Savage Love

Lost In Pussy Land

Besides not enclosing a few dozen pictures with your e-mail, there's nothing wrong with you that I can tell, LIPL. More pussy gets tossed your way than gets tossed into a Dumpster behind a vet's office—good for you. Why isn't that slow-pitch pussy turning you on? Maybe you like to work harder for your pussy, LIPL, or maybe you're not a catcher (as the gays say), or maybe you're an arrogant douchebag who likes to brag to gay sex-advice columnists about all the pussy he isn't banging for whatever reason. Or, geez, maybe you're just turned off by sexually aggressive women—and that's fine. No one is obligated to be into sexually aggressive women (they certainly leave me cold). But you might want to look into your heart—it's that tiny, undeveloped muscle beneath your left pec—to make sure you're not a dumbassmotherfucker turned off by sexually aggressive women because he believes "good" women don't or shouldn't have sexual desires or agency.

Oh, and speaking of sexually aggressive women: Did you catch Abigail Van Buren's advice column last Monday? (That woman—she's the Johan Fucking Santana of pussy pitchers.) Now, I generally try to avoid policing the work of other advice professionals—life's too short to read Jamie "Get Naked" Bufalino—but I'm going to make an exception. In her March 17 column, Abby responded to a man whose wife was seduced, in the middle of the night, by one of his three brothers. The man's wife doesn't know she had sex with one of her brothers-in-law, and the husband doesn't know what to do about it. Abby suggested that his wife may have had an "inkling that it wasn't [her husband] that crept into her bed" that night, and recommended that her correspondent demand "chapter and verse" from his wife before packing her off to the docs for an STI screening.

Feminist bloggers were outraged—a highly unusual occurrence—because the only correct response, according to Jezebel.com, was something along the lines of, "Your wife was raped! Kill your brothers—all three of them! Now! NOW!!!"

The problem with Jezebel's reaction is this: That woman wasn't raped, because that woman doesn't exist. Regular Savage Love readers are schooled in the art of spotting bullshit letters. So here's the letter, kids—let's see if you can spot the clues:

"I am 27, and my wife, 'Marybeth,' is 26. We recently went to my folks' house for supper. That evening, a heavy snowstorm was starting and... we decided to stay overnight. My old bedroom is upstairs, as are the rooms of my brothers, ages 25, 24, and 22. The guest room is downstairs. [Because] Marybeth said she felt a cold coming on; we decided I'd sleep in my old room. The next day, while we were driving home, Marybeth told me she was glad I had come to her room after all and made love to her. Abby, it wasn't me! She had mistaken one of my brothers for me in the darkness. We are all about the same size and build."

Okaaaay, Savage Love readers, let's pause here. How do we know this is a fake? Well, for starters, there are the ages of the protagonists: 27 and 26. Not 37 and 36, not 67 and 66, but 27 and 26—which just so happen to be, for most folks, the years of maximum hotness. Fake letters about sexual scenarios always involve the young and presumably hot, never the old and presumably average. Next, there's the cascading set of circumstances that are, as is typical with fakes, utterly beyond the control of the letter's author: a snowstorm, a cold coming on, a far-off guest room. And all of his brothers were at Mom and Dad's for dinner that night, too. Or they all still live at home. And they're all in their 20s.

Now back to the letter: