Have a question? Email erin@nerve.com. Letters may be edited for length, content and clarity.
Dear Miss Information,
I smoke pot. It doesn't interfere with my work or social obligations, but my boyfriend doesn't like it and he wants me to quit before we get married. He's a police detective, and he says it could damage his career. I say as long as I don't do it around him it's okay. He doesn't have to love it, but he should be willing to compromise. He drinks a lot of alcohol, and I don't see much difference between his vice and mine. — Grass Harassed |
Dear Grass Harassed,
Your alcohol argument is valid, Grass Harassed, but it doesn't mean squat with the laws the way they are now. I've never had to put a wet towel under the door and light incense in order to have a beer in my apartment, or page someone called "Smokey Darryl" in order to buy white Zin. Pot's illegal, alcohol's not. You can't change that, no matter how strong your political and social arguments are. Does it matter that pot's illegal? If your boyfriend weren't a cop, I'd say probably not. It's a measured risk, and one quite a few folks are willing to take. He is a cop, however, and a fundamental part of his job is obeying the law. Living with, sleeping with and associating with someone who's actively breaking it isn't congruent with that lifestyle.
The way I see it, you have two options. Option one is to promise that you won't ever (and I mean ever) smoke pot in his presence, have it on your person when you're around him or keep it in your home or vehicle. This is going to be such an annoyance that you'll be tempted to hang up your bong altogether. Still, if you're a committed stoner and your boyfriend's amenable, it might be a decent workaround. Option two is to quit cold turkey. If I were you, I'd go with the latter. God knows I have nothing against the green stuff, but you guys are just starting out. You want to have every option at your disposal, whether it's buying a home, having a child or relocating to a fab place cross-country. To do that you'll need both careers. Putting your whole lifestyle on the line for a buzz is kind of stupid, don't you think? There'll be plenty of time to blaze up once he quits the force. |
Dear Miss Information,
I'm seeing somebody and we're very happy, but lately I've felt this compulsion to sleep with my ex. She lives close by and we have a child together, so we talk regularly. Part of me wants to just go for it and see if she'd be willing to have one last roll in the hay. What do you think? — Ugghhh |
Dear Ugghhh,
Some fantasies are made to become reality. Others are better left as idle jerkoff material. Screw your ex all you want, but do it in your head if you want to stay happy. A fuck is never "just a fuck," especially when it's a fuck with the mother of your child. If you get caught, it's going to be twenty times worse than if you picked some random person off the street.
Cheating requires motivation and opportunity. Guess which one's easier to remove? That's right, the opportunity. Avoid ending up in situations where you and your ex are alone. If you know that your ex hangs out with certain people or in certain places, avoid them until this feeling passes, or bring your girlfriend along. I've also found the "we" pronoun — as in, "We went to the movies" and, "We spent the day picking out a new wallpaper border" — to be an excellent flirtation killer. It's easy to slip it into everyday conversation, and it reinforces your status as a couple.
The motivation part is a bit more involved. It's not just your dick speaking (though that is a big part of it), it's also your brain. What's making you feel so dissatisfied? What do you think would help you get past this? Do you feel "entitled" to cheat because of some perceived hurt by your partner? If so, tell her.
You're not a bad guy for having these urges, Ugghhh. Almost everyone does. It's what you choose to do about them that matters.
Dear Miss Information,
I'm a twenty-three-year-old lesbian going steady with my first girlfriend (she's twenty-five). I seem to drool a lot when I perform oral sex, leaving giant wet marks on the sheets. How can I keep this from happening? — Bed Wetter |
Dear Bed Wetter,
Forgive me for asking the obvious, but how do you know the wet marks are coming from you? Maybe what you think is saliva is really your girlfriend's vaginal fluid. Vaginas have been known to get wet during oral sex, anywhere from slightly moist to gushing. She may even be ejaculating, as some women are prone to do. It's easy to mistake one fluid for the other when you're in the dark.
If you're convinced it's you, keep a soft towel nearby the next time you take a trip down South. Give it a fun nickname like "ye olde cuntrag" or "the Zamboni." If you want to be more covert, you could also use your partner's panties — tease her by rubbing the silky fabric over her crotch as part of foreplay, and keep them handy to blot your mouth with later. The pussy-eating environment plays a part as well — patterned sheets and soft lighting will help disguise that big wet semi-circle on the mattress.
I bet a lot of your embarrassment stems from being a newbie. Since your girlfriend is a little older and (I'm guessing) more experienced, why not ask her how she keeps her game so clean? Maybe she could go down on you in front of a mirror while you watch. I'm sure she'll be all too happy to have you as her pupil.
