Well, not really …
I’m a 27-year-old bi girl, with a lovely fiancée. I’m a top; she’s a sub. I’m trying to be responsible, so this weekend I sat down and wrote my will. I hope I won’t need it anytime soon, but it makes me feel better to know friends and family will get what I want them to have before the IRS can take the rest. You have to specify each item and its recipient, and that’s where I ran into trouble. I want to leave my fiancée’s collar to her, rather than Uncle Sam, but wasn’t sure how specific I could be without either of us being prosecuted for practicing S&M, which is illegal under current laws in the state where I live. So I can’t say, “I’m leaving the S&M collar to my fiancée.” We don’t have a dog and aren’t going to get one, so writing “leather collar” looks strange and makes me nervous. Do you have any advice?
-Needs A Good Lawyer
Most people into S&M have a touch of the drama queen about them, I realize, but let’s not be ridiculous. If you should precede your sub in death, NAGL, I promise you that Uncle Sam is not going to take possession of your widow’s dog collar. But to set your mind at ease, I called a very good lawyer and annoyed him with your very stupid question:
“No, no, no, no. A gift from one person to another is not illegal — that’s the bottom-line answer,” said D. J. Rausa, a very good lawyer in private practice in California who I found via the “Kink-Aware Professionals” listings at the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. “The government is not going to be interested in a gift, in any gift, unless they can tax it.” And unless that dog collar is solid gold and the word “slave” is spelled out on it with big fat diamonds, NAGL, the IRS doesn’t give a shit.
And since you don’t file a will with the state, but with your lawyer, the odds of being prosecuted for engaging in S&M — already infinitesimal — are nil. Worry about the fact that you can’t legally marry your fiancée, NAGL, and not about Uncle Sam swooping in and stealing your sex toys.
I’m questioning my boyfriend’s sexuality. He cross-dresses, which I understand doesn’t mean he’s gay. But he frequently talks to gay men on the Internet and states that he is gay. He denies being gay and says he just thinks it’s interesting to hear people’s reactions. He says he never meets anyone, but I found MapQuest directions to a man’s house on his computer. When confronted he said that he just wanted to know where this person lived!?
I don’t mind the cross-dressing, but I have a problem with him possibly being gay. He has no male friendships and prefers friendships with women. Our relationship is at the point that we are considering marriage. All I feel is fear and doubt.
-Female Is Seeking Help
If he’s gay, you shouldn’t marry him. If he isn’t gay, you still shouldn’t marry him. Because, FISH, gay or straight, your boyfriend is one big, fat, fucking mess. And, gay or straight, this mess is making you miserable. DTMFA.
RealTouch, the new sex toy for men that you wrote about recently (“Good Vibrations,” CL, Jan. 28), is a porn-marketing device, not a sex toy. Note that it says on their Web site that the first “30 minutes [are] free” (translation: You’ll have to pay the rest of the time) and that the FAQ says explicitly that it cannot be used by itself.
It’s a scam, IMO.
Not Buying One
“RealTouch is only activated by the … movies in our video-on-demand library,” says Jim McAnally (a pseudonym, I’m thinkin’) at RealTouch HQ. A per-minute price has not been established, as the toy is not yet being sold — a detail I would’ve included in my previous column, had I known — but “the device [will be] activated with 30 minutes when it is purchased.”
So you’re right, NBO: RealTouch could be considered a porn-marketing device. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a scam, and neither would Mr. McAnally: “The device is driven by a haptic data stream that we have to encode with a lot of detail,” he added. “To give you an idea, it takes eight hours to encode 15 minutes worth of content. And that data stream doesn’t exist outside of the video that has been encoded.”
Good to know. But many men will be disappointed to learn that they can only use this toy when they’re watching porn. Here’s hoping that RealTouch 2.0 has more functions.
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2009.