Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of May 1. With a new job comes a return to aimless swiping on the dating apps. What’s your favorite first date idea?
You can listen to this week’s episode here.
Dan’s opening rant is about Michelle Wolf, the comedian at the White House Correspondents’ dinner. Not surprisingly, he’s a fan of her set and thought she spoke truth to power. Dan points out that, in addition to calling out Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her lies, not her looks, Wolf called out the media for enabling Trump’s rise. The White House Press Corps, especially, won’t call out liars. Wolf didn’t have access to maintain. Dan paraphrases a quote attributed to Oscar Wilde: The comedian was a great success. The audience was a failure.
A bi woman in California is going to be traveling for a period of time. She’s a switch kinkster, and she’s wondering how to find partners on the road. The internet, Dan says. Fetlife for the opposite sexers, Recon for the gay folks. Both sites give you the opportunity to meet your potential play partners and check their references.
A married bi guy and his wife have had some adventures over the years, mostly with other couples. They try to keep their dalliances as anonymous as possible and don’t do it within their social circle. They met a couple through a swingers site, exchanged pictures, and our caller found out he went to high school with the other woman and that they are scheduled to be at a social event together in a few weeks. Should they continue with the tryst anyway, or can they ghost? Dan calls back. In the meantime, the caller revealed to the other couple their connection, and they are still on to meet for dinner.to gauge the attractiveness of the husband. Dan says that our caller took his advice in advance – he would have advised our caller, if he had reasonable certainty that they wouldn’t be outed, to let the other couple know what they knew about them, and proceeded from there. The caller, while he has Dan on the line, wonders what the term is for folks in between poly and swingers. Dan says there’s definitely a gray area in there.
A woman just saw Hump!, and wonders what kinds of films are getting left on the cutting room floor. Tracy Cataldo, director of operations at Hump! and Dan’s mean lesbian boss, is on to help answer this. Tracy says there are too many films with food. Dan, perhaps unsurprisingly, thinks too many solo female masturbation videos get submitted. Dan says they look for videos with creativity, uniqueness, nerve, and talent. Above all, if you’re going to submit a film to Hump!, be yourself and real. Deadline for this year is September 14.
A 27-year-old straight woman has been in a relationship for 3 years now. For the first year and a half, they had a super fun and adventurous sex life. But since he’s been getting treated for alcoholism, the sex has been much less frequent and fun. Our caller doesn’t want her boozy boyfriend back, but she does want those booze-fueled sex romps back. What can she do? Dan parses the reason why the sex was more erotic then – it wasn’t because he was drunk, it was because he was disinhibited. Dan thinks our caller is going to have to lead the boyfriend back to a place where he can be disinhibited without the alcohol. It’s going to take a conscious effort, and a conversation.
A 21-year-old woman has been having an affair with her boss for the last year and a half. She has feelings for the boss, but he’s married with a kid on the way in the next week or two. She tries to break it off, but she keeps going back to him anyway. She can’t quit her job now because of financial pressures, but she’s going to leave soon after graduating college in a month. She feels incredibly guilty, but she still wants him. What now? Dan doesn’t buy that she can’t quit her job now. See if you can get your folks to cover the income for one month once you explain the situation. Dan makes an extremely insightful point here: our caller says she doesn’t know how to make up for what she’s done, and Dan says that’s a cover to keep on doing the wrong thing. Our caller knows she has to end things with the boss, so just fucking do it. I admire Dan calling people out on their bullshit, and it’s appropriate here. It didn’t sound like our caller was pressured into this relationship, and it has to stop now.
A man and his fiancée recently found out about a situation involving four mutual friends, who are two hetero couples, boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife. Husband and boyfriend, who are longtime best friends, go out drinking and confess their attractions to men. Boyfriend leans in for a kiss, which husband rejects. Soon after, girlfriend comes home, which husband uses as an excuse to get out. In the hall, boyfriend tries kissing husband again, and when he gets turned down again, he starts grabbing at husband, including at his junk. Husband shoves boyfriend, apparently hard. The next day, boyfriend claims not to remember anything. What should our caller do here? Tell the girlfriend? Shun the boyfriend? Dan boils it down: a semi-closeted mess assaulted a mutual friend – should you tell your friend who is dating the mess about it? Dan says yes, a good friend would check in on the girlfriend. Don’t lay out everything that happened, but let her lead the conversation. If she shuts down discussion, let it go, but if not, you can lay it out there.
