Boys will be boys

Dear Cary,

My boyfriend has never given me flowers. We are going on seven months of dating. Should I be concerned?

Flower Girl

Dear Flower Girl,

At the beginning of this relationship, when you amended the boilerplate foolscap boyfriend-girlfriend contract to govern the particular requirements of this engagement, was there a contingency to be removed within seven months by his competent performance of the flower delivery element of the master plan? Is that what you're referring to? If so, he's in flagrant violation by nonperformance, and it's within your rights to terminate the contract or demand immediate compliance. If it wasn't in the contract, however, you might have to spell it out for him.

Some guys only buy two kinds of flowers: Sex-Tonight Roses and It Was All My Fault Roses. And some guys buy no flowers because they compare them on the commodities market with beer. Let's see, two six-packs ... or flowers? Duh.

I really think, to be fair to guys, that the frequency of flower purchasing and the manner of timely delivery should be spelled out early in all boyfriend-girlfriend contracts, lest later unspecified expectations by one party emerge as hitherto unstated demands, causing suspicions of prior bad faith bargaining and engendering possible hostile counterdemands, such as that in return for regular flowers you must henceforth, under penalty of contract nullification, increase the frequency and duration of formerly optional oral-genital acts, with no reciprocal stimulation required.

Dear Cary,

I've been married for 12 years to a good-hearted man who loves me despite my being often impossible. He's a decent companion, though often infuriating, no dummy in his own world but nowhere near my intellectual or passionate equal. Except for the exhausting excitement of having a hyperactive daughter, I've been bored stiff most of my marriage. He, on the other hand, is happy with his lot.

When the millennium began, I decided to take matters into my own hands and searched as best I could for a soul mate to fill the gaps in my life without leaving my marriage. I had many adventures, but all ended in feelings of disappointment and emptiness. I've given up on that route, and lost the desire to even search for the thrill anymore. Even at the gym I no longer get excited by fantasies involving hardbodies.

There are people in life who are never satisfied for long, and I'm one of them. But I've gotten to a place where I don't feel like I'll ever be satisfied again.

Any thoughts?

Thrill-less

Dear Thrill-less,

So you had many adventures behind your husband's back, and each time you felt disappointed and empty. And now you're exhausted, still empty and the future looks bleak?

Were you looking for fulfillment in quick fucks on cut-rate motel queen-size Sertas in double-occupancy air-conditioned "suites" with ice down a neon corridor and a pool open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., swim at your own risk?

Did you think that a late-night cognac in a hotel bar at closing time when the band is coiling Monster Cable and wheeling out Baby Fender Twins and the bartender's phoning his girlfriend in the next town was going to open a velvet curtain into a Nirvana where all the bank tellers call you Miss Thrills and the men crowd around with flowers, quoting Percy Bysshe Shelley, where you only ride in convertibles above gleaming seas and the radio is always playing Nat King Cole?

Well, it doesn't happen. Welcome to life on earth. The repeated failure of such dreams is why we have the dubious consolations of philosophy, religion, psychotherapy, shooting ranges, slot-car tracks and Prozac. Why do you think there's a blues singer bent over his National Steel guitar howling in the cotton fields about a woman done gone? Why are there gospel music, heavy metal and basement bondage and discipline clubs?

It's been all about you, you, you and that's where the pain comes from. You've got to find some group where they shrink the ego down to where it stops eating your days. Find a religion. Serve soup to the homeless. Fix some little girl's hair. Give yourself to giving and give, give, give and bit by bit you'll cool down and get grounded and then you can make some decisions: to either become your husband's true companion or, if that's all wrong, honorably divorce him, without getting into all the betrayals, because he doesn't need to know.

Dear Cary,

I have tried and tried but I -- a 40-year-old woman -- still don't like kissing. Frankly, I find kissing a disgusting habit, especially tongue kisses. I have broken up with an otherwise perfect man, because I could not get used to his habit of tongue kisses and rolling his tongue around in my mouth. (He found that quite exciting -- I found it quite disgusting; all the saliva and all the germs that get exchanged during kissing!) Tell me what is the big deal that is made about kissing and how can I get to like being kissed?

Yucky

Dear Yucky,

That really does sound disgusting. Have we actually been doing that all these years? My god, that's gross. But French kissing was the Holy Grail in the junior high makeout quest across the barren and hostile kingdom of adolescence, and there was among us not one who was not eager to experience its legendary tingle and accompanying nether wetness. And it remains to this day a sure precursor to satisfactory romance if pursued long enough for its electric incandescence to spread throughout the animal frame, though its roots lie in furtive basement rutting, flashlight nakedness and girls from Staten Island returning to uncles after Labor Day.

But enough of my distant memories: How can one learn to like being kissed? Off the top of my head, aside from the fact that if prostitutes have anything to teach us, it's that you don't have to kiss to have sex, it might help you to change your focus away from the germs, the saliva and his big spastic mouth-squid, to the connubial bliss approaching, or whatever private movie plays in your head on occasions of mounting excitement leading to that rapture the French call la petite mort. That is, think about something that turns you on. Don't think about the germs.

But another thing: Rather than tell you what's the big deal about kissing, I'd rather ask you, If it wasn't for that would you still want to be with this otherwise perfect man? Because people aren't objects to be discarded casually. If he was perfect in every other way, isn't that remarkable? How often do you find that? And you're in your 40s. Don't you crave community, some secure ties, a sense of continuity and a rich social life? Even if the tongue thing proves insurmountable, if he's perfect except for that don't you at least want him still in your life? So there's the sexual mechanics but there's also the big picture: People are priceless, especially if they're almost perfect. At least keep the guy around as a friend; if he's not your cup of tea, marry him off to a friend.

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