How to do the wrong thing right
Proudly self-confessed social media hermit that I am, I unashamedly don’t text and won’t read texts sent me, to say nothing of replying to them. “Delete” is the only teensy button I deign to obsessively punch. I shun Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, cameras of every sort — all pods, pads, apps and smartphones; Scruff, Tinder and Grindr (all three of the little pigs) go spuriously disavowed. I’m the J.D. Salinger of sex advice columnists. Thus, I could just kiss all you fellas for the tsunami of questions you’ve since submitted regarding a column I wrote in February pertaining to what I presumed was but a trivial topic: gay slang acronyms and abbreviations. Astoundingly, I have received a sizeable series of follow-up questions that even I — cloistered sex-Dumpster-diving researcher that I am — had never myself previously heard. So, let’s everybody stand up, spin dizzily around 23 times in a circle, and just get figgily breadcrumbing right to it.
Dear Howard: Sir, have you heard of anybody who’s ever done “figging” before? My weekend Master, I just noticed, has added “figging” to his Saturday’s playlist agenda on me, but I can’t tell if it’s meant to be my reward or punishment. With Master, the pleasure/pain pendulum can always swing either direction. — Bjorn Tobey
Dear Bjorn To Obey: Sweet mother of Mephistopheles, you boys are absolutely killing me here: The wonder, considering such twisted bedroom “agendas” you pervy little acolytes make me research, isn’t so much that dear Howard’s computer has now all but entered into a near-permanent state of blinking pop-ups forebodingly warning me, “YOUR SEARCHES ARE BEING RECORDED.” No, the actual wonder is why my unholy hard-drive hasn’t yet spontaneously combusted altogether. Fortunately, my spouse has now gone yawningly un-shockable to whatever archetypal Ask Howard errands he’s assigned, such as me blasély chirping, “Oh, and while you’re out, find us an Asian market somewhere that sells whole entire ‘hands’ of fresh ginger root — not just those chopped-off fingers the regular grocery stores sell. And pick us up a new paring knife, too. A sharp one — we’re setting the bed ablaze tonight!” (“Yes, Lamby,” he hollowly responds, numbed and inured to whatever lunatic instructions I hurl him. That’s his adorably sweet nickname for me — Lamby… you know, because I’m such a manger-born, bleating innocent.) Here, all you virginally fresher-than-springtime deplorables, is the super-easy, three-step recipe for figging: 1. Peel a “hand” of ginger root into the shape of a small butt plug (the fig). 2. Insert into anus. 3. Scream.
So, remanding your reward/punishment query, Lamb Chops, I think we may safely eliminate any “reward” factoring into your weekend’s writhing-in-misery playlist. Just be grateful Master isn’t ordering you whip up that BDSM home-suppository favorite: four ounces of melted glycerin soap mixed with two tablespoons hot chili powder and hot curry powder. No doubt, you’d then consider figging a delightful alternative, indeed. And just why, you ask, is it called “figging” anyhow? Ah, yes, well, for all you suckling piglets born yesterday, the winking world of S-&-M wallows of mirthful misnomers: Git figgy wid it.
Dear Howard: Against my sane judgment, I recently befriended a fervent, “all-in” Christian. What started out as just cordially banal gym banter — his workout routine is the same time every day as mine — gradually mutated into grabbing a bite together here and there. Then honestly, I don’t know what possessed me, but last Friday I invited him by my place for just some leftovers of my “world famous” lasagna and (assuming he didn’t get all sanctimoniously augury about it) maybe enjoy a toke or two beforehand.
My sexual interest in Deacon Pass-The-Plate was a limp zilch; like, within my britches’ bulge-ranking, His Zealotry Holiness scored a miraculously flaccid zero. Hell, his sex appeal barely qualified even as existent. You know exactly the type I mean; everybody does: Not good-looking by any stretch, although not quite pitchfork ungodly; neither fat nor fit; not dreary, but not dreamy; neither petite, nor passably tall; not humorless or in any way humorful. In short, he not one iota fuckably appealing nor fuck-a-duck appalling. (In the now-vanquished World Book Encyclopedia era, circa 1972 edition, his mug would be the correspondingly bereft of photo accompaniment pictured in the “C” volume adjacent to: “Christian, Born-Again.”)
