Savage Love Episode 1038

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_10] You're listening to the Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage's sex and relationship show for grown-ups. If you're under 18, get out of here, youngin'.

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_04] If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harm...

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_07] I've been listening to show tunes. Probably not a surprise, I'm always listening to show tunes. But there's one show, one tune from one show, that I've been listening to a lot lately.

[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_09] I wanna walk down the aisle on an island and say vows with lots of ahui vows Where tropical wedding showers bring gifts of his and his matching towels I wanna see all our friends and family on a beach by Hana Bay They're all gonna fly in for our Hawaiian wedding day

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_07] That's Hawaiian Wedding Song from Howard Crabtree's When Pigs Fly. Music by Dick Gallagher, lyrics by Mark Waldrop, sung here, the original cast recording, by the amazing actor, singer, comedian Michael West. When Pigs Fly was an off-Broadway musical review, a hit off-Broadway musical review, that opened at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre on August 15, 1996. The show is, as the first number puts it, a great big party smorgasbord with a generous helping of ham.

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_07] Howard Crabtree, the show's co-creator, really the inspiration for the show, was this insanely talented, absolutely demented gay costume designer. The show was so much fun. And we really needed something fun in the summer of 1996, when gay men were still dying of AIDS in ever-growing numbers. I've been thinking about Hawaiian Wedding Song and the moment in time it captured

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_07] because we were so close to winning marriage equality in our first date in 1996, so close we could taste it, so close we were writing show tunes about it. Every gay couple I knew in 1996, in 1995, in 1994, in three, was fantasizing about flying off to Hawaii to get married, legally married.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_07] Every gay couple I knew in 1996 was fantasizing about flying to Hawaii to get married. Backing up, the marriage equality movement began in Hawaii in 1990, when three gay couples applied for marriage licenses and then sued when they were denied. In 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples in Hawaii had a constitutional right to marry. That decision was put on hold while the state appealed,

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_07] and we were still waiting on that decision, the final decision, when Howard Crabtree died of AIDS in July of 1996. His final show, Howard Crabtree's When Pigs Fly, his name is in the title, there's a character in the show named Howard Crabtree. His last show opened a month after his death to rave reviews. Before jumping ahead to 2008, and I promise you we will get to 2026 just as quickly as we can here,

[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_07] I want to pause to talk about exactly how the marriage equality movement got started. It wasn't national gay organizations hoping to cash in. The big gay organizations wanted nothing to do with gay marriage and offered no help to these three gay couples. And it wasn't about gay men looking for an excuse to throw a party. Gay men have never needed an excuse to throw a party. The movement for gay marriage began because in 1990,

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_07] every gay man either knew or was one degree of separation from a gay couple where one man got sick, and then the homophobic family members of the dying man, estranged parents, estranged siblings, showed up at the hospital and had their dying child or brother's boyfriend, their partner, their husband in everything but name, barred from the hospital, removed from the room. In some cases, homophobic family members wouldn't tell their child's partner

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_07] that his lover of many years had died or where the funeral was or even where the body was buried. Men who had been with their husbands in everything but name were 10, 20, 30 years weren't allowed to say goodbye or even grieve privately at a gravesite. And this emotional violence was possible because two men couldn't get married. The early leaders of the gay marriage movement were not circuit queens who thought a wedding shower sounded like fun.

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_07] Gay couples in the 1990s weren't fantasizing about flying off to Hawaii to get married and party. They were, we were, fantasizing about flying off to Hawaii to get married to protect ourselves. So, jumping ahead from 1990, after one or two positive state Supreme Court rulings and the passage of 13 anti-gay amendments in other states, it was now 2008 and the Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama,

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_07] was asked if he supported gay marriage, this right that the gay community had been desperately fighting for for more than 15 years. And he said no. It wasn't just that Obama came out against gay marriage. It was where he did it and in what terms. Obama went to an evangelical megachurch to speak with an anti-gay preacher in front of his anti-gay congregation. That was the where.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_07] As for terms, he came out against gay marriage in the most offensive possible terms. When he was asked if he supported gay marriage, a question he knew was coming, a question he probably went to that evangelical church to answer, Obama said he did not. Because when a man marries a woman, and I quote, God is in the mix. The congregation knew what he meant by that. Someone else was in the mix when two men got married. And it wasn't Judy Garland.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_07] Making it worse, we didn't believe him. When he was a state senator in Illinois, Obama backed gay marriage. So this was a purely political calculation. He wanted to be president. He couldn't endorse gay marriage and be president. He threw us under the bus. And what did we do? How did we react to that? We wrote him a check and we voted for him. Because we knew it would be worse for us and for others if John McCain won the White House in 2008.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_07] And Sarah Palin, McCain's demented pick for vice president, a rabidly anti-gay Christian nutjob, wound up being a heartbeat away from the presidency. So we voted for Obama. But we kept pushing him. Gay activists were showing up at Obama's speeches in 2009 and 2010 and interrupting him, which made him furious. But he made promises to us that he hadn't delivered on. A year into his presidency, at a time when he had 60 votes in the Senate,

