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Dear Fat Broad,
My best friend has just been dumped by her long-time boyfriend,
and she was heartbroken. Now, the jerk has called me for a date.
With my friend's consent, I am considering going out with this
bozo, putting him through a long, slow tease that may last a month
or so, and denying him, of course, sexual intercourse. I think
this might be appropriate and that sexual frustration could be
a great punishment. What do you think, and do you have any pointers
on how to administer this cockteasing? |
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- Texas Tessie |
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Oh, dear. My sweet Texan darlin', the Fat Broad does not often
pass judgement on other people's sexual escapades, whether actual
or merely hypothetical, but since you asked and the question's
an interesting and instructive one, I'll make an exception.
To recapitulate, you and your jilted pal are both -- possibly
justifiably -- pissed off at this no-good, double-crossing, ain't-worthy-to-lick-the-shit-
off-your-boots scumbag rat who, for some unnamed reason, dumped
his longtime girl, who just happens to be your best friend. He
is, furthermore, classless enough to phone you (the best friend
of his erstwhile main squeeze) and ask you out. So you and your
girlfriend think that a protracted exercise in cockteasing would
serve him right...teach him a lesson?
I'm not going to ask you not to do this. You could well decide
to do it anyhow, even if I did. But I will tell you that I think
it's a pretty bad idea, and I'll tell you why. Now, things being
what they are, I may be completely wrong and it could go exactly
as you hope it will, and create precisely the effect you desire.
But since you asked, I doubt it will. And here, in a nutshell,
is why.
First off, I don't really believe that revenge is a justifiable
response to someone being jilted in love. Shit happens. People
change. Relationships that once worked wonderfully stop doing
so, and sometimes it's not bilateral. There may, in fact, be good
reasons behind this guy's actions, although you still may not
agree with what he did. Or he could just be a schmendrick. At
this point, it's immaterial. But if he's enough of an ass to call
up his ex's best friend and ask her out shortly after dumping
his ex...well, let's just say that perhaps there need be not too
much love lost, hm?
Yes, your friend has been hurt by being dumped, and that sucks.
No doubt it hurts and angers her more that her ex then turned
around and asked you out... I'd wager that it was calculated to
do so, on some level. You feel for her and empathize with her
as a good friend should. So do I, as a matter of fact.
Being dumped really sucks giant dog eggs -- we've all been there.
But if the two of you have the sense God gave a guppy, you're
also going to realize that vengeful behavior is a really inadequate
patch for a broken heart: it's short-lived, shallow, and incomplete.
It's a nice fantasy that makes a lousy Band-Aid for a busted sense
of romantic idealism, and it isn't even a good fade cream for
a case of lingering spots of love for The One Who Done You Wrong.
Secondly: how, precisely, is this supposed to be punishment? Because
he wouldn't be getting laid, but would want to? Because he would
be thinking that he'd be getting something that he wasn't really
getting? Is this supposed to teach him something, or humiliate
him, or frustrate him? I'm not sure what goal you've got in mind
with this plan. What's more, I'm not so sure it'd work anyhow,
and right off the bat I can see a number of ways it could very
easily backfire.
Let's roll through a couple of possible scenarios here:
Scenario 1 -- You accept a date with El Schmuckamundo. He immediately
phones Ex-Girlfriend up and tells her about it in the most humiliating
terms possible. Then he calls you back and cancels the date, or
else stands you up. All he really wanted was to rub in her face,
and yours too, that he can dump whomever the hell he wants, so there, nyaaah.
Or alternately, what if you went out with him and he intentionally
tried to parade you in front of Ex-GF in some way, clearly just to get her goat? Sure, either or both of you could confront
him at this point, but what're you going to do, say "I only agreed
to go out with you so that I could be a cocktease and make you
miserable?" No explanation you can give will make you look good,
and no explanation you can give is likely to make him feel chastised
in the slightest.
Scenario 2 -- You accept the date, you go out with him, and you
start teasing him as per plan, leaving him with a hopeful and
happy hard-on at the end of the evening. He figures he's gotten
what he came for, brags to all his buddies about how he dumped
his ex and nearly made it with her best friend to boot. There's
no guarantee that he'll try a second time, or if he tries a second
date, that he'll try a third. After all, you're frustrating him
and he may not be as much of a glutton for punishment as you think.
In the meantime, you're garnering a nice little reputation amongst
his beer buddies as being the kind of girl who'll doublecross
her best friend by fooling around with the guy who just dumped
her. You can tell folks all you want that you're only going out
with him in order to tease him and leave him hanging, but it's
still going to look awfully suspicious to everyone except your
nearest, dearest friends.
It takes two to tango, after all, and if you're fooling around
with him, folks will presume that either you are enjoying it (dangerously
close to double-crossing your best friend), or that you're the
coldest-hearted bitch to come down the pike since Dangerous Liaisons' Marquise De Merteuil and your sexual attentions will forever
more be regarded with a great deal of suspicion with regard to
your sincerity and manipulativeness. Perhaps you like having people
constantly second-guessing your motivations for being in relationships
and that sort of thing. Then again, perhaps you don't.
Scenario 3 -- You accept the date, you're proceeding with the
ratcheting-up-the-sexual-tension plan and the intensity of the
cockteasing as you go through successive dates, and then one evening
you're out with him and things get a little crazy and the next
thing you know... you've sucked his cock, or let him go down on
you, or perhaps you've even gone the whole nine yards and fucked
your best friend's nogoodnik ex.
