LIFE LESSONS
Author and sex-advice columnist Dan Savage
Diving under the sheets, Dan Savage is at the helm of longrunning sex-advice column Savage Love and its sister podcast show, Savage Lovecast. “People come to me because there’s something they need to tell someone — usually a romantic partner — and they don’t know how to say it,” Dan, 56, explains. “Most of my job consists of telling people, ‘That thing you just said to me? Say it to them.’” The American writer is married to model and Tom of Finland ambassador, Terry Miller, and, in 2010, they founded the It Gets Better Project to help LGBTQ+ youth.
My motto in life is “Suck the dick,” by which I mean, “Go for it.” I mean that figuratively. Unless you wanna suck a dick – if that’s what you’re going for, well, then I mean it literally.
I once got advice from a professional cheesemaker for someone who wanted to make cheese out of human breast milk. I’ve given advice to people who wanted to be eaten alive and to people who wanted to be castrated and to people who wanted to have “SEX SLAVE” tattooed on their foreheads. The situations are sometimes unique, and sometimes extreme, but the desire is always the same – to be seen, to be known, to be wanted by someone who wants what you do and what you are.
I MET GAY GUYS WHEN I WAS COMING OUT WHO THOUGHT THEY WERE SICK OR SINFUL OR BROKEN — THAT THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEM — BUT I ALWAYS HAD THIS SENSE THAT I WAS FINE… I WISH I COULD GIVE THAT GIFT — THAT SENSE — TO EVERY QUEER KID OUT THERE.
My childhood crush was Leif Garrett — shaggy-haired-teenheartthrob-era Leif, not balding-anddrug-addicted-era Leif. Still have a thing for longhaired boys in leather pants.
My biggest turn-on is… a lot of people will answer, “The small of a man’s back,” or, “The ability to make me laugh,” and maybe they’re not all lying. But a lot of them are. Anyway, I’ll just say, “The small of a man’s back,” and leave it at that.
The most memorable place I’ve had sex is an East German guard tower behind the Berlin Wall a few days after the Wall fell.
MY BIGGEST TURN-OFF IS CIGARETTES. NOT JUST HOW BAD THEY SMELL, BUT THE STATEMENT A GUY MAKES WHEN HE SMOKES THEM, I.E. “I REALLY DON’T CARE HOW BAD I SMELL.”
My worst habit is worst-case scenario disorder. A normal person says “Hello” when they answer the phone. My mother always said, “What’s wrong?” I am my mother.
I met Terry in a gay bar — I was drunk, he was high — and I was standing at the coat check with a drag queen friend watching him dance. I kept saying, “Look at that boy, he’s so fucking pretty,” and then that pretty boy walked over to get something (cough, cough) out of the pocket of his coat. My drag queen friend said, “Tell him what you told me!”, in a really loud voice. And so, I, a person with no game, said, “You have a pretty mouth,” and Terry, who is all game, said, “The better to eat you with.” Ten minutes later, we were making out in the bathroom.
[Terry and I] went from monogamous to monogamish to open to poly. We’ve grown and changed over the years. It hasn’t always been easy, but we like to say we’re never bored.
When you first meet, you’re the adventure they’re on, they’re the adventure you’re on. To keep it going, to keep it spicy – to keep it as effortlessly exciting as it was at the start – you have to make a conscious decision to go on adventures together.