DEAR INDY

Dear Indy Presents:

OH NO!

Sometimes things go unbelievably wrong. Not just mildly wrong, or feasibly fixably wrong, but irreversibly, horribly, heinously wrong. Record-scratch, freeze-frame, Hi-I’m-Indie-and-I-bet-you’re-wondering-how-I-got-intothis-situation wrong. “I’m not sure what you are going for here”- in-red-pen-on-your-essay wrong.​ The-way-I-used-to-pronouncethe-word-“coxswain” wrong. The kind of wrong that leaves you utterly powerless to do anything other than stare blankly into the wreckage and say, softly, almost inaudibly, “Oh no.”

Fear not, dear readers. I hear your soft, near-inaudible whisper, and I’m here to pull you up from the ruins, to be your deus ex machina descending from on high, to retrieve you from the Belly of the Whale, the Abyss, or any other differently-named-yet-equivalent stage of the hero’s journey. This week’s column is not for the faint of heart. You will read these questions, feel a visceral tug of horror, and think,​“I am so glad that is not me.” Unless you submitted the question, in which case you’ll just feel the visceral tug of horror. Don’t worry, though! I’m going to completely fix everything. More or less.

Dear Indie,

My best friend made me swear I wouldn't start hooking up with her brother. I started hooking up with her brother. She just found out. Help.

Love, Victorious (Or Not)

Dear Victorious (Or Not),

There comes a time in all of our lives where we must make a choice. Love or hate. Vengeance or mercy. Action or inaction. Ratty or V-Dub. The time has come for you to make a choice: best friend or brother.

I could foresee a few possible exceptions, scenarios in which you could maybe get away with both, like a Hailee-Steinfeld-in-Edge-of-Seventeen forgiveness situation. Is your best friend more angry about the fact that you're banging her brother or about the fact that you're banging her brother when she explicitly asked you not to? If you apologize enough, she might forgive you for the betrayal. But there's a chance she might not be able to get around the weirdness of, you know, the fact that you're banging her brother.

If the apologizing doesn't work, it's time to make a decision. Best friend or brother? You can only have one, and I recommend going with best friend. Unless, of course, the brother is really really hot. Then go brother.

Dear Indie,

This week I got lunch with one of my friends from freshman year who I hadn't spoken to in a long time. Unfortunately, it was really weird and awkward. After we hung out, I proceeded to text my best friend about how weird and awkward it was—but instead of sending the text to my best friend, I sent it to the person I was talking about. How can I salvage the situation?

Love, Flushing My Phone Down the Literal Toilet

Dear Indie,

My mom found my vibrator while she was helping move me into school. We haven't talked about it at all, and things have felt pretty awkward since then… What should I do?

Love, Bad Vibes

Dear Bad Vibes,

Do you know how many women in the United States own a vibrator? I'm seriously asking—I just tried to Google it, but I could only find statistics on what percentage of sex toy owners own vibrators, and then it took me to a big chart about all different kinds of sex toys and their popularity, like strap-ons and dildos and stuff, and then I got a little nervous that someone was going to see all of this over my shoulder, so I closed the tab really fast. The first point I was going to try to make is that your mom probably owns a vibrator, too, but now I'm going in a different direction.

Why did I close that tab? Owning a sex toy, according to the statistics that I glimpsed for about five seconds, is a pretty common phenomenon. I mean, you know the drill! Break the stigma, be sex-positive, say the word "vagina" in conversation, etc.! As a very cool and sexy columnist, I'm a massive proponent of all of that…but in the heat of the moment, I still got skittish and closed that tab. What I'm trying to say is that for all of our progress and our slogans, sex stuff can still be really hard to address head-on! Especially with your mom!

I'm ashamed of myself for closing that tab, but now I feel better knowing that I've written about my vibrator-Googling experience for all of Providence to read. On a similar note, you'll definitely feel better the more open you are with your mom (who probably has a vibrator too, though I don't have statistical evidence to back up this claim). Maybe you can break the ice by watching some kind of sex-related Netflix docuseries together.

Or Bridgerton! Then, you don't have to start the conversation yourself, or even talk about things directly quite yet. Regency-era people going down on each other is a kind of universal language, anyway.