A 34-year-old straight woman has been dating a guy for a couple months. He’s great, but he makes ironic sexist jokes around his friends. Like, he’ll make jokey references to the ol’ ball and chain, and she doesn’t like it. She registers her disapproval every time he makes these jokes, and he says he’ll stop, but he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter how many people found it funny in the past, Dan says. What should matter in this relationship is that this guy’s current girlfriend doesn’t like the jokes. The potential red flag here is that our caller has laid down a clear marker early on in the relationship, and he has completely disregarded it. Dan says proceed carefully, because this is a big deal.
A woman gets a yeast infection every time she inserts her favorite vibrator inside her. She cleans it every time, so what is she doing wrong? If she doesn’t have this problem with other toys, Dan says, this one could be porous in a way that makes it hard to clean. She could test this by putting a condom over this vibrator. But Dan wouldn’t suffer yeast infections for any vibrator – he would throw it away and get a new one.
Dr. John Scott is on to talk about male escorts. Dr. Scott researched male escorts all over the world for six months, which sounds a lot worse now that I type it out. Dr. Scott says that men make up about 10% of sex workers overall. Approximately 90% of male escorts are engaging in same-sex sex work, which does not surprise Dan. The little research that has been done indicates that men make up 20-30% of arrests done in sex work, which Dr. Scott attributes to the historic criminalization of homosexual activity generally. There has been an anecdotal increase in people trying to “save” male escorts like their female counterparts. One of the main differences is that pimping doesn’t really exist in male sex work. Dr. Scott, in addition, touts the benefits of decriminalization of sex work.
Back to the calls. A 31-year-old woman in the Pacific Northwest has been with her boyfriend for one year, living together for 5 months. Everything’s been going great so far. She’s wondering if she should get engaged and married to this guy. He could really stand to be on her health insurance. She’s foreign (I’m guessing Canadian) and would like to get a green card so she can vote against Trump and Republicans. What says Dan? Dan reminds our caller that becoming a citizen and all that is not an overnight process. So set that part of it aside. Besides, her money would do more than her single vote would.
A 32-year-old woman has been married for four years. They have mismatched libidos, so she tried to convince him to open up the relationship. He refused, so she went outside the marriage to get what she wants. She wants men to be aggressive with her, throw her down on the bed, and she hasn’t found that with her husband or the men she’s cheating with. Our caller says she has only had two good sex partners in her life, one of which was her ex-husband. She also gets bored masturbating. What does she do? Dan says sexual compatibility was never established in this relationship. She should call the question: it’s open or it’s over. If the status quo continues, sooner or later she’s going to get caught cheating. Dan ends with a plea: please establish basic compatibility before you march down the aisle a third time.
A 38-year-old man’s wife wants an open marriage. When she was with her first other guy, our caller freaked out. How can our caller deal? Bizarrely, Dan refers to an open marriage arrangement as “poly” for the second call in a row. The way he understood the call (either he made inferences I did not or something got cut) is that the wife, after talking about it for a long time, announced the relationship was open or it’s over, and then immediately jetted off for a weekend with her boyfriend. That, says Dan, is not okay. Not every open relationship that starts under duress is doomed. Our caller needs to find someone he can talk to about this. Find a sex-positive couples counselor, and reach out to anyone else you know with an open relationship. Above all, though, the wife needs to be hugely considerate at this point.
A 21-year-old woman wasn’t technically dating this guy, but she was living at his house, and one day he packed up her stuff and told her to leave. This was at a really emotionally fragile time in her life. He refuses to give a painting back, which was made by her family member. What should she do? Dan acknowledges that we don’t have all the facts here. She can go to small claims court to get the painting back. He may be holding on to the painting as back payment for rent. If she was behind on rent, that may be justified, but if they didn’t have an agreement, he can’t do that. Go to your local small claims court. Who knows, you might end up on Judge Judy.
Caller feedback! A guy was scared of going down on women, until he read a book. Dan was probably turned on by the shape of the cab seat. A good dom wants to please just like subs.
Thanks for reading.