Salon.com > Sex and love

My lover, my client

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

I am a freelance bookkeeper. I had been seeing one of my clients a couple of times a week at his home office for over 15 years. Over time, we became friends -- having dinner together every once in a while and even going to the movies. He knew my family and was invited to holiday meals. There was never any indication that he had romantic feelings for me even though he has always been very generous and kind. In fact, I always thought he was the best person character-wise that I know but he always has seemed rather cold, emotionally. As an example, there was one time I just naturally tried to give him a hug on my way out the door and he stiffened like I had really crossed a line. It struck me as being very strange. I vowed then never again to be so "friendly." He's never seemed to have any friends much less a girlfriend.

About eight years ago, I advised him to purchase a house as he was making good money and doing so would (and did) save him quite a bit at tax time. He was resistant to the idea and always "teased" that if things didn't work out he would come to live with me. To make a long story short, his business took a dive, he lost the house and had to declare bankruptcy in March of last year.

No mild sexual innuendo! This is Utah!

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 23:40:00 +0000

A software company with offices in Utah is afraid that a possible sexual innuendo in its street address may make business go, well, soft.

The address? Morning Glory Road.

Xactware Solutions Inc., concerned that sharing a road with the uncommon slang term for an erection might distract customers or simply make them confuse software with hardware, asked the city of Lehi to change the name to Morning Vista Road. They said it did not fit their "international corporate image."

The city, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, complied -- though they didn't understand the problem. "We never knew about the ulterior definitions until that came to light a little while ago," local economic development director Jonathan Gardner told the paper.

Better than actual porn!

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:50:00 +0000

I knew that X-rated GIFs had truly come of age when porn star Kimberly Kane tweeted earlier this week that they were "better than actual porn." I'd heard similar proclamations from pornoisseur friends, but a celebrated adult performer calling it the pinnacle of smut? Now that is something.

For those of you who are visiting the World Wide Web for the first time ever, a GIF is a static or animated, looped image that's been compressed for quick loading. The rest of you have probably come across your fair share of GIFs showing dramatic reactions, catly shenanigans, dancing politicians or Ryan Gosling doing any number of things. Most GIFs are meant for laughs, but, increasingly, they're being designed to tickle a different bone.

“Presidential pleasuring”: NYT review of “Hyde Park” sounds like horny teenager

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:27:00 +0000

Here's one they don't teach in journalism school: How do you describe the president getting a hand job, in the New York Times? On the front page of the Arts section.

In today's review of "Hyde Park on Hudson," the new Franklin Roosevelt biopic starring Bill Murray and Laura Linney, film critic Manohla Dargis goes for alliteration, calling it "presidential pleasuring."

And then it gets awkward.

Dargis notes that FDR has taken to driving his cousin, Daisy Suckley, in a car designed for him, which he "operates only manually." Before you can wonder whether you're already supposed to be snickering, Dargis bangs the point home. "Daisy," she notes, "will soon have something to occupy her hands with ..."

Want to know how that goes? "The violins surge, the flowers bob, and, alas, so does the president."

Alas! Dargis does, alas, pass on a joke about Daisy's last name. Oh, come on, you can't do that in the Times!

Your wife is the worst

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 23:30:00 +0000

When I was about eight or nine, at the age you begin to have a consciousness that the tall people in your life exist for reasons other than to give you stuff or take your stuff away, my parents’ friends started splitting up. It seemed to come in like a slow tide, the news of a divorce. I’d hear my mom on her morning calls to her mother and three sisters, alternately expressing shock and admitting, “I can’t believe they were together this long.” Either way her attention would turn to the matter of custody. Not the couple’s children, mind you, but which person in the relationship my parents would “get.” According to my mother — and so, as far as I knew — every couple had a good person whom you liked and who brought wine and almond torte and laughed when they came to dinner, and a bad person who brought conversations to a screeching halt and invaded your personal space and talked about their bowels. Frequently, according to my mother, my parents got stuck with the stinker. Mainly because the good one was usually the one who had done the bad thing.