Q:
My new girlfriend has a dog and she lets it sleep in her bed, and the freaking thing refuses to leave the room when we have sex. If we lock it out, it whines outside the door till we open it. If we let it in, he watches us, and it weirds me out when the stupid mutt gets a hard-on—which happens every damn time. I tried closing the dog in the bedroom so we could have sex in the living room or bathroom, but my girlfriend won’t do that unless her roommate is out of town. And she hates my roommate, so she won’t screw at my place at all. What should I do?

A:
Have you thought about strapping something to the mutt so it can participate? No, not that kind of strap-on. I’m talking about a head cam! Even if the footage comes out shakier than a Lars von Trier film, it might help you to imagine the dog as an auteur of fine erotica who just happens to drink out of a water bowl (he wouldn’t be the first director with eccentric habits). This way, instead of old Bingo creeping you out by staring at your boner like, well, a dog without a bone, he’ll be bringing something to the mix. In fact, if you set him up with a webcam, you might even be able to monetize the situation. Just tell yourself that when he barks it means, “Flip her over doggie-style. I have a guy in the chat room who wants you to take her to the dog pound.”

If being on camera just doesn’t turn you on, imagine the pup is the voyeuristic tool of the hot office intern who’s been making eyes at you. I figure in the future you’ll be able to travel back in time and implant spy cameras in animals’ eyes—so it’s perfectly possible that this chick has done just that with your girl’s dog and set up a webcam of her own, and she’s lying back, fully naked, diddling her moist hoo-hah while she watches you hook up with your girlfriend.

I know what you’re thinking: There’s no way you’re going to talk yourself into believing any of this. But you’d be surprised how easy it can be if you just give the dog a funky set of shades (maybe those Kanye West ones) and wrap its tail in tinfoil so it’s easier for it to transmit images.

Q:
This girl I’m dating invited me to her parents’ house for Christmas, where I would meet three generations of her family, all for the first time. I don’t want to go, and I really don’t want her to think that I’m going to invite her to celebrate the holidays with my family, either. We haven’t been dating long, and we’re not even exclusive, but as soon as I said yes to New Year’s Eve plans, she went into couples overdrive and starting planning out our entire lives together. Dude, I just want to know for sure I’m getting laid every Saturday night. I’m not looking for a commitment, and I don’t want to get cornered into one. The sex is great, though, so I need a way to back off without cutting her loose.

A:
Three generations of her family? Ai-yi-yi! Better spike your eggnog with Tres Generaciones tequila to keep yourself relaxed enough to avoid getting your nuts roasted over an open fire.

You need to make it clear to this girl that she’s merely Santa’s little humper. Of course, you can’t chase her off entirely or come Christmas Eve, it won’t be trinkets you’ll be filling socks with. To ensure you won’t be stroking it yourself, give her the proverbial snow job. Tell her you’d love to meet her family, but you spend Christmas handing out turkeys at the local soup kitchen. You’ll score points with her and get out of hearing about her grandma’s bunions. If she tries to tag along, tell her the soup kitchen is no place for a lady. (See how gallant you are?)

If this goes down less smoothly than a fruitcake and she just isn’t swallowing it, you have to ask yourself whether going home with her is really such a bad thing. Maybe she has a hot sister or a MILF-y mom who will spur fantasies about an under the mistletoe threesome. (Note: If you end up beating off in their bathroom, carefully eliminate all evidence that you put the “jack” in Jack Frost.) And if she goes home with you, your mom will talk her ear off instead of yours, leaving you free to sneak away and play videogames or go through the old porno magazines still hidden under your mattress.

Of course, your mom is 99.9 percent sure to tell her that one truly embarrassing story you hope no one ever hears again, so maybe you should just cut her loose like a gangrene-ridden reindeer. After all, the Christmas season is a damn good time to be single, assuming you have a few holiday parties to crash. (You haven’t lived until you and some random receptionist have turned the office Christmas lights into anal beads.) And don’t forget that New Year’s Eve is the one time when perfect strangers are obligated to suck face with you. Don’t worry about ending up alone. Girls are desperate for company during the holidays, and at least one of them will look at you and think, I’m dreaming of a wet Christmas.

