PANTS LOCK

Well that’s … I was gonna say “refreshingly honest” but I don’t think “refreshing” is quite the word. More like “the psychic equivalent of that smell towels get when you leave them damp under the bed.” So, that kind of honest.

Wait, so there’s a way I could punch people in the face who think casting me in their weird little psychodramas and then telling me about it is somehow flattering? Without even having to meet them?

LET’S GET ON THIS.

Romance may be dead, but pooping glitter on its grave is just unfair.

Before you hit “send,” read what you’ve said out loud. If you said it to someone at, say, a cafe, be honest: would you get a flirty smile, or would it end up looking like a brawl scene from “Road House”?

Violet, bless her, sent us her reply:

So, um, point of interest? Most dykes are not going to be so into a girl without knowing a little bit more about her. Does she have hobbies? Do we like the same kinds of music? Even if we’re just into having a hot fling with a girl, we probably still want to get to know her a bit first: are we sexually compatible? Are we looking for the same thing, however brief? Does she have a face?

I want to emphasize that last point.

Disconnected, porny shots of hot womens’ bodies without their faces might do it for guys, but they will mostly make lesbians wonder why the photographer sucks so bad they couldn’t even get her face in the frame.

It’s also the case that messaging gay girls telling them that your want us to date your girlfriend might not be so effective as you might think. For one thing, it implies that she might not be entirely on board with the whole enterprise. (I have to say, this suspicion is rather heightened by the fact that your own profile lists you as single.) For another, your response rate can’t be good: I did with your first message (which is, I note, identical to the message you just sent me) what I do with all messages from dudes—I briefly considered sending it to Pantslock, then deleted it unread.

In conclusion, I think your girlfriend should get her own OK Cupid profile, and she should message me from it, so we can go out and I can give her a series of such mind-blowing orgasms that she will break up with you reflexively. I mean, Red Hot Chili Peppers? Seriously?

(His profile mentions that his favorite band is Red Hot Chili Peppers. Specifically, it says, “Love the Red Hot Chili Peppers they are my favorite band,” so we know that he’s also a fan of run-on sentences.)

Fat, Ugly or Slutty: Another Pants Lock sister from another mother.

Dear wannabe submissive:

Submission is theater. It’s conflict in captivity, a microcosmic version of the millions of imbalances of power that affect our lives, where we can isolate conflict and exaggerate it, heighten it, in ways that are fun, creative, dark, deeply thrilling — whatever flavor of tension that speaks to the part of you that lives behind your social persona. It’s about give and take, and the struggle of giving and taking.

Maybe you want to be degraded. Maybe you want to be proud of the care you can give another person. Maybe you get a thrill out of appearing to be autonomous when you’re under secret orders. Who knows?

Pitching a bunch of sexy services that get you off as if they’re automatically doing someone some kind of favor isn’t the same thing. The difference isn’t exactly subtle, sure, but in a scene so richly populated with tropes, fetishization, costumes, and infinite ritualized reenactments of power imbalances from everyday life, it can get hard to tell the difference. Hell, it’s not even a scene thing; everyday life is full of the push-pull between what you want, what you think you want, what you can barely admit you want, and how that fits in with how you think others see you. So here’s a good rule of thumb for when you’re trying to sell yourself as a submissive, someone who wants to surrender completely to another person and live even for a few minutes as if it’s not about you:

If your idea of submission is a menu of tasks you already jerk off to, it’s probably about you.

“I mean, open minded about my inflexible, rigorously specific sexual demands. Not about, y’know, like politics or whatever.”