How to do the wrong thing right
Dear Howard,
I considered myself bona fide heterosexual way back in the ’90s; consequently, I’m the proud parent now of a beautiful teenage daughter — living proof that if you fear alternative sexual consequences badly enough, you can perform any feat. I’ve wised up in the years since, regarding what constitutes real relationship motives, but now my college freshman little girl — fresh off a Vegas weekend with a gaggle of her silly sorority sisters — believes she’s “in love” with some ’roided-up, Aussie hustler after he plucked her onstage to gyrate his junk in her face during her “most awesome first male strip show experience ever!” “He’s straight, Dad,” she blushed doe-eyed at me, with a straight face. “We all got invited backstage afterwards; that’s when he gave me his number, we’ve talked practically nonstop ever since — Dad, it’s like I’ve known him my whole life!” Howard, what’s your best advice? — Dean K.
Dear Dean,
Incremental steps — slow ones — are all that’s crucial: You might attempt first reasoning “obvious” logic with your daughter via, say, delicately informing her there are no such fantasy creatures as “straight” males wearing fuchsia sparkle G-strings for office attire, any more than there are “straight” males who, oh, legally qualify income tax deductions for their assorted work-collection of penis pumps. Secondly, there exists no such hunk-of-plenty as a “straight” male stripper who doesn’t primarily rent out his moneymaker to [ahem!] non-female clientele on the sly (i.e., earn his “real” living as a gay hooker); moreover, every single stripper/escort/hustler in Vegas is, by virtue of their chosen career, minimally bisexual (or rather, gay-for-pay): translation, if you’re doing the buying, irrelevant of gender, he’ll sure get grindingly down-and-sexual: Mr. Thunder Down Under possesses testosterone superpowers to lift it lovingly up, always, for whomever flashes cash at his crotch. Your daughter, of course, will call you an old hateful fart liar for destroying her one chance in life for eternally true love and happiness, but she’ll believe your bluntly sincere, father’s spoken truth, regardless.
Dear Howard,
Around the corner, man, looms one hideous “holiday” each year that just puckers my posterior thinking about. Again, I’ve trapped myself inside the exact same Valentine’s Day shit pit that I’ve never once successfully crawled out of — ever — to smell like bouquet roses and heart-boxed candy. It seems my “side dishes” suddenly expect me take them out for a full night of bells-and-whistles romance, with all that’s implied (the horny stinkers). None of these “millennial boys” seem to comprehend, at all, that I’ve a long-term spouse who won’t too kindly tolerate another excuse from me as to why I have to work late again on, of all nights, Feb 14 … instead of making love to him as is required. Howard, you got anything convincing I can use to let these frisky kids down gently on Valentine’s Day without the entire pack of them, too, swearing they’ll come at me with sharp objects and fire? — Harland
Dear Har Har,
FYI, your “millennial side dishes” comprehend perfectly that you’ve a spouse more deserving of your rosily delicious, cream-filled erection on Valentine’s than should be their undeserved holiday candy box treat. However, they simply could not give a cherub’s quiver about your better half’s love for you or your annual guilt pangs over being a serial cheater, nor should they; it’s you alone, stud, who shoulders all and sole responsibility of determining whether your spouse is more important to your cupid happiness, long-term, than any of your little side-trick moppets slinging their pouty arrows, pitchforks and torches at you are, short-term.
Dear Howard,
This guy I’m dating literally looks like something straight out of, like, a recruitment poster touting the virtues of good, clean, healthy living — all hazel-eyed, chisel-jawed, white-teethed, blond and gleaming… a total heyday-of-Hollywood matinee idol material. In other words, the polar opposite of the crack pad “Tina” tweak-a-thon pervert he really is. I enjoy that “him,” because he’ll sure agree to anything in bed with me once he’s slamming, but he never offers going Dutch with our party favors, the freak, and seems honestly to presume I was just born on this Earth to be his very own private, drug lord sugar-daddy. Like, what fresh hell even is this? — Benjamin Bing
Dear Ben Bin,
I’m not sure quite what your gripe here is — that your Nordic MGM god of Dorian Gray handsomeness enjoys kinky meth-sex (the filthier, all the better), or that you don’t make enough money to keep a smack habit going for both you and Lars, simultaneously? In any case, my buzzing B. B., dazzler blonds never pay their own way, especially ones so vile they look virtuous. Haven’t you learned this truth by now? Out of curiosity’s sake, what is Lars’s sign, might I ask? My good friend, a famous astrologist, would bray, “Gotta be Capricorn, honey; only a Capricorn can pull off being true-born junkie and it not show!”
Have a question about love, life, sex, etiquette or anything? Email it to AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition January 29, 2016.
