Dear Madame X, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I have a lover I see whenever I want and a career that fulfills me. Everything is going along perfectly but it doesn’t feel like enough. I refuse to cheat, but lately the idea has developed some appeal. I want to bring another man into the ...
Dear Madame X, I’m a grown man and my doctor says I need a circumcision. I went because it hurts when I get an erection and he said something was probably pulling. Do adults get this? I’m worried because my doctor is Jewish, so maybe he doesn’t know about other options. Ouch! I did it ...
Dear Madame X, I have been with my lover for two years and we do everything under the sun, but he has never asked me for anal sex. In the past, it has always been the man who has brought it up and doing it has always been a special treat for them. I don’t ...
Dear Madame X, I grew up in the 1980s, when AIDS warnings were run at every commercial break in the Saturday morning cartoon line-up. It worked. I’m petrified. The fact that I’m a gay man doesn’t make it any better. Although, they were effective because now I’m very diligent about suiting up before going ...
Dear Madame X, My penis is unhealthy. When it gets up it won’t stay up and then she cries and I feel terrible. My lady and I are trying to have kids and she wants them real bad. I want to have sex. I’m only 35. Should I take Viagra? Is the cheap Canadian stuff ...
Dear Madame X, Pam Beasley met her husband at work, and this is the new romantic dream for women my age. There are a few candidates in my office but one guy really stands out. We talk and joke all the time about random things, and often have lunch together in the break room. Normally ...
Dear Madame X, Why don’t those damn pregnancy tests tell you for sure if you’re not pregnant? It’s stupid! I’m writing this at 3am. On the weekend I was very stupid and got drunk and had sex without a condom and then forgot my pill all morning! I ended up taking it 2.5 hours later ...
Dear Madame X, My wife and I were swingers way back before we had kids. Now they’re all grown up and no longer living at home and we’re beginning to feel that familiar itch again. I’ve looked up some clubs on the Internet and they all seem a little — depressing. Are only weirdos swinging ...
Dear Madame X, I have met my soul-mate and I’m afraid that I’m about to lose her. We have been dating for three months and have generally been more romantic than physical. She has told me that she’d like to become a little more intimate, and that she senses I am hesitant about this. I ...
Dear Madame X, I’m all about maximizing my pleasure but my lover is a little hesitant about things he doesn’t know about. I want him to try a cock ring — I bought a great one from my friendly neighbourhood sex store, nice and simple. Nothing too scary. Yet he won’t try it. He thinks ...
John Burnside’s novel A Summer of Drowning takes us into the mind of Liv, a woman remembering the strange,...
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. ~...
Are you a couple? Aren’t you? Maybe it’s just complicated. Thanks to xkcd.
This week I had a meltdown. In its wake, the remains of a Very Nice and Thoughtful Man who...
If you are breastfeeding your child, they are less than six months old, they only eat breastmilk (no other...
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Actually, some time in the 1980s in a flat...
Dear Madame X, I have been on a few dates with a guy I met online. He is really...
Achmat Dangor’s novel Bitter Fruit begins in post-apartheid South Africa, when Silas spots the police lieutenant who raped Lydia...