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_07] the ban on gay people serving openly in the military was still in place and gay voters, gay activists, were pissed and let him know. Later in his first term, after delivering on his promise to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Obama said he was evolving on the issue of gay marriage. Terry and I showed up at the one and only White House Pride reception we were ever invited to with our pockets stuffed full of buttons that said Evolve Already on them.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_07] I have a photo taken at the reception of me pressing one of these buttons into the hands of then Vice President Joe Biden at the reception. Terry gave one to Jill Biden. We never got invited back to another White House Pride reception, but we didn't care. Right now, trans people have been thrown under the bus by a handful of Democrats running in red or purple states. Some, like James Tallarico in Texas, have walked back or qualified

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_07] past support for trans rights, particularly trans girls and women participating in sports, kind of like Obama did on gay marriage in 2008. Being thrown under the bus? I know how that feels. And it sucks. But some trans activists are out there saying that they're going to sit out the midterm elections. Some are saying they want Republicans to win so that everyone suffers. That would be a mistake.

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_07] Like electing John McCain and Sarah Palin would have been a mistake in 2008. What's being done to trans people in this country right now is awful. Republicans in red states like Idaho have made it illegal for a trans person to use a bathroom. The Republican candidate for Senate in Texas in his role as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to arrest the parents of trans kids. And the attacks from the White House are despicable and depressing and constant.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_07] And I still think trans people, I think all LGBT people, I think all straight people should vote on November 3rd in the midterms and vote for Democrats. Part of me wants to say, look, I'm not telling trans people what to do, but telling people what to do is literally my job. Just advice, not binding arbitration. Everybody gets to do ultimately what they want to do and what they think is right. But I am not telling trans people or anyone else who feels like they're under that bus

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_07] right now to do anything I haven't done myself. You could say I take the same approach to politics that I do to face fucking. Gay voters backed Obama by huge margins in 2008. We voted for him from under the bus. And we prevented worse from happening by putting him in office and then demanded better from him once he was in office. And in the end, we got better from him.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_07] LGBT voters now have the opportunity to do the same with imperfect allies, imperfect candidates like James Tallarico. That's a bummer note to end the intro on. These are bummer times. Bummer notes are unavoidable. So let's end with another little bit of Hawaiian Wedding Song.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_09] On the night we're legally wed, we give a whole new meaning to Diamond Head. And these will sure be trying on our Hawaiian Wedding.

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_07] Diamond Head. Hilarious. When Pigs Fly. Love that show. All right, coming up on this week's show, a gay man won three months of free entry to his local bathhouse and wonders if I have any tips for what he should do there. Maybe register voters. A woman who is really into ears wonders if there's such a thing as ear porn. And if there is, how do you get the dick in there? And my guest this week, journalist and podcaster Alan Salkin, creator of the new 12-part podcast

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_07] series from The Hollywood Reporter called Gerbil, which is about what you think it's about. Alan and I talk about the persistence of this urban legend and why it has such staying power. A little of my conversation with Alan Salkin from Gerbil is on the micro. The whole thing is on the Magnum. To hear the entire interview with Alan, subscribe to the Magnum Savage Lovecast by going to savage.love and clicking on the subscribe button. I promise you will be glad you did.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_07] And did you know that you can text questions to me? You can. Just record your question and then text it to 206-302-2064. And we are still pulling together our next quickies show. Quick cues, quick A's. If you have a quick question of any kind, quick and dirty or quick and clean, doesn't even have to be a question about sex, send it to us, text it to us, or go to savage.love and record and upload it directly onto our website.

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_07] Keep your questions for the quickie show short and I will do my best to keep my answers short. Do we have a deal? I think we have a deal. All right, on to this week's show. I can help you get your sex life together, but where can you go to get your financial life together? Here at the Lovecast, we get questions all the time about money that I have no idea how to answer. For money advice that thinks outside the closet, schedule a judgment-free consultation with the team at Toler Financial Group today

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_07] at tolerfinancialgroup.com slash savage. This episode is brought to you by Forkful, seed oil-free chef-cooked meals delivered to your door. Go to forkfulmeals.com and use code savage to get 50% off your first order. Today's show is sponsored by A-Seeks-B. Remember when personal ads were good? When people wrote in their own words what they were actually looking for? A-Seeks-B brought that back.

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_07] It's a free text-first app for personal ads. Kink and E&M friendly, no swiping. Search what other people are looking for or post what you seek and choose who sees it. A-Seeks-B.com slash savage. That's A-S-E-E-K-S-B dot com slash savage.

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_02] Hi, Dan. I'm a 43-year-old female and I have a question about ear touching and ear fetishes specifically. And that's ear E-A-R. E-A-R. I like to touch my ears. My own ears. And I also like to touch other people's ears. It's very comforting for me. Ears are very soft. They're very pliable.

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_02] They're also really good when they're cold. I like cold ears. Not like deadly cold. Like, I don't want to touch a corpse. There's no way that I would want to touch a corpse's ears. But I do want to touch, like, room temperature cold ears. And I've recently stumbled into the fact that there may be ear porn. Like, who is interested in ear porn? E-A-R porn. Ear porn.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_02] I can't enunciate it any more than I'm already trying to. Ear porn. It's very weird. Anyway, I understand, Dan, that sometimes you like drunk questions. This is definitely a drunk question. Again, what's the difference between, like, touching ears and needing to touch ears and ear porn? Like, do people really want to stick their dick in ears or their fingers in an ear? Like, I don't want to stick my finger in an ear.

