Tells Us About It

Dan Savage Knows Fear

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Dan Savage seems to have it all: looks, brains, a steady income. Underneath his boyish, sly smile, however, Mr. Savage suppresses a deep, paralyzing fear. What does Savage have to fear, you may ask? Well, plenty.

First and foremost, politics are frightening, something he’s learned during his career and various editorial positions at The Stranger. So, sex’s – a subject of which Savage has written extensively on in his syndicated column, “Savage Love”. Desert islands are particularly horrific, especially when the escape hinges on unthinkable sexual acts. What else frightens Savage? Pictures of your oozing penis, so stop sending them.

How do we know all of this? We asked him. Read what Savage has to say about totally frightful things like Larry Craig, sexual hypocrisy and the aforementioned oozing penis.

After the jump, of course…

Queerty: Who are the top three scariest politicians?

Dan Savage: Jenna Bush, Jeb Bush Jr., and all future Bushes lurking in the scrota and ovum of every last member of that dense, selfish, clueless plague masquerading as a political dynasty.

QT: You’re stuck in a desert island with Dennis Hastert, Rush Limbaugh and Fred Phelps. You’ll be freed if you fuck one of them. Who are you going to do and why are they the best choice?

DS: Good God. Must I answer this question? I guess… uh… Fred Phelps, because he’s the most revolting of the three –way out in front of Hastert, and edging Limbaugh by a hair. Why Fred? Well, I figure I might have an easier time working up a hate-fuck boner for Phelps than the other two. Plus he’s the skinniest and I likes ’em skinny. But, man, just thinking about it makes me worry that I’ll never get a boner again. Out, out, damn mental image!

QT: Why are conservatives so scared of gay sex?

DS: Gays invented recreational sex, and they’ve never been down with that. Nowadays you don’t hear much about heterosexual sodomy — a lot of heteros aren’t even aware that they can commit sodomy. But once upon a time any sex act that wasn’t grimly reproductive was forbidden and sinful. And by “once upon a time” I mean “forty years ago.”

Not until the pill came along was heterosexual sex divorced, finally, from the threat of pregnancy. And, yes, I use “threat” intentionally. Women dying in childbirth, infant mortality, too many mouths to feed — pregnancy was often a curse. But the Sky God wanted a steady stream of new worshipers, so coming in someone’s mouth, ass, ear, armpit, etc., was taboo. Gotta get that spunk in there, make more people. Fruitful multiplication and like that.

Religious people have pretty much given up trying to control straight people’s sex lives. The cat is out of the bag and he’s getting a blow job somewhere. But they’ve drawn a line in the sand with us. Our recreational sex is still going to be taboo, because our sex can never be procreative, only recreative. Straight people can make babies. We can only make messes. So straight sex — all of it, procreative or recreative — gets a pass. We don’t. But within my lifetime — and I’m only 36 — oral sex was controversial. I can remember when it was a kink, something people “got into,” like people “get into” bondage or piss today.

QT: We’re meant to think democracy’s the best political system, which may be true. Despite all its advantages, our American democracy is not entirely liberal (as in the philosophy, not the stance.) What do you find to be our democracy’s biggest weakness? Or, if you’d rather, our government’s?

DS: The U.S. Senate and the Electoral College are anti-Democratic in the extreme. They allow small states and rural minorities to dictate to more urbanized states and coastal majorities — and we tolerate it, which blows my mind. Barbara Boxer represents millions of progressive Californians; that douche bag from Nebraska whose name escapes me [Chuck Hagel] represents a few hundred thousand backassward Nebraskans. But his vote cancels Boxer’s out. It’s a scandal.

QT: Which presidential candidate’s the worst choice? Why?

DS: Rudy McCain. No: Fred Romney. No, wait: Mitt Thompson. I’m sorry, but they’re all scary — all the R’s, at least. If after the Bush years an R manages to win the White House, well, we’re finished. Stick a fork in our country, folks, it’s done.

QT: It’s scary that the so-called values voters would continue to favor the Republicans when they party’s been marred by such hypocrisy. What the fuck are they thinking?

DS: You credit them with thinking, which is generous of you. They’re not thinking. They’re lashing out. And, come on, they like to pretend that they’re troubled by sexual hypocrisy but they’re not that troubled. They’re actually pro-sexual hypocrisy. They know the people in the pews are downloading pornography by the mega loads. All they ask is that the porn-consuming members of the choir have the decency to pretend they’re not looking at porn and tsk-tsk through sermons about the evils of pornography. They know the ex-gays are all liars, and that the ex-gay “movement” is a scam and a sham. They don’t believe that homosexuality can be cured. They just want homosexuals to refrain from coming out. They want us to be hypocrites. They want us to look them in the eye and deny that we’re gay — and we can issue those denials with their youth pastor’s come tricking out of the corners of our mouths for all they care. We’re still gay and they know it and they don’t care — all they ask is that we remain closeted and live our lives as miserable hypocrites. Remember: they’re mad at Larry Craig, for instance, not for being closeted, but for getting caught.

Oh, and the slam-dunk proof that they don’t believe in ex-gays? Ask any straight asshole that insists we can cured –that ex-gays exist — if he would let his daughter marry one. The answer, amazingly, is always no.

QT: You’ve received your fair share of unsettling sexual questions. Does one in particular stick at as – hate to use this word – bizarre. Or, jarring?

DS: You get a letter from a shit eater and you think, “Ugh, doesn’t get worse than that.” Then you get a letter from a guy having a sexual relationship with his mother — he didn’t have a problem, he just wanted some advice about getting an Incest Pride movement off the ground (really) — and you think, “Ugh, doesn’t get any worse than that.” Then you get a letter from some shit-eating motherfucker and you… well, you have to take the rest of the day off, get high, and go to the movies.

QT: What the best and also the most frightful part of your job?

DS: The best? Man, all the cute boys — gay and straight — that send me pictures of themselves in hopes of getting their letters into the column. I’m sorry to say that it’s a pretty successful strategy. Their letters tend to jump to the front of the line. And it’s a pretty sweet gig even when I set that aside. I get paid to do what most folks do for free: obsess about sex and boss other people around.

The worst? All the people that send me pictures of mysterious sores on their dicks, pussies, assholes, pets, etc. They send me pics because, they say, they’re too embarrassed to talk to a doctor. But not too embarrassed to send me appalling, incriminating digital images over the non-secure Internets. And in the end they still have to go to the doctor because — believe it or not — I can’t give ’em shots via the column. It’s not like the column is printed with anti-biotic ink, and folks can wipe themselves with it and be cured. They still have to see the doc.

QT: What’s your biggest fear?

DS: Do I have to pick just one? I am my mother: I spend most of my waking hours contemplating every potential tragedy that might befall me. I’m writing this on an airplane, which I’ve pictured crashing — very detailed mental images, too (thanks, Lost!) — every three minutes or so. I’m afraid of prison. It’s not an environment that I would flourish in. I worry about something happening to my kid. If my boyfriend were to die, well, I think I’d blow my brains out. It’s that or learn to do my own laundry again, and I’m not prepared to do that. My day is a parade of fears, each one scarier than the one I was contemplating the moment before.

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