Q:
My birthday is coming up, and I figure it’s a good time to get my girlfriend to do something she’d otherwise never do: a threesome. The thing is, she’s said over and over again that she’s not attracted to other girls and would never do it. Is there a way to convince her? Something tells me that using the “it’s my birthday, bitch” line is not going to cut it.

A:
You’re right about one thing, my man: Birth days are not about blow ing out candles and playing pin the tail on the donkey. They’re about you getting blown and maybe even getting tail at a donkey show. (If you’ve spent any b-days in Tijuana, you know what I’m talking about.) You’re a very lucky man if your girl friend decides to throw you a “three bie”—a free pass to strip down to your birthday suit with two chicks—but that takes a special kind of woman. I’m thinking your lady is not going to like watching you spray your confetti all over some other girl’s titties.

Try this instead: Ask her to go to a swingers party with you. Since it’s not only your birthday, but Halloween is coming up, you might luck out. Scour the internet for a masquerade orgy, as she’ll feel a lot less exposed if she’s wearing a Batman mask. And remember that she’s nixed the idea of a threesome more than once before, so you need to play it cool. Tell her that you’re not looking for a threesome; it’s just that it would turn you on to “show her off” to other men. You just want to “see how other couples do it” so you can learn some tricks to please her. See where I’m going with this? Make it all about how hot you are for her, and how much you want to please her.

Before the party, take her out and give her the most romantic night of her life—we’re talking champagne, caviar, roses, violins, the whole prover bial shebang. Once you get to the club, hang out in the clothed section for a while—most clubs have them. With the help of a couple of drinks and a hot-and-heavy make-out session, she’ll shed her inhi bi tions before hope fully shedding her clothes. After that, just hope she meets someone who makes her go “ooh” instead of “ew,” and enjoy the occasion.

Q:
I’ve been office buddies with this girl for a year or so, but lately we’ve been hanging out after work. She’s married and has what looks like a $10,000 rock to prove it, but she doesn’t mention her husband much. I only met him once, when he picked her up at the bar in his Benz and we talked for a few minutes. The funny thing is, he was a buff dude who seemed totally gay. The next day she asked me what I thought of her husband, and I said I’d never met him. She was all, “You met him yesterday, silly!” and I blurted out, “You mean that gay dude?” She acted like no one had ever thought that before. But that night, after a few shots, we ended up kissing. When she reached for my dick, I remembered that poor schmuck’s clueless smile, and how nice he’d been, and my dick went limp. I’ve been cheated on, and I just couldn’t bring myself to cuckold another man. But now she’s sending me sexy photos, and her body is even better than I ever imagined. I’m wondering if I should just go for it.

A:
He’s got a Benz and $10,000 for a ring, huh? With that kind of liquidity, I’d marry the guy. Can he afford a sex change, too? My point is, your girl is obviously not with this guy for his bedroom moves. Not if she’s fishing for flesh in your boxers. You have a couple of options here. One is to send in a gay man to do some recon. As soon as your boy collects hard evidence that the husband is in the mood for dude, you can puncture the girl and come without compunction. But why go to all that trouble? In the time it takes your G man to pull it off, the girl will have moved on to someone who is willing to screw her. Trust me, this girl is hot to trot, and you need to stop being a naysayer and start being a player. If you’re really such a softy that you just can’t get it up for cheating, maybe a threesome is the way to go. But the Scoundrel’s official advice is, stop being a pussy and get some. It’s time to master a move I like to call “cock her and walk her.” That’s when you fuck the shit out of someone’s wife, then walk her home to her other half. Bonus points if you bang her again on the porch swing.

Q:
I’ve been an actuary at an insurance company for several years. Basically, I spend my entire day crunching numbers and assessing risk to determine what people’s premiums should be. Sounds boring, I know, but it’s a sixfigure gig. The thing is, I’m obsessed with risk in my own life, from the odds that I’ll get the Big C to getting hit by a car. At first I stopped going through red lights on my bike; eventually I stopped riding my bike altogether. I switched from contact lenses to glasses because there’s less risk of pinkeye, and the girl I was dating broke up with me because I looked so dorky. The truth is, it’s not just that I look dorky. My job has turned me into a total dork! The girl I’m dating now is begging me for anal sex, and I keep turning her down because I’m worried about bacterial infection. I don’t want to quit my job because—let’s face it—I wouldn’t be getting any girls at all if I didn’t make six figures, so I ask you: How do I rid myself of the fear that danger lurks around every corner?

