I can see the emails now, "Why the hell did you ask Dan Savage about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?" The best answer is, I knew he would say something funny, thoughtful and dirty. If Savage is ever forced to change the name of his column, Savage Love, he should think about using, funny, thoughtful and dirty with a capital D.
After growing up in Chicago, Savage studied theater and history. But like many smart people he doesn't use that knowledge for anything but making fun of historians and actors. After falling into this advice column gig, Savage transformed and then transcended the very idea of an advice column to the point where if his readers don't get their weekly fix they might end up having sex with a tiger shark because he didn't tell them not to do it.
Just this week Savage Love printed one of the grossest letters I've ever read. It's from MUTTS and she engaged in oral copulation with her dog from ages 13 to 16. I'm going to assume the dog's name was King and it involved peanut butter. She was wondering whether she should tell her current significant other. Like a good unlicensed therapist Savage justified the bestialities for her, told her not to tell anyone and came up with strong facts to prove that she wasn't a minority in the world of animal fuckery.
Its letters like that, which has made millions of people from San Francisco to Prague to Beijing fall in love with Savage. A few of his readers have even been teased by an unnamed SuicideGirl and that's something all of us can certainly relate to. Besides his weekly column, Savage recently released his book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins And The Pursuit Of Happiness In America.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I saw you mentioned SuicideGirls in a recent column.
Dan Savage: Yeah someone wrote a letter and mentioned them. I don't make up the letters I'm way too lazy.
DRE: We thought that was funny. Naming that foamy mix of lube and fecal matter Santorum has done wonders for your popularity. I think I've read it in a few places besides your column now. How did that come about?
DS: Oh really. I'm about to write another column about it. After Rick Santorum made those idiotic comments and has continued to make them [Senator Santorum compared homosexuality to incest, bigamy and adultery], a reader wrote in and said we should memorialize him by thinking of a sex act his name could stand for. It ended up not being an act but a noun and now it's sticking. It's something that didn't have a name for until now. It always needed one. It's like whatever that book was in the 1980's, Sniglets.
DRE: Santorum does sound like something you drop in the toilet. What do you think has changed the most about sex in the new century?
DS: Everyone talks about the way the internet has revolutionized business but it really revolutionized sex because it allowed the four people in the world with fairy fetishes to find each other. It's created communities of people with obscure fetishes who would have otherwise lived in isolation all their lives. I've been doing this column since before the internet exploded. Half the mail used to be "I'm the only one in the world. are there any clubs or support groups for people like me." Now all people need is google and you can find everyone else with the same fetish. Everyday I used to get mail like, what's a cockring? I don't get that question anymore because it's easy to put what's a cockring into askjeeves.com and he'll tell you. Its transformed pornography, personal ads and that's good. It happened at a moment when we needed those things to find a new outlet. Because as the culture progressed or deteriorated depending on your point of view it's no longer ok to hit on people at work or on the bus or on the street.
DRE: Or even in clubs or bars sometimes.
DS: Right so all that "got to get laid" energy had to go somewhere. There had to be a new venue where you can hit on people, be hit on or expect to be hit on. That's the internet.
DRE: Is it a coincidence that the internet came along in the mid 90's when we were criminalizing desire?
DS: It is an odd coincidence and a blessed one.
DRE: Has the internet created any fetishes?
DS: I think in 10 or 15 years it will have. Fetishes usually take root very early in life in formative childhood experiences that go right to your reptile brain. You can't really have those later in life. A lot of people's first erotic experiences now are sitting in front of a computer. In 20 years you are going to have people popping up who have cyber fetishes that aren't just the Matrix fetish or dressing up like cyber geeks or whatever. Especially as technology advances there will be new and different ways of incorporating computers into your sex life with somebody else. I know a guy in New York who is this big time S & M guy and he hired someone to write this big computer program so he could completely strap someone in, wire them up and then he can sit at a keyboard and torture them by typing. I think there will be a lot more of that. Not always S & M but more distant virtual play, sex toys that incorporate the computer while people are not in the same room.
