Savage Love

FETISH A GO-GO

by Dan Savage

I�fve always had a fantasy of playing with the limp body of an extremely beautiful woman who is pretending to be dead. Real death grosses me out. I�fve never had a problem meeting girls, but sometimes I have to visualize my fantasy to stay hard. I achieved my first orgasm watching horror movies and I�fve often masturbated to fantasy necro content on the web (i.e., www.necrobabes.com). For obvious reasons I�fve felt insecure and ashamed about this fetish and haven�ft shared it with anyone. To make a long story short, I recently paid a fetish model at a BDSM dungeon to enact my fantasy of a corpse in a morgue. She did a great job, but I was surprisingly not aroused. Could it be that I�fm not into this? Or could I have conditioned myself into thinking I�fm into this fantasy by overthinking and overwanking? Should I try and purge it entirely from my mind? Or am I hopelessly and permanently tethered to it?

Wants �fEm Drop Dead Gorgeous

Or could it be that indulging in the most extreme version of your limp-woman fantasy�\a female corpse in a morgue�\was less of a turn-on than, say, a kinder, gentler version of your fantasy might be? Let�fs back up a little, WEDDG: While the power dynamics at play in some people�fs fantasy scenarios are more obvious than in others, almost all sexual fantasies are, at bottom, about power and control. From BDSMers to foot fetishists to women who want to peg their boyfriends, people eroticize power because our subconscious minds, tormented by our sexual urges, process our fears by eroticizing them. In your case, WEDDG, you want total power over an extremely beautiful woman�\you don�ft want her dead, you ol�f softie, you just want her �gpretending to be dead,�h and therefore incapable not only of resisting but also of critiquing, making demands, being unsatisfied, making unflattering comparisons, pointing and laughing, getting knocked up�\basically, incapable of doing all the things that men fear. Unlike a live woman, a dead woman can never emasculate you. She may not smell very good after a few days but then there�fs always a catch, isn�ft there?

Sad to say, this desire isn�ft going to go away�\fetishes don�ft go away, WEDDG. We can wrestle with �fem, look back over our lives and tease out the clues, we can choose to act on them or not, but we can�ft erase �fem. What you can do, however, is attempt to refocus your desire for power and control away from female corpses (which is going to scare most women off) and toward some other, more common, less terrifying kinks that will allow you to indulge your bedrock erotic urge�\which, again, is to have power and control over the woman in your bed, not to actually have a dead woman in your bed. Luckily for you, WEDDG, there are a lot of women out there who get off on playing power and control games. The sane ones want to be powerless in short doses and under carefully controlled circumstances, but they�fre out there. If you can refocus your P&C kink on, say, tying up an extremely beautiful woman or having a beautiful woman who�fs your willing slave, not your cadaver, you will be less insecure and ashamed.

Finally, if you can�ft let go of your extremely-beautiful-pretend-dead-woman fantasy, and if paying for it is a turn-off, check out the local goth scene in your area, as some of those girls might not be too spooked by your fantasy. But there�fs always a catch: I�fve never actually seen an extremely beautiful goth girl myself�\most of them seem to have weight problems, which has always struck me as strangely contradictory. From the neck up, the look cultivated by goth girls seems to say, �gOh, we despair of this world and long for the sweet embrace of death!�h From the neck down, their look seems to say, �gI�fll take the bacon cheeseburger, two orders of fries, and a Diet Coke, please.�h

I am a 22-year-old woman who got drunk with some friends and downloaded some sick porn. We ended up watching a woman having sex with a dog. I mocked it with everyone else but I felt myself getting turned on. I was disturbed by this, because I had always thought of myself as fairly well-adjusted. Now I feel disgusting. What turned me on the most about the experience were the sounds the woman made. She sounded like she was having the best sex of her life. I wonder if this is the reason I was turned on�\I�fve always found groaning women incredibly sexy. But my mind screams that I�fm just trying to rationalize it all away. The fact that I was turned on haunts me. I will be at work, and suddenly, �gYou�fre into bestiality, you sick fuck!�h pops into my head. I like having sex with people, not animals! What can I do to get rid of this?

My Utterly Terrible Turn-On

For starters, MUTT, you can stop trying to prevent your mind from rationalizing this dog-fucking thing away. Rationalizations have a bad rap, I realize, but there are times when they come in handy�\and suddenly being turned on by the idea of being fucked by a dog is definitely one of those times. And as rationalizations go, yours seem pretty darn rational: You�fve always thought groaning women were incredibly sexy and you weren�ft turned on by the idea of being fucked by a dog until you saw a video of a loudly groaning woman being fucked by a dog. It stands to reason that you wouldn�ft have been turned on if the woman you saw being fucked by a dog had been silently flipping through the Weekly Standard, or glumly watching Hardball. But she was groaning and the reptile part of your brain that�fs always been into groans made a snap association between groans and fucking dogs. Now you need to let the non-reptile part of your brain unmake that association.

So let those rationalizations work their magic. It wasn�ft the dog-fucking that turned you on, MUTT, but the crazy level of arousal the woman in the tape achieved. (Or, more likely, faked for money or under duress.) Tell yourself that if you ever did fuck a dog you wouldn�ft be turned on at all because you�fre not into fucking dogs.

I was impressed and am deeply grateful for how you responded to a letter from a diaper fetishist recently. I have a diaper fetish. The absolute first thing any of us wants to get across to a curious/disgusted public is that our fetish has ZERO to do with actual children. I can�ft tell you how much I would give to not have this fetish. It has cost me more than one relationship, the latest ending the day before your recent column on my fetish was published. I�fve never forced it on anyone, usually hiding it the best I can, but my most recent ex discovered my fetish without my knowledge and was thoroughly grossed out. Hopefully she�fll read your column one day and gain a greater understanding. I just wanted to say thank you, Dan.

No Use for a Clever Acronym

You�fre welcome, NUFACA, and just in case your ex-girlfriend is reading: Honey, things could�fve been much, much worse. Compared to a thing for dead women or fucking dogs, a diaper fetish is positively endearing.

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