Dear Dan: I’m a 37-year-old male. I’ve been with my wife for 15 years. I know that passion transitions in a long-term relationship, but I’m having a hard time finishing lately. Yes, I’m on SSRIs — antidepressants — but that has only exacerbated the issue. We all know that a lot of people who own a vagina enjoy foreplay to help the orgasms along. Will foreplay help people who own a penis get to the moment faster? I’m pretty sure I know the answer, and I figured you’re the one to ask what the best foreplay options are because your sexual knowledge is vast and you regularly deal with two penises at a time. As someone who pleasures a penis and who has a penis that is pleasured, what is the best preparation to get guys off before the insertion happens?
—Seeking Weapons Of Male Penile Satisfaction
Dear SWOMPS: Foreplay isn’t just for vagina-havers, SWOMPS! Penis-havers have nerve endings all over their bodies — inside ’em, too — and while many younger men don’t require much in the way of foreplay, older men and/or men taking SSRIs often benefit from additional forms of stimulation both prior to intercourse and during intercourse. Like tit play. I know some men can’t go there because that tit-play shit — like feelings, musicals, sit-ups, and voting for women — could turn you gay. But if you’re up for it, SWOMPS, have the wife play with or even clamp your tits, and then shove a plug in your ass that stimulates your prostate while also remembering to engage what’s often called “the largest sex organ”: your brainz. Talk dirty to each other! If you’re already proficient at JV dirty talk — telling ’em what you’re about to do (“I’m going to fuck the shit out of you”), telling ’em what you’re doing (“I’m fucking the shit out of you”), telling ’em what you did (“I fucked the shit out of you”) — move on to varsity dirty talk: Talk about your fantasies, awesome experiences you’ve had in the past, things you’d like to try or try again with your partner. To get your dick there — to push past those SSRIs — fire on all cylinders (tits, hole, brain, mouth, and cock) before and during insertion.
Dear Dan: I’m a 32-year-old English guy, and this morning I was diagnosed as HIV-positive. I’m in a bit of a state. I haven’t told anyone, and I needed to get it out. I’m in a long-term, mostly monogamous relationship, but my boyfriend is overseas for work at the moment, so I can’t really talk to him about it. So I’m talking to you.
—Diagnosed And Dazed And Confused
Dear DADAC: I’m so sorry, DADAC. I hope you have a friend you can confide in, because you need a shoulder to cry on and I can’t provide that for you here.
What I can provide is some perspective. I’m just a little older than you — OK, I’m a whole lot older than you. I came out in the summer of 1981—and two years later, healthy, young gay men started to sicken and die. During the 1980s and most of the 1990s, learning you were HIV-positive meant you had a year or two to live. Today, a person with HIV is expected to live a normal life span — so long as they have access to treatment and they’re taking their meds. And once you’re on meds, DADAC, your viral load will fall to undetectable levels and you won’t be able to pass HIV on to anyone else (undetectable = uninfectious). Arguably, your boyfriend and your other sex partners are safer now that you know than they were before you were diagnosed. Because it’s not HIV-positive men on meds who are infecting people, it’s men who aren’t on meds because they don’t know they’re HIV-positive.
I don’t mean to minimize your distress, DADAC. The news you just received is distressing and life changing. But it’s not as distressing as it was three decades ago, and it doesn’t mean your life is over. I remember holding a boyfriend on the day he was diagnosed as HIV-positive more than 25 years ago, both of us weeping uncontrollably. His diagnosis meant he was going to die soon. Yours doesn’t. You have a lot of time left, and if you get into treatment and take your meds, DADAC, you will live a long and healthy life, a life filled with love, connection, and intimacy. Spend some time feeling sorry for yourself, feel the fuck out of those feelings, and then go live your life — live it for all the guys who didn’t get to celebrate their 33rd birthdays.
P.S. Don’t wait until your boyfriend returns to tell him. He needs to get tested right away.
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