DRE: In some ways it's a good thing but will it depersonalize sex even more?
DS: Anybody who says that about the internet is engaging in willful ignorance of how depersonalizing a singles bar can be or a meat market gay bar or Mardi Gras. Seeing a person face to face doesn't prevent people from depersonalizing or dehumanizing each other. Yeah it can lend itself to that but you fight against it the same way being drunk at a bar lends itself to doing stupid things.
DRE: Now you get drunk, sit at a computer and no one gets hurt.
DS: Right and in a way that's awesome.
DRE: How did you get blessed with that great name Savage?
DS: I've often been accused of taking it but I got blessed with it because it's on my birth certificate. That's my family.
DRE: Ashton Kutcher's popularity has skyrocketed recently.
DS: It sure has. I've been called for comments by the Chicago Tribune. Rolling Stone wants to know what I think of Ashton Kutcher but everyone knows what I think of him. I had a hard-on for Ashton Kutcher before everyone else. When I was writing about him people were like "you have a crush on that guy from that stupid 70's sitcom?" Now everyone does.
DRE: Do you think you were part of him getting big?
DS: No way am I responsible.
DRE: Is the Demi Moore thing a sham?
DS: I don't think it matters much unless you're being invited to participate or observe.
DRE: I think they're definitely doing it.
DS: That would be awesome and I wish I was there to photo document the whole thing.
DRE: What's your favorite thing about him?
DS: He's just a really handsome guy. Even though every time I see him on TV he's smoking, when you read a profile of him they say he's a chain smoker and I hate that. I think that's disgusting so I worship him from afar, I will never make sweet love to Ashton Kutcher no matter how much he begs.
DRE: Why do you hate the word partner so much?
DS: [laughs] Partner is a word some gay people thought of to put straight people at ease. It allows a straight person to be introduced to half a gay couple without having to be either uncomfortable at the mental images or feel uncomfortable in their own complicity in denying gay couples words like spouse and husband. Those are desexualized words.
DRE: Do you consider yourself part of the "gay community?"
DS: There is no such thing as the gay community. The only people who yammer on about the gay community are the gay thought police. They believe that gay community means that we are under siege; we have to pretend to agree with each other and battle the heterosexuals. That is not the reality of the majority of gay people's lives.
We're regular people and we are not waiting for marching orders from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The people who invariably go on about what their gay community thinks and how someone may make the gay community look bad are rainbow flag waving dumbasses who live in hermetically sealed little gay neighborhoods. They are really anachronisms and throwbacks to pre-Stonewall gay life where you lived on a sort of precipice. No gay people I know live that way anymore. Very young people will blather on about the gay community because when they come out they feel like friends are falling away or may be estranged from their family so they cling to this idea of a gay community. But it's very destructive because what's implied is that the gay community is this big group of people who love and will take care of you. That doesn't exist.
No one says to straight women "Straight men are your brothers." They say "Look out. Straight men want to fuck you, will lie to you, get you drunk, put something in your drink and rape you. Careful.' But we say to 15 year old gay boys who are just coming out "grown up gay men are your brothers. We're here to help." We shouldn't give them false impressions. Everyone who is ex-gay or very bitter are the guys who fell for it. They are the ones who believed that once they came out everything would be nice. Then they find out that these guys lie, manipulate and break your heart.
DRE: I think a lot of people were surprised at how moving your book was. Even in your column a lot of honest feeling comes across.
DS: It didn't surprise me because the books feel like extended columns to me where I don't have to shut up.
DRE: When did you start doing Savage Love?
DS: I started doing it 12 years ago when I was 22 in the first issue of The Stranger in Seattle and its been there ever since.
DRE: I saw it in the Prague Pill when I was over there.
DS: It's everywhere. Even in a paper in Beijing. Who knew?
DRE: Find any difference in letters from different countries?