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_02] I just want to touch around it. There's no way I would want to touch the inside of an ear. I just want to touch around it. Like, do dick... Okay, does ear porn involve sticking a dick in the ear before I have to go and actually watch ear porn?

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_07] There is a lot of ear porn out there. I did a quick search. Thousands of videos on various porn sites like Pornhub and XHamster. I don't think, if I were to watch some of those videos, and I didn't watch any of those videos, just establishing that this is indeed a thing and you are not the only person out there with a thing for ears, I don't think if I watched those videos I would see a lot of dicks going into ears,

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_07] even if I did see the occasional dick rubbing up against an ear, which I would expect to see. You seem to think that ear porn means a dick is going to fuck something in the porn. That porn means dicks fucking things. So ear porn means a dick fucking an ear. Do you think people with foot fetishes... There are lots more videos out there for people with foot fetishes. Do you think people with foot fetishes are putting their dicks into feet?

[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_07] Cutting a foot open and inserting a dick? No, no. People with foot fetishes are kissing feet, licking feet, maybe rubbing their genitalia against feet. People with foot fetishes are doing everything that it sounds like you might enjoy doing. You, sitting there at home, drunk with your ear fetish. And it's a little bit judgy because it's subjective. People are into body parts that most other people aren't into.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_07] People who are aroused by feet or elbows or the backs of knees. That's called partialism. If you are aroused by boobs or butts or genitalia, that would also have to be, in my judgment, in my estimation, a partialism. It's just a majority partialism, so we don't slap that pathologizing label on it. But people into feet are into feet the same way people into other body parts are into other body parts.

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_07] And there are people out there into body parts that you can't necessarily stick your dick into. But you can rub your dick up against. A lot of foot fetish porn out there involves people getting foot jobs, which is the dick being jerked off between the soles of someone's feet pressed together.

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_07] Of course, a person can't press their ears together unless you're having a three-way and there are two people there willing to press their ears on either side of your dick if you had one while you fucked away. But I imagine most people with ear fetishes just want to do what you want to do. Kiss and lick and suck and touch with their fingers or their tongues or their genitalia, their dicks, their clits. Touch someone's ear.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_07] I would not advise anyone to try to stick their dick into someone's ear. I don't think that would be possible. I imagine there are some people out there who have ejaculated into someone's ear canal. I would also not recommend that. Very uncomfortable to get water that you can't get out into your ear canal. I imagine semen, which is thicker and gooier, would be harder to get out.

[00:18:09] [SPEAKER_07] And when it dried, it would be impossible to get out. So I would hope that all the responsible ear fetishists out there with dicks aren't pointing their dicks straight into people's ear canals and ejaculating. Although, my back's hamster opened in front of me right now. Although I bet if I clicked play on some of these videos, I would see exactly that.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_07] But I'm not going to click play on any of these videos because I do not wish to see that. Money questions and relationships start on the first date, whether you met on the apps or you met in real life. As our sex lives and our relationships grow, so too can the financial stress. Have you ever wished you could find someone like me to answer your financial questions? If you've been looking for a financial advisor that really lets you be you, check out Tolar Financial Group.

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[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_07] Learn more about their Get Your Finances Together offer for Savage Lovecast listeners at TolarFinancialGroup.com slash Savage and schedule a no-judgment free consultation with their team today. That's T-O-L-E-R Financial Group dot com slash Savage. Let them know the Lovecast sent you. TolarFinancialGroup.com slash Savage.

[00:19:51] [SPEAKER_00] Hey, Dan and the TechSavvy AtRisk Youth. I just want three months free entry into my local gay bathhouse. And as a Gen Z, I was wanting advice into how to best use this. Any advice from the obvious to the hilarious is welcome.

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_07] This isn't very helpful advice, but it is what came to mind while I was listening to your call. Weirdly Seize Candies, they're a West Coast candy retailer. If you're from the Midwest, think sort of the California, Washington, Oregon version of Fannie Mae chocolates. And they allow their employees in the factories, in the warehouses where the chocolates are made and packed, they allow their employees to eat as much chocolate of their product as they want to.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_07] Under the theory that the employees, rather than stealing the chocolates, will quickly grow sick of the chocolate. They will eat their fill. Maybe a bathhouse giving away free memberships is operating under the same theory that you won't come every night. You won't occupy the sling or one of the private rooms every night because you will quickly eat your fill. I guess it's not exactly parallel.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_07] The parallel at a bathhouse to Seize Candies would be employees of the bathhouse being allowed to gorge on dick until they were sick of dick. If you can get sick of dick. But it does work on chocolates. You can have one too many Fannie Mae Trinidads and then you can never eat a Fannie Mae Trinidad ever again. Used to be my favorite fucking candy ever and then I had one too many in one sitting and now I can't. I haven't had the same problem with dick yet.

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_07] But I imagine if I had a three month pass to a bathhouse, maybe I would eventually stare down the Trinidad problem. Too much dick coming at me, on me, in me, near me. And I would get sick of it. Only one way to find out if you are going to face the Fannie Mae Trinidad problem at this bathhouse. And that is by going. As to what to do there, it depends on what you want to do. Come on. This isn't a serious question. You know what you're going to do in the bathhouse is what works for you.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_07] And what works for you in the bathhouse might be different than what works for somebody else. I would encourage you, if you're going to go to a bathhouse, especially if you're going to go every night for three months, to get on prep, if you are not already on prep, to get Doxy, a prescription for Doxy, if you don't already have a bottle. And then go and do, with others who want to do the things that you want to do, go and do the things that you want to do. Go gorge on dick.

