by Rudy Cheeks

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,

I have been seeing a very beautiful man for the past five months. It's really been more physical than emotional,although we are immensely attracted to each other and enjoy the time we spend together. But we never discuss our feelings or where the hell this relationship is going. Because he's such a looker and has had a host of short-term relationships and one-night stands with many women, I haven't truly invested myself in him because I just expect that he will disappoint me (considering his past and lack of long-term relationships). Still, we've been together for five months, the longest relationship for him in a long time.

My fear is that I've just made it so easy for him. I don't probe or push the envelope and question him about how he feels or where we are going, largely because (as I said above) I can just sense that he's the kind of man that runs from that. Furthermore, last weekend while we were sitting in a cab, he had his arm around me, and our friends in the cab recognized a woman on the street. They called her over, and she was very pretty and turned out to be the twin sister of a woman he had a fling with last summer. As soon as she started to walk over to our cab, he immediately removed his arm from my shoulder. I just didn't know what to make of this. Could you help me to read between the lines?

-- Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

Sounds to me like you have a pretty good fix on what's going on in this relationship. Your instincts have informed you that, despite the fact that you have been together for five months now, Mr. Beautiful is still partial to his rather casual ways. The arm-removal-in-the-taxi-cab anecdote indicates good observation on your part.

If you believe that he's struggling with this and would like to make a serious, committed go with you, by all means probe and push the envelope about what his intentions might be. Maybe he's considering settling down and needs a bit of prodding. If not, there's no great loss here because you are just an extended five-month one-night-stand. Your intuition about Mr. Beautiful is probably correct, but people sometimes do change and, with this guy's history, he probably needs a number of nudges if he indeed wants to attempt something more intimate and serious. By all means, question him on his intentions.

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,

I read the dilemma of "Just Curious" (someone who just recently broke off with a man who was into sexual experimentation, and was wondering how safe it was to go trolling for future research subjects) with interest. The letter does not say if "Just Curious" is a female or a male. If she is a female, then could you please do me a huge favor and forward this e-mail with my email address to her? I would like to get in touch with her to be the "guinea pig" for her sexual experiments :-) and I'm totally comfortable with "just" a physical relationship. Besides, I like females with a sense of adventure. Much Thanks!

-- Guinea Pig

Dear Guinea Pig,

Why use the honorific "Guinea" when writing Dr. Lovemonkey? A certain ethnic group might get justifiably upset. "Just Curious" did not specify his/her gender, and I have no idea whether it was a man or woman. It seems, however, that you read the letter but did not pay much attention to the reply, in which the Doctor bemoaned reckless behavior. I won't be helping you in your quest for irresponsible meat market sex, but I will share my visual image of you, Mr. Guinea Pig.

Back in the decade I like to call "the '70s," Doctor Lovemonkey earned his keep as a rock n' roll musician. We used to interact quite actively with the audience and one night, in Providence's original Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel (a club once described on the David Letterman show by Commander Cody as "the biggest dive in America") we asked for a volunteer to mount the stage.

An attractive woman, who appeared to be about 20 or 21 years old, bounced up on stage as our volunteer. Although fastidiously groomed and wearing an outfit that could only be described as "preppy," this woman was obviously, as we used to say, out of it. We can only assume that she was mid-way on a journey instituted by some manner of chemical ingestion. We hurriedly whisked her from the stage, but she returned on two more occasions, only to be physically removed by a member of our road crew.

While all this was going on, from my vantage point on stage, I noticed a particular bottom-feeding male audience member who was literally salivating. Each time she was unceremoniously removed from the stage, this guy descended on her like some sort of giant locust. I don't know what became of either the woman or the locust.

So, my question to you is, around 1976-77, were you ever a customer at Lupo's? If not, I'm sure that you won't mind that my mental image of you happens to dovetail with the visual picture I have of the Audience Locust. You just seem to have too much in common (although I'm not so certain that the Audience Locust was capable of composing an actual letter). Regardless, I suggest that you check with medical authorities on the potential for voluntary chemical castration. I hear that it works pretty well, and it may just inhibit you from the debasement of writing more letters like this one.

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