AVC: What percentage of your letters do you end up answering privately?
DS: One or two every day. Oftentimes, when people write me 4,000-word letters, I write them back and tell them if their problem's that complicated, they probably need a lawyer or a cop, and not me. There's a limit to what you can do for people in a snarky advice column.
AVC: Do people write back to you to complain about how you edited their letters?
DS: Yeah, people will write in and say, "You left out these other 4,000 words," and I'll write back and say, "The column is 1,200 words long. I couldn't include everything, every mitigating circumstance." And people often write in to say, "Oh, that person was giving blowjobs and swallowing loads, and you didn't point out all the health risks that that entails." I can't. There's a limited amount of space. What I love are the people responding to letters who bring in all this stuff that isn't in the letter, but hypothetically could be possible. Somebody is in a situation, and they give me the details, and I respond to those details, and somebody else responds, "Oh, but what if they're Croatian? What if they're Korean and their last names are both Kim? Then they can't marry!" And I'll be like, "Yeah, and what if they're space invaders?" You can't possibly deal with every possible hypothetical permutation. You have to run with what people give you, and beat the fuck out of them if that's what they deserve, and be nice to them if that's what they need.
AVC: Do you get feedback from the people you advise, complaining or thanking you?
DS: Very, very occasionally. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. I have a letter here I have to run, which was the Mistress Fuckwit who I wrote about over Christmas, who's bringing her slave home for the holidays. She wrote in to explain that she wasn't going to abuse her slave in front of her family, and that her sister's letter was wrong. But rarely, if ever, do I hear from people who I've given advice. Maybe they're all killing themselves after they read the column. When I do hear back from people, it's usually a year or two later, and they'll write in and say something cryptic like "The advice you gave me really helped," and I'll write back and say, "Who are you, and what advice did I give you? It would help to know." And then they'll write me back. It can be really sweet. You'd be surprised how often I hear from people who are in very similar situations to the one that ran in the column, and the advice I was giving somebody really helped them too, accidentally. And that's tremendously gratifying.
AVC: You joke about people getting your advice and then killing themselves, but do you have any actual anxiety about the effect your column may have on people?
DS: No. I feel like I'm a compassionate guy, but I also feel if somebody's grip on life or sanity is so tenuous that a joke in an advice column that usually is nothing but jokes pushes them over the edge, then if not me, it would have been a leaf blowing past them that did it, or something else. You almost have to feel that way, doing this. And also, I'm not a big anti-suicide guy. I don't regard suicide necessarily as this huge unspeakable act of selfishness or tragedy. Some people take themselves out for completely legit reasons. Hopefully they'll get help, hopefully they'll think about it, but if they want to check out, I feel like they have a right to do that. I hope that nobody checks out because I made a joke at their expense, but anybody who's so weak that they could check out because of some stranger in the newspaper, in the anonymous treatment of their letter, is gonna bleed to death in a rainstorm if their skin is that thin. You can't really obsess about it.
AVC: You've said you get a lot of letters from people describing sex acts like donkey-punching or the Hot Karl, things you don't believe anyone ever really does. What's the most outlandish letter you've gotten that you actually believed was true?
DS: It was from a guy having sex with his mom who wanted to start a support group of parent-child incestuous relationships, and normalize it and make it healthy and okay. The problem about hearing about somebody having sex with their mothers is, the mental image that bumps into your head is you having sex with your own mother, and it just makes you want to go boil your head.
AVC: Presumably, you're harder to shock than you were when you started the column. Was there a gradual process of being inured?
DS: [Laughs.] Usually people just ask if anything shocks me anymore. Yeah, I got inured really early on. That question from the guy having sex with his mother, that was a long time ago. What could possibly be freakier than that? Then you get a string of questions from guys who eat their own poop or eat poop and think it's fun and sexy—invariably, it's always guys. And then you get the letter from the guy who's eating his mom's poop. You're like, "All right, I'm done, there's no depths left, we are at the bottom of the ocean." It took about a year of these questions until there was just nothing more depraved. Now it's just bank-shot stuff that kind of shocks you 'cause you never thought it was possible, like the woman who wrote in about her grandmother jerking off her parakeet. And I was just like, "Holy shit, somebody's jerkin' off a parakeet. Who knew?" You don't think of birds as having sex or dicks or spunk or anything, but there's grandma, jerkin' off the parakeet. And when I called people at pet stores and vets, and asked if that was possible and found out that it was, it just kind of blew my mind.
