Talking Dirty, Internet Dating, and “Is My Friend Dan Lying?”

by A Dude

In past relationships and in my current one, my boyfriends have made the (totally reasonable) request that I talk dirty to them during sex. With all the good intentions in the world, I open my mouth … and no words come out. I feel a terror that I can only describe as “stage fright.” I’m pretty shy and quiet in general, but I’d like to be obliging. What do guys like to hear when girls talk dirty? What particular things do they particularly NOT want to hear? Should I rehearse in advance? I’m hounded by the terror that I’ll say something completely unsexy that spoils the mood.

All sorts of guys like to hear all sort of different dirty talk; there’s no magic formula that makes magic hot-sex fumes seep from the pores of every dude’s skin. For example, a guy with a medium-sized cock might not want to be told how big his cock is, since that’s only going to make him think you’re telling him something porny in order to sound porny. (Not hot.) And yet: if you’re legitimately into recurring sex with a dude, you should be able to ID the things that are distinct about the way y’all are doing it — rhythms? inter-thrust bouts of kissing? positions? — and then make sex dirt in your mouth from its fecund particulars. I bet you can do this! Though right now, it sounds as though you’re just worried that anything you say will sound risible (and not, uh, rise-able) to his cock. You’d prefer not to come straight off the dome with “do you like my titty tops?” — since then everyeone will stop fucking. Because of all the laughing.

I have a plan for you. It involves you potentially embarrassing yourself, though. (Though not in front of your lover.) Also I promise that I did it once, too.

You need to say some embarrassingly dirty shit in public where people can hear you. And then you need to realize it is not the end of the world. Maybe sing “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” at karaoke. Early Polly Jean Harvey could work also. (Drive to another town if that helps!) Depending on the local attitudes, your personal version of “I sincerely wanna fuck the taste out of your mouth” or “I wanna bathe in milk, eat grapes, Robert DeNiro sit on my face” might draw stares. Some older people might even give you whatever-would-your-parents-say glares. But fuck them. Do it and be proud of it. Own that filth in your mouth. There are other ways: check out some Mary Gaitskill stories (or some Bataille or maybe de Sade?), memorize some of the dirtiest parts, and then scream them out loud in the street late at night when none of your neighbors can see who is screaming. The point is: you need to behave as though the world should be accustomed to hearing non-ridiculous, deeply felt porno-isms emanating from your soul. (Deal with it, society.)

Then drive home or run inside or shut your windows and realize that you are indeed a verbal-sexual being. After this vision quest, my guess is that you’ll be able to connect with the particular things that make sense to say to your dude in bed.

I go out on a lot of internet dates and about half of my dates seem to want to discuss it. “Have you done this a lot?” they’ll ask. I consider this breaking the fourth wall in a way. It bothers me because they seem to really be asking, “How many guys have you been with?” Typically I just make mouth noises and change the subject.

(Ed. note: This is to be read reverse-chronologically.)

BoringDatingSiteSocialMediaGuru
@JustFUCKaLot @cannotstoptalmboutinternet @thewaywe____now I ASSURE YOU ALL THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE INTERNET. IT IS NOT MAKING DATES LESS INTERESTING AT ALL. SWEAR SWEAR SWEAR. #vestedinterests
17 seconds ago

thewaywe____now
@CannotStopTalmboutInternet Did not know u r 1 of da tribe?!? #internetshtetl
1 minute ago

JustFUCKaLot
@cannotstoptalmboutinternet @thewaywe____now Unfollowing y’all internet-navel goons. Just make conversation like a real man w/ladeez + stop obsessing about online world!!! #realtalk #LookAtYourOwnFeeds
1 minute ago

CannotStopTalmboutInternet
@thewaywe____now DOT SHANDA. #uAintInternetDatinRight
4 minutes ago

thewaywe____now
@CannotStopTalmboutInternet Plus what is happening on all these dates, also? My internet dates never result in sex. Is it possible this many ppl r meeting up firsties this way and no1 is doing it? Or am I not hitting things correctly?
9 minutes ago

CannotStopTalmboutInternet
@thewaywe____now I NO. It’s like if you go on that many internet dates, I wonder if something is rong w/you? Or me, if you’re on an internet date with me? So that’s all I talk about on dates now?
10 minutes ago

thewaywe____now
@cannotstoptalmboutinternet It’s like, GURLS: you going on so many innnnnernet dates is making me have questions about the sex that I only feel comfortable couching in user-experience nerdery!!!
11 minutes ago