[00:22:31] [SPEAKER_07] And if you hit your limit, if you've had one too many dicks and you can never have dick again, let me know. Give me a call. Tell me that that's how it worked out for you. Tell me that you too hit the Trinidad wall. This episode is sponsored by Forkful, our new favorite meal kit around here. Terry, my husband, he loves to cook and he is a great cook, but sometimes Terry needs a night off. Sometimes he needs someone else to cook for him. And that someone, yeah, that someone isn't going to be me.

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[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_07] There's no meal prep, cooking, or cleanup. Just clean flavors, ready in under three minutes, delivered right to your door within 24 to 48 hours. We loved the Arizona grilled chicken with plantains. And the coconut chia pudding with almond granola, that got wolfed down real quick at our house. Their menus offer really interesting options, so we're trying some new things and it has been awesome. Explore their plans and their menu of fresh, ready-to-eat meals at forkfulmeals.com.

[00:24:00] [SPEAKER_07] And use code SAVAGE while you're there to get 50% off your first order. That's forkfulmeals.com slash SAVAGE. And use promo code SAVAGE to get 50% off your first order. Let them know the Lovecast sent you. Use the promo code SAVAGE. And thank you to Forkful for the delicious meals. And thank you to Forkful for sponsoring this episode of the Savage Lovecast.

[00:24:25] [SPEAKER_08] Hi, Dan, Nancy, and the tech savvy at risk youth. I'm a 39-year-old trans femme who's just moved back to Brighton in the UK. And I've moved in with some kink-friendly individuals, which is fantastic. And I'm so looking forward to being able to be more open and, I don't know, be a bit of a slut without having to hide it from people. The only problem, if it's a problem, is that one of my flatmates has a dom who I've played with in the past and who's a fairly good friend,

[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_08] who's expressed interest in playing with me and her together. This sounds like it could be really good fun, but it might also be a terrible idea. I hope we could, if we did that, we could use our words and set boundaries and all those other good things. But it feels like it could be a pulling a rug out from under my own feet situation. What do you think? Should we go for it and see if we can be mature about it? Or is this an absolute no-go?

[00:25:25] [SPEAKER_08] I don't want to mess up the best housing situation I've had in literal decades. And I'd be really keen to hear your advice.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_07] All right. If you don't want to risk screwing up the best housing situation you've ever had, you shouldn't do this. You should be risk-averse and not fuck around with your roommate and this dom, your new roommate and this dom that you fucked around with before. But I can tell from the tone in your voice that you are going to do this. I think most kinky people would.

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_07] Kinky people tend to score high on measures of sensation-seeking personality traits. And you are a sensation seeker, sounds like. Most people with doms are. And yeah, you are going to do this. You should talk to your new roommate about this dom. You should compare notes. You should have a conversation about limits and boundaries. And you should put it out there. Like, this could go south.

[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_07] Like, we could walk away from this experience feeling weird about being roommates or somebody, three ways, somebody could get their feelings hurt. It is the thing that sometimes happens in three ways. So let's talk about what we will do if the worst happens. Let's worst case scenario this and spin out the worst case where it's just a shitty three way. And I get my feelings hurt. You get your feelings hurt. And then what?

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_07] Well, then I don't want to screw up the best housing situation I've had in decades. And I don't want to screw up your housing situation. So let us commit before we have this three way, you, my new flatmate, this dom that you've played with, that I've played with, who wants to play with both of us. Before we do that, let's commit that if there are hurt feelings, we will work through it like mature grownups.

[00:27:21] [SPEAKER_07] So that doesn't guarantee that you will work through it like mature grownups. But there is something, I think, magical about assuring someone that if the three way goes south or somebody gets their feelings hurt, that we will try to work through this like grownups. It doesn't guarantee, again, that you will work through it like grownups successfully.

[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_07] But it does seem to guarantee that at least you will make both of you on both sides or all three sides, a triangular effort here to work through it in good faith, that you will make the attempt to work through it. But yeah, you are definitely going to do this. I do not think this is a temptation that you are going to be able to resist. And I wouldn't encourage you to resist this temptation. It sounds really fucking hot.

[00:28:08] [SPEAKER_07] Sounds like a good candidate for an after action report segment. So send us an email at Q at savage dot love after the inevitable happens. And you and your new flatmate and your dom all play. Let us know how that went. But yeah, you know what to do. You're clearly a listener. Use your words in advance. Set your boundaries. Pinky swear that if somebody gets their feelings hurt or it's a bad experience,

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[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_01] Hi, Dan. I'm a part of a book club. And sometimes in our book club, we read books that have sex scenes in them. The most recent book we read had a sex scene in it, which nothing out of the ordinary. It was all right. Except to I got to a part where the main male character goes down on the main female character. And I quote, he devoured her with tongue and teeth.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_01] In all my life as a person with a vulva, no one that has ever gone down on me has used their teeth and I would never want them to use their teeth. So I need to know, Dan, are teeth allowed in oral sex? I need to let my book club know.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_07] I have an uncle who was a famous, on a kind of regional level, rock musician at one time. And it was the 70s and he got with a lot of young groupies. And yeah, there was probably a lot going on there that shouldn't have been going on there. But one of the things that was going on there that shouldn't have been going on there, but used to make my uncle laugh when he retold these stories.

