Salon Columnists

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What if the shame of whoring around becomes as intoxicating as the clandestine sex?

John

Dear John,

You should do as your conscience tells you to do, and only you can hear it. Overriding the conscience has a numbing effect and could open your life to hazards you haven't yet contemplated, including a sort of erosion of personality that one sees in people gripped by obsessive destructive behavior, a kind of furtive passivity. If you find the shame intoxicating, then it's time to detox. Abstain for a while and see if abstinence doesn't have a certain steely allure of its own.

Dear Mr. Blue,

My father has married a curt, rude woman. He now treats his stepdaughter with great favor and has ceased regular communication with me. I don't give a hoot if I ever get along with this abrasive woman, but I miss the close relationship with my father. I am 25 and capable of surviving without him, but I do fear this would break my heart.

Despondent Child

Dear Despondent,

Keep up communication with your father, even if his end of the line goes dead. Try to be friends with the stepdaughter. Invite her for dinner, take her to the movies, have a beer together, tell her your life story. Be a better person than you really are. Be considerate. Remember birthdays. Tell jokes. Bring food. Kill the stepmother with kindness. And if, after a decent period, your father does not relent and the stepmother does not thaw, then relax your efforts and know that you did what you could.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I am 26 and am living with a 44-year-old man. I have a 7-year-old daughter, and he has two teenage sons. I thought everything was going along well; we seemed to be growing closer. Then he found an old flame on the Internet, a woman he'd been in love with when he was 18, but they'd never admitted their feelings or acted upon them. I found out, and he lied to me about the frequency and depth of their communications. Finally, after her husband called and asked him to stay away from his wife, he stopped communicating with her. He assured me that it was just a visitation to the past when he felt capable of fully trusting another person -- an ability he says he lost after his disastrous marriage.

But I can't help but feel that irreparable damage has occurred. We have never regained the intimacy we once had. He says he loves me and doesn't want to hurt me or our families, but emotionally he feels numb. What do I do? We don't even pretend to make love anymore. Should I just give up and try to get out of this with my dignity, or can this be saved? I love him enough to want what is best for him even if it is not me.

Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,

Your lover's dalliance with an old heartthrob via the Internet is irrelevant here, a sideshow, an escapade, and you ought to forgive him for it. You really should. It was a flirtation, a fluttering of the eyebrows. You can't throw your domestic arrangements overboard for that unless you simply are tired of him and his moods and want done with it. Forgiveness is called for here, and that means putting that episode aside and plunging into your life with renewed vigor and pleasure. You love each other, and that is no footnote -- that's the main story, isn't it? Cancel your Internet account, give up Salon and give this guy another chance. If he's numb, tickle him.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I'm 24, and last week, after some indecision, I took a job as a reporter at a daily newspaper. I was undecided because I had started what seemed to be a promising freelance career. I love the newspaper job, but a number of my creative projects are falling by the wayside. It's hard to come home and work on a screenplay after a day of writing about water projects. I'm young, so I feel I should shoot for the stuff I really want to do right now. I don't want to end up 45 years old with two ulcers and wondering why I didn't finish that screenplay. Do I quit the job and put my parents on Valium, or do I try to find some way to squeeze in the creative work?

Joe

Dear Joe,

You're young and you can handle two jobs at once, at least for a while. You know, and I know, that most jobs are about half work, half clubhouse activity. Do your work at the newspaper, manage your time, eat lunch at your desk, cut down on the schmoozing, don't do other people's work for them and don't let yourself be drawn into newspapering as a way of life. It's a job. Cut to the chase. Learn to coast. Save some juice for your own work. You can write late at night or early in the morning, but keep a regular schedule. Stay fit, keep off alcohol and you can maintain a heavy workload for a year or two or however long it takes you to finish that screenplay and maybe another screenplay and get things sorted out in your mind. You're absolutely right that you don't want to cheat yourself of the chance, and now's the time to try, but if you're in good health, there's no reason to quit this job. Not yet.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I'm almost 26, a small-town Wisconsin kid who had big dreams, and through luck or fate, or whatever, I went from having nothing and barely getting by to being a prosperous world-traveling man living in London, who has fulfilled all those dreams and now has lost all perspective, all direction, in my life. When I lived in Wisconsin and had nothing, I knew where I wanted to go. Now I'm wondering what I should be doing with my life. I work hard, and I still feel like I don't deserve any of it. It came so suddenly, and I can't help but feel it will go just as quickly as it came. And though I know I'm good at what I do, I feel more than a little helpless.

I'm lonely. I can't really date, because I'm always off at customer sites all week. By the way, I'm gay. I'm out. I'm comfortable with and proud of my sexuality. But I've got no interest in bed hopping and one-night stands. I really need to have a life partner, but there doesn't seem to be time for it. I don't know how everything slipped so out of control.

A Lonely Heart

Dear Lonely Heart,

You know, of course, that the world's sympathy for lonely yuppies is limited, but never mind; success is bewildering. Successful people have the illusion of being in charge of their lives; the truth is that life is always out of control. What you should do with your life is enjoy it. Savor your loneliness while you have it, and get to know yourself. Since you're fearful about the future, salt away half of what you earn, after taxes, and use some of what's left to help out others who need it, to give yourself a sense of purpose. The loss of perspective may be due to busyness: If so, carve out time for yourself to walk in the park and sit and watch the world go by. If your work week is fast-paced, protect your weekends. Why not date then? If you find a man who loves you, he can wait from Monday to Friday. Finally, set a time limit on this way of life that you find confusing and empty. Don't be unhappy so long that it becomes a habit.

Dear Mr. Blue,

A couple of years ago I fell in love with a guy who, a few months later, broke up with me because I was "too emotionally dark." He had asked me to tell him about my life, and so I did -- I told him about when I was raped, the death of my sister, the end of my marriage, the death of my brother, a car accident in which I was brain-injured. It seems to me that if I could write about these experiences, I'd be a better writer, but I lack the courage to tell those stories until someone can love me for having lived through them. But the failure of this relationship has left me feeling that the stories isolate me from normal human life.

Lost Voice

Dear Lost,

Don't draw large, life-defining conclusions from one guy. Another guy might hear the same stories and conclude that you were just dark enough. But the stories aren't what isolate you. You can only be loved for yourself, your spirit, the person you are, whether you lived through those experiences or not. The experiences have changed you and how you see yourself, but the experiences themselves cannot be offered to another person as tokens of yourself, to be traded for love. Write about what happened to you. It may help you see yourself more clearly. And writing is the easy part, L.V. People are the hard part.

Dear Mr. Blue,

My husband has been writing fiction for years and lately has finally begun to think of himself as a writer, though he doesn't seem to believe in himself. I truly believe he is one of the most gifted writers I have ever read. How do I help him to think more of his writing?

Cheering from the Sidelines

Dear Cheering,

You help him by reading what he asks you to read and telling him honestly what you like in it. You like where the Blue Angels dance through the door in their shoes with silver buckles, you like where the Indian counterman at the green market gives turnips to the girl with the pet pig. Et cetera. If he asks you about a specific thing, such as the Weejun scene, then you give him your honest take on it, as gently as you can manage. That's all. If he fishes for insults, don't provide them. Your husband is responsible for his own work, and you can't make him think better of it than he is willing, but if he is a gifted writer, he's awfully lucky to have you there enjoying his successes.

N E X T+P A G E +| Acting is like group sex, and writing is like masturbation