A:
Hemingway said, “Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth,” so it doesn’t surprise me that your cushy job has turned you into a pantywaist (and I’d bet you wear an athletic cup at all times under those panties—just to be safe). Granted, it’s ironic to quote life truths from a man who blasted his head off with a shotgun, but when he was a strapping young lad, Papa knew where it was at. In fact, you could follow his example and run with the bulls. That’ll put some hair on a man’s chest.

It sounds like you’ve completely forgotten the high of an adrenaline rush. You have to go someplace where you spend your vacation praying that you won’t be robbed by street urchins, or that the disco you’re partying down in won’t be blown up by political extremists—because how much would it suck to spend your last moments listening to Lady Gaga? You need a getaway that reminds you that in order to spell F-U-N, you have to start spelling F-U-C-K I-T.

Here’s my advice: Book a trip to a place that requires a connection on a puddle jumper or one of those commuter planes that are always biting it. When you hit the ground, rent a motorcycle, or at least a Vespa. Ride it to your hotel through the rough part of town (this does not apply to places where entering the “rough part of town” requires knowing secret hand signals). Book a skydiving or scuba-diving lesson. At night, go into at least one bar that has blacked-out windows—or, better yet, no windows at all and a buzzer and security camera at the door. Ask for the bottle with dust on it and some sort of creature inside—if not a Vietnamese snake, then at the very least a mescal worm. Do not leave until that creature is in your belly. Wander into the red-light district. At this point, you will have finally stopped crunching numbers and assessing risk in your head—except to calculate the likelihood that the streetwalker in the tube top has a penis. That’s okay.

Q:
Last summer in Miami I happened upon a nude beach. I’d never bothered going to one before because, well, I always associated them with old nudists whom I wouldn’t want to see naked, but this was a whole different scene. Problem is, I’m pretty shy, so I barely even looked at anyone, and anytime I did sneak a peek, I sprouted a full-on chubby. Now I’m planning a vacation and heading somewhere with a nude beach (Ibiza is my first choice), and I’m a little worried that I’m going to blow all this money only to bury my head in the sand. I’d like to be able to approach a girl, but I feel like that would be creepy unless I’m nude myself, and I’m not crazy about getting naked. I have an average physique and a respectable dick size, so there’s no shame there, but I think there’s still something unnatural about strutting around outdoors in the buff. Plus, I’ll be with a couple of my boys. Are we really going to hang around with our schlongs out?

A:
There’s no way around it: If you’re creeping around a nekkid beach by yourself, you’re going to show up on every girl’s prey-dar; they’re going to sense you’re preying on them. You need the cover of friends. Ideally one of them will be a female who won’t be mistaken for your girlfriend. If you don’t know any chicks who are cool enough to hang, then you and your boys are going to have to enact a policy of “no cock blocking, and no cock mocking.” If you’re really insecure, opt for the strict no-glansglance stance.

Now that that’s figured out, the question is, how do you make a move? It sounds like last summer you made the classic rookie mistake: You bunkered down. As soon as you lay out on a beach towel and put those ogle goggles on, you’re a pervy sick-fuck sitting duck out in the open with no camouflage. The most obvious cover-up is to horse around with the boys like you’re not even aware chicks are around. Your first thought is probably, Okay, we’ll play some volleyball, and when the ball rolls over to some hottie’s beach mat, we’ll ask her to join us. Eh, not so fast, shrimp dick. She’s going to know you just want her to join in so you can see her bazoongas bounce. Aim higher. If you’re flying a kite, for instance, she’ll be less likely to tell you to go fly a kite. Other things that work: Tell a girl you need an extra player for a card game and offer to share the champagne in your cooler. You may go from playing poker to plain old poking her.

