Coming along BY DAN SAVAGE

Dear Readers: a few weeks back, I printed a letter from Mutilated and Comeless (MAC), a 24-year-old who had lost the head of his penis — the glans — as an infant in a botched circumcision. MAC hasn’t had an orgasm since he was 16 years old, and the few women he’s slept with as an adult either didn’t notice his condition — and the fact that he didn’t climax — or ran screaming when they got a look at his cock. He thought getting head, ironically enough, might help him get off, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask anyone to suck what was left of his dick.

I was so traumatized by MAC’s predicament that I punted the question to my readers. Tons of e-mail poured in, offering everything from tips on varsity-level techniques that might get MAC off to solid relationship advice from women who’ve been there. Here’s a selection of the best e-mails:

It surprised me when you were left without a suitable suggestion for our poor friend MAC. As a sex-advice columnist and especially as a gay man, I thought for sure the answer would be immediate. Though he is straight and may be opposed to anal play, as an unfortunate proportion of straight men are, men without regular orgasms often become desperate creatures and do things they normally wouldn’t. I would encourage him to go for the direct route and find some really cool chick who’ll shove a finger right up his ass. I know I’ve had partners come, without me even touching their penises, when my cock, a finger, or a toy wound up in their asses. Believe me, there are chicks out there willing to do these things for him.

Feeling His Pain

I used to work at a ritzy sex shop and occasionally would talk to or hear about women and men with nerve damage to their genitals. MAC’s story is a little different, but it boils down to not being able to feel much. A common solution was usually to combine a few toys to get the maximum effect. MAC might want to try a masturbation sleeve. There are tons of them out there — stores like Good Vibrations, Blowfish, Toys in Babeland, and Grand Opening have a wide variety. By playing around with a sleeve and his prostate, he may be able to get off.

Trying To Help the Comeless

MAC should try a technique independent of penile stimulation to achieve an (often even-more-powerful) orgasm, one that has been used to pleasure paraplegic males for many years: milking the prostate.

Now Enjoying Milked Orgasms

MAC’s problem can be solved by everyone’s best friend: drugs! Maybe experimenting with Viagra and the like, and possibly Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that increases sex drive and sometimes enhances sex) could help MAC reach orgasm.

Drug Lover

MAC should see a physician. A urologist may help, but a plastic surgeon specializing in gender reassignment may be ideal. During gender-reassignment surgery, the head of the penis is converted to a clit or vice versa, so these surgeons have a lot of experience working with and preserving the relevant nerves and tissues. This guy (randomly found on the Web) may be worth chatting up: www.altermd.com. At the very least, the photos on his site are educational.

Happy To Help

Something I’ve recently taken an interest in might be the answer for MAC: electro-stimulation. There are units that you can buy that use electrodes to "zap" the sensitive bits of the body. One set-up I’ve seen involves a ring that encircles the base of the penis and another that goes around the shaft. By all accounts, the pleasure derived can be extremely intense, because it provides such a direct stimulation of the nerves. In some cases men can achieve orgasm in seconds with this set-up.

Withhold My Name

If I knew and liked MAC and wanted to have sex with him, his mutilated condition would certainly not alter my decision, and I would be more than willing to provide lengthy oral-sex sessions in the hopes of making the poor guy come — assuming I had been forewarned, that is. MAC doesn’t say whether or not he informs his sex partners about his penis before they get a chance to actually see it; he even mentions that women sometimes find out about it after sex, which leads me to believe he doesn’t tell them ahead of time. It must be very awkward to bring something like that up, and doing so might deprive him of some sexual opportunities, but eventually he’ll meet a woman who hasn’t forgotten the goddamn golden rule, and when he tells her, she’ll happily suck away at his dick until she makes him come.

Do Unto Others

My boyfriend is in his early 30s and completely impotent due to diabetes and a genetic heart condition. His penis is still very sensitive and he loves to have it sucked, but it’s never more than slightly firmish. There is nothing he can do about it, his heart just doesn’t work, so his dick doesn’t get hard anymore. We messed around the night we met and he knocked my socks off by eating my pussy in ways that were just amazing. He wore me out! On the phone calls and in e-mails, he won me over with his wonderful personality. He sent me sweet e-mails and did everything right. Then about three weeks into our relationship, he told me about his dick, and while I was a little hesitant, I sucked it and saw how happy it made him even though it wasn’t rock hard. He had been making me happy (sexually and other ways) for a while and I was excited to make him happy. Now I don’t care that his dick isn’t Sgt. Rock. If I need to be fucked, he has a wonderful strap-on we bought together that he loves to use on me.

So my advice for MAC is this: learn how to eat pussy and eat it well. Buy books, ask around. Maybe you could practice on a few supportive and open-minded female friends. By the time you show your next girlfriend your dick, she’ll already adore you so much she’ll be willing to work with you. And if someone is really grossed out or put off by it and won’t suck you off, dump the bitch. That’s what my boyfriend used to do. Eventually you’ll hit pay dirt.

Happy in Madison

I have incredible sympathy for MAC. I’m a transsexual man (formerly a woman), and can identify because I have no dick. I could not fathom entering the dating scene and dealing with vapid people who give two shits about what’s between your legs. Luckily, I have a loving, compassionate GF who doesn’t care that I don’t have a cock. We make do with what we’ve got, and despite it all we share a strong, understanding love. So my advice for MAC is to keep searching. Someone out there won’t be repulsed by his dick and will be willing to put in time and effort and love to get him off. Anyone who runs away is not worth it anyway. Remember that, MAC.

C.J.

Dan Savage can be reached at mail@savagelove.net.