Off the hook

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,

I’m a 39-year-old woman who has been divorced for five years. For the past few years, I’ve had a number of partners — I wouldn’t call them "relationships" — but I find myself unsatisfied. I’m not looking for a long-term arrangement, I just love having sex. The problem is that I’m sort of shy and have a hard time meeting men. Because of this, I frequently end up getting involved with married men. They rarely, if ever, call me back, and, as I said, I’m kind of shy and don’t call them. I don’t want them to think I’m cheap or anything.

I would appreciate a call back now and then, but it just doesn’t seem to happen. What’s wrong with me?

— J.D.

Dear J.D.,

Let’s see, you’ve been engaged in a series of one-night stands, often with married men, and you’re wondering what’s wrong since they don’t call you again? What’s wrong is that you have expectations when you should have none. This behavior is to be expected in your current sexual lifestyle. If you don’t want people to think you’re cheap, you have to stop acting cheap. You may not want to have a committed relationship, but you could avoid married men and not be so eager to jump into bed with someone so quickly. You might be able to have a fairly casual boyfriend and lots of sex, but it won’t be so shallow. If you continue to do what you’re doing, however, you shouldn’t expect to get many calls back.

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,

I’ve been watching the American Idol series for some time and I find that most of the singers are really irritating. I know that they have really good voices and everything, but they all sound alike to me and the singing seems to be of the show-off type. My boyfriend thinks I’m just grumpy and hard to please. What’s the deal?

— Not Grumpy, Just Have Standards

Dear NGJHS,

What’s the deal with this letter? Dr. Lovemonkey realizes that he often goes far afield of his relationship and etiquette advice mission, and he may have brought it on himself as an arbiter of cultural opinion. The problem is something called "melisma," a manner of melodic embellishment or ornamentation. There is a long tradition of this in gospel singing and it can be thrilling. Perhaps we could blame Aretha Franklin or Stevie Wonder, although they are both geniuses of melisma and know when to (and more importantly) when not to use it while singing. The unfortunate popularity of Mariah Carey a decade ago brought melisma out of the closet in a big way, and all the kids now seem to think that they should jam in 18 notes when one or two would do. Apparently, no one gets selected to appear on American Idol unless they indulge in melismatic theatrics of the most ignoble kind. The problem is that the contestants, unlike Aretha and Stevie, don’t know when to shut it off.

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,

I believe that my penis is too small and was wondering if you know of any way to make mine larger.

— Mini-Me

Dear Mini,

If you don’t already have a computer hooked up to the Internet, get one. After a very short while, you will begin to receive e-mails — many, many e-mails from a variety of sources — that promote penis enlargement. I don’t know exactly what these are, because my hand is constantly poised on the delete button when I review my e-mail. The ratio of letters from those who want to inform me how to enlarge my dick versus those from people I actually want to hear from is about 50-to-1. My theory is that the Republican National Committee has already organized all the dick-enlarger spam e-mailers as the swing vote for Bush in 2004.

Send romantic quandaries and questions to RUDYCHEEKS@prodigy.net.