Dear Dan: I’m a 31-year-old gay man who looks 45. Most men interested in me are surprisingly up-front about expressing their desire to include a father-son element. Even men older than me call me “daddy” unprompted. I try not to be judgmental, but this repulses me. People who are into other forms of out-of-the-mainstream sex approach their kinks respectfully and establish mutual interest and obtain consent in advance. Why aren’t I given the same consideration when it comes to incest role-play? And where does this come from? Were all these men molested by their fathers?
— Desperately Avoiding Discussing Disgusting Incest
Dear Daddi: Whoa, DADDI. Just as gay men who call themselves or their partners “boy” don’t mean “minor” and aren’t fantasizing about child rape, gay men who call themselves or their partners “daddy” don’t mean “biological father” and aren’t fantasizing about father-son incest. Daddy is an honorific that eroticizes a perceived age and/or experience gap; it’s about authority and sexual dominance, not paternity and incestuous deviance. If being called “daddy” turns you off, you should say so, and your partners should immediately knock that “daddy” shit off. But you shouldn’t assume every gay guy who calls you “daddy” is into incest and/or was molested by his bio dad, because 99.999 percent of the time that’s just not going to be true.
Think about it this way, DADDI: When a straight woman calls her man “baby,” no one thinks, “OMG! She’s into raping babies!” When a straight guy says he picked up a “hot girl,” no one thinks he’s talking about a sexy fourth grader. When Vice President Mike Pence calls his wife “mommy,” no one thinks… well, Pence might be a bad example. (That man is clearly a freak.) But my point still stands: Pet names—used casually or during sex—aren’t to be taken literally.
Dear Dan: I have a sugar baby who is a mature post-op trans woman. She is very attractive but also very high maintenance. (She has OCD.) I pay her $300 per anal sex event; I help with bills, food, etc.; and I spend every weekend with her. I probably spend $15,000 a year on her. I’m happy most of the time (the sex is great), but does this arrangement sound fair?
— Daddy Asking Dan
Dear DAD: Divide the money you’re spending annually ($15,000) by the number of weeks in the year (52), DAD, and your anal-sex-event-packed weekends are only costing you $288.46 a pop. Seeing as most sex workers charge 10 to 20 times as much for a full weekend, I’d say you aren’t spending too much. (If this arrangement is unfair to anyone, DAD, it’s unfair to your sugar baby.) Now, if you’re only pulling in 30K a year, spending half your pre-tax wages on a sugar baby is unsustainable. But if that 15K represents a small percentage of your annual income, DAD, you should give your sugar baby a raise.
Dear Dan: I’m a 30-year-old woman who has always been more attracted to older men. I was with a guy last year who liked to be called “Daddy,” which was hard because he was six years younger. But now I’m secretly sleeping with someone who’s 34 years older than me. It’s not just sex—we have so much in common and we’re falling in love. I don’t know how long I can handle being a secret, but I don’t know if I can come out of hiding because of the age difference. He’s not as ashamed and would be more open if I wanted to be. Thoughts?
— Ashamed Sex Has All My Emotional Damage
Dear ASHAMED: You haven’t been with This Old Dad long enough to determine if you have a future together, ASHAMED, so you can kick the coming-out can down the road another six months. If it turns out you two are emotionally compatible as well as sexually compatible, and you decide to make a life together, then you’ll have to go public. And if you find yourself worrying about being judged due to the age difference, just think of all the homos out there who went public despite their partners’ genital similarities. If we could stare down disapproving family members and small-town prudes, ASHAMED, so can you.
On the Lovecast, sex and weed with David Schmader!: savagelovecast.com. Send questions to mail@savagelove.net