AVC: Would you like to reach a point where nothing makes you flinch any more, or do you think it's better to have limits?
DS: I think it's better to have limits. My limits are different from other people's limits. I'm all for freedom, I'm all for people doing what they want. I'm also all for people shouldering the consequences of their behaviors, and not being assholes, and not lying unless they need to, and being honest except when you shouldn't, and being faithful except when it's okay to cheat. [Laughs.] I guess I'm just a mass of contradictions.
AVC: You've said your parents were really repressive about sex. How did you get from growing up with them to being this honest and open and comfortable with talking about sex?
DS: They weren't that repressive. I wish they had been more repressed. We were kids in the '60s—my dad was a Chicago cop. My dad and mom were more like World War II-era parents, even though it was the 1960s, because they were both born in the '40s. They were young adults before the '60s even happened, and married, and already having kids. But by the time we were adolescents in the '70s, the whole culture was screaming at parents, "You're a good parent if you're open with your kids about sex." They attempted to be open with us about sex, and it made them want to die, and consequently, it made us want to die.
Having these conversations about oral sex with our parents made me want to jump out the window, particularly me, because I was afraid of getting outed. They're telling me about the fallopian tubes and women's genitals and how they work, and I'm just like, "Beep, beep, beep," listening to the clock-radio alarm in my head and trying to get through it. I'm still uncomfortable about sex, I don't like talking about sex with my family. I think one of the things that has made Savage Love really last is, it comes across to readers that it's written by somebody who doesn't only think about sex. Other stuff creeps into the column, often politics, but still other stuff, and I'm actually not that interesting or that interested when it comes to sex. I think what the column is often about now is conflict and behavior, and the difference between right and wrong, and the battle of the sexes.
If anything, the one way the column has changed me over the years is, I feel so sorry for straight guys. Because their sex lives are a terror, and are really circumscribed by straight guys policing the behavior of other straight guys—"Hey, you're a fag"—and by gay guys policing their behavior, and straight women. Paradoxically, straight guys run the world, but sexually, they're so imprisoned and it's not just a prison of their own creation. A girl goes to college and eats a little pussy and gets over it, and nobody thinks she has to be a lesbian because she did that disgusting pussy-eating thing once or twice. A straight guy goes to college and once or twice gets drunk and goes down on another guy, and if it gets out there, nobody's ever going to think he's straight, ever. It doesn't matter how much pussy he eats after that, or how many kids he fathers by a woman, he's secretly a fag. There's a problem with straight-male sexual identity where it's just a mass of negatives. It's not defined really by anything positive. Being a straight guy is not being a fag, not being a woman, and not doing anything that fags or women do, like have feelings or sit-ups or anything.
Half my mail sometimes is just straight guys going, "She put a finger in my butt. I liked it. Am I gay?" because he was penetrated. Or from women going, "I put my finger in his butt. He liked it. Is he gay?" And it's very sad. You wonder why straight guys are all so endlessly perverse. Like I said earlier, all the poo-eaters are guys. And it's just because there's so much more pressure laid on men about male sexuality that just squeezes out in weird, perverse ways. It's kind of tragic. It's also tragic that straight guys have so little access to sex. And it's always their fault. This just happened with Savage Love, with FS and WILLIE. WILLIE was the guy whose wife wouldn't have sex with him, and FS was the woman whose husband wouldn't have sex with her. And all the letters that I got in response to my column treated them both in a very similar way. In WILLIE's situation, it was his fault, and here's why, and in FS' situation, it was her husband's fault, and here's why. And it just put complete responsibility for sex on the men in those relationships. And men do sort of bear all responsibility—whatever's going wrong is completely their fault, women are always the victims. I just think there's no respect for male sexuality in this empathy culture that's shaped by and defined by a female perspective on relationships and emotions. I believe that if you marry somebody and you're gonna make the commitment to be faithful, you should be faithful. If your wife doesn't have sex with you for five years, I think you should fuck somebody else. [Laughs.] And it's not your fault if you're cheating at that point. You get a pass. Women are told that being in love means you don't want to fuck anybody else, so I get all this mail from all these women who are freaked out 'cause their boyfriend or lover or husband looked at some Internet porn. "Oh, he's got me, why would he look at Internet porn?" 'Cause he may have you, but he wants more. The measure of a man's devotion isn't that he doesn't want to fuck other people. It's that he doesn't fuck other people.