DS: I used to have an answer to that question because for a long time I would only take things via snail mail then I could see the postmarks. But it's rare for someone to tell me where they are from anymore.
DRE: Do you get any hate mail?
DS: Everyday [laughs] tons of it. Half of it is hate mail.
DRE: What's your favorite?
DS: That I'm stupid and I don't know what the hell I am talking about. Often times the mail about what a dumbass I am is packed with typos.
DRE: Those are from Nashville.
DS: Most people think my hate mail is from Christians telling me I am going to hell. Very little of it is from them. A lot of it is from gay people and a lot is from women. Everyone gets it in the teeth from me. I don't spare my own. Everyone laughs until it's their turn to get the knife stuck in them and be the butt of a joke. Then they send me an angry letter about how unfair that was. Usually it starts out "I love all of your columns until you made this joke at my expense." I want to write those people back and tell them what hypocrites they are [laughs]. They laugh at all the people and it's not ok when it's them.
DRE: What's been the best thing about doing Savage Love?
DS: It made me move to Seattle from Wisconsin. I moved here and it took off. It was a lark at first, it sounds cheesy but I wouldn't have moved here, wouldn't have met my boyfriend and we wouldn't have adopted the kid. So the best thing that came out of it is my relationship. Check with me in ten years when we're broken up and bitter.
DRE: How old is the kid?
DS: Five.
DRE: What's it been like?
DS: Having a kid is like having a heroin problem. When it's good you've never been so high, when it's bad you've never been so fucking miserable and you wonder what the fuck you were thinking.
DRE: Has it changed your outlook at all?
DS: It really hasn't. Everyone expected my heart would start to flow with the milk of human kindness but that hasn't happened. I was always short with people I thought were stupid and now I'm even shorter with them because my kid is smarter than half the people who write me letters.
DRE: Did you have a big coming out thing with your family?
DS: Of course. I came out to my family when I was 15, 16, 17 and 18 [laughs]. A lot of straight people think you get a hair in your ass; you do it one Tuesday morning and its over. Usually you reveal things slowly to different people. I told my mother when I was 18 and my father when I was 20. I'm from a really Catholic urban blue collar Chicago family so they were upset at first.
DRE: How much has your sexuality shaped your sense of humor?
DS: It certainly skews your perspective. I think the thing that gay people have over some straight people is that you spend years as an adolescent aware that you are who you say you are and perception is reality because you go home and say you are straight and everyone believes you. Then you go out with your friends where you're gay then you go back home and you're straight. You put these different masks on that's where the clichs came from, gay people love dressing up, gay people love Halloween and they're so good at surfaces because we construct them as adolescents to survive. I had to pass as straight for years so I made a study of straight people for years.
DRE: You think much of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?
DS: I've seen it but I don't have cable so I haven't seen a lot. CNN had me on to talk about Sex and the City and I didn't bother to tell them I had never seen it.
Queer Eye traffics in stereotypes but its fun. Could there be a more harmless PR stereotype than gay guys have fashion sense, can cook and know how to bathe.
DRE: Plus those 5 guys are actually like that.
DS: The fun will be if Queer Eye does a special where they come to my house and clean up. The one big unexpected thing Savage Love has done to me is that I have so much sympathy for straight guys which I didn't use to have until I read their pathetic letters for 12 years. Straight male sexuality is defined as what it is not. It's not female and it's not gay. So a lot of straight guys don't know what the fuck they are beyond they want to fuck women. Anything else beyond wanting to fuck women that anybody can classify as feminine or queer they're not allowed to do. If they do, they will be busted by other straight guys, gay guys or women. Every straight guy's sexuality is in this concentration camp with guard towers around it. They're trapped.
A lot of the straight guys who are out there would pay attention to doing their sit-ups and have a flat stomach but they're friends might call them gay. I've known these beautiful straight guys who have to assert their heterosexuality by destroying their looks. We see famous beautiful male stars do it. They run away from their looks or just grind them away with booze, cigarettes or bad food. It's tragic especially to a connoisseur of male beauty like me.