Whatever you do, remember, you probably aren’t going to get randy where it’s sandy. Always have a party to invite her to that night. Then, when she meets up with you later on, you can work on getting to see her naked again.

I’m a barbecue aficionado in Canton, Ohio, where there’s no decent ’cue to speak of. But I have a Weber bullet in the backyard and I’m constantly upping my game. I’ve always dreamed of hitting one of the big barbecue fests, and this year I decided to get down to Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Problem is, my girlfriend and I have family obligations every summer that result in very little vacation time for the two of us, and she doesn’t want to blow this year’s one free week watching me ’cue up. She thinks I have an unhealthy obsession with barbecue (guilty as charged!), and watching me slurp down ribs makes her gag. Okay, so maybe I’ve gained a few pounds over the past year, and maybe my farts smell like a Texas smokehouse, but barbecue is my life’s passion. She finally said she’d go with me if I prove how much I want it by going without sex till then, and she’s even going to stop trimming her bush and start wearing Mickey Mouse pajamas to bed. I should also mention that she wants to go shopping in New York City—not exactly a destination for smoked pig.

A:
I hate to say it, big man, but as far as your girl goes, I’m going to have to use the C-word: compromise. And I don’t mean compromise by putting your dick on hiatus for two months. That’s punishment, not compromise. Do you really want to be applying a “dry rub” to yourself for that long? I don’t think so. But your girlfriend clearly hates barbecue with a burning passion, and descending into the inner circle of fire pits is going to be hell for her. Instead of breaking her heart via a greasy orgy of swine, tell her you’ll give up the dream this time around, but next year she’s going to have to let you do the ’cue, whether it’s with her or your boys. Trust me, dude, she’ll end up thanking you for bending to her whims, hopefully by bending to your dick, and instead of being cut off, you’ll get even more sex than usual.

As for this year, find some place that’s good for splurging on clothes and gorging on meat. Buenos Aires has some of the best steak in the world, and she can score dirt-cheap leather boots all over town. Brazil is becoming a real fashion capital, and the all-you-can-eat steak rodízios are legendary. And if you’re hell-bent on good old American barbecue, New York City ain’t so bad. You can get a sampling of Texas, St. Louis, and other styles at places like Hill Country, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, and Blue Smoke, all of which have live music to entertain your girl while you stuff your gullet. Heck, Dinosaur even has girlie drinks. Maybe you’ll even lose those pounds you’ve put on by walking around the city. Just make sure you draw the line at musicals.

Q:
I recently started online dating after getting dumped by my girlfriend of a few years. I’m amazed by how easy it is to pick up girls and bag them on the first night out. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, since I’m sane, creative (I’m a published poet), I work out (I’ve been told I look like a buff Kurt Cobain), and I ride a motorcycle. But I am surprised that these girls seem to be in it mostly for dick. We go on a few dates and everything is awesome—so much so that I find myself asking them how they feel about being exclusive. Keep in mind, I’m not pressuring them, just asking. Invariably, they stop returning my calls after the “going steady” conversation. I’m a little confused. I thought most girls like a guy who’s willing to commit. What am I doing wrong?

A:
When it comes to girls you meet online, it’s safe to assume they’re anglers. There are two types—the ones on the catch-and-release program, and the ones who show up with a cooler of ice, ready to take home the first catch that meets their requirements. You, my friend, have encountered catch-and-releasers. They reel you in for pleasure, then return you to the dating pool. A catch-and-releaser is usually coming off a bad relationship, or having some sort of crisis, or she finally lost those 20 pounds and wants to slut it up. Maybe her parents just split after her old man had a fling and suddenly she’s anti-relationship. Whatever the reason, she’s livin’ it up and givin’ it up. Nailing this kind of girl is easy, but nailing her down is another thing. She’s probably seeing a half dozen dudes at once, surfing a wave of ego validation; she’s not looking to lie on the sand next to you, no matter how good you look shirtless.

Another thing: If a girl is online to bounce back (or be banged back) from a bad relationship, and she sees a guy who works out and has a Harley, she’s expecting a ride on the open highway, not a dark trip down the tunnel of love. If you want to weed out some of the catch-and-releasers, don’t advertise the bike. Hype up your poetry instead. No woman ever used a man for his iambic pentameter.

