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BY
DAN SAVAGE
I
am a 33-year-old married male who has a WAM—wet and messy—fetish.
I’m into mud and clay. I have played with various substances
in the bathroom by myself over the years. It always ends with
me masturbating myself into oblivion, wishing there were someone
with me so we could sensuously rub against each other, etc.,
until we both climax. But I’m always alone!
I was always too shy to share this fetish with anyone until
three years ago, when I told the woman I’ve now been married
to for two years. She assured me that I should never be ashamed
of any of my fantasies and that she would be glad to help
me fulfill them. But when I went and got some clay from the
art store, showed it to her, and said that we were going to
be having some fun, she acted uncomfortable. Once I got the
bathtub full of the “mud,” got naked, and started to coax
her into the room, she totally freaked out.
Needless to say, I was mortified and disappointed, and there
was $50 worth of clay in the tub that I didn’t want to go
to waste. So I locked her out and decided to try to make the
best of it. This backfired because soon she was pounding on
the door like she was jealous that I was in there pleasuring
myself. I washed off, washed everything down the drain, and
opened the door, but it was too late. She was angry and wouldn’t
say anything the rest of the day. Neither of us has spoken
of it since.
I still have my fantasies, but now I feel I have to hide them.
I have magazines and videos that I masturbate to, but it goes
no further than that. So my questions are:
1. Am I some kind of a freak or weirdo?
2. Have you ever heard of this fetish before?
3. If so, why doesn’t anyone else ever write to you about
similar fetishes?
4. Will I ever be able to show this side of me to my wife,
or should I just hide it from her forever?
—Mis-Understood
Dude
Let
me get this straight: Three years ago you shared your
fetish and fantasies with the woman you married two years
ago, and your then non-wife assured you that she wanted
to help you fulfill all of your fantasies—but she completely
flipped out when you filled the tub with clay. And 12 months
later, you married her anyway?
I’m not endorsing the way you sprang a tub full of clay on
your future wife—maybe she reacted badly because the bathroom
was an unholy mess? Maybe you should’ve stopped everything
and talked things through when she acted uncomfortable? Maybe
the sight of you half-covered in mud and fully aroused was
too much, too soon?—but why on earth didn’t you get to the
bottom of this before you married this woman?
Sounds to me like you really spooked the wife-to-be, MUD,
both with that “Hey, here’s a tub full of clay!” move and
then, when she balked, by going right ahead with one of your
solo mud-and-sex sessions instead of putting your orgasm on
hold to, gee, go and inquire after the future wife’s feelings
about what just went down. At that moment, she may have concluded
that given a choice between her and a tub full of clay, you
would choose a tub full of clay—because that’s just what you
did . . . and yet she married you anyway.
People are fucking mysteries, man.
And in answer to your questions . . .
1. Yes, but your kinky weirdo freakiness is charming and harmless
and not anything that you need to feel ashamed of, MUD.
2. Yes, yours is a relatively common fetish, MUD, one that
exists on a continuum. Wet-and-messy play can involve substances
that are harmless and represent a low barrier to entry for
the loving, GGG, nonfetishist partner—mud, food, condiments,
etc.—or substances that are not at all harmless and represent
an impossibly high barrier to entry, e.g., shit, vomit, snot.
Your kink could be much, much more problematic.
3. Other people have. Yours isn’t the first letter I’ve run
from/about a weirdo freak like you.
4. You already showed this side of yourself to the wife. She
knows, you know she knows, but you’re both pretending not
to know what you damn well do know. To avoid becoming completely
sexually estranged, talk to your wife. Ask her what
went wrong—how did she go from “never be ashamed . . . glad
to help [you fulfill your fantasies]” to freaking out and
pounding on doors and ignoring the mud-caked elephant in the
room for more than three years?
Ask her to open up—beg her to open up—and apologize to her
out of the gate for botching it, for rushing her, for being
so insensitive as to prioritize the clay over her feelings
after she freaked. And then tell her you want to be able to
work on building a healthy, honest, and mutually satisfying
sexual relationship, one that meets your needs and hers, but
to do that you’re going to have to start communicating with
each other again.
I
have a 15-year-old daughter. I am bisexual and work in marketing
for the adult industry; both are things I explained to her
when I thought she was old enough to form an understanding
of what they meant.
Recently, I returned from an adult- industry convention, where
I often pick up new toys. One of my gift bags contained a
petite sparkly purple vibrator, and I thought, well it’s not
my style but maybe I should give it to my daughter along with
a lecture on masturbation being a great alternative to sex.
Even though I am an open-minded and cool mom, this thought
still made me uncomfortable, and I relegated the new toy to
my nightstand full of gifted-from-vendors toys that aren’t
my style.
I figured that no teenager wants to be given a masturbatory
device by a parent. Was I wrong?
—Teenage
Masturbation Icky
No,
TMI, you were right: No teenager wants to be given a masturbatory
device by her parent. But that doesn’t mean a teenager—even
your teenager—wouldn’t be delighted to have a masturbatory
device. A moment of awkwardness and a little feigned teenage
discomfort/disgust—perhaps even a show of discarding the device
where it could be easily retrieved after Mom apologizes and
retreats—is a price that most teenage girls would be willing
to pay to have a brand-new sparkly purple vibrator of her
very own. (Oh, and I’m thinking she knows about your drawer
full of misfit sex toys. Maybe you could just tell her that
anything in there that’s still in its original packaging is
up for grabs.)
Some
gay friends said that girls don’t ever think a penis is cute.
I started asking all the chicks I know if they think cocks
can be cute. Not one said yes. Gay guys think cocks are cute.
—Curious
Of Cock Knowledge
No
man’s cock is cute—well, no man’s besides the man who got
a Hello Kitty tattoo on the head. A cock can be hot, it can
be beautiful, it can be vaguely threatening. But unless there’s
something very, very wrong, no man’s cock is cute and no man
wants to be told that his cock is cute.
mail@savagelove.net
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday
at thestranger.com/savage.
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