Your column entitled “The 34-year-old virgin” (Jan. 17) prompted me to respond. I’m a 42-year-old virgin, the cause being a case of severe social anxiety (I’ve tried cognitive therapy/meds), coupled with mild OCD. I avoid all group/crowd situations and can’t really function except in smaller numbers. I’ve never been able to approach women, much less initiate intimacy. I’m a homebody with creative aspirations and no desire for children so being alone is not detrimental to me. Yet I’ve found that on almost every date or first meeting with someone, the anxiety/shyness always scares them away. My question: do you think there are people who would either not find this negative/unappealing or even find it appealing in a partner? AJ WITH SA

I’m thinking a community like Quirkyalone (www.quirkyalone.net) may be a good place for you. Created by a self-identified “Quirky­alone” woman named Sasha Cagen, it celebrates the person who enjoys being single but is not against the potential for relationships — just on more autonomous terms. I know, the word is dismissably cutesy, the movement occasionally feels manufactured to bolster Cagen’s other burgeoning eccentricity brands and, with your severe social anxiety and mild OCD, you may be on the extreme end of the Quirkyalone spectrum — a Hyperquirky­alone perhaps. Still, your solitary nature will be shared and even appreciated. Then you can open up about the freakier shit.

Despite the above-stated misgivings, I really appreciate the Quirkyalone universe, including the book, which puts personal stories and faces to exasperating situations I frequently confront myself: when am I moving in with my boyfriend (when I can say for sure that it won’t end in a murder-suicide), when am I getting married (when I can offer the benefits of Canadian citizenship to a beleaguered Iraqi widow), why am I always partying without my boyfriend (because he just got the long-awaited final issue of Y: the Last Man and he’d prefer to be at home reading it than to watch me get drunk and make out with women’s studies majors). Why don’t people just ask what they really mean: “When are you going to mirror my choices so I feel better about them?”
It took more than one partner wondering why I needed to spend so much time “without them” (as opposed to by myself) to realize that people view time and how they are owed it in a relationship very differently. There are many assumptions made when you commit and, if you’re like me, your anxiety is compounded by the fact that you just won’t live up to them and if you try to, you’ll become perpetually grouchy. I know I was a terrible girlfriend to just about everyone who wasn’t as independent as I am, but judging by all the Seethingtogethers I’ve met, this is not unusual.
AJ, I genuinely believe there is someone who would find your idiosyncrasies bearable and even appealing (see, for example, Clover Kim in the Quirkyalone book whose motto is “Solitude in Solidarity”) but, of course, you must be prepared to accept theirs too. So just how mild is that OCD?

Great eggspectations
Just wondering if you’ve heard of a Yoni or Oni egg? It’s supposed to be a ceramic egg that a woman can insert for practicing Kegels. I’m single after having been in a long-term relationship for several years, I had a baby a few years ago and I want to get into “shape.” When I practice my Kegels, I’m not really sure if I’m doing them right and when I sneeze really hard a tiny bit of pee comes out. What would you recommend, if anything? Anonymous

Goddess Industry alert! Not only does Majestic Mud’s Oni Egg (at www.majesticmud.com) “help open and harness the power of our ancient female wisdom that is stored in our root chakra,” but it also “helps to achieve healing, self love and empowerment.” Did they remove the Y from Yoni (Sanskrit word for the lady’s business end) because there’s already a Yoni Egg whose creator got their chakras out of sorts and threatened a lawsuit? Whatever the case, I’m sure it’ll still fit nicely in your agina. Yes, it’s unkind to make fun of small-business owners, but those attempting to profit off Ye Olde Cunte with vague, all-healing platitudes are asking for it.

I doubt that any product, regardless of its purpose, can meet such metaphysical claims, but that’s not to say the Oni won’t assist in the more secular task of strengthening your PC muscles. If I were to personally recommend one though, it would be Betty Dodson’s stainless steel vaginal barbell.

Love bits
At my friend Joe’s the other night, I came across some Pop Rocks in his kitchen. “Don’t ever snort these,” I said (hey PJ, do you remember why in the fuck we did that?). Joe countered, “Have you ever given someone a blow-job with them in you mouth?” Joe never had, but he’d heard it was sensational. You know what they say: you’re never too old to end up in ER after an urban-sex-myth calamity! I told my boyfriend I had a column-related assignment that required his participation, promising it would be more fun than when I took him to a plastic-surgery clinic and put his balls up against a pair of prosthetic ones. (“I dunno,” he replied, “that was pretty fun. I got to meet Dr. Stubbs!”) After joking about getting his rocks off, we got down to business.

Prognosis? “It feels like a bit of number three sandpaper combined with pins and needles, like I’d been squashing my balls on my bike seat too long,” he said and promptly lost his erection.


EMAIL SASHA AT SASHA@EYEWEEKLY.COM OR SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO SASHA C/O EYE WEEKLY, 625 CHURCH ST, 6TH FL, TORONTO, M4Y 2G1.