Q:
I’ve been seeing this girl for a year now. We went on our first date last Valentine’s Day, after I answered her personals ad saying she was looking for company that night. Needless to say, I got laid. At that time, she played it off like she wasn’t into Valentine’s or relationships or any of that, but now she’s dropping hints and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that she wants me to do something special for Valentine’s, even though we still haven’t even had a conversation about being exclusive. I have the terrible feeling she’s using our “anniversary” as a way to see where I stand. How do I show her a decent time without sending her the wrong message and getting trapped in a full-blown relationship?

A:
Forget cupid’s arrow, my friend. This girl is about to nail you to the butcher’s block. Have you thought about getting out of town? Can your mom be convinced to die that weekend? Short of that, you want to treat her nice without getting too romantic. In fact, drop the “ro” altogether and make your night just plain man-tic. Keep things safely in the proverbial testosterone zone by, say, treating her to box seats at a hockey game (assuming she digs hockey enough that you avoid the old “we only do things you like” complaint) Even if she ends up bitching that you’re at a fluorescent-lit gladiator pit while all her friends are at fancy restaurants, there isn’t a recrimination in the world that can’t be squelched with, “Do you realize how much I spent on these tickets?” That said, when some schmuck proposes to his girlfriend on the Jumbotron, ridicule him mercilessly in order to make it clear that you’re not about to ever go there, and then, before she can say “boo” (or, more worrisome, call you her “boo”), be so gallant as to ask her if she wants more nachos.

I’m sure you get the idea: Lay her down in a bed of roses, but make sure said roses have thorns. You don’t want her getting too comfortable. And if the night does end in “I never want to see you again” dramatics, don’t worry. Everyone breaks up on V-day. February 15 is prime time for cruising the net for randy rebounders.

Q:
My girl and I were going to spend New Year’s together in Playa del Carmen, but she surprised me by breaking up with me. She gave back the money I spent on my flight, but I can’t think of a single place I could go that would take my mind off the possibility that she’s in Mexico getting nailed by the cabana boy. To be honest, I don’t really want to go anywhere or do anything anyway. This is the girl I thought I was going to marry. And to make matters worse, all my friends are going to be with their own girls, so I’m flying solo. How do I avoid ringing in the new year with a shotgun blast?

A:
When I hear a question like yours, I think, Which country has the strongest booze? Then I think, Caipirinhas. Then I think, Rio de Janeiro, where Christ the Redeemer awaits a wretch like you with open arms and—more to the point—so do countless mochaskinned porn stars. Look at an online map of Rio and you’ll see that it’s a wondrous collection of peaks and valleys. And yes, I’m talking about tits and ass (I should have added, put the map on street view). Rio might as well be called “the city of perfect tens.” You should have no trouble finding termas—saunas that are equipped with a full bar and an assortment of, well, let’s call them physical therapists. If that doesn’t take your mind off your new ex, you might as well walk into the favelas and ask a drug kingpin to shoot you in the face, because you truly are hopeless.

Of course, getting tongue-bathed in bathhouses can put a nice dent in your wallet, even with the favorable exchange rate. If you’re on a budget, just park your butt on Ipanema Beach. You’ll have to bury yourself in the sand to hide the chub you’ll get from watching all the topless titillaters, but at the end of the day, your spank bank will be full for a lifetime.

Whatever you do, end the year as the Brazilians do: sleeping on the beach. Some Cariocas guard against the elements by putting up a tent, and with memories of the termas and the samba clubs floating around your brain as you drift off to sleep, you’ll be pitching a tent of your own.

Q:
Dear Scoundrel,
My wife gave me $400 in strip-club funny money as an early Christmas gift and told me her only rule was that I take her with me when I spend it. But the other night when I was getting wasted with my boys, we ended up getting a champagne suite and one of the dancers all but went “ho, ho, ho” on me. Now my wife keeps asking when we’re going out for lap dances, and I don’t know what to do. I know she’s trying to be a good sport, because she isn’t one for strip clubs, but she’ll turn redder than Rudolph’s nose after an eggnog bender if she finds out I went without her. Christmas means a lot to her, and I can already tell she’s going to be hurt if I don’t take her up on her gift soon, but I don’t have the spare cash to buy more beaver bucks and pretend I never spent the original ones—unless I don’t get her a Christmas present.