DRE: What's Dan Savage's favorite pornography?
DS: Hah I can't really say. I don't watch video porn because everyone looks like putty. It's also unimaginative and there are places where the sun doesn't shine for a reason. All those underneath shots and glistening rectal mucus, nobody wants to see that and I sure don't. I like still images and dirty stories. Even still images of a video porn shoot look better than moving videotape.
DRE: What are your favorite girls out punk, emo and Goth?
DS: Does Pink qualify as punk?
DRE: Sure.
DS: If I had to sleep with a girl then I would sleep with Pink. She's so masculine. I would want to sleep with a girl who can break me in two.
DRE: How did you end up answering the letters?
DS: I met somebody when I was living in Madison Wisconsin with my then boyfriend who was moving to Seattle to start a newspaper. We got to chatting, I advised him to have an advice column and then he asked me to write it. It sounds really disingenuous with 12 years and a mortgage later to say I wasn't angling for the job but I wasn't. I was just a busybody.
DRE: What's been your favorite letter?
DS: It's really what is the weirdest letter. You get the letter from the guy who is fucking his mother and you think it doesn't get any weirder than this then you get the letter from the guy who's fucking his mother and eating her shit and you go, there it is. Then you get that letter ten more times from different guys. There are only so many ways people can freak you out before nothing freaks you out anymore.
I used to run these kinds of letters all the time "I've got this sore on my penis or my labia. It hurts and I'm too embarrassed to go to a doctor." I would run these letters just so I could say, go to the fucking doctor. You have a sore on your genitals and there is nothing I can do. I can't write you a prescription. I'm not even a fucking doctor I don't know what's on your fucking dick. I used to only get descriptions. Now thanks to the wonders of digital photography I get photos of the sore on the dick or the asshole from people who are too embarrassed to tell their doctors but they're not too embarrassed to email a photo to some stranger.
by Daniel Robert Epstein.
After growing up in Chicago, Savage studied theater and history. But like many smart people he doesn't use that knowledge for anything but making fun of historians and actors. After falling into this advice column gig, Savage transformed and then transcended the very idea of an advice column to the point where if his readers don't get their weekly fix they might end up having sex with a tiger shark because he didn't tell them not to do it.
Just this week Savage Love printed one of the grossest letters I've ever read. It's from MUTTS and she engaged in oral copulation with her dog from ages 13 to 16. I'm going to assume the dog's name was King and it involved peanut butter. She was wondering whether she should tell her current significant other. Like a good unlicensed therapist Savage justified the bestialities for her, told her not to tell anyone and came up with strong facts to prove that she wasn't a minority in the world of animal fuckery.
Its letters like that, which has made millions of people from San Francisco to Prague to Beijing fall in love with Savage. A few of his readers have even been teased by an unnamed SuicideGirl and that's something all of us can certainly relate to. Besides his weekly column, Savage recently released his book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins And The Pursuit Of Happiness In America.
Daniel Robert Epstein: I saw you mentioned SuicideGirls in a recent column.
Dan Savage: Yeah someone wrote a letter and mentioned them. I don't make up the letters I'm way too lazy.
DRE: We thought that was funny. Naming that foamy mix of lube and fecal matter Santorum has done wonders for your popularity. I think I've read it in a few places besides your column now. How did that come about?
DS: Oh really. I'm about to write another column about it. After Rick Santorum made those idiotic comments and has continued to make them [Senator Santorum compared homosexuality to incest, bigamy and adultery], a reader wrote in and said we should memorialize him by thinking of a sex act his name could stand for. It ended up not being an act but a noun and now it's sticking. It's something that didn't have a name for until now. It always needed one. It's like whatever that book was in the 1980's, Sniglets.
DRE: Santorum does sound like something you drop in the toilet. What do you think has changed the most about sex in the new century?
