[Savage Love] So Much for 'Action News'

Where The Girls At?

You think your luck with Craiglist is bad, WTGA?

Jeff Gradney, a television-news reporter in Las Vegas, lost his job after some anonymous douchebag alerted the management at KTNV-TV “Channel 13 Action News” to the fact that Gradney and his girlfriend placed an ad on Craigslist seeking a third. Sexphobia? Definitely. Homophobia? Perhaps: Gradney and his girlfriend were looking for another dude. And for this infraction—which had nothing to do with his job performance—Gradney was fired. So much for “Action News,” huh? (People who’ve had three-ways—or not—are invited to come to Gradney’s defense. Send an outraged e-mail to KTNV-TV’s vice president and general manager Jim Prather at jprather@ktnv.com.)

Gradney’s dismissal came a week after a pair of nationally ranked college wrestlers—including a 2007 national champion—were booted from the University of Nebraska wrestling team after it emerged that both had jerked off for an Internet porn site. (Solo jerk-off scenes, nothing gay about ’em, although the website is aimed at gay men.)

Sexphobes will say that Gradney and those college wrestlers got what was coming to ’em. People shouldn’t let it all hang out on the Interwebs—or spurt out, in the case of the wrestlers—unless they’re prepared to lose their jobs, their spots on the team, their shot at being an “American Idol,” etc. But with so many people documenting their lives online, and with so many people using the Internet as a tool to seek sexual fulfillment, and in our thoroughly exhibitionist culture, one might think that people could picture themselves in Gradney’s shoes or those wrestlers’ singlets and cut ’em a little fucking slack.

If I may tweak a phrase: What happens online really ought to stay online. Your Internet personals shouldn’t be something that can be used against you by bluenoses at work; if you like to show off and want to wank for the Web, that shouldn’t matter to the douchebags who run the NCAA. (Hello, NCAA? Want to generate interest in the sport? Encourage more college wrestlers to make JO videos.) Here’s hoping that we soon reach a Web-exposure tipping point, a time when everyone has something out there online that’s sexually explicit or deeply embarrassing or both. When that blessed day arrives, we’ll think twice about firing someone or cutting someone from the team for the crime of letting it all hang out online because, hey, we’ve got it all hanging out online, too.

As for how to find a third, WTGA: Most people looking for thirds want someone who’s totally trustworthy and honest, someone who comes guaranteed to be disease-free, but they also want that someone to be a complete stranger whom they’ll never see again after the three-way is over. Those someones don’t exist, WTGA. If you really want to have a three-way, you either go with the likely-to-be-skeezy stranger you met online and risk dismemberment, or you approach a trusted, attractive friend and risk rejection.

I am a 30-year-old woman in a relationship with my childhood sweetheart. My boyfriend and I got together when we were 15. That’s 15 years ago. It was—and remains—an intense and extraordinary intellectual compatibility. He’s the funniest and smartest person I have ever met. Sure, we have had our ups and downs, but there is a lot of good stuff there.

Okay, cutting to the chase: I have never slept with another man, and I don’t want to. But I no longer want to have sex with my boyfriend and have been having sex with women behind his back. I have long been attracted to women and suspect I would have been in a relationship with one by now if my life had taken a different path. I love my boyfriend, his family, our friends, our life. But nothing makes me feel more “me” than lying next to a woman after we have gotten each other off for hours on end. Do I come out, wreck my life and his, all because of one small part of who I am? Or do I stop being an unfaithful bitch and make things work with the man I love?