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I
hope you address the recent rough-play-gone-bad death of New
York City radio newsman George Weber. According to reports,
it appears Weber met a guy on Craigslist for “violent sex,”
and the guy stabbed Weber to death.
It’s a reminder that if you have these kinds of fantasies—Weber
wanted to be bound and abused—you’re better off doing it with
someone you trust and not with some random trick off the internet.
No one should wind up dead trying to fulfill a sexual desire.
—Safety
Conscious
First,
I want to extend my sincerest condolences to George Weber’s
family and friends.
Second, reading about Weber’s death reminded me of a joke—this
has to be the worst start to a second paragraph ever—that
Jon Stewart told on The Daily Show during the darkest
days (er, years) of the insurgency in Iraq. Conservatives
were complaining that a biased media wasn’t reporting any
of the good news in Iraq, nothing about all those freshly
painted schoolrooms or, um, all those other freshly painted
schoolrooms; the news out of Iraq then was all bloodletting,
beheadings, and car bombs, all the time.
“Yeah,”
Stewart deadpanned. “We never hear about the cars that don’t
explode.”
What happened to Weber was horrifying—what John Katehis allegedly
did to Weber was horrifying—and, again, my heart goes out
to his friends and family. And, yes, there are lessons in
this horrific crime for anyone seeking sex and/or love online.
But looking for sex online is not, as some have insisted in
the wake of Weber’s murder, so inherently risky a pursuit
that only a lunatic would contemplate it. Remember: We never
hear about the people hooking up online who don’t get brutally
murdered—and unlike cars in Iraq that haven’t exploded (yet),
it’s actually relevant that most people hooking up online
aren’t brutally murdered.
Every day tens of thousands of people—hundreds of thousands—find
partners online. While lots of folks online are seeking relationships
at sites like Match.com or Christiansingles.com, there are
more people online at any given moment seeking NSA sex at
sites like AdultFriendFinder.com or Recon.com. (People seeking
relationships can find love the old-fashioned way, at work
or by going out, and many do. And the ones who go online stop
lurking online after they’ve met someone and appeared in an
eHarmony commercial. NSAers, on the other hand, have better
odds finding other NSAers online, and they’re always coming
back for more.) If random internet hookups were even half
as dangerous as crimes like this make them seem—if they were
even one-one-hundredth as dangerous—there would be a dozen
online-hookup murders in New York City every day, and scores
more in Toronto and San Francisco and Miami and Vancouver
and Chicago.
No one should be cavalier about safety when it comes to internet
hookups, of course; people seeking NSA or fantasy-fulfillment
sex online need to use common sense and take all reasonable
precautions. Insist on a verifiable exchange of real names
and real phone numbers before meeting; meet in person first,
in a public place, preferably at a time when you can’t mess
around immediately after your first meeting. And people seeking
the services of a pro should go to one of the dozen or more
established websites out there that host ads from pros along
with client reviews.
And it’s always a bad idea to post an offer for $60 in exchange
for sex to the crowd of fakes and freaks who have overrun
Craigslist, as Weber is reported to have done. Meeting cheap
whores via Craigslist ups your odds of hooking up with, say,
a mentally unstable teenage “satanist” with a coke problem
and a MySpace page packed with pictures of him wielding knives
and swords.
Now perhaps Weber, working as a freelancer, couldn’t afford
the services of $200-an-hour professional dominant; maybe
he had lowballed it on Craigslist a dozen times before and
always had good experiences. Most people who ignore my advice
about safety, or hook up with cheap CL hookers, do live to
tell the tale. But when it comes to realizing a fantasy that
involves violence or helplessness, someone safe, sane, and
expensive is more than worth the investment.
Finally, people take calculated risks all the time for pleasures
less essential than sex. You’re assuming a certain degree
of risk—of injury, of death—every time you get in a car, go
skiing, or order the chicken. We do what we can to minimize
those risks (buckle the fuck up, wear a helmet, don’t order
your chicken rare), but we don’t hold up deaths on highways,
slopes, or at the dinner table as evidence that people who
even think of driving, skiing, or chickening have to be out
of their minds.
The sad fact is that some of us will die at the hands of our
intimate partners. Do what you can to minimize your risk of
being murdered by a sex partner, because some people are dangerous
lunatics—and not just internet hookups. Yes, George Weber
took the wrong guy home, no question. So did Laci Peterson.
My fiancé is bisexual. I fulfill his “man-love” fantasies
by strapping it on and giving it to him, but he has started
talking about wanting to have sex with men. I feel like a
jerk for freaking out about this, but I’m not willing to entertain
the emotional and physical risks of opening our relationship
to another person. Am I totally off base here, Dan?
—What
The Fuck Is Wrong With Men These Days
Do
not marry this man.
Lots of bisexual guys are capable of monogamy, as are lots
of bisexual girls. (That’s what angry bisexuals are always
telling me, at any rate, in their angry e-mails.) But this
bisexual guy is not, and he’s made that clear. He gets points
for being honest—and I mean that sincerely. He gets points
for telling you now, before the wedding, that being pegged,
while wonderful in its own right, isn’t enough and that he’s
going to need a little man-love reality now and then. You
might be able to extract a promise from him under duress,
WTFIWWMTD, and get him to agree to sexual exclusivity as a
condition of going ahead with the marriage. But that will
just result in you facing the emotional and physical risks
of an open relationship without the honesty and accountability
that can mitigate those risks.
And to the angry bisexuals: You know I don’t think monosexuals
are any good at monogamy either, right?
My partner and I have been together for four years.
Last year we sought to experiment with another couple via
an adult Web site. We eventually found a sexy pair who we
met up with, but the experience left me feeling unsure about
how comfortable I am with the idea of the “swinging” lifestyle.
I know my partner loves me and is loyal, and he’s messed around
a bit with others since we’ve been together and that’s OK
(so have I, also OK), but getting together with another couple
was a lot more personally challenging than I thought. How
can I get more comfortable and open-minded about this?
—Swinger
Wannabe
The
problem might have been the other couple, SW, and not the
swinging lifestyle per se. You could give it another shot,
with another couple, and see if you feel differently. If you
do and you don’t, well, then you may have to accept—or, more
to the point, the boyfriend will have to accept—that synchronized
infidelity just isn’t for you.
Download
a new Savage Love podcast every Tuesday at www.thestranger.com/savage.
mail@savagelove.net
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