CannotStopTalmboutInternet
RT @thewaywe____now This happened: RT @BoringDatingSiteSocialMediaGuru I made this! bit.ly/DateFactoidChartToMakeYouInsecure
30 minutes ago

But seriously: I think a good rule for a date set up through the Internet is to resist the temptation to talk about the Internet all the time. It’s a crutch. Give the guys subtle hints that you don’t want to talk about yourself in relation to the virtual world, or just say, “Ahh, let’s not talk about that! Let’s pretend the computer doesn’t exist for two and a half hours!” or “If you want to know how many dates I go on, just ask me that! But let’s take Internet navel-gazing out of the equation.”

I’ve been non-committally-committally (i.e. we get along but neither of us wants a real relationship) seeing a guy for the past year. Ever since the first time we slept together, the only way he could get off was via a blow jay. We’ve talked about why he can’t finish the job in my lady parts (condoms aren’t the issue) and he says he has never been able to do that with any women, even his dream-girl-ex-gf. My questions are as follows: a) Is he lying? b) If he’s not — what’s his deal? c) Are there some dudes that can only make it happen in a mouth? and then d) WHY?

a) Always a possibility. But you have been with him for over a year! That would be a pretty sustained lie. Think: does he have that kind of falsehood-endurance? Might he not slip just once and lose himself in your vagina? My guess is that this is a real thing of his. Which begs the question…

b) What is his deal? See: “even his dream-girl-ex-gf.” Again: you have been “non-comittally-committal” with him for over a year. That is a long time for a dude to be so casual. And it is also a long time to have the chimera character of a “dream” ex-girlfriend still in his head. It’s possible that these two issues are not connected, though I doubt they are not. My guess is that when he was with the “dream ex-gf,” he had some other poetic, un-graspable notion that seemed just out of reach at the time. He might always be “holding back,” in some way: either by keeping his sperms out of the vagina, or by consistently having a dream-fantasy supersede the actual experience he’s engaged in during any particular moment. Are you cool helping him through this? Or are you just really desperate to feel his cock seize up inside you during his orgasms? If the answer to the latter question is (and has been) “yes,” you need to wonder whether it’s worth continuing on with him (and also potentially why it has been cool with you to fuck this way for a year, contra your desires).

c) I have heard tale of this phenomenon broadcast via sad songs and legends that have reverberated down through the ages (e.g., “The Ballad of Why Can’t I Come in A Vagina, It’s a Mystery,” and The Tragedy of Athens Is That Its Men Are Not But Able To Ejaculate But Outside Thine Doomed Birth Canal). No but really — I have never heard those songs or seen such plays. This is a new one on me.

d) Innovation and frontier-expansion in the field of “feeling fucked up about matters sexual” is perhaps the sole activity in which America might be expected to remain competitive in our brave new century.

I have a hairy butt crack. Thoughts?

How do you know this? Is it because you wipe your own ass and therefore have a sort of non-imagistic and purely tactile sense of the hairs in your butt? Because that’s no big deal. Or is your sense of this more due to this one time when you looked at the back of yourself in the mirror, and there was a penumbral suggestion of anal-muff peeking out from the curvature of your ass-cheeks? I only ask these questions because I think women are generally made to be way too self conscious about the hairs on their body — to the point where they often over-estimate the significance of hair due to its terrible (not really) existence. It’s possible you can just relax about this, and that you don’t truly have a forbiddingly, carnival-attraction tush-beard.

But who knows, that might actually be the case? If so, my guess is there are waxing options available to you? Or some kind of permanent procedure, if we’re talking about ZZ Top-grade sheets of follicle? (I realize that is not a real thing, I don’t think.) So: as with many things… you should determine whether you’re just provisionally freaked out by the unforgiving strictures of mainstream efforts to make women hate their bodies, or if you actually have an authentically felt problem with something about yourself that you would like to change. And if you decide it’s the latter, your mission is to go about addressing it in a responsible way with a trusted and fully-bonded lady-hair institution. I think that’s right.