DS: Everyone talks about the way the internet has revolutionized business but it really revolutionized sex because it allowed the four people in the world with fairy fetishes to find each other. It's created communities of people with obscure fetishes who would have otherwise lived in isolation all their lives. I've been doing this column since before the internet exploded. Half the mail used to be "I'm the only one in the world. are there any clubs or support groups for people like me." Now all people need is google and you can find everyone else with the same fetish. Everyday I used to get mail like, what's a cockring? I don't get that question anymore because it's easy to put what's a cockring into askjeeves.com and he'll tell you. Its transformed pornography, personal ads and that's good. It happened at a moment when we needed those things to find a new outlet. Because as the culture progressed or deteriorated depending on your point of view it's no longer ok to hit on people at work or on the bus or on the street.
DRE: Or even in clubs or bars sometimes.
DS: Right so all that "got to get laid" energy had to go somewhere. There had to be a new venue where you can hit on people, be hit on or expect to be hit on. That's the internet.
DRE: Is it a coincidence that the internet came along in the mid 90's when we were criminalizing desire?
DS: It is an odd coincidence and a blessed one.
DRE: Has the internet created any fetishes?
DS: I think in 10 or 15 years it will have. Fetishes usually take root very early in life in formative childhood experiences that go right to your reptile brain. You can't really have those later in life. A lot of people's first erotic experiences now are sitting in front of a computer. In 20 years you are going to have people popping up who have cyber fetishes that aren't just the Matrix fetish or dressing up like cyber geeks or whatever. Especially as technology advances there will be new and different ways of incorporating computers into your sex life with somebody else. I know a guy in New York who is this big time S & M guy and he hired someone to write this big computer program so he could completely strap someone in, wire them up and then he can sit at a keyboard and torture them by typing. I think there will be a lot more of that. Not always S & M but more distant virtual play, sex toys that incorporate the computer while people are not in the same room.
DRE: In some ways it's a good thing but will it depersonalize sex even more?
DS: Anybody who says that about the internet is engaging in willful ignorance of how depersonalizing a singles bar can be or a meat market gay bar or Mardi Gras. Seeing a person face to face doesn't prevent people from depersonalizing or dehumanizing each other. Yeah it can lend itself to that but you fight against it the same way being drunk at a bar lends itself to doing stupid things.
DRE: Now you get drunk, sit at a computer and no one gets hurt.
DS: Right and in a way that's awesome.
DRE: How did you get blessed with that great name Savage?
DS: I've often been accused of taking it but I got blessed with it because it's on my birth certificate. That's my family.
DRE: Ashton Kutcher's popularity has skyrocketed recently.
DS: It sure has. I've been called for comments by the Chicago Tribune. Rolling Stone wants to know what I think of Ashton Kutcher but everyone knows what I think of him. I had a hard-on for Ashton Kutcher before everyone else. When I was writing about him people were like "you have a crush on that guy from that stupid 70's sitcom?" Now everyone does.
DRE: Do you think you were part of him getting big?
DS: No way am I responsible.
DRE: Is the Demi Moore thing a sham?
DS: I don't think it matters much unless you're being invited to participate or observe.
DRE: I think they're definitely doing it.
DS: That would be awesome and I wish I was there to photo document the whole thing.
DRE: What's your favorite thing about him?
DS: He's just a really handsome guy. Even though every time I see him on TV he's smoking, when you read a profile of him they say he's a chain smoker and I hate that. I think that's disgusting so I worship him from afar, I will never make sweet love to Ashton Kutcher no matter how much he begs.
DRE: Why do you hate the word partner so much?
DS: [laughs] Partner is a word some gay people thought of to put straight people at ease. It allows a straight person to be introduced to half a gay couple without having to be either uncomfortable at the mental images or feel uncomfortable in their own complicity in denying gay couples words like spouse and husband. Those are desexualized words.
DRE: Do you consider yourself part of the "gay community?"