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_07] Got a lot of blowjobs from women. Fingers crossed, adult women who'd never really given blowjobs before. It was the 70s. Oral sex was still considered kind of out there, kind of a kink that a couple might get into after many years together. Oral in the 70s did not come standard. So my uncle was on the receiving end of all these blowjobs from all these adult women.

[00:31:19] [SPEAKER_07] And he would tell them that all men liked blowjobs the way he liked blowjobs. And he liked blowjobs with a lot of biting. He liked to have his dick bit. He wanted to be devoured tongue and teeth.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_07] And it used to make him laugh to think about the guys who came after him, literally came after him, that these adult women would go down on in the future, operating under the assumption that all guys liked it the way he liked it because that's what he told them. And he used to laugh about the guys who got their dicks bit after he got his dick bit. And what was funny about it is most guys don't want their dicks bit. All right. This is a long way of saying no. Generally, no.

[00:32:04] [SPEAKER_07] Teeth are not allowed, not wanted in oral sex. Teeth will, of course, be adjacent. Teeth will be nearby. It's not as if you can have oral, unless you're getting it at the old folks' home, not as if you can have oral without teeth being nearby. Teeth will always be close by. But people don't generally want teeth incorporated into oral sex. Do not want to be bitten.

[00:32:30] [SPEAKER_07] Do not want to be devoured tongue and teeth. I am an oral sex fan, practitioner, critic. I am not a literary critic. I do wish, though, you had included a little bit more of this passage. I'd like to assess it or maybe encourage your book club to assess it in its full context. Did the author mean it literally? Did they mean devoured using tongue during oral? Allowed. Lips? Allowed. Suction? Allowed.

[00:32:59] [SPEAKER_07] And teeth? Biting? Chewing? Scraping? Yeah. Not allowed. A little maybe gentle pressure with teeth during oral is allowed. Could be effective. Could be an arousing sensation, a pleasurable sensation. But devoured? Yeah. No. Fingers crossed that the author, just as fingers crossed that all those women, all those groupies that my uncle slept with in the 70s were adult women.

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_07] Fingers crossed here that the author did not mean this literally. And if they did mean it literally, and they did not do the enormous carve out like I did at the beginning of this response, where I framed my uncle's preference for oral sex involving a lot of biting, a lot of tooth action as a minority taste. If the author didn't set this off as a minority taste. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:55] [SPEAKER_07] Then if they meant it literally, if in its full context, the author meant devoured tongue and teeth, oral performed both with tongue and tooth, tooth's teeth, then I suspect this may be one of those books, dirty books written by a person who hasn't had much sex, but nevertheless writes about sex.

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_07] I read a few books, I've read a few of those books, a lot of them kicking around out there lately. A lot of them being devoured tongue and tooth, tongue and teeth by various book clubs all over the country lately. Don't know if this one is one, but if the author meant it literally, I suspect it is one of those books written by somebody who's thought about sex, but hasn't had much. We're going to take a quick break from your calls to speak with Alan Salkin.

[00:34:50] [SPEAKER_07] And he is a journalist who's covered everything from serious political stories to bizarre trends for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, New York Post and other major outlets, written books on Festivus and the history of the Food Network. He has a new project out now. The first two episodes of his 12 part podcast series from the Hollywood Reporter are available now wherever you get your podcasts. The title of this new podcast series from Alan Salkin, Gerbil. Alan, welcome to the Savage Lovecast.

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_06] I could not be more thrilled to be here. This entire podcast was almost made for you.

[00:35:23] [SPEAKER_07] I appreciate the thought. I've never had a podcast made for me that was specifically about, I'm quoting you here, what your description of this podcast, this 12 part series, an investigation into rodents and buttholes. Which rodent, Alan, and whose buttholes?

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_06] It's a gerbil, although is it a gerbil? Some say it's a hamster. And it would be, well, theoretically, the prime version is Richard Gere's butthole.

[00:35:54] [SPEAKER_07] You do this experiment in episode one where you just say the word gerbil to people and get their reaction. And the reaction you get is almost always this rumor that's been circulating about Richard Gere for decades. What is that rumor?

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_06] Well, the rumor is that Richard Gere at some point in the 80s showed up at Cedars-Sinai Hospital with a gerbil in his ass that he could not get out that he had inserted for sexual pleasure. Richard Gere, the A-list movie star.

[00:36:27] [SPEAKER_07] You interview me for the show, and I remember hearing this rumor in the mid-80s, which you suggest I may be misremembering, which happens. You know, memory is fun. No, Dan.

[00:36:39] [SPEAKER_06] No, Dan. No, Dan. You remembered hearing it in the early 80s, in fact. Because you said at the time of American Gigolo, which was 1980.

