› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
My ex-boyfriend won’t give me back my stuff! I’ve e-mailed him repeatedly but gotten no response. I broke up with him because he just couldn’t be bothered to show up or call. After three months of him flaking, I ended things.
He was also impotent, but couldn’t have an adult conversation about it. He was tired, or his grandmother was dying … After lots of excuses and frustration, I began to feel a little insecure, even though I’m smart and healthy, I exercise, I have a nice figure, and I make reasonable efforts on my appearance.
Anyway, pencil dick (think: roll of quarters) decides to let me know one night when we’re out drinking that he thinks my pussy smells. I am, of course, shocked and horrified (I should also mention that I’ve had nothing but compliments from other exes). But quarter dick says he’s sensitive to smell. I try to initiate an adult conversation. Is pubic hair an issue? He says yes, and that all of his girlfriends have been completely shaved.
This was difficult for me, because although I shave my legs and pits and trim my pubes, I think shaving your pussy is just masochistic. I also have some history with not-too-cool stuff that happened to me before I’d even grown any pubic hair. He’d been saying that he wanted me to open up to him more, so I told him I was having a tough week after our conversation. He said he’d come over but never showed, never called.
I left a bag with his stuff and a note tied to his front door. So maybe me not getting my stuff back is just karma for taking the easy way out. But I feel he owes me something for all of the bullshit he put me through! Because what I’m left with, more than the absence of my stuff, is this feeling that I never had before — that maybe, somehow, because I don’t shave I’ll be unattractive to future partners. What I really want back is my sense of self-confidence. I’m not afraid to be a psycho hose beast on this, so feel free to make outlandish suggestions.
Love,
Stuff Waiter
Dear Stuff:
Sorry, can’t. The giant revenge scene in which people (usually women) cut up Prada ties and throw entire bedroom suites from upper-floor windows and set fire to Cadillacs is a staple of a certain type of cozy, girlfriendy fiction, but truly, we are all better off keeping it fictional. These dramatics are, as I say, usually carried out by women (real or fictional), and all we have to do to get a clearer look at the phenomenon (is it kinda cute-when-you’re-angry or just plain psycho?) is switch the genders: what if a vengeful man took a knife to your stuff or set pictures of you on fire outside your office? Would you perhaps find his behavior a touch … threatening? I think any ex in his or her right mind would, and should. Sorry to go all your mother on you, but do you really want to be that sort of person? The sort of person others in your circle will be warning new people about ("Yeah, she’s cute, but that bitch is crazy")? Sound familiar, would-be psycho hose beast? Of course it does. Don’t do it. Enlist a mutual friend to go get your stupid stuff, or just e-mail the guy and tell him you’ll be there at X o’clock on Y day and show up without waiting for his response. And if that doesn’t work, remember: it’s just stuff. You can get some other stuff.
I have no doubt that you are nicely groomed and nicely shaped and smell nice too (most women do unless bacteria are involved somehow). What I don’t believe is that pencil dick (think of him that way, and the words "no great loss" come easily to mind and stay there, do they not?) was ever really your boyfriend or even ever all that into you. If he’d been more into you, he might have tried a little harder to have sex with you, for one thing. People who are into you also tend to return phone calls and show up for dates and comfort you when they inadvertently hurt your feelings. Oh, and nobody nice inadvertently hurts your feelings by telling you your most intimate parts smell bad.
Actually, that last part is not necessarily true. People who love us sometimes have to tell us hard and inconvenient truths. Nice people will do anything to avoid that kind of thing, and if we have to do it, we don’t do it all suddenly and brutally at the bar, for god’s sake, and we don’t then refuse to comfort or even call. Only a pig-dog would do that. Putting it that way is, I realize, unfair to pig-dogs, and nice people don’t do that either. Neither, however, need we allow pig-dogs to determine our worth or define us in any other way. We do that ourselves. Buck up now, and don’t set anything on fire.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.