Surly Sorts it Out

From the magazine that this week brought us the story of a fifty year-old woman who hid prawns in her bridal bouquet so that her cat could give her away (and who spent her honeymoon on a sheep farm to appease her sheep-obsessed (her words) husband), I thought we could turn our attention to the problem page. It was a difficult decision as this week's poem was fabulously, excruciatingly lumpen but other people's weird concerns are always going to win.

Dear Surly,

I've found women's knickers hidden in my husband's underwear drawer. They're all new, the same make and in a large size so I'm assuming he's bought them rather than stolen them. Is this some new kink I should know about?

Beryl, 50, Rotherham

Beryl,

I find it interesting that you need to write to a magazine in order to establish whether or not your husband's predilection for gert big knickers is a "new kink". Are you perhaps under the impression that middle-aged men up and down the country are, to a man, popping unconcernedly into Marks and Spencers of a lunchtime and stocking up on giant, inappropriate pants? Is your husband so far up the whispering-neighbour scale that your only concern is that, in addition to helping him powder up his gimp mask and slip into a giant babygro, you're now going to be expected to spend half your life laundering his expansive underwear? Get a grip, woman. For crying out loud, if you were a bit more enthusiastic in the sack he probably wouldn't need to get his jollies parading around in monstrous thongs. Grit your teeth, give the man a blowjob and pray that your lack of inspiration in the bedroom department hasn't driven him away for good. And dust your skirting boards, they're a fucking disgrace.


Dear Surly,

My boyfriend and I enjoy anal sex, but I'm worried about catching a sexually transmitted infection. We're not using condoms at the moment because we're trying for a baby. Can you advise me if this is safe?

Sarah, 24, Cardiff

Sarah. Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Your letter is wrong on so many levels I'm not sure where to begin. Let's break this down, shall we?

1) If you think your boyfriend is going to pass on an STI I'm not sure you should be letting him stick it anywhere, let alone up your arse. Seriously Sarah, if you think letting him in the back door is going to stop him shagging that slapper from the chippy you're more deluded than I first thought. Wake up, woman.

2) If you're trying for a baby, maybe your front entrance would be a better bet, at least from a conception point of view? Do you really want to have a conversation in eighteen years time in which you have to tell a horrified, weeping teenager that they were conceived in a bizarre reversal of the universally recognised "not THERE!!!!" scenario in which your old man inadvertently popped his cock into your idea of the "wrong hole"?

3) If you thought I was going to say that anal sex is actually illegal and that your boyfriend is facing a substantial prison term (in which he could see what it was like to be on the receiving end of a good old-fashioned buttfucking. I bet he wouldn't be so keen after that, would he?) in the hope that you could stop him sidling up behind you and whispering a request for some "special loving" you've come to the wrong place*, I'm afraid.

So what have we learned, Sarah? Well, we've learned that if you hadn't been such a slut in the first place, you wouldn't be in this mess now. You've made your bed - I'm afraid you're going to have to lie in it. Face down.


Does anyone out there have a problem I can help with? Ask away. I think I may have found my vocation.


* The actual response to this letter included a suggestion that if Sarah "wants" to continue this practice, she should get her boyfriend to "wear a condom when at the back and to remove it before entering at the front". Who said romance was dead?