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_07] 1980. 1980. Okay. So, yeah. I may have misremembered, but I do remember hearing this early and perhaps before the rumor about Richard Gere specifically got started, which I felt a little vindicated by episode two. Because I'm not misremembering in that this rumor about gay men engaging in this practice. And Richard Gere is not a gay man.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_07] But this rumor about gay men sticking rodents in their asses really gained some cultural toehold and purchase in the mid-80s. And you share a story in episode two about Jerry Pentacoli. Who was Jerry Pentacoli?

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_06] Jerry Pentacoli. Jerry Pentacoli was an up-and-coming news anchor, sort of like Ron Burgundy, if you will, in Philadelphia in the 80s. He was a handsome, young star newsman at the sort of number two channel, KYW. And all of a sudden, episode two is called the Philadelphia Gerbil Panic of 1985.

[00:37:51] [SPEAKER_07] Always about handsome guys.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_06] Never about a schlub putting a gerbil in his ass. But in the case of Pentacoli, a closeted, you know, the term closeted man, a gay man, actually, who was not out because, of course, you could not be a star anchorman in Philadelphia in 1985 if you were gay.

[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_07] I'm trying to wrap my head around this. And I listened to the first two episodes, and I feel like there's an unindicted co-conspirator in all of this. That there's this thing that's happening in the mid-1980s to gay men that straight people, you know, you called it the gerbil panic. And listening to episode two about the gerbil panic reminded me of the AIDS panic, the AIDS crisis.

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_07] And I began to think that this rumor, when it originally began to fly around, it was about gay men doing this thing, putting gerbils in their butts. And I think it's a part of the AIDS panic that it wasn't just that gay men were doing sex things and getting sick and dying, but gay men were doing insane things. Sexual things that no straight person would do, like put rodents in their asses.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_07] Because straight people certainly have anal sex, and straight people certainly have casual sex. And straight people, even once in a while—

[00:39:11] [SPEAKER_06] Whenever possible, yes.

[00:39:12] [SPEAKER_07] —will have anonymous sex. So I do—gay men have more—gay men do more things than straight men do, but not because gay men are gay, but because gay men are men doing things with other men. Straight men would do everything gay men do if straight men could, but straight men can't because women won't.

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_06] Listen, I've been reading you for decades because I completely agree with pretty much everything you say. Yes.

[00:39:31] [SPEAKER_07] And it seems to me that this rumor beginning to circulate, this urban legend specifically about gay men and this insane sex practice, it gets—it takes off in the early mid-80s along with the HIV-AIDS crisis. And that's what I remember. That's what I was there for, because I'm one of those rare gay guys who came out in high school for my generation.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_07] I came out in 1980, and I remember the onset of the AIDS crisis and the sudden conversation about, what the fuck have gay men been up to? And it wasn't enough that we were having a lot of butt sex. We were doing butt stuff that no sane person would do. And it was another way of suggesting that maybe we had this coming and we brought it on ourselves.

[00:40:16] [SPEAKER_06] Yes. And as the episodes unwind, this—I do get into AIDS as a very central character in this. And not only AIDS, but of course the death of Rock Hudson in 1985. And Rock Hudson being, although maybe known to some insiders in Hollywood as being gay, when he got AIDS and then died, all of a sudden it was revealed that Hollywood would lie to you,

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_06] would tell you somebody was an icon of being straight who was actually gay. And so then the sort of wheel of, well, who the fuck else out there in La La Land is gay and hiding it? And you look at a guy like Richard Gere who is actually photographed, plays with this image. Like classic photographs of him early by Robert Mapplethorpe and Herb Ritz.

[00:41:07] [SPEAKER_06] So I don't want to give too much away, but I get into something later where I talk about AIDS a lot. I talk about—you probably know there was a magazine called Diseased Pariah News. It was a sort of humor magazine put out by people dying of AIDS, actually. You know, it's our party and we'll die if we want to. It was a very seminal magazine.

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_07] I was a subscriber.

[00:41:30] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah. Well, do you still have them? They're probably worth a lot.

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_07] No, I don't still have them. I lost them in Wisconsin.

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah. Anyway, you're 100% right. AIDS is a huge part of how this rumor—the panic rises. But, you know, it's maybe how it starts, but is it why it persists? Obviously, no.

[00:41:52] [SPEAKER_07] Interestingly, Richard Gere's really—his first breakout role was playing a gay man in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. I think I'm okay to give out spoilers for 60-year-old movies, 50-year-old movies, but he plays a semi-closeted, deeply conflicted, self-loathing gay man who murders Diane Keaton after having sleazy sex with her, meeting her in a pickup bar. It was kind of a moral panic film about singles bars, about straight people acting a little bit more like gay people.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_07] So the first role that really brought Richard Gere to public attention and the first role where the camera sort of panned up and down his body, he was playing a gay man.

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah. And in fact, I have Brett Easton Ellis is on talking about American Gigolo. And, you know, in Gigolo, at the very end, Gere says, you know, to try to save his life, he says, I'll do fag tricks for you.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_06] So there's this implication that he was—and in fact, in the original shooting script, he talks about—his sort of pimp talks about that he was sucking cock, you know, for money before she found him and sort of made him a gigolo mostly for women. So a lot of his early roles, it was very unclear what he was. And in fact, supposedly John Travolta turned down the role in American Gigolo because— Because. Dot, dot, dot. Dot, dot, dot.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_07] Okay, so what we have is the emergence of HIV-AIDS in the early 80s, the emergence of Richard Gere as not—like obviously a straight sex symbol, but in some movies where he's gay-coated or ambiguous. And this gerbil thing gets off the ground before Richard Gere, but then somehow in the mid-80s attaches to Richard Gere. And like you said, the show is about the persistence of this.

