SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE

Dear Readers: We’re rerunning some very early columns while I recover from shoulder surgery. This column is from February 1999 and doesn’t appear in the online archives.

HEY, DAN: I feel dirty. Not dirt that can be wiped away with a Wet Nap, but two-cans-of-Ajax kind of dirty. Alas, no matter how hard I scrub, I can’t get the memory of this man off of me. The urge to grab an SOS pad and scrub my nether regions is almost irresistible. Long story short: I spent the last year ass-over-teakettle for an older man who never made me feel very good about myself.

This is a man who refers to a certain male movie star, whom he met 20 years ago in an acting class, as “Robin.” This is a man who — IN ALL SERIOUSNESS — gives that speech about how he’s a loner, so please don’t fall in love with him. This man questioned every positive step I made in my life, in an attempt to keep me in obsessive crazy love with his rickety frame. I’m furious with myself for letting it go on as long as it did, and for ignoring the broken hip, butterscotch pudding and adult diaper jokes my friends threw at me in an attempt to bring me to my senses.

Do not label me “bitter”— that’s too easy. What I need from you is an answer to a simple question. I know that not even Dan Savage can turn back time. I mean, if Cher can’t, you can’t… but I ask you, Dan, is there any way you can un-sleep with someone?

— Filthy in New York

HEY, FINY: If un-sleeping with this man is your goal, you don’t want time turned back. You want time to pass, and pass quickly. Because it only takes three to four weeks for your skin, your epidermis, to replace itself completely. But for all intents and purposes, a month after this sorry affair ended, the skin covering your body never touched the skin covering his. You never even shook hands.

As for the rest of your body — vaginal canal, esophagus, stomach lining, rectum, and any other organs and orifices that came in contact with his organs or ejaculate — it’ll take more time for the cells comprising those tissues and organs to regenerate and replace themselves. But rest assured: You will, in time, have brand new everythings. The life cycles of various cells range from months to years, but soon enough you’re going to be a whole new woman, FINY, a woman who never touched that creep. So, there’s no need to take an SOS pad to your nether regions, as soon they won’t be the nether regions he touched. They’ll be new and improved nethers. Brain cells, unfortunately, are not regenerated, so you’ll be stuck with the memories forever. You could regard them as having been falsely implanted by an unethical therapist, or, if that’s too passive, you could drink them away. Alcohol kills brain cells, and with a lot of cosmos and a little luck, you may kill the very cells that store the memories of this sorry affair. Be careful, however, that in your efforts to drink away your bad memories you don’t create new, equally regrettable ones.