Dear readers: I’m on vacation this week, so brand-spanking new EYE WEEKLY intern Alex Nino Gheciu combed the archives for his favourite letters so far this year. Enjoy.
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? (Originally published April 9.)
WHT TH FCK?
luv ur name by the way. i think 2yrs, ago a girl wrote 2u how her boyfriend din’t like her big clik well im all about clik de bigger the better, so i was wondering if u can give this girl my e-mail. plz i haven found a big clik girl 2 eater for over 1 year. thanx love ur side. BROWNDOG
I want you to get yourself two books, Browndog. One is The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex, where you will learn the correct terminology for women’s sex organs. The other is The Elements of Style (you can find this little gem online at www.bartleby.com/141/), where you will learn how to be a more conscientious letter writer. You will have a much easier time becoming intimate with clitorises of all shapes and sizes if you know how to skilfully woo their owners. (Originally published Feb. 13.)
Totally assinine
I’ve been seeing my girlfriend for a few months and recently she asked if I’d be interested in some anal play — my receiving it from her. I said I’d give it a shot and I have found myself enjoying it. But shortly afterwards, she started making little comments (“jokes” she calls them) here and there that she’s turned me gay, etc. I laughed it off at first but she just keeps on going on about it, even starting to making some suggestive remarks about it in front of our friends. As a result, I got really annoyed with her and told her off. She then started calling me homophobic and said that she didn’t think I was “that kind of guy.” The whole thing has really upset me because I don’t think that’s fair at all. Are my actions that wrong?
ANAL BANAL
Anal, hand this newspaper to your girlfriend right now. Girlfriend, we do not
ask our new boyfriend to try ass play, have him graciously agree to give it a go and subsequently enjoy it, then make homophobic remarks by implying that anal sex is the exclusive province of gay men (and that, moreover, being gay is something worth being teased about), then call him a homophobe himself when he gets ticked off.
Look, I know you’re doing it because you think you’re such a renegade for fucking your boyfriend’s ass and you’re trying to find some way of working it into casual conversation, but just stop it, will you? Everyone is doing anal now; it’s no big deal. Go get yourself a tranny boyfriend if you want something to wow your friends. (Originally published March 5.)
EMAIL SASHA AT SASHA@EYEWEEKLY.COM OR SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO SASHA C/O EYE WEEKLY, 625 CHURCH ST, 6TH FL, TORONTO, M4Y 2G1.