Strait man BY DAN SAVAGE

I’m not sure what to do. I’ve had a fetish for straitjackets since I was 15 years old. I’m now 35. I’ve told only two girlfriends about it and absolutely no one else. The last one went along with it just to please me; my current wants no part of it. Problem is, I feel frustrated because whenever we have sex, I have to fantasize about her wearing a straitjacket. When I was single, the only way I could come when I jerked off was by fantasizing about girls/women in straitjackets. It feels like my fetish governs my sex life. What can I do to "lessen" my dependency on this fetish?

Mr. Straitjacketed Tightly

I’m not generally in the fetish-lessening business, MST. My specialty has always been fetish facilitation — and you know that, right? It’s why you wrote to me and not to, say, the awful, awful Jeanne Phillips, the demon seed who writes "Dear Abby" now that her mother, the original author of that column, is too old and sick to break her idiot daughter’s fingers, right? And as a regular reader of my column, MST, you must have read all the columns in which I pointed out that fetishes don’t go away. You can learn to live with them, you can choose to indulge them or not, but you can’t reach into your erotic imagination and yank ’em out.

That said, MST, there is a way to "lessen" your dependence on this fetish. Unfortunately for your current girlfriend, the only way to do that is to be indulged on a semi-regular basis. Your fetish dominates your erotic thoughts at present because in the last 20 years you’ve only been able to live out your fantasies with one partner. Now you’re with someone who won’t indulge you at all. Your fetish governs your sexual imagination, MST, because it’s so absent from your sex life that desire and despair are combining to make your fetish loom larger in your erotic imagination than it would if you were getting to fuck a woman in a straitjacket every once in a while.

My advice? While there aren’t that many straitjacket fetishists out there, there are plenty of women into bondage. A girlfriend — a brand-new girlfriend — who’s into bondage should be willing to go there with/for you. Go find one.

I’m a hetero college male and I recently started dating a hetero college female. I’m crazy about her and we’re taking things slow. A few nights ago she asked me to go down on her. I was more than willing to oblige. Trouble is, she wouldn’t take off her pants. She explained to me that her last boyfriend would do it to her with her jeans on. I don’t know what to make of this. She claims she had multiple orgasms while he was tonguing her Levi’s. Is this even possible? I want to get her off, but I feel uncomfortable licking the crotch of her jeans. How do I get her off with the jeans still on?

Confused Cotton Mouth

It’s entirely possible that her last boyfriend chewed on her Levi’s, CCM, and that she got off on it. It’s also possible that she grew up masturbating with her jeans on and enjoys the sensation of damp denim pressed hard against her clit, but is too shy to come out to you as a denim fetishist and this "my last boyfriend ate my pussy through my jeans" thing is a face-saving fib. Either way, she must enjoy the kind of intense gnawing, dampness, and pressure that only a guy chewing on her clit through thick denim provides. For more detailed information about how to get her off with her jeans still on, I suggest you get down between her legs, place her hands on the back of your head, and start chewin’.

My roommate uses condiments to lubricate his penis when he beats off. He tries to be sneaky when he takes mayonnaise or ketchup out of the kitchen, but I’ve seen him do it. When he does, a rhythmic slurping sound can soon be heard over the radio that he turns up loud only when he beats off. I am seriously disgusted because he puts the condiments back into the refrigerator when he’s finished. I don’t want to make things weird, but I also don’t want to use the same condiments he’s used to lube up his dick when he beats off. How do I make him stop?

Sloppy Seconds

If you just want to make him stop, SS, I suggest you empty a bottle of Tabasco sauce into the bottle of ketchup in your fridge, or a few tubes of BenGay into your mayonnaise. That will put a stop to his condiment abuse. Or you can be a man about it, SS, and tell him to go buy some actual lube or, if he’s a wet-and-messy fetishist, suggest that he buy himself play-time-only condiments and keep ’em in a small fridge in his room.

I just need some clarification on your Big Three, your list of perversions that you will never sign off on (scat, bestiality, and pedophilia). All three make my list (although I would include water sports with scat), but number one on my list is necrophilia: anything to do with dead people is right out. Does your omission of necrophilia mean that you’re down with it?

Dead Against Fucking Stiffs

I’m certainly not down with necrophilia, DAFS, so I hereby amend and expand my list to a Big Four. But I object to dumping harmless ol’ water sports in with scat. After a six-pack of beer and a liter or two of water, piss is nothing more than clear, odorless hot water. And piss, even stinky piss, is sterile and can’t make you sick — unlike shit, which comes packed with bugs and microbes and can make a poop fetishist just as sick as he is sickening.

I never heard of your column until I started a new job. I found out about it because every Wednesday, when the Village Voice comes out in New York, this creep I work with comes into the conference room at lunchtime, where the rest of us are eating, and reads us the disgusting letters you print from the perverts and degenerates who write to you. He asks us what our advice would be before he reads your filthy answers. If I were to speak my mind, my answer would be that you and your readers should have your mouths washed out with soap, but I’m new to this job and I don’t want to make a fuss. Sign me (as I’m sure you would appreciate, Mr. Acronym):

Doofus Intentionally Reads Terrible Blather At Group

Knowing that this would be the last time you ever read my column (or had it read to you), DIRTBAG, I selected the letters above with you in mind. Straitjackets, denim fetish, wet-and-messy fetish, piss, shit, and necrophilia — it’s quite a sendoff, no? As for your threat to wash my readers’ mouths out with soap, I’ll certainly be hearing from readers who get off on that after your letter appears — and all e-mails from soap fetishists will be forwarded right on to you, DIRTBAG, in case you wanna make good on your threat. But while we wait for those letters to pour in, let’s consider this: any employer in NYC large enough to have a conference room must also have a sexual-harassment policy in place. Perhaps you should be complaining to your human-resources manager about that dirtbag you work with and not to me?

Dan Savage can be reached at mail@savagelove.net