DEAR ANDREA: I'm a 22-year-old female. I've been battling cancer for more than three years now. This has left me with emotional, psychological, and physical scars – I have a scar from the left side of my neck all the way up behind my right ear. I can't stand to touch the areas: they are too sensitive and painful. Also, the scar, even when healed, is still very puffy and conspicuous. Anyway, my boyfriend of a year has brought up the ideas of a "pearl necklace" and a "money shot." Naturally, he wouldn't allow me to do anything nearly as degrading to him, so I get nothing out of letting him do these things to me.

I find his insistence extremely hurtful and insensitive. He knows how hard having cancer has been on me physically and psychologically. He watched me slowly recover from surgery! He also knows I hate things like this because they are degrading, unless I can do something equally humiliating to him. But when I try to tell him how his selfishness makes me feel, he won't listen or take it to heart. What should I do?

Love, Cancer Girl

Dear Girl: The pleasure that some (amateur) advice-givers seem to take in urging other people to break up with their boyfriends (or girlfriends, et cetera, but it's usually boyfriends) has been much discussed on some online discussion boards I've frequented. "My boyfriend never does the dishes," someone would complain. "Kick him to the curb!" certain people would crow. "What are you, some sort of doormat?" More level heads prevail, of course, and I'm unaware of any relationships actually done in by bad Internet advice, but it just seems so unwholesome to me to take joy in coaching others to treat their partners as literal garbage. (I always imagine the boyfriend bundled up with twine and tossed out on recycling night.)

Your boyfriend, though? Mr. Inappropriate Suggestion 2003-04? That's different. If I happened to mumble something along the lines of "kick him to the curb," I can't imagine who would disagree with me or why. My own sweetie read your letter and shuddered with horror. I asked him, "Do you think it's surprising that she doesn't feel particularly submissive right now?" and he said, "Hell no. She's already bottoming to cancer."

Very few people manage to eroticize their illness, disfigurement, or chronic pain, merging bedroom with sickroom in a way that works for them. If you're interested in seeing a flamboyantly morbid (and extremely funny) exception to this rule, you couldn't do better than to rent the movie Sick, featuring "Supermasochistic Bob with cystic fibro-o-o-o-sis." But Bob Flanagan, the chronically ill artist and almost lifelong masochist (he quit toward the end) chose to explore his relationship with his damaged body through sexual pain and submission. He didn't do it to get some bed partner to shut up and leave him alone, which is the only reason I can imagine you ever agreeing to let Facial Boy spooge all over you right now.

I was just recently drawn into a discussion, also online, about whether above-the-neck money-shots (a.k.a. "facials") are inherently degrading. I said no, it's only degrading if you feel degraded, blah-nonjudgmental-blah. There's no question, though, that spilling or shooting one's bodily fluids at someone is sexy for many people precisely because it smacks of degradation and defilement, and that goes double for the people who like to be spilled upon. "I'm a dirty girl/boy" is the pinnacle of hotness for, let's say roughly one quarter of the population. Facials, water sports, and scat grab that dirtiness by its grubby collar and yank it clear out of the metaphorical and into the real world, where it has to get mopped up with towels. Hot, hot, hot if you like that sort of thing. Grounds for divorce if you don't.

I do note that you have the money shot thing filed neatly, and perhaps unquestioningly, under D for degradation and wonder if you're quite sure that's what Spooge Boy is after. Money shot, as you may know, originated as a porn term referring to the fact that, absent laparoscopic camerawork, an ejaculation must be delivered externally if the audience is going to believe it really happened. In its native habitat it carries no particular message of dominance or submission. Maybe he just wants to play porn star, no degradation intended, and isn't getting it that you feel degraded by the suggestion.

Not that it matters much. You've made it clear that your neck is off-limits, so who cares why he wants to spooge on it? If he won't listen, won't let you reciprocate somehow, and won't shut up, we're back where we started. Curb kicking or contract killing, whichever seems best.

Love, Andrea

P.S. Dear Readers: I want to sing "it's blo – o-o-g, it's blo-o-o-g" to the tune of the Ren and Stimpy log song, but I won't. Just go read the new blog at www.altsexcolumn.com/mt.