AVC: By your reckoning, it seems like more education, acceptance, and openness—enough to make men more confident about their sexuality and less paranoid about other people's—would be a solution to most men's sexual problems, and to homophobia as well.
DS: I actually think the solution to homophobia is eradicating misogyny. I think a lot of homophobia is hatred of women repackaged, 'cause gay men seem to preoccupy homophobes the most. It's usually about anal sex, and gay men are perceived as taking on the woman's role, and women are despised. The woman's role is less-than. And in a male-supremacy culture, men who take on the woman's role willingly kind of freak out some of the dudes. If you could eradicate misogyny, homophobia would evaporate. That's why I always tell women, "If you're dating a homophobe, you're dating a guy who's secretly a misogynist, who secretly hates you. And you shouldn't."
AVC: Either way, "eradicate this attitude" is an abstract solution. Is there a practical solution?
DS: No. There really isn't. Will we ever solve racism? No. The apparatus of the state has to be against it, the culture has to make up its mind that racism ain't okay. But you can't take "eradicating racism" as the goal, you'll never get there. We should fight homophobia, fight misogyny, but we will never eradicate them.
AVC: You often stress the importance of sex in relationships. You often advise couples who are sexually incompatible or even just sexually frustrated to just give up—you've even got an acronym for it.
DS: Yeah, DTMFA. ["Dump the motherfucker already." —ed.] I also advise people that it's okay to stay together and not for sex. I even said it in the WILLIE and FS column, that some relationships are about companionship and you stay together and I think that's totally legit. If sex isn't an important part of your marriage, you can't beef if your wife or husband does this unimportant thing with somebody else every once in a while, if you have no interest in it.
AVC: You advise them to stay together, but only if there's a sexual outlet.
DS: Yeah, unless you're both asexual eunuchs. I don't think it's fair to say that one person who wants to have a normal healthy sex life who accidentally married somebody who doesn't want to have sex just has to suck it up for 50 fuckin' years and never have sex. That's not gonna make for a happy marriage or relationship, and the person who wants sex is going to sabotage it and end it subconsciously. So you might as well end it honestly. Or, if the relationship is what's important, craft a deal to allow it to survive by allowing sex, which isn't important, to happen in some other way.
AVC: For several years, you did a call-in radio-show version of Savage Love. How did that differ from the print column?
DS: It was really fun. I'd get an FCC fine today for some of the stuff we did. But it was oddly unsatisfying. Radio is very ephemeral—it's just words floating through the air. It requires tons of preparation, as much as writing anything does, and then there's nothing left for you at the end of the day. The show kind of came and went. You write columns, you write essays, and they're still out there, they're still on your computer. You write a book, and someone picks it up eight years later and reads it. But you can't say the same thing about a radio show. It's taking away so much time and energy that could be going to something that feels more lasting.
AVC: Is that why you ended it?
DS: We were having trouble with the radio station—the station wanted to hold us at arm's length. People have talked to me about radio since, and I've never really aggressively gone after it. Every time I'm on a radio show, they say, "Oh, you should have a radio show." Al Franken says it to me every time I'm on the Al Franken show. If I went charging after Air America, who knows? Maybe I could get a radio show. But I haven't really aggressively pursued it.
AVC: You also did an advice column for ABC News' website for a while.
DS: I did. [Laughs sheepishly.]
AVC: That chuckle sounded a little embarrassed. What was it like?
DS: It was funny. It was no swear words. I can't deny that it was sort of a take-the-money-and-run moment. It was the Internet boom. I did it with my mom, which was fun. But what was interesting about it was—say I write an op-ed for The New York Times. I've written probably half a dozen. And I don't use the F-word in them, and I don't make dirty sex jokes, although I slipped one into the last one I wrote for them, and it got published, which made me very happy. And I get letters like, "Oh, you sold out, you're on ABC and you don't use the word 'fuck.'" But I never wrote anything I didn't believe on ABC News. I wrote columns defending three-ways and cheating on this incredibly mainstream news organization's website, and defending drug use as opposed to drug abuse. So I didn't change where I stood, I just changed how I said it. Is that selling out? I don't think so. I have a great-aunt who's a nun, and when I'm having a conversation with her, it doesn't sound like the conversations I have with my gay friends about sex in bars. Am I a different person when I'm with my great-aunt the nun, or when I'm doing a piece on This American Life? No. I'm just an adult who knows which kind of language is appropriate and when it's not appropriate. I don't feel like a different person when I'm with my great-aunt the nun. I don't stop being gay, I don't stop using drugs, and she's read my books, and she knows who I am, and if we get into a conversation about politics, I tell her the Pope can eat my shit. I don't use the phrase "Eat my shit," although I'm sure she'd like the Pope to eat her shit, too. She's no fan.