DS: There is no such thing as the gay community. The only people who yammer on about the gay community are the gay thought police. They believe that gay community means that we are under siege; we have to pretend to agree with each other and battle the heterosexuals. That is not the reality of the majority of gay people's lives.
We're regular people and we are not waiting for marching orders from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The people who invariably go on about what their gay community thinks and how someone may make the gay community look bad are rainbow flag waving dumbasses who live in hermetically sealed little gay neighborhoods. They are really anachronisms and throwbacks to pre-Stonewall gay life where you lived on a sort of precipice. No gay people I know live that way anymore. Very young people will blather on about the gay community because when they come out they feel like friends are falling away or may be estranged from their family so they cling to this idea of a gay community. But it's very destructive because what's implied is that the gay community is this big group of people who love and will take care of you. That doesn't exist.
No one says to straight women "Straight men are your brothers." They say "Look out. Straight men want to fuck you, will lie to you, get you drunk, put something in your drink and rape you. Careful.' But we say to 15 year old gay boys who are just coming out "grown up gay men are your brothers. We're here to help." We shouldn't give them false impressions. Everyone who is ex-gay or very bitter are the guys who fell for it. They are the ones who believed that once they came out everything would be nice. Then they find out that these guys lie, manipulate and break your heart.
DRE: I think a lot of people were surprised at how moving your book was. Even in your column a lot of honest feeling comes across.
DS: It didn't surprise me because the books feel like extended columns to me where I don't have to shut up.
DRE: When did you start doing Savage Love?
DS: I started doing it 12 years ago when I was 22 in the first issue of The Stranger in Seattle and its been there ever since.
DRE: I saw it in the Prague Pill when I was over there.
DS: It's everywhere. Even in a paper in Beijing. Who knew?
DRE: Find any difference in letters from different countries?
DS: I used to have an answer to that question because for a long time I would only take things via snail mail then I could see the postmarks. But it's rare for someone to tell me where they are from anymore.
DRE: Do you get any hate mail?
DS: Everyday [laughs] tons of it. Half of it is hate mail.
DRE: What's your favorite?
DS: That I'm stupid and I don't know what the hell I am talking about. Often times the mail about what a dumbass I am is packed with typos.
DRE: Those are from Nashville.
DS: Most people think my hate mail is from Christians telling me I am going to hell. Very little of it is from them. A lot of it is from gay people and a lot is from women. Everyone gets it in the teeth from me. I don't spare my own. Everyone laughs until it's their turn to get the knife stuck in them and be the butt of a joke. Then they send me an angry letter about how unfair that was. Usually it starts out "I love all of your columns until you made this joke at my expense." I want to write those people back and tell them what hypocrites they are [laughs]. They laugh at all the people and it's not ok when it's them.
DRE: What's been the best thing about doing Savage Love?
DS: It made me move to Seattle from Wisconsin. I moved here and it took off. It was a lark at first, it sounds cheesy but I wouldn't have moved here, wouldn't have met my boyfriend and we wouldn't have adopted the kid. So the best thing that came out of it is my relationship. Check with me in ten years when we're broken up and bitter.
DRE: How old is the kid?
DS: Five.
DRE: What's it been like?
DS: Having a kid is like having a heroin problem. When it's good you've never been so high, when it's bad you've never been so fucking miserable and you wonder what the fuck you were thinking.
DRE: Has it changed your outlook at all?
DS: It really hasn't. Everyone expected my heart would start to flow with the milk of human kindness but that hasn't happened. I was always short with people I thought were stupid and now I'm even shorter with them because my kid is smarter than half the people who write me letters.
DRE: Did you have a big coming out thing with your family?
DS: Of course. I came out to my family when I was 15, 16, 17 and 18 [laughs]. A lot of straight people think you get a hair in your ass; you do it one Tuesday morning and its over. Usually you reveal things slowly to different people. I told my mother when I was 18 and my father when I was 20. I'm from a really Catholic urban blue collar Chicago family so they were upset at first.
DRE: How much has your sexuality shaped your sense of humor?