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_07] Why this is so sticky. Why no amount of debunking. I once wrote a column where I called all the pet stores in gay neighborhoods to find out how many gerbils they go through. And they don't sell a lot of gerbils in pet stores. You would think there would be gerbil stands on the corner by the Castor Theater in San Francisco if this was a widespread gay sexual practice. And there aren't and there isn't. And why do you think this is so sticky?

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_07] Why does Richard Gere probably hate you so much right now and is probably never going to talk to the Hollywood Reporter ever again?

[00:44:18] [SPEAKER_06] Well, okay, that's a whole other thing.

[00:44:22] [SPEAKER_07] You say, like you tease, and I want everyone to listen to all the episodes. I've only heard the first two. You say that you hope in the end to speak with Richard Gere about this, that you hope he will speak with you. Jerry Pentacoli? Oh, Pentacoli. He's still alive.

[00:44:37] [SPEAKER_06] Yeah, yeah. Still alive, yes. Has never spoken about it.

[00:44:41] [SPEAKER_07] Am I mispronouncing his name?

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_06] Yes, you're saying Pent with a, like a, he's pent, like a pentacostal. He's more like Penicoli, Pentacoli, which by the way, let's talk about that. Okay. I get into this too. It's not nothing that his name sounds like penis. And I'm not being light about it. It's not nothing that Gere is the first letters of gerbil.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_07] Here's more of my convo with Alan Salkin on the Magnum version of the show. Become a Magnum subscriber today by going to savage.love and clicking on subscribe.

[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_10] Hi, Dan. I'm a 51-year-old queer lady from the great state of Minnesota. My fiance and I have been together for two years and have a pretty great relationship. She was married to a man before and she has this flower tattoo on her finger as her wedding ring for that marriage. She decided to have it removed before we were engaged. The process is long and pretty painful. She's had about six treatments and they have to be six weeks apart. It's pretty hard on her.

[00:45:38] [SPEAKER_10] She has anxiety leading up to the appointments and complains about the pain for a couple days after. We've already paid for the entire removal process, but who knows how long it will, how many more sessions it will take. I know that if I told her to just stop doing the removal, she would jump on it. I think she's doing it just for me at this point. Should I let her off the hook? Her ex-husband is a pretty great guy and very much a part of our lives. Should I just get over it?

[00:46:06] [SPEAKER_10] Dan, am I an asshole for wanting her to continue through the pain so I don't have to look at her old wedding tattoo under my pretty new engagement ring?

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_07] I can understand why you might be uncomfortable with the tattoo, but I think you should tell your fiance not to worry about it. And presumably you two are going to get married. You're engaged, which means there's going to be another ring. Well, when you go ring shopping, get one that's big enough to cover the tattoo so you don't have to look at it.

[00:46:42] [SPEAKER_07] That said, you know, you're in your fifties. You don't mention how old your fiance is, but she's lived a little. She's been married to a man. She was in a heterosexual relationship. She has a history. She has an ex-husband. Sounds like he's a nice guy. You're kind of violating what I think is one of the queer superpowers, which is a certain

[00:47:06] [SPEAKER_07] comfort level that a lot of straight people don't share with our partners' sexual and romantic histories. That is why you see often at lesbian weddings an officiant up there on the altar or a best woman standing up there next to one of the brides who is an ex. We have a kind of comfort with the existence of exes. We don't tell our friends they can't date anybody that we've dated.

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_07] I have been to dinner parties where guys have set up guys with their exes. So it seems to me that, yeah, you should be better about what that tattoo symbolizes, which is your fiance's romantic and sexual history. Whoever your fiance is now, you fell in love with her now.

[00:47:55] [SPEAKER_07] And her sexual and romantic history, the positive aspects of it shaped her, are the reason she is the woman she is now, the woman that you fell in love with. And her ex-husband that you say you're friendly with and she's friendly with is a part of her history and a positive part of her history. So not then I think something that you would want to literally or figuratively erase.

[00:48:22] [SPEAKER_07] I do not look kindly on the kind of people out there who get mad because their new husbands or new wives have photo albums or even photos on the wall of their previous spouses. Sometimes the co-parents of children that they're still raising, you should, if you're coming into someone's life after they've had some experience, after they've lived a little, after they've had other

[00:48:52] [SPEAKER_07] relationships. If those relationships were positive things, if they stuck the dismount, if those were successful short-term or long-ass term relationships, you should honor them, not resent them, not seek to erase them, not make it about you and your discomfort because you know that that photo album or that photo, even if it was taken off the wall, is somewhere in the house. Fuck that.

[00:49:19] [SPEAKER_07] Embrace your partner's whole history, just like you embrace your partner's whole self, whole person. And that includes embracing her marital history before you came along. So yeah, tell her to stop going to get these painful procedures to have the tattoo erased if she was only doing that for you. And then go buy a ring, go buy a big fucking rock that covers up the tattoo.

