Q I’m a 45-year-old woman who’s thinking of getting vaginal rejuvenation as a gift for my husband. I’ve had a couple kids and my vagina is obviously not as tight as it used to be. My husband says he doesn’t really notice the difference, but I think he’s just trying to be nice. What’s your take on the surgery? Do you think it’s a good idea?

A Personally, I think it’s just one more marketing gimmick designed to make women feel shitty about themselves. We claim to be a country that worships motherhood and apple pie, but mothers continually get the shaft (whether it’s via lack of decent day-care options or having to juggle work with all the parenting responsibilities), and apple pies continually get ravaged by our increasingly obese citizenry (I’m not sure how I got sidetracked into a Save the Apple Pies diatribe, but there you have it). In any case, why go right to the surgery option when you can do things like Kegel exercises (I’ve defined these babies numerous times, so go Google it) that can work wonders at tightening vaginal muscles? There doesn’t have to be a quick fix for everything in this world, and in this case, it seems that there doesn’t have to be a fix at all. Don’t do it.

Q I’m a 27-year-old gay guy. I’ve been out of the closet, living a normal, healthy, gay lifestyle for the past ten years. My career and family life are balanced and stable, and I’ve had a few good relationships, but I’m now single. Recently, I’ve started having sexual and romantic fantasies about women, which is really throwing me off, because I’ve thought only about men for so long. While I’m still definitely attracted to men, that attraction is waning, and my attraction to women is growing. To make matters more confusing, I can feel my overall sex drive declining as I grow older. Part of me wonders if my mind is playing tricks on itself. Am I just feeling these new attractions as part of a convoluted denial mechanism? Is it possible for sexual orientation to swing like this? The idea of my sexuality being fluid scares me. What if I settle down with a partner only to later find that I’m not attracted to him or her?

A The human mind is a gloriously devilish thing. For instance, during that whole Spitzer-hooker brouhaha, I wasn’t thinking, How could he?, or, Poor, poor Silda, or even, $4,000 for a hooker?!?, I was thinking, This makes me feel so profoundly good about myself, because no matter how much I fuck up in life, there’s no possible way I would find myself standing at a podium with a humiliated spouse beside me, announcing to the world that I am one gigantic fraud. Of course, I’m sure Spitzer thought that about himself as well, since these things happen in baby steps of turpitude leading up to one huge leap into the pit of comeuppance. My point is: Don’t underestimate the power of the mind to do the bidding of your subconscious, even while your conscious mind is heading in an entirely different direction. First of all, yes, sexuality can indeed be fluid, and people can suddenly find themselves dabbling in a different orientation based on an attraction to a specific person or to fulfill some need that hasn’t been met in previous relationships. In your case, I’d like to know more about the fantasies you say you’ve been having. Are they mostly sexual or mostly romantic? I ask because I’m wondering if perhaps your sudden declining sex drive is simply a symptom of the fact that you’re craving more of an emotional connection with someone, which lately you’ve been finding more with the women in your life. Then again, if your fantasies are mostly pussycentric, that’s a whole different (sorry, can’t help myself!) kettle of fish. At 27, you may very well still be discovering the hidden subtleties of your sexuality, so I wouldn’t worry so much about being an orientational yo-yo. Besides, you’re not going to be marrying either a penis or a vagina, but a full human being who presumably will make you feel like you want to spend the rest of your life with him or her. If I were you, I would just keep exploring all of your sexual urges, and ultimately you’ll figure out which ones can satisfy you the most.

And last, since I love airing reader feedback, here’s a little bitch slap about my apparently overzealous response to a guy who was suffering from premature ejaculation, even though his current girlfriend isn’t—in his words—as “physically attractive” as his ex, with whom he had no ejaculatory issues.

Q Generally, you give compassionate and judicious advice. Just on occasion, you have a li’l hyperaggression fest. Why go medieval on the good guy who said his ex was more attractive? You seemed to be channeling pure, gratuitous animus, mixed with the excuse and high dudgeon of misguided chivalry. So no man or woman can be honest about a feeling, or perception, in any context? If I am secure, I will not mind if a girlfriend thinks me less attractive than another dude. Of course she should be discreet in expressing this—but I would want her to feel free to express this with a valued good friend, or if she needed to write an advice columnist to figure out how to handle a perceived problem. This guy should not be shamed. A reality-check question: Would you scold a great friend who was agonizing about the same issue and told you this information? From your usual, overwhelming decency, I do not think you would try to tear said friend a new one.

A Wow, it’s not often I get a letter from someone who writes in a more convoluted way and with fancier words than I do. (Gratuitous animus and high dudgeon in the same sentence? Well played.) There’s just one li’l problem with your argument: You seem to think that writing in a public forum and casually revealing that one’s current girlfriend is less attractive than one’s ex is discreet. Yes, I know, no names are attached to these things, but there’s something so cavalier about writing that down and e-mailing it off for the rest of the city to read. Of course I think people should always be honest and open about their feelings, and looks are never the sole foundation of any good relationship, but I do think there’s still a place for chivalry in this world. Perhaps you’re right and I should have gone a bit more Reformation rather than medieval on the guy, but it just struck me as a lousy thing to say in the midst of a letter in which he was talking about how great his girlfriend is to him. And no, I wouldn’t say the same thing to a friend, but that would be a private, personal conversation, so I wouldn’t have an issue with that kind of soul-baring at all.

Send letters to Jamie Bufalino c/o Time Out New York, 475 Tenth Avenue, 12th floor, New York, NY 10018, or send e-mail to sex@timeoutny.com. Check out “Sex on the Street” with Jamie Bufalino at timeoutnewyork.tv.

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