DS: It certainly skews your perspective. I think the thing that gay people have over some straight people is that you spend years as an adolescent aware that you are who you say you are and perception is reality because you go home and say you are straight and everyone believes you. Then you go out with your friends where you're gay then you go back home and you're straight. You put these different masks on that's where the clichs came from, gay people love dressing up, gay people love Halloween and they're so good at surfaces because we construct them as adolescents to survive. I had to pass as straight for years so I made a study of straight people for years.
DRE: You think much of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?
DS: I've seen it but I don't have cable so I haven't seen a lot. CNN had me on to talk about Sex and the City and I didn't bother to tell them I had never seen it.
Queer Eye traffics in stereotypes but its fun. Could there be a more harmless PR stereotype than gay guys have fashion sense, can cook and know how to bathe.
DRE: Plus those 5 guys are actually like that.
DS: The fun will be if Queer Eye does a special where they come to my house and clean up. The one big unexpected thing Savage Love has done to me is that I have so much sympathy for straight guys which I didn't use to have until I read their pathetic letters for 12 years. Straight male sexuality is defined as what it is not. It's not female and it's not gay. So a lot of straight guys don't know what the fuck they are beyond they want to fuck women. Anything else beyond wanting to fuck women that anybody can classify as feminine or queer they're not allowed to do. If they do, they will be busted by other straight guys, gay guys or women. Every straight guy's sexuality is in this concentration camp with guard towers around it. They're trapped.
A lot of the straight guys who are out there would pay attention to doing their sit-ups and have a flat stomach but they're friends might call them gay. I've known these beautiful straight guys who have to assert their heterosexuality by destroying their looks. We see famous beautiful male stars do it. They run away from their looks or just grind them away with booze, cigarettes or bad food. It's tragic especially to a connoisseur of male beauty like me.
DRE: What's Dan Savage's favorite pornography?
DS: Hah I can't really say. I don't watch video porn because everyone looks like putty. It's also unimaginative and there are places where the sun doesn't shine for a reason. All those underneath shots and glistening rectal mucus, nobody wants to see that and I sure don't. I like still images and dirty stories. Even still images of a video porn shoot look better than moving videotape.
DRE: What are your favorite girls out punk, emo and Goth?
DS: Does Pink qualify as punk?
DRE: Sure.
DS: If I had to sleep with a girl then I would sleep with Pink. She's so masculine. I would want to sleep with a girl who can break me in two.
DRE: How did you end up answering the letters?
DS: I met somebody when I was living in Madison Wisconsin with my then boyfriend who was moving to Seattle to start a newspaper. We got to chatting, I advised him to have an advice column and then he asked me to write it. It sounds really disingenuous with 12 years and a mortgage later to say I wasn't angling for the job but I wasn't. I was just a busybody.
DRE: What's been your favorite letter?
DS: It's really what is the weirdest letter. You get the letter from the guy who is fucking his mother and you think it doesn't get any weirder than this then you get the letter from the guy who's fucking his mother and eating her shit and you go, there it is. Then you get that letter ten more times from different guys. There are only so many ways people can freak you out before nothing freaks you out anymore.
I used to run these kinds of letters all the time "I've got this sore on my penis or my labia. It hurts and I'm too embarrassed to go to a doctor." I would run these letters just so I could say, go to the fucking doctor. You have a sore on your genitals and there is nothing I can do. I can't write you a prescription. I'm not even a fucking doctor I don't know what's on your fucking dick. I used to only get descriptions. Now thanks to the wonders of digital photography I get photos of the sore on the dick or the asshole from people who are too embarrassed to tell their doctors but they're not too embarrassed to email a photo to some stranger.
by Daniel Robert Epstein.
VIEW 18 of 18 COMMENTS
argene:
I really like the podcast. Good to listen to on drives!
lemonkid:
I invited him to a country music concert with my girlfriend once, he turned it down.. citing that he was "too gay and mostly loved musicals." Perfect response.