Cockteasing is slippery turf; the tease is just as much a part
of creating the sexual energy as the "victim" is, and the whole
thing can be astonishingly arousing. Yes, I know that you'll protest
up and down that this one's just not possible, but trust me, it
is. I've seen it happen more than once, and while even the smartest
people always seem surprised when their libido takes them for
a ride, there's no guarantee that it won't.
As a friend of mine who ended up being outed rather dramatically
after she had a "don't worry, it's impossible, it'll never happen"
roll in the hay with her soon to be ex-husband -- the result of
a similar plan to use sex as a lure to get the estranged husband
to agree to hand over some contested property -- said to me in
the aftermath, "You just don't get to live it down when you think
you're sly enough to play the game and you end up getting caught
in your own trap."
If you think your best friend's heartbroken now, imagine what
it'd be like if she found out that you've actually slipped up
and doinked her ex. Talk about your bad karma. And let's not even
think about what would happen when word got out to your circle
of friends, either -- it's just too "90210" for words.
Scenario 4 -- As with the preceding, you're going along with the
Best Friend Memorial Cock Teaseathon, and things are, it would
seem, going swimmingly. Cad ExBoyfriend is writhing with exquisite
pleasure and barely lets out a peep when you don't put out, and
seems to be enjoying the pleasure of your doubtlessly delectable
company to the hilt.
Slowly it dawns on you that far from frustrating him in a punitive,
unpleasant sort of way, he seems to be revelling in the heightened
arousal of the tease, and to be positively glorying in the so-far-but-no-further
routine. You might even pull a big Ice Princess number, only to
find that he's still enraptured. Just like Mikey with that damned
bowl of Life cereal, he likes it.
Some guys do, you know. I should know -- I'm an accomplished cocktease,
and I've written for publication about cockteasing and being a
tease (my essay "A Married Man and His Zipper, or, Confessions
of an Unrepentant Cocktease" appears in the essay collection Sex and Single Girls), and I regularly get letters and email from men wondering whether
I can put them in touch with women who really love to cocktease.
Some of them even go so far as to beg me to tease them personally,
which can occasionally be charming but doesn't really work.
Remember that sex isn't just intercourse (no matter what the President
says). Sex is about the exchange and circulation of sexual energy,
and there's plenty of that going on when you're being a cocktease.
In fact, the energy of a really high-intensity sexual tease is
every bit as high-voltage as a really hot fuck. No wonder there
are a whole lot of men (and women!) out there who get off on it
both in thought and in actuality. What do you do if Ex-Boyfriend
turns out to be one of them?
Scenario 5 -- You could concievably end up getting raped. Many
men, unfortunately, think that a partner's cockteasing automatically
constitutes a statement of willingness to have sex. Although you
and I know that only saying yes, explicitly and with full awareness,
constitutes meaningful consent, it's not entirely illogical for
a man being cockteased to assume that there is some sexual interest
going on. I've had several reader letters since this column was
first published, telling me about similar situations that ended
in rape. I dislike scare tactics, but let it simply be said that
a word to the wise is always sufficient.
Without flogging this particular deceased equine any more, I think
I've demonstrated amply that there are quite a few ways that your
plan -- however emotionally satisfying it may be to imagine the
Cad Ex-Boyfriend suffering Sisyphean torment as he endures a monumental
case of blue balls -- just isn't such a hot idea. When all is
said and done, though, I think that my biggest difficulty with
the notion of using cockteasing as punishment is that it strikes
me as a true perversion: an ethically indefensible misuse of sexuality.
I have serious ethical problems with using sexual activity as
a venue for punishment. That's simply not what I personally consider
an appropriate or respectful direction into which to channel your
sexual energy, or anyone else's. By "appropriate" and "respectful"
here, I don't mean appropriate or respectful vis-?-vis the person from whom you want revenge, nor even in relation to
yourself. I mean appropriate or respectful in relation to sex
per se.
If sex matters at all to you as a way of expressing the sacred
spaces within yourself and your partners, if you're even willing
to countenance the notion that sex should be about growth, joy,
shared delight, and the best parts of human interaction, then
what the ripe hell are you doing thinking about using it as a
tool for punishment?
Sex is not a rolled-up newspaper to use to whack a bad doggie
on the nose. It isn't a bargaining chip, it isn't a way to ask
for a commitment, and it sure as hell isn't okay to use it as
a weapon. Moreover, no matter how hippy-dippy it sounds, I truly
do believe that it does damage to your own sexuality to use it
to those kinds of ends. I believe that what goes around comes
around, and being sexually manipulative opens you up to the possibility
of being the victim of similar manipulativeness, perhaps even
through the ways you yourself have manipulated your sexuality.
Why screw over your own sexual karma? Is it really worth it?
If what goes around comes around -- and I truly do believe this
is so -- all you and your best friend really have to do is bide
your time and watch and wait. Sooner or later, Mr. Schmuckhead's
going to have something very similar happen to him, and when he's
standing there dazed, broadsided by someone dumping him when he
least expected it, you can both rest assured that he's very likely
to be doing a little rethinking of how he himself has handled
things in the past.
In any case, he'll be hurting, and if what you really want is
to see him suffer, don't worry...he will. If you must gloat over
his romantic or sexual misery, just sit tight. It'll happen. But
trying to force the issue is almost guaranteed to blow up in your
face in one way or another. As they say in the South, revenge
is a dish best eaten cold. Stirring it over the fires of deliberate
sexual dishonesty and manipulativeness doesn't make it any more
tasteful.
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