Dear Sasha,

Supposing I were to call an escort and have her come down to my apartment for sex, my question for you is this: after giving her $100 to $300 of my hard-earned money, if that’s what it costs, how on earth am I supposed to now achieve an erection?

And don’t say she’ll give me one. Now that my mind knows I’ve just lost all that money, it ain’t happening. How do other men do this?

Cheap Sex Freak

Some men, like you, find the financial aspect of this transaction demoralizing, but those who don’t seem pretty goddamn grateful that someone actually can be paid to come over and fuck them. They don’t see this exchange as losing money, but rather as a consensual agreement between a client and service provider.

If you are the type of person who sees yourself as a “loser” (both financially and personally) when you imagine giving someone money for sex, then certainly this attitude will reduce your enjoyment. And reasonably so. I mean, honestly, how are you supposed to loosen up when you see yourself as a loser and the sex worker as someone who does little more than profit off this quality?

Unless you can change the way you think about this exchange, sex with a professional may not be the best way for you to get laid. I can tell you from the other end of things that nothing sucks balls more than a client who acts like you are simply taking and not giving. Seriously, you want to talk hard-earned money, Cheap?

What’s the buzz?

Dear Sasha,

I’m looking for a doctor for my Magic Wand. She’s between life and death. I used her in Europe with an adaptor and now she makes noise but the head doesn’t vibrate. Help.

Diane

Aha! I’m not the only one! I’m not the only one.

Sorry to gloat about your misfortune, Diane, but this exact thing happened to me when I was in Hell (aka Amsterdam) in November. Regular readers know the story: I took out the power in the squat where I was staying, suffered great humiliation and loss, etc.

While someone handy with electronics may be able to replace your Wand’s cord if it gets frayed over time (this can be avoided by coiling the cord below the unit rather than around it), what you’ve done in this case is essentially executed your vibrator by electrocution.

As Reg of Reg’s Appliance Service says, “If an adaptor doesn’t have a transformer to step the voltage down, you are putting 220 volts of power into an appliance that takes 110 volts.”

This is likely what happened to both of us: we used an adaptor that was simply a universal plug with no power transformer.

“It’s fried,” is Reg’s grim prognosis.

You’ll have to get a new one, but for goddess’s sake, let’s all learn from this tragic lesson. Pass the word on to your Wand-loving friends who are travelling to countries that require adaptors: make sure your adaptors have power transformers. Artistic ladies, consider for your repertoire a folk song, poem, dance piece or painting on this urgent topic. It’s really up to us to keep the issue in the spotlight and make sure it never happens again.

Who’s that girl?

Dear Sasha,

I’m a very successful businessman. I have a highly profitable retail business, a big house and a beautiful, loving girlfriend. Life is just perfect.

I do, however, have a secret life. I’m a straight man but I love being a woman. My girlfriend is very conservative, so I know that she wouldn’t understand. It’s a secret I’ve kept from her during our entire four years together.

At the store, I wear women’s lingerie and stockings underneath my clothes, and I have a stash of women’s outfits, cosmetics and wigs in my back office. Recently, I’ve met a woman who knows about my secret life as Christine, and she respects it. We’ve developed a great friendship, and she will even role-play with me, coming into the store when no one’s around, uncovering my secret Christine identity and then taking me to the back office to punish me for being such a bad girl. No sex is involved, just a lot of play.

I really love my dual life. Both worlds are fulfilling to me. Is it wrong to keep this second life from my girlfriend?

Big Lozanski (Christine)

The way you establish what you consider right and wrong within the context of an intimate relationship is by saying, “I think this is wrong. Do you think that’s wrong, too?” Or “I think this is right. Do you think this is right, too?” Or “I have ambivalent feelings about this issue. What are your feelings?”

If you define wrong as carrying on with someone in a way that you know would send your very conservative girlfriend over the edge (both because of the content and the intimacy), then you’ve got a divisive issue on your hands. Now, if your girlfriend couldn’t give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut what you do when you’re not with her, then by all means, put on a wig and dance to Whitney with your new friend. But, see, you’ll never know because you’re not giving her the option to tell you what she thinks.

I guess that cross-dressing was part of your life before you got involved with your very conservative girlfriend, and that isn’t the first time you’ve kept this from a partner. Likely it won’t be the last. It looks like you’ve spent some time preparing yourself for an inevitable confrontation by trotting out shopworn technicalities like “no sex is involved, just play.”

Nice try, Clinton, but when we have to spend time mulling over loopholes for our behaviour, well, there’s some indication that we know we’re on controversial terrain.

People keep these kinds of double lives from their partners for decades, occasionally lifetimes. They rationalize their secrecy by telling themselves that it would destroy their partner to know and that the fact that they can live this out every once in a while is holding their relationship together.

Interesting, isn’t it? If you look at this compulsion in a broader sense, what you are saying is that you need to keep a part of yourself just for you. What I’m asking you is this: even if you had the option to tell your partner, would you want to?

Ask Sasha: [email protected]

Sasha Van Bon Bon

Sasha is a nationally syndicated sex columnist whose work has appeared in a variety of Canadian weeklies and online magazines for over 15 years. Her column appears weekly in NOW magazine. She is also...