I met this girl on an “adult” web site, and we are supposed to
meet. We first exchanged a few e-mails on the service, and then we got
each other’s screen names. Then we chatted over IM twice, just the
basic small talk, before exchanging numbers. It was on the phone that
she told me about her rape fantasy: She has always fantasized about
being kidnapped by a stranger from a public place like the grocery
store, held in a dark room over the weekend, and forced to do whatever
her captor wants.
Even though that sounds hot as hell, I wouldn’t do that to
someone without at least meeting first. Safety first. So the idea now
is to meet at a bar, have a drink, and then go back to my place and
enact a date-rape scene. Not quite her ultimate fantasy, but it just so
happens to be one of my all-time fantasies. We’re both turned on by the
idea that we won’t even know each other that well. We will be
near-strangers.
Now here comes the problem: What if she is some wacko who will
call the cops on me/blackmail me and say it was actual rape? Can I
protect myself from this somehow? We never talked about it over IM,
just on the phone. This is one of the boxes I would like to check
before I die, but I want to be safe about it. Help!
To Rape Or Not To Rape
I’m tempted to advise you — and others with similar fantasies
(not all of them men, not all of them straight) — to Google
“Oliver Jovanovic” and then move on to the next question. But there’s
the digital divide to consider: Not all the aspiring date-rape
fetishists out there have access to the interwebs. So a brief recap for
you Luddites:
Oliver Jovanovic was a graduate student at Columbia University when
he met a woman named Jamie Rzucek on the interwebs way, way back in
1996. The two bonded over a shared interest in bondage and torture, and
they met up for an evening of consensual sex that included bondage and
torture. After it was all over, Rzucek went to the police and Jovanovic
was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, and given to fifteen years to
life. He spent almost two years in prison — during which time he
was brutally assaulted and nearly killed — before he was released
on appeal and ultimately kinda, sorta exonerated.
Guess what got Jovanovic out of prison? E-mails that had been
improperly excluded by the judge during the first trial. The e-mails
showed that Rzucek had not only consented to engage in bondage and
S&M, but that she had touched base with him after the fact to tell
him how exhilarated and freaked she was.
The lesson for you, TRONTR, is to get it in goddamn writing.
Negotiate this scene via e-mail, keep copies of those e-mails, and
agree in advance — via e-mail — on a safe word that, if
uttered, brings the action to a screeching halt. I’d also suggest that
you — with her consent — make a digital audio recording of
the encounter. Then you wouldn’t just have e-mails proving she
consented going in, TRONTR, but a digital recording that proved you
stopped whatever it was you were doing if she used her safe word and
retracted her consent during the encounter.
Making a digital audio recording of the encounter means you won’t
have photos or video to share over the interwebs, which should appeal
to her if she is concerned about privacy. And using the magic of the
World Wide Interwebs, you can simultaneously record this encounter on
your computer and remotely on hers. That should give her some assurance
that you won’t take advantage of her written consent to a consensual
rape-role-play scenario as a cover to actually rape her, i.e., to do
things she hasn’t consented to or to ignore her if she removes her
consent during the act, because then she’d have proof that you ignored
her safe word and kept going after she withdrew her consent.
I’ve been seeing “Radioman” for a few weeks — the physical
chemistry between us is amazing, and we have a lot of fun. He had a
vasectomy a year ago (he’s only 26), and for me this is a deal breaker
for any serious commitment, since I want to have a family. The other
surprise is that he is also in relationships with two other women. They
know about each other and about me, and the three of them get together
about once a month and have threesomes. I am a bisexual woman recently
out of a long-term relationship, and I am interested in joining this
little playgroup. However, I met one of the other women recently, and
she seemed jealous and upset. Radioman insists that she was just tired
and that she actually likes me. I’m not so sure. Am I asking for drama
by getting involved in this foursome?
Thinking Of Joining A Harem
Yes.
Speaking of drama: Teen mom Bristol Palin and her fiancé,
Levi Johnston, called it quits last week. So we’ve been cheated out of
the Royal Rube Wedding we were promised during last summer’s Republican
National Convention — and another child will grow up without a
father in the home, which is a tragedy for the child, according to
America’s Talibangelists.
Or that’s what they said when Mary Cheney — remember that
dyke? — had a baby with a woman she would marry if she could
marry. It’s weird that America’s Talibangelists aren’t making the same
point now.
I hate to disagree, Dan, but you missed the mark when you wrote
this: “When we marry, we’re signing up to fuck someone at least
semiregularly for decades. Not interested in fucking? Don’t
marry.”
Dan, people marry for many, many reasons. Sex is only one of
them, and sometimes it isn’t even high on the list — or on the
list at all. Family, friendship, stability, love, someone to grow old
with, and on and on. Your surprisingly narrow description of what
marriage means needs some rethinking.
Thanks for your work,
Cacilda Jethá, MD
blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/lust-in-paradise
I’m willing to concede that I left an important subordinate clause
out of the sentence that riled you, Cacilda: “When we marry, we’re
signing up to fuck someone at least semiregularly for decades, among
other things.”
Marriage can be about all the things you list, Cacilda, but so long
as sexual exclusivity is presumed to be a part of marriage — a
defining part, according to the right-wingers — spouses have a
right to expect sexual activity within their marriages. People who are
interested in marriage but not sex — people whose lists include
only family, friendship, stability, love, someone to grow old with, and
on and on, but not sex — need to inform their prospective spouses
of their disinterest in sex before marrying, not after.
As I’ve said a million times before: If you don’t think that sex is
what marriage is all about, mostly about, or even partly about, if sex
is something you can live without, that’s grand. But you need to marry
someone who feels the same way or inform your betrothed of your
disinterest well in advance. And if you lose interest in sex after you
marry but want your partner to stick around for the family and
stability and friendship and the rest of it, I’ll let you in on a
little secret: The spouse is likelier to stick around for that crap if
you give the spouse permission to get his or her sexual needs met
elsewhere.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people who aren’t interested in
sex — who consider sex to be trivial and unimportant —
nevertheless deny their frustrated partners permission to do this
trivial, unimportant thing with others.
