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Just friends
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May 2, 2000 | I've just turned 50, much to my own surprise. I lived for 20 years in a
loving relationship with a man who was bisexual. We were the best
of friends, but the sex evaporated when I was in my mid-30s, and odd though it may seem, apart from a few brief flings I've been celibate ever since. Now I'm involved with another man whom I truly love, and I desperately need your advice. A year and a half ago, he answered a personals ad I placed, and at first there was a great romantic intensity: We fell into bed on the second date. Then we didn't see each other for six months, then we started seeing each other but not romantically. Now we're very good friends and I've joined him in his business as a partner. We spend most of our time together: We work together, we eat out, we ski together, we share our finances, our thoughts and feelings, we laugh together and we enjoy each other's company thoroughly. People who come into our shop always assume that we're a long-established couple.
Mr. Blue Garrison Keillor's column appears every Tuesday in Salon Books.
Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue. I love this man and I would like to have a sexual relationship with him. It doesn't seem important to him to take that step again. I don't know what moves I should make. From a male perspective, what's going on here? He is 52, and I don't see any evidence of him being interested in anyone other than me. I'm virtually certain that he hasn't slept with anyone since the time we slept together, and I certainly haven't either. It seems to be something he doesn't miss, while I definitely feel the lack. I don't want this to be the way I live the rest of my life. But is this something that, given my age, I should learn to live with? I don't want to give up the warmth and affection I do have, but is there any hope for generating some sparks? Too Old to Be This Dumb, Too Young to Be This Old Dear T.O., From my male perspective, this guy has done pretty well for himself: He answered a personals ad and found a great friend and business partner and pal. One could do a lot worse. The romance sparked and fizzled and he has chosen not to revisit it but he has hooked up with you in every other respect. Perhaps he is thinking of all the couples who have sex and who aren't good friends at all. Perhaps it wasn't a deliberated decision so much as a sense of wrongness about having sex with you. This doesn't have anything to do with your age or his. (Though there could, of course, be physical and chemical causes of a loss of sex drive, but this is not your concern at this point.) If you want to pursue this man, go ahead, but do it gently. Tell him you love him. Be physically affectionate, playfully so, and after you eat out, if the situation seems right, kiss him. You can read a lot in the response to a kiss, and if you're not getting a clear reading, try a long lingering kiss, and run your hands down him as if you were frisking him for weapons. (Why be subtle? You've already been to bed with him, for heaven's sake.) You'll know how he feels about this, believe me. He will endure it with good humor or he will shrink from you or he will respond. He may be hesitant, if he's been celibate for a while, but he'll respond if he's interested. If he's not interested, drop it. Dear Mr. Blue, All my friends and co-workers tell me I'm the "funniest person [they've] ever met." I'm not a stand-up guy, I don't tell jokes (I don't like them), but I think I manage to work humor into conversations quite well. But this is more or less something that just happens, mostly because I'm stimulated by the pleasure of good conversation when I'm around my friends, and so when I'm happy, I'm funny. But when I sit down to write, I become a Serious Guy, and my ability to be funny, or whatever it is I am when I'm with my friends, just evaporates. And my writing is mind-numbingly tedious to read. What can I do to write as if I'm in the midst of an interesting conversation with friends, with all the laughter and lights and uncertainty? There's lots of spontaneity in conversation, little of it when I sit down to write. What to do? Serious Comic Dear Serious Comic, If this is you, Dave Barry, you big weasel, get lost. Quit yanking my chain, buddy boy -- I've got solid evidence on your drug habits and I'll spill my guts to a U.S. prosecutor if you don't quit writing me these dorky letters. On the other hand, if this is a letter from someone other than Dave who really is trying to write funny stuff, my heart goes out to you. I am in the same situation [you] are in. I too have regaled [my] friends and co-workers with witty repartee that reduced them to puddles of snot, and yet, sitting at this very laptop computer, I often become tedious, such as right now, for example. Do you want to know the problem? Your friends who think [you're] the "funniest person [they've] ever met" are drunk out of their gourds, but you (when you sit down to write) are not drunk. And neither is the reader. This is the big reason most humorists fail. Drunks don't read books. What to do? Make more friends and tell them jokes. The funniest joke I know is the one about the two penguins standing on the iceberg. One says, "You look like you're wearing a tuxedo," and the other says, "What makes you think I'm not?" This joke gets funnier the more often you tell it. Maybe you could try writing about penguins, I don't know.
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