AVC: Are you still involved in local theater in any way?
DS: No, I've had to stop. I'm just too busy.
AVC: Would you like to be?
DS: I would. I really enjoy doing theater, but doing theater in Seattle is like dropping a brick in a bottomless well. It's gratifying, but it's almost like doing radio. It's ephemeral. In the end, I didn't have the time to devote to it because of Savage Love and The Stranger, and so the last plays I did weren't very good, because I didn't have the time to really be there for the entire rehearsal process. So I decided I had to stop.
AVC: Do you see yourself ever getting sick of the column or The Stranger?
DS: God, no. I have short-term memory problems. Every day, I show up at work and it feels like the very first time. And it's not all the pot. But I do feel like Ann Landers now. My column will be pried from my cold dead hands. Writing an advice column is such a great gig that you just can't, after a while, see yourself giving it up. I don't know—when I'm 55, are straight kids really going to want to hear what I have to say about fist-fucking? Maybe not, in which case I'll stop writing it. But it's really fun, and I still get tons of mail, and the column is still really wildly popular in the papers that it's in, and it just feels cool.
If you're paying attention, and I hope that I am, you don't become a fossil. There's always something new with sex. We lived in a world without Viagra, now we live in a world with Viagra. We lived in a world without blowjobs and anilingus in the Oval Office, and then it happens and you get to write about it. We live in a world where now the government is screwing with contraception and holding back vaccines that could save 4,000 women's lives a year, and you get to write about that. It's not as much fun as anilingus in the Oval Office, but what are you going to do? If you pay attention, there's always something new, and it's always really invigorating.
Sometimes I'm really shocked by people who write in and say, "Oh, you write too much about politics, stick to sex." Because politics in America is all about sex, and if you're writing for an American audience, you can't avoid politics. It's one of the huge defining differences between the two parties in the United States—sex and sexual freedom. So I find writing about the intersection between politics and sex occasionally in this goofy column really gratifying, and I'd like to keep doing it, because it's really such a fascinating moment to write about sex and politics—with jokes. Usually when I do interviews like this, we end up talking about the serious columns, but I'm really conscious of the fact that most people read the column for a laugh. And if every once in a while if I get serious, they'll read that too, because I usually entertain them. If I get serious about gay marriage or AIDS or emergency contraception or George fucking Bush or Ralph Nader, they'll go there because they trust me, 'cause I'm not gonna waste their time.
AVC: Apart from your column, what's the most rewarding part of being editor of The Stranger?
DS: I really love firing people. [Laughs.] No I don't, that's the worst part. I don't know, I love pulling the paper together, I love working with a big group of people. Actually, I think of The Stranger as the theater I do now. I think The Stranger has a really good rhythm, the actual physical paper. I think of every issue as a piece of theater with sort of an arc, and the curtain going up, and a nice little dénouement at the end of the book, and it's just really fun to put it together. We've got a great bunch of people on the editorial staff, and we boss the city around. It's a blast.
AVC: What do you want to do with the paper that you aren't doing yet?
DS: I want to put the other papers out of business. We'll never have the resources that daily papers have for, like, four investigative reporters who dig into stories for a year to find out there's nothing there.
AVC: What's next for you?
DS: Nothing. {Laughs.] This is the first time in eight years where I haven't had a book deadline looming. I'm talking to my publisher about a couple more books, and I'm taking a couple years to just do the paper and the column, and to just hang out with my kid and have weekends again. I didn't have weekends for about four years, 'cause I was always writing something. I want to do more goofy writing. That's what I call doing op-eds occasionally for The New York Times. I just did one for The Advocate, and I enjoy writing those essays. I'd like to do more of it.
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