Stunningly, he actually accepted my lasagna leftovers’ invitation — that is, until I told him my apartment was on the ground floor, number 23: I’m telling you, Howard, I’ve never seen the color drain out of anyone’s face so quickly — like, holy fuck, man, it’s not like I told him come up to my 13th floor devil’s lair, apartment number 666! So what damnable enigma happened here, for this my Jesus freak friend to suddenly go off, slinging rude ’tude my way, his parting snark being that rich old sanctimonious gem: “Have you been saved?” Pirouetting on his pious heels, he fled so fast I didn’t even get the chance to holler back, “Soon as you’re gone, I sure as hell will be!” — Kasey with a K
Dear Suckubus with a K: OK, so here’s the locoweed-lowdown on numeral 23: In a far, far and away too ludicrously occult-obsessed land of lurid enchantment called Gayville, 23 has unfathomably come to symbolize “riding the horned beast.” Now, whether one is actually required (please forgive my crude parlance here) to fuck himself via riding said succubi’s literal horns, or whether the beast is purely a horny fucker in general (salivating to filthily destroy just any anus) is a trifle murky; regardless, in what passes online for mythological “truthiness” in nowadays’ jizzy jargon, the number 23 translates into a fetish for riding the “horns” of beastly tops. In gay-speak clarification: “How much hornier than the devil’s dick is a thankless size queen?” Numeral 23 — the very dumbest urban legend ever spawned — amounts to nothing more than a fictional fantasy creation of author William S. Burroughs in his farcically demonic sendup of “numerology science” and the ridiculous convolutions created by “numerologists” to achieve their desired results. Burroughs intended his laughably hokum “23 enigma” to be an idiocy-personified articulation of the “laws of five” which (banish thee, Lucifer, now!) states that “all things occur in fives,” as indisputably proven by the numbers 2 and 3 added together equaling 5; hence, look in places you’re not supposed to, and you’ll discover demons you’re never supposed to see: Burroughs mockingly howled all the way to the bank.
The sole intrinsic significance, Kasey, and the only unique quality of 23, is that number 22 precedes it and number 24 follows it. And that’s all the “enigma” amounts to — just a boringly ordinary, grotesquely insignificant, demon-free numeral. For more sleazy elucidation than Howard’s here, Kid Kinkubus with a K, you’ll need contact Beelzebub himself.
Dear Howard: I’m getting no tenderness or passion anymore from my supposed boyfriend. Not a shred. We’ve been dating five months now — the last three exclusive — and he says he loves me, but he only comes over for a grind-and-grunt quickie, followed by a “good boy” pat on my head while he “permits” me to lick everything clean until his heartrate returns normal. Prison twinks receive more dignity. “I’ll call you this weekend,” he soothes. “We’ll go out to a nice dinner.” Then he’ll peck me a sweet, heart-melting emollient in his escape, smiling over his shoulder, “You know, I just love you so much.” And so there, with his semen-scented breath I’ll stand, abandoned as a smacked-out Cedar Springs street hustler, shaking my head, going, WTF just happened here? — H.N.E.
Dear Honey: Girl, what happened is you just been breadcrumbed — this year’s deviously newer, more psychopathically-improved (i.e., less morally cumbersome) extension of last year’s “ghosting” phenom, in which one guillotines all contact with whomever they’re “dating” just for the sociopathic fun of it. They’ll feign to continue lusting you on Instagram just barely enough to amorally ensure you keep chasing their trail of sex-baiting crumbs hysterically down a path of unrequited amorousness, leading absolutely nowhere … and, still, you all bewilderedly ask Howard, in tones beatific of contempt, “But, why do you refuse participating in social media?”
— Howard Lewis Russell
Do you have a question — about etiquette, love, life or work — that needs a special spin from Howard? Send your problem to AskHoward@DallasVoice.com and he may answer it.