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Dear Dan: I’m an old guy, fast approaching geezerdom. After 45 years of marriage to the same woman, the sex has fallen off to zero. We otherwise have a great and comfortable relationship. If I want any at all these days, the only options are masturbation or professional service providers. I was very nervous the first time I paid for sex. Curiously and surprisingly, considering my Christian upbringing, I didn’t feel at all guilty. I now find the urge gets stronger as the body gets weaker. It seems as geezerdom takes a full hold, all I think about is pussy, and paid sex has become a regular thing. You stress honesty and communication for a long-term relationship to work. In our case, honesty would mean the end to what is now just a great friendship that provides us both with deeply satisfying companionship. I don’t want to hurt her, but revealing my outside activities would certainly do so, as she thinks men using prostitutes is disgusting. Any comments from a young gay guy?

Sin Or Salvation

Dear SOS: There aren’t any young gay guys around at the moment, so you’ll have to settle for my advice… Honesty and communication are important, SOS, but there are limits. No long-term relationship would survive a strict regime of full disclosure enforced with depositions taken under oath, regularly scheduled lie detector tests, truth serums disguised as artificial coffee creamers, etc. Knowing what to omit and avoid — identifying herethere-be-monsters spots on the map and sailing around those topics/ incidents/persons — is just as important as honesty and communication. And married people, even long-married people, get inner lives, a few secrets they take to the grave, and some privacy and autonomy.

But there are limits. If your innerlife amounts to a double-life, that’s a problem. If secrets place your spouse at risk of grave physical or emotional harm, that’s a problem. If your zones of privacy and autonomy grow so large that your spouse doesn’t know who you are anymore, that’s a problem.

But I don’t think what you’re doing is necessarily a problem, SOS. If your wife is truly content — if she isn’t interested in sex anymore, if you’re not cheating her out of anything she values, if you’re not taking risks with her health, if you’re not depleting your retirement savings to finance your activities, if all of the above is true — then visits to sex workers are covered by my standard advice to people in sexless but otherwise solid, loving, and fulfilling marriages: Do what you gotta to stay sane and married.

You sound like a decent and loving husband, SOS. To make sure you’re also a polite and courteous client — for tips on communication, personal hygiene, tipping, and avoiding women who have been trafficked — check out the all-star sex-worker panel we convened for a recent episode of the Savage Lovecast. Go to savagelovecast.com and listen to episode 387.

Dear Dan: One of the boys at the restaurant where I work met up with a dominant gay couple in a regular bar — not a gay bar — during happy hour. They told him to go to the bathroom and strip in a stall. Then one of the guys came in and took his clothing from him. He didn’t know when they would be back or even if they would be back. While he was trapped there naked (and hard), other men were coming in and out. Knowing that other people didn’t know he was in his stall gave my coworker a big thrill. My problem: This couple and my friend involved other people — without their knowledge or consent — in their little domination game. I say, “Not okay!” We got in a heated argument about it and decided to ask you for a ruling.

Coworker’s Recent Escapade Entirely Perverted

Dear CREEP: Let’s say a straight couple comes into your restaurant and they’re seated in your section, CREEP. They order, they eat, they tip, they leave. All good? Now let’s say that, unbeknownst to you, the man was wearing a locking male chastity device and the woman was wearing the key on a chain around her neck. She was dripping wet all through dinner, his cock was straining against the confines of his chastity device, and a big part of the turn-on was being in public and interacting with, say, a waiter who had no idea. Is that okay?

Of course it is — just like it’s okay for a businessman to get a secret thrill out of wearing panties under his suit at an important meeting or a sneeze fetishist to get secret thrills during flu season. The world is full of people deriving all sorts of secret thrills from all sorts of seemingly random shit. So long as secret thrill derivers keep it to themselves — so long as they don’t actively involve others without their prior consent — there’s nothing “Not okay!” about secret thrill derivation.

Bisexuals, grab your pitchforks: Dan interviews writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis at savagelovecast.com.

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