huh.

Bathing with a Lady Friend - even if under a lawn sprinkler?

Maybe begin by asking to iron a pretty lady's flower blouse.

huh.

Before a bathroom mirror - practice a drooling stare. Gauk?

You make me as horny as a Volvo mechanic humming blues.

huh.

I wish the letter was funnier. I wish the response was funnier, too.

In these economic times, funny has got to be pretty funny. Please, people, step up.

Know any good jokes? Amusing anecdotes? Antidotes? Antioxidants?

Has anyone else noticed that their local female newscasters are all starting to look like Sarah Palin? The glasses, the hair. It's uncanny. Or canny.

Was this supposed to be funny? I don't get it.

Usually, I don't believe it when someone says that they think one of Teniis' letters is a fake. But this one? LW? Drop by and make a liar out of me.

Funny, I thought Sarah Palin looked like a small market newscaster to begin with . . . Started a career in journalism in 1988 -- double hair whammy!

How the hell did Cary miss the fact that the guy is ADDICTED.

Lots of clues.

And the suggestion to seek out co-dependents?

Clearly slipping.

I really try not to think about her as much as possible, but it's true -- you are right. The local Massachusetts and Rhode Island female newscasters all look like her.

I had this same problem though when Cheney was announced. Suddenly, I was seeing him everywhere.

I don't know if this letter is fake or not but it really got me thinking, you know, about the gays.

Wasn't this an article in the Onion?

Is there a Nobel Prize for perfectly hilarious www advice columns?

Anybody who does not get it, Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Wow, Mr. Tennis! You must feel honored to have received a letter from David Kepesh (even if he did lie about his age).

Maybe we've stumbled upon something.

There have been studies that people like people that look like themselves, right?

Perhaps this is how the Republican party chooses VP candidates? Runs prospective candidates through some kind of facial recognition computer program..?

PS to Timbuktom: C'mon now. I'm trying to change the subject away from that really bad fake letter and the not-very-funny response.

Anybody who belives this is funny, please respond. Come in, Rangoon, come in Rangoon...

The problem here, I guess, is that we do not have a real Letter Writer to advise. However, we should be a able to laugh, and to write additional jokes. Every couple months, we need a change o' pace.

It is obvious that you need to find a religion compatible with your mind set.

Catholic guilt? Most useful.

Fundie nut Protestant guilt? Yes and focus upon those chapters in which you die for spilling your seed.

Jewish guilt? Read Portnoy's Complaint. You get a guilt-inducing mother as well.

I don't know much about Islam and Hinduism, but I suspect that they both hold something for you.

Forget Buddhism. You need guilt that punishes you in this life.

Avoid Unitarian-Universalists. One congregation I belonged to actually had a history of spouse sharing.

Atheism and agnosticism will be most unsatisfying. Sometimes those folks can't even manage to feel guilty about the things they actually should feel guilty about.

Good luck. And whatever you do, avoid beaches and swimming pools.

Its funny because its an exact parody of what conservatives would have us believe is wrong with gays, that being born as they are is some psychological malediction, and it sounds ridiculous. Its tragic because they actually say these things though.

We must all make our attempt!

LW, have you considered chemical castration? I hear it's very effective, yet completely painless.

Wait, that's not funny at all...

Sorry...must now porn-surf.

Flight of the Conchords have a song just for you LW:

The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)

"I am a 28-year-old man who is attracted to women, especially to those in my age group"

Yes, Salon recognizes that the corrosive effects of eight years of Republican rule has caused heterosexuality to break out in certain American demographics. The sudden elevation of Sarah Palin as a heterosexual diva is, as has been noted in 11,563 thoughtful articles in this forum during the past month, an obvious symptom of a Nation In Decline (tm).

But we must recognize that heterosexuals are generally born that way. If you catch your son furtively changing the channel from Oxygen to a football game, take heart in knowing that the twenty-first century offers increasing acceptance of his kind. Although he'll have to leave your apartment in Silver Spring and will never be able to influence policy in forthcoming Democratic administrations, there are now large numbers of his kind in places like Ohio and Arizona. He will even find academic tolerance in places like this. Square your shoulders and face up to a new world.

"Women of the opposite sex"? That's kind of mangling the English language, isn't it?

The only way I can think of that one could be a "woman of the opposite sex" would be to be a male. Though I suppose a female who had gender-reassignment surgery would be the most accurate interpretation..

-ng

I've been missing you for the longest time. I hope all is well.

I really appreciated this letter.I could have written it myself, more or less, if I'd had the clarity. I'm quite a bit older than the LW, so I grew up in less permissive times, totally unaware that there might be others like myself, people with this embarrassing relation to the opposite sex. Intellectually, I have caught up with the times. I can say, "Oh, you're... like that? Cool. I have a friend from high-school... you know. He's that way too. It's so much fun to listen to him talk about real-estate and stocks and sports and real estate and stocks and sports." But it took a long time before I could acknowledge that weird miscegenistic (sp?)impulse was in me. Once I did admit it to myself, I thought, well, I'll try to act as though its natural or something. I looked around, as Cary suggested, to see what other people were doing, how they were carrying this burden. That led to some of the darkest experiences of my life. Really a lot of confusion and suffering. I just couldn't make it work, and I tried all kinds of things, lots of therapy, in particular, to help me accept that part of myself. In the end, I gave up. I didn't have the stamina. The benefits were transitory at best, while I'm still paying the costs years later. The psychic costs, I mean. Yes, its in me, that compelling but utterly mindless impulse, but that doesn't mean I have to act on it. Learning about the hormonal aspect has helped a lot. For whatever reason, I was just made this way. The comforting thing about the hormonal component is that it diminishes over time. Which is such a blessing. As I become older, the challenge of refraining from libidinally generated activity becomes easier and easier to manage. At this point, it's usually effortless. Once and a while I catch myself daydreaming, and then I just say, "You want WHAT? Why don't you just slam a door on your hand? It's quicker and less painful." I'll feel sheepish for a moment, but then I can go on about my life. Freedom is great. The absence of chronic shame and anxiety. Letting go the burden of trying to be pleasing. My God. After a certain point, you realize that others, the person you love, for instance, aren't disappointed by what you have done,or not done, which might be correctable, but by what you are. Like it's only on account of your perversion that the two of you are locked into this twisted, strangling, hetero-normative diad.

I have to admit that if I hadn't gotten such damning reviews, I might have stuck it out. But it's so hard not to take that look of hurt and bewildered disappointment personally. At least for me. I really have no idea how other people do it. Sometimes it seems like there must be something much worse, and that this is chosen as the lesser of evils, but I don't know what that greater evil might be. Non-existence, maybe.