The woman in my life is severally pierced. This, I must say, added to the attraction when I first saw her. At that point, I only saw the nose ring and the ear-rings and the ring on her lip and the one through her tongue. Later, I discovered that she had others and I marvelled at her tenacity of purpose. But, now things have come to a strange place. One night, after I spent much time with a little ring of silver in a strategic place, she said, “You have had so much fun with my piercings, but I haven’t had any fun with yours.” I pointed out that this could be because I did not have any. I had my ears pierced when I was a boy, as many boys of my kind do, and then allowed the holes to fill up, ditto ditto. I have never wanted anything else pierced. I told her so. She said, “Oh, it would be nice if you could have a Prince Albert.” I looked it up on the internet the next day, and my treasure trove froze. I quote Wikipedia here: “It is a ring-style piercing that extends along the underside of the glans from the urethral opening to where the glans meets the shaft of the penis.” I don’t even know where all these things are, but the idea of having someone pierce me there and then run a ring through it makes me shudder. So, I told her as much, and she said, “Oh”, and since then she’s been a bit off-hand. This is non-negotiable. Should I tell her so?

 

This is such a simple thing. Your bits, your bobs, your decisions. That’s your body, and you get to do with it what you want, pretty much. (Within reason and within the law. It is against the law for instance to bleed yourself to death.) So, you have a choice. She goes from off-hand to hands-off, and you get to find someone new. Or, you go and get a earring and see if that will do it for her. Chances are, it won’t.

 

I slept with this woman and now my best friend is marrying her. I want to warn him that she’s a lousy lay. What’s a good way to do this?

 

You could go up to him and you could say: I slept with the woman who you are planning to marry and… That’s a good way to lose a friend, right? You could write him an anonymous letter and join the ranks of people who are beneath contempt. Or, you could look at the situation as an adult might. A woman is not a lay. A woman is a woman. A man is also a man. He is not a lover. When a man and a woman — or any other combination thereof — have sex, both of them determine how it goes. Both of them are co-inventors of the experience. Both of them have the chance to make it meaningful or meaningless, fun or sublime, funny ha ha or funny peculiar.

 

So, she is not a lousy lay. You and she had sex, and it did not work for you. It probably also did not work for her. If she is a mature person, she is not going around saying: He (that is to say, you) is a lousy lay. So, give it a rest, will you? And, even if, at some distant point in the future, your friend should come up to you and recount some amatory disappointment, you will get no brownie points for saying, “You know, I wanted to tell you but…” or even, if you do go ahead and tell him, “I told you so.” So shut the eff up.

 

He’s shaved. Down there. Is there something I should know about him?

 

Yes, there is. He is a schizophrenic murderer on the rampage and has a thing about drinking blood from the skulls of his victims. Unlikely? Okay, he had a bad case of pubic lice and he had to have a shave. Or, he had some surgery somewhere in the area and had to have a shave.

 

Or, he likes the idea of shaving his pubes off. Maybe he just likes the way it feels. Some women do that airstrip thing? Some women get it all shaved off and have a merkin put back on to retain that natural look. Some women get ringlets done. None of this means anything other than that’s what they like to do.

 

So, how about you ask him, friendly-like. “I say,” you say, friendly-like. “I noticed you don’t have any hair. Down there. Why?” And he laughs friendly-like and says, “I’ll tell you as soon as you put down the kitchen knife and sit down so that we can talk this over like reasonable adults.”

 

PS: Finally, it could be a cultural thing. Or, a religious thing. But, we’re not going there, not in this column, we’re not.