Above all, relax. Good sex is messy sex, and saliva is 98% water. You wouldn't freak out if your partner spilled a little H2O on your pussy, would you? Think of saliva as one of water's sexy relatives, not some toxic sludge. n°
©2006 Erin Bradley and Nerve.com
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Commentarium (14 Comments)
You know, one thing about being a policeman in a big city is that you get to see the nasty effects of drugs every single day on the job, whether it's just people driving while stoned, beating each other up while stoned, committing crimes for money to support their habit, or shooting each other with automatic weapons they could afford using the money they got from selling drugs. Most of the real problems come from drugs that are nastier than marijuana, of course, but to see all that and come home to a girlfriend who is "part of the problem" is not going to result in a stable relationship. She either needs to kick the habit for good, or find someone else, because this isn't going to work out.
That's a good point. The money people spend on pot goes to a much more potentially nefarious network than Anheiser-Busch. And as much as people claim how benign pot is, it just seems to go in hand with people whose lives are in long-term holding patterns. I find women who smoke pot wholly unattractive for that reason.
great advice to bed wetter and to the detective's girlfriend. although there are tons of cops who smoke pot. probably more doing coke since it's harder to trace.
rcf & jcf are kinda dumb though.
the dealers that use guns are in much more lucrative trade. pot isn't leading to many turf wars of any magnitude. but it is illegal and that's all this young lady needs to be concerned about given her bf's profession.
and the money that goes to alcohol goes to their marketing budget to get kids drinking with ads that make alcohol consumoption attractive to kids.
more people die from alcohol and tobacco-smoking related causes than from any drug war that exists in the minds of the government or the public. you'd have to smoke a shitload of pot to get lung cancer.
however, as a pot smoker, I can agree with the concept of "long-term holding patterns" - I don't think that pot creates such situations, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to stay in such frames of mind.
plus she might want to worry about the effects of prolonged pot use on the health of her eventual children.
Ms. Info - you keep getting better and better.
"Vaginas have been known to get wet during oral sex"
Best line from any sex advice column, EVAH.
My response to her would've been -- Um, what's the problem, exactly?
(Incidentally, great advice on all three.)
The advice to the cop-lover is weak. The fiancee should stand up for herself; she may need to take certain measures to avoid having her identity redefined by her dude's work culture. The "holding pattern" statement is as useless as any generalization about a group of people, especially one formed by an activity as ideologically unmotivated as smoking grass. Getting fucked up is a major dimension plenty of our culture. There are professionals and academics who love to get high as much as teens in a LeSabre en route to homeroom, and those of us who do it responsibly and discreetly are indistinguishable from people who are "going somewhere."
Everyone knows smoking pot doesn't exactly lead to getting things done. Throw around all the stats you want--them's the facts. Now go fire up the bong and forget about it.
Deer Miss,
You are Hot!! Lets do it!! You can smoke post before if you like, and if your Vagina gets wet, well, so be it, all the better.
Remember, a wet pussy makes a cock feel good!!
Love ya,
Oh for God's sake.
Your advice to Grass Harassed is the final straw. My ambivalent but fairly regular reading of your column is over. Your advice is just so relentlessly bourgeois, so middle-class, so oriented toward the stupid petty comprimises that woman seem to think they need to make in order to have that most prized possession a boyfriend. So un-Nerve.
Is that who you really are? Your blog writings sort of support it. Maybe you should be writing for Cosmo instead?
Don't get me wrong. I think you could / will make a decent living writing for mainstream or even slightly naughty media. Why not.
Best of luck.
Wow it's Douchebag Day in the comments section
i'd tell the girl to take up blow, sex is da bomb on it
Christ, Sexy Mandalina, I'd know your cunty pseudo-intellectual-trash whine anywhere. Why don't you beat it altogether, sister? Trust me, nobody here gives a shit WHAT you think.
SM,
I can't believe that you are giving Miss Information shit for telling a girl she should probably choose her boyfriend over pot. Do you really live in a world where drugs are more important than love and relationships? If so, I feel really bad for you.
Plus, it's one thing to give up something because your boyfriend wants you to if its an non-rational thing. But, this guy could lose his job because of her pot smoking and if she really wants to build a life with him, it's probably a good idea if he's gainfully employed, you know?
Or are you just another pot smoking trust fund loser who will never have to worry about jobs and don't have enough motiviation to have a relationship that doesn't involve eating a lot of doritos and falling asleep in front of American Idol?
Bart
it's not the case that "drugs are more important than relationships" it's that people who have irrational attitudes about drugs don't make good partners for stoners. cops make even worse partners for a reason that Miss Info didn't mention--they are actually ethically bound to report your criminal activity. Therefore I count two strikes: 1) it's his job, not him personally, that is hostile to your habit 2) he personally isn't "Evolved enough" (to use a phrase Miss I likes) to understand why you use pot. Even if he wasn't a cop this would be a problem--being a cop gives him an excuse for not dealing with the problem. if you stay with this guy, how many other things will he refuse to compromise on? whether he has an excuse or not, it's likely that since he's using "the law" rather than reason to argue about your pot use, he will take advantage of any other backward and negative social attitude to justify his bullshit. DTMFA. there are plenty of nice stoner guys who have good jobs and will jump your bones, and they'll even get high WITH you.
Now you say something