an asymmetric bell curve; the biggest and bulgiest part of that bell-shaped curve would be closer to the sub end of your graph. Because you’re right: there are more subs out there than Doms out there. But you shouldn’t assume that guys who find the sub role more appealing aren’t also turned on by the Dominant role. Sometimes a “total top” just wants to get fucked. Take GearMedic. He has almost 20,000 followers on Twitter, DLP, and it’s clear from the content he creates and shares that he’s extremely Dominant—even a bit sadistic—but his bio reads, “Dom to most, sub to few,” because he falls a tiny bit closer to the middle of the Dom/sub bell curve than an absolute/100% Dominant. “I find myself more as the Dom with most kinky guys I meet,” said GearMedic, “and they feel naturally submissive around me. But there are a few guys out there who naturally feel Dominant to me and I feel submissive to them. It’s all about the chemistry. There are even times when the chemistry flips, and I switch roles with a guy during our second session.” And there are lots of guys on kinky hookup apps who are still figuring themselves out. “It could be that DLP is encountering guys who are still learning about their kinks and their roles,” said GearMedic. “Or it could be that DLP is putting off dominant vibes and other guys are naturally falling into the submissive role with him.” Follow GearMedic on Twitter @medic_gear. You can find him on Recon at www.recon.com/gearmedic. Your response to WATCHER, whose wife enforces a zero-tolerance policy toward porn, was sound! (As always!) I was surprised, though, that you didn’t ask the obvious question: How is their sex life? If it’s great for both WATCHER and his wife, I would agree with you that her objections are more about control than porn. However, if sex is nonexistent or subpar, resentment may be fueling his wife’s demands. On a personal note, I don’t masturbate and have only ever had neutral or negative reactions to porn, but my partner and I share a deeply, mutually enjoyable sex life. I have no idea if he uses porn. I don’t ask or snoop and he doesn’t tell or leave it lying around for me to inadvertently discover. This works for us. You hit the nail on the head in stating that everyone deserves a “zone of erotic autonomy, even married people.” But if WATCHER’s last counselor didn’t zero in on the state of their current sex life as a couple and how that may relate to his use of porn and his wife’s reaction to it, that would be an excellent place for the next counselor to start. Insert Zippy Acronym Good advice, IZA, but it was hard not to think of the old saying, occasional t-shirt, and once-ubiquitous pirate-themed plaque, “The beatings will continue until morale improves!” Allow me to explain… Lots of monogamously married people have subpar or non-existent sex lives; married people with small children—married people like Mr. and Mrs. WATCHER—almost always have subpar sex lives. Sometimes the subpar-ness or non-existence is temporary; when parenting becomes less stressful and exhausting, the sex improves and/or becomes more frequent. In other cases, sadly, subpar-ness is permanent. The spark is gone, kids or no kids, it’s never coming back, and the marriage becomes sexless. Telling your spouse they’re not allowed to use porn when they may need it most—when they may need porn to tide themselves over during a temporary period of subpar-ness or to help them cope with decades of sexlessness—seems (and pardon my ableism here) fucking crazy. Hanging a pirate-theme plaque over your bed that says, “The porn ban will remain in force until our sex life improves!” is unlikely to improve your sex life, just as beatings are unlikely to improve anyone’s morale. That said, IZA, I agree with you about one thing: it’s galling to be sexually neglected or rejected by a partner who is constantly watching porn. But if you’re not interested in sex because you’re just too exhausted or disinterested and your partner is getting their own needs with a little discreet, considerate porn viewing—and they’re not whining about sex, badgering you for sex, or cheating on you to get sex—then you should not only be tolerant of porn, but grateful for porn. questions@savagelove.net Listen to Dan on the Savage Lovecast. Follow Dan on Twitter @FakeDanSavage. Columns, podcasts, books, merch and more at savage.love.

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