Eugene Weekly : Savage Love : 9.6.07

Savage Love
by Dan Savage

My friends and I were debating a troubling incident over drinks and figured you would be the best person to ask: What should you do when, while looking for a toilet, you accidentally walk into the bedroom of someone you know, but don’t know well, and discover a boy half her age tied to her bed? (Half her age = very early 20s.) The boy is not just tied to her bed, but also has a giant, leather muzzle-like thing buckled over his mouth, clothespins on his nipples, his cock exposed—and hard, which seems relevant—and, this is an important detail, a look of panic in his eyes?

My friend said, “Oh! Sorry!,” shut the door, and quickly left without saying anything. But should she have done something more? Called the police, perhaps?

Concerned Women For America

 

Did the boy want to be there? His hard cock would seem to scream, “Yes! Yes!” But what of his look of panic? It’s tempting to credit that look to the bondage or the clothespins or his helplessness and presume that he’s being held against his will. But a naked boy sprawled out on a bed of rose petals, a dozen tiny tea candles twinkling on the windowsill, dollops of whipped cream on his nipples, will also look panicked when a stranger walks into the room. So it’s likelier that this boy was merely distressed—and humiliated and turned on and thrilled—at being discovered by someone else, a stranger, in this helpless condition, exposed as a perv and some kinky, older femdom’s sex slave.

But this boy, unlike a boy rolling around on a bed of rose petals, can’t bolt if whipped cream or clothespins are applied to his nipples in a nonconsensual fashion. So here’s what your friend should do if she ever finds herself in a similar situation: Step into the room, close the door, walk over to the boy, unbuckle his gag, and ask him if he’s all right. If he says yes, ask him if he’s sure. If he says yes again, ask him if he’s really sure. If he says yes a third time, take the clothespins off his nipples, count to 10, give the clothespins a half turn, put them back on his tits, and quietly leave the room.

Then your friend should rejoin the party, hand the gag to her host, and say, “You do know it’s not safe to leave a tied-up person—particularly a gagged one—alone, right?”

 

Lost in the oohing and aahing over the outing of another socially conservative lawmaker—something that no longer surprises me—is the fact that there was an undercover police officer in a bathroom at the Minneapolis airport specifically for the purpose of rounding up men looking for sex. This concerns me. Why shouldn’t someone, even a closeted senator from Idaho, be able to pick up a sexual partner in a bathroom? I can understand arresting someone for public sex, but for public hitting-on? As a gay man, doesn’t this concern you?

Confused And Scared Here

 

Before I answer your question about U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idahomo), CASH, I want to dispute the vicious assertion you’ve made about my private life: that I am a “gay man.” Let me be clear: I am not gay and never have been. Yes, it is true, as the Idaho Statesman has reported, that as a teenager I “came out” to my mother shortly after my father, a police officer, asked her for a divorce. But I was motivated by a selfless desire to take my mother’s mind off her marital woes, not a selfish hunger for cock.

I want to put my state of mind into context on the day I told my mother I was a homosexual: I assumed that my mother, a practicing Catholic, would react negatively to my “coming out.” I expected her to say, “Oh no! First a divorce and now this! Why me, God! Why me!” And then I would say, “Psych! Just kidding, Mom! I am so totally not gay! Never have been!” I hoped this would help put her impending divorce into perspective—yeah, divorce sucks. But at least none of her sons do.

Unfortunately for all concerned, my mother took the news so well—she seemed quite thrilled—that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was, in fact, not gay and never had been.

I have been living a lie ever since.

As an advice professional, I fully realize that my life is open for public criticism and scrutiny, and I take full responsibility for the mistake in judgment I made a decade and a half ago when I “came out” to my mother. Maintaining this lie has forced me to deceive more men than I care to remember—including my lovely husband, Terry, who is everything I ever wanted in a spouse, despite his large penis and stubborn refusal to get breast implants. But I assure my readers that each time I sexually serviced another man, which I did only to maintain the facade of my homosexuality, I was thinking of warm, wet pussy.

Mmm. Pussy.

Moving on: I’m sure that Senator Craig takes comfort in knowing that some regard him as a victim of police entrapment, CASH. And despite the fact that I am not gay and never have been, I don’t think it should be illegal for one man to hit on another man. But if a bill making it illegal for men to hit on other men in airport toilets—or anywhere else—had come up for a vote, Senator Craig—with his perfect antigay voting record—would surely have voted in favor of it. So even if Senator Craig is the victim here, as some are insisting, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for him.

However, CASH, as I’m sure you and others involved in the homosexual lifestyle are aware, the kind of man that plays footsie in an airport toilet fully intends to have sex in that same toilet, and a public toilet is a public place—and public sex is illegal for gay people like you, CASH, and for straight people like me and Senator Craig.

And while I would be the first to argue that most of the men looking to get it on in toilets and other public sex environments are discreet and don’t bother anyone—and I argued just that on CNN last week—some are not discreet and some do bother people. (I also argued that most of the men getting it on in toilets are straight-identified, just like me and Senator Craig.) There were complaints about that particular bathroom at the Minneapolis airport, and the police did what the police are supposed to do when there are complaints—they responded. If straight men, like me and Senator Craig, had been fucking women in the toilets at the Minneapolis airport, the police would no doubt have responded to those complaints, too.

Finally, part of the thrill of public sex—getting it on in toilets or parks with strangers—is the delicious danger, the exquisite risk, the trouble you know you’ll get into if you get caught. So it’s hard to have much sympathy when someone who is aroused by the risk of discovery is discovered. It wouldn’t be a career-destroying event for an out gay man today—like, say, a George Michael. It would, however, be career destroying for gay-bashing, straight-identified hypocrites like, say, Senator Craig.

 

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