Heel Hounds

I have a question about my love of feet (I hate the word "fetish"). No, no, I won't ask you where it comes from, (I know it stems from childhood), but my question is as someone who has liked looking at and touching/tickling feet all his life, I didn't think about licking feet until I was 19. It came to me out of the blue while reading about the New Deal for a history class, and I wasn't even with a girl at the time. Now I like licking as much as tickling and all the rest.

How the hell did it come to me out of nowhere at the age of 19 while studying? I even wrote down the words "playfully devour a lover's feet," and I've been obsessed ever since. Where did this come from so suddenly?

-Sudden Foot Devourer

I want you to sit back and concentrate. Remember the first time you learned about the real-life logistics of sex? I sure do. My sister and I were sitting on our back porch in West Irondequoit, New York. We must've been seven or eight, and our mom thought it was high time we knew the facts of life. I don't recall her exact wording, but I do recall being thoroughly horrified at the mental image of my dad stuffing his peepee into mom's private bