I’m a 24-year-old straight female. I just moved to a new city where I don’t know anyone. So the other night I hung out with a 21-year-old jock from work. We went to a bar and eventually wound up back at his apartment, where we both smoked pot. I was thinking he was a muscle-bound meathead, so to shock him I told him a story about one of my male friends wearing a skirt. He kind of exploded and said, “You have guy friends who wear skirts? That’s weird, because I like to dress up like a woman and it turns me on and I really want to be a girl and I want to be pretty and I have these huge muscles because I’m fighting it and I’ve never told anybody this before and I can’t believe I just told you and it’s probably because I’m drunk and do you think it would be OK if someday I dressed up for you?”
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I swear it was like that–one big run-on sentence. We talked for four hours and he says that he’s not gay: he just wants to be a woman. The strain is really getting to him, he said, hence the heavy drinking and pot smoking. I suggested therapy, not to “fix” him but to help him get to a place where his desire doesn’t make him so unhappy. Now I’m not sure what to do. I can tell that he’s crushing on me. He was even before he told me his big secret, and now that he’s confided in me his crush has intensified. I wasn’t really interested in him to begin with, but I must admit his admission makes him more appealing. I really do want him to dress up for me. I’m just not sure that I’m ready to deal with his reaction when I don’t want to live happily ever after–especially if he sticks with the idea of becoming a woman. I’m not sexually interested in actual women.
Tell him you’re tempted but you’re not going to go there if you’re the only person he can talk to about this stuff. If he wants to mess around and explore with you, fine, great, you’re game for that. But that’s all you’re signing up for. You can’t be his therapist, and you’re not making any commitments. Explain to him that if you knew you were the only person he had to talk to about his desires you’d feel obligated to continue seeing him even if you decided that the relationship wasn’t working out. He’ll have his first therapy session scheduled a half hour after you get off the phone.
If your sanity depends on hearing me say something like “There’s no way you could’ve been infected by that circus kid,” then my response is going to drive you out of your mind. There are plenty of hot 22-year-old HIV-positive guys out there, just as there are plenty of hot guys who got infected with HIV under the circumstances you describe. Sorry, SACK, but there’s HIV in precome, anal sex is the most efficient way to spread HIV, and not all guys who claim to be clean are telling the truth.
Yes: DTMFA. And if you’re just joining us, SBNL, DTMFA stands for “dump the motherfucker already,” which is what you need to do. Your boyfriend is a rude, insensitive asshole and doesn’t deserve to have a girlfriend who likes to suck dick.