[00:49:48] [SPEAKER_07] All right, time for listener feedback. First up, a few comments listeners left about last week's show in the comment thread at savage.log. Love says Orgasogoblin. In regards to the guy with the magical dick and the heart condition, he sounds exactly like me. Unlike him though, I wasn't blessed enough to be born with a magical dick that gets rock hard. I acquired my magical penis doing kegels. Everyone with a penis who wants better, stronger erections should do kegels regularly.

[00:50:18] [SPEAKER_07] I'm literally doing them as I type this. And I, Orgasogoblin, I am doing them right now as I read this. Says Golden Girl Jane to the caller dating the divorced guy. It is a red flag that he thinks his divorce came out of nowhere. That usually means the man never listened to the woman when she tried to talk about their problems. Then he was shocked that she left. Says Fiona Gao.

[00:50:45] [SPEAKER_07] Dan's comments about the immunocompromised person needing to find a sex doll instead of a partner were way out of line. I expect better of someone who lived through the AIDS epidemic. Dan, you should have more empathy for people with compromised immune systems. I could pivot from this comment to the last ditch bar in Massachusetts, which is the most famous bar and lesbian bar in the world. A bar that is either being held hostage by immunocompromised lunatics or being taken over by greedy ableists.

[00:51:15] [SPEAKER_07] But I am going to read another comment instead about the same call. Says Denny Tron regarding the caller who has HSV-1 and an angry immunocompromised partner. You're not the asshole. If it's really that big of a deal to him, he should have initiated a conversation about STIs and sexual health before having any kind of sex with you. Like Dan said, so many people have HSV without knowing they have it. That if that's a disqualifier for him, then he'll never be able to have sex and peace of mind. All right.

[00:51:44] [SPEAKER_07] Got something to say about something I said? Jump into the comment thread at savage.love and say it there. Or give us a call at 206-302-2064 and leave us a message or send us a voice memo at q at savage.love. You can also send us your comments via text at 206-302-2064. You have my digits. Use them. And now Savage Love listeners who called in with comments about last week's show get to have, as they always do, the last word on this week's show.

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_11] Hello, Dan. Unfortunately, I'm calling in response to a call about a grapefruit blowjob, a.k.a. grapefruiting. You said no one had ever thought of this before. But unfortunately, I am here to report that grapefruiting is based on a viral video from the year 2006.

[00:52:37] [SPEAKER_11] A 20-year-old video, which I find harrowing because I had originally watched it in my dorm room as a teenager. It was considered a joke even then. It's very cosmetolitan magazine sex tips type of bullshit. It's been an internet meme for a gazillion years. Most millennial internet brain-rotted types are familiar with it, but it has always been a joke. Don't put citrus on your dick. Come on. Grow up.

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_05] For the caller in episode 1037 who had the question about grapefruiting, please heed Dan's advice. I can tell you from personal experience that playing around with a citrus, in my case it was a pomelo, which is even bigger than a grapefruit, as well as a papaya and a melon. It's just not worth it. All of Dan's concerns and considerations are absolutely spot on, and I experienced every single one of them.

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_05] I would never touch a piece of fruit with my cock again, and I certainly hope you don't.

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_03] I'm calling as a response to the question about grapefruiting. It is real, and it's so fun. I tried it last year with my partner because a friend of mine had done it with his boyfriend. I didn't have a grapefruit, but we had a blood orange, and I think blood orange is a lot sexier than grapefruit as a fruit. We did it in the shower. The blood orange definitely fell apart because the cock was bigger than the blood orange.

[00:54:07] [SPEAKER_03] But honestly, it's so fun. Yes, it's messy. Yes, the pulp gets everywhere, but it was so sensual, fun, playful. There's pulp all over my titties, the mix of the blood orange juice with cum. It's super sensual. Everyone has their yums. Everyone has their yucks. Highly recommend a little blood oranging in the shower.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_03] Have your little shower drain cover, scoop up the pulp, throw it in the compost at the end. Highly recommend.

[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_07] And we are going to leave it there. Got a question for me. Got a comment for us. Go to savage.love.askdan to record and upload your questions and comments directly onto our website. Or you can send us a voice memo at q at savage.love. Or you can text that voice memo to 206-302-2064. You can also give us a call at that number and leave us a message on our answering machine. And if you tried something new and you want to tell me all about it, email us at q at savage.love.

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_07] Let us know what you tried, and you might be my next guest on After Action Report. Seattle, the Hump Film Festival premieres in Queen Anne this weekend at On The Boards. Come and enjoy 24 brand new short films in 90 minutes. Visit humpfilmfest.com to get tickets, watch the trailer for the fall tour, and find out when Hump is coming to and in and on a city near you. Follow me at bluesguy at dan savage. Follow me on Instagram at dan savage.

[00:55:38] [SPEAKER_07] Follow Alan Salkin on Instagram at alansalkin. And for all things Alan, check out his website, alansalkin.com. And go subscribe and listen to Gerbil, Alan's amazing deep dive podcast into one of the stickiest and squickiest urban legends of all time. Gerbil is available now from The Hollywood Reporter on all podcast platforms. This podcast is so much better than it had any right to be. Alan does an amazing job. Listen and subscribe to Gerbil now.

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_07] The Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Artunian and me and the tech savvy at risk youth and Nancy. We will all be back at you next week on installment of The Savage Lovecast. Thank you for telling me.