Is my friend Dan lying when he says literally all girls underestimate how good they look in glasses?

Do you wear glasses? If so, your friend Dan is perhaps trying to hit on you. (But even if you want him, encourage him to do a better job of it, OK?) Does he own and operate a thriving mall franchise based on one-hour lens prescription-filling? Then he may be lying to you.

Though it must be said: lots of women look amazing in glasses. They magnify the eyes, which is almost always a nice side benefit! If you don’t have terribly prominent cheekbones, those black n’ bulky hipster frames can add a sense of structure to the top half of the skull’s overall profile. Also: to a certain type of non-philistine dude, the prospect of a woman being an aggressive reader (not guaranteed by the mere presence of glasses, of course, though we are all socialized by cliches regarding nerds) is also attractive. Sometimes adding glasses to a girl does not make her seem any more or less attractive than she was previously. Only in one instance in my life has the glasses-look on a girl I thought was generally hot made her look less attractive to my eyes.

I was recently diagnosed with a chronic vaginal pain disorder, called ‘vulvodynia’. Women who suffer from this all experience different intensities of pain, but in my case it means that I’ll never be able to have penetrative sex with anyone. Ever. I’m talking about full-on PIV intercourse. I can do other sexual things, but never that. For example, a finger or two is fine, but any more than that is excruciating.

Right now, because of this, I’m feeling like no man will ever want to be with me. So my question is this — do you believe there are men out there who would be willing to have a relationship with someone incapable of having sex? I have asked numerous people about this, but mostly I feel that they’re lying to me to protect my feelings. Generally I have a hard time believing any man would be interested in a sexless relationship.

I’m 20, and obviously a virgin because of this, and I don’t even know how I would bring this thing up if I were to start seeing someone. When do you tell someone you can’t sleep with them?I feel like this disorder has ruined my life, and that no-one will ever love me.

Sorry to go on and on. I’m just curious as to your honest opinion on this subject. Please don’t feel you must lie so as not to hurt me.

OK. Usually, even when giving serious advice, it can also be fun to jazz around stylistically with this column. We are turning the jazzing-around down to 0 on this one.

My immediate, personal reaction to your question — after the initial large amount of sympathy and well-wishing for your good health, bodily and mentally — was, “hmm, it might be very hard for me to be in a long-term amorous relationship with someone who could not have penetrative sex.”

But then I remembered how the various attitude-molds in my mind related to “doing it” are always being broken and remade in relation to every woman for whom I feel romantic affection. Any guy who is not merely intent in jackhammering away at anonymous pussy is always having his conceptions and definitions brought up for review. The sort of holy, pure surprise that this constant re-making and re-exploration of one’s imagination can bring about is awesome and as big as the whole fucking entire universe, I believe. And the severity of how much we often DESIRE to be made anew and changed by the requirements of another person reminds me of John Donne’s ecstatic Holy Sonnet XIV, the opening lines of which go like so:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

So — at a very abstract, conceptual level, what I suppose I am saying is this: In the balance of some warm embrace with another loving person, you might well overwhelm that man’s way of seeing EVERYTHING. Your condition is a condition, to be sure. But it is also a force. Any man who is interested in you will be tested by it. And I do not think it is out of the question that some man — when faced with the challenge — could give himself over to the prospect of doing you long, loving erotic justice as his official response. The challenge could even refashion him into state where, to his great surprise, he does not care about your limitations! His way of seeing could be unmade to a degree where he simply wants to devote himself to your requirements. It could turn out to be his calling.

Now: that’s obviously a super idealized scenario. And most of the men in the world are total jerks, for real. So I’m not suggesting that finding someone will be easy. It may indeed be very hard. But, while you navigate that process, remember also that there are support groups for your condition. (I just Googled so many!) Same goes for books about ways to live with this condition. (Ditto.) I can’t speak to the quality of particular books or support groups, but the doctor who diagnosed you should be able to help you with this. My non-medical note is that, while you submit to the totally healthy and commendable lingo of support groups — which can have a fairly anesthetized and not-sexy language to it all — that you also remember that Eros is unpredictable. That it is by definition wild, and you might be surprised by the ways a man could love you.

Previously: Porn, Assne, “I Love You,” and Short Guys.

A Dude is one of several rotating dudes who know everything. Do you have any questions for A Dude?