A:
You’re definitely in a sticky situation, but you can use your wife’s cluelessness about strip clubs to your advantage. First off, do you have a friend who can pose as a stripper and wouldn’t mind giving you and the wife a grind for free? Say that old college fuck buddy? Or maybe there’s a chick from your area on AdultFriendFinder.com who’s looking to indulge a stripper fantasy. Have your ringer at the club wearing half a gallon of perfume and a little sequined number, posing as house talent. She can chat up you and your wife at the bar for a few minutes, then invite you into a VIP suite. Even if you have to pay off a bouncer to get in there, you’ll come out ahead. Of course, unless you’re an extremely lucky man, things won’t go so far that you’ll get $400 worth of action, but your wife probably won’t know that. And it’s not like she’ll hold it against you when you tell her you’re opting out of another dance because the club girls pale in comparison to her.

Or you could skip the elaborate ruse, walk into the club, and tell her you don’t feel right about being with anyone other than her. Then you can just feast your eyes on the T&A.

Q:
Dear Scoundrel,
I recently bumped into an old high-school friend from Michigan who, like me, moved to New York about ten years ago. I hadn’t seen him since. We were both pretty much dorks in high school, and after I got a hotshot job in finance and learned the joys of swilling Jameson instead of grape pop, I ignored him anytime he’d call to catch up. This time, he mentioned he was heading back to Michigan for Thanksgiving, and when I said I was, too, he offered me a ride. I was so wasted I was like, Hell yeah, road trip! Thing is, other than playing Magic: The Gathering with him during study hall, I barely remember anything about this guy. Now I’m dreading spending ten hours on the road with someone who might as well be a complete stranger. And some sort of computer engineer, at that. I mean, this guy seems like he still plays D&D. I was going to bail, but I lost my last penny in a poker game and Greyhound isn’t even an option. How do I survive this trip without talking about the weather for ten hours?

A:
A road trip is a challenge even if it isn’t the Gumball 5000. I’ve known guys who were best of buds before that trip to Fort Lauderdale, yet when they got back they were sobbing in their respective showers, trying to wash away the weird ness with Irish Spring. Often it’s a case of intimacy overload. The utter lack of hot chicks on the open road means you can’t diffuse uncomfortable discussions (say, about a guy’s mom dying of cancer) by saying, “Dude, check out those jugs.” Sadly, pretty much the only racks you’re going to see will be on station-wagon roofs. And while you can try to turn the trip into one long “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” sing-along, eventually you will have to talk to each other. Once you exhaust the two linchpins of roadtrip conversation (sports talk and puking anecdotes), you’ll turn to sex stories, and this is when things can get hairier than a 1970s porn bush. Your bro may just confess that he has a pervy thing for your little sister.

Lucky for you, you don’t have to sweat losing this guy’s friendship—you just need to kill time for ten hours. The majority of those hours should be spent unconscious. I know—fall asleep on an actual friend during a road trip and he’ll use a pencil as an ass thermometer, then stick it up your nose. But in this case you should immediately assert your alpha status by telling the guy you only got an hour of sleep because you were banging these two chicks you took home from Jugs-N-Strokers (an actual biker bar on Long Island). When your sleep aid wears off several hours later, he’ll still be in awe. Act apologetic about drifting off and continue to intimidate him with tales of your über-manliness. Ask him if he’s ever fired a crossbow from a hang glider into the tailpipe of a truck. He’ll realize his life pales in comparison to yours, and instead of bothering you with chitchat, he’ll let you talk about yourself and tell dick jokes, something that passes the time quite nicely, thank you very much.

Just make sure to rein it in at some point, if you want a ride back. During the last half hour you might want to ask him about his family. And his job, of course. Maybe he has some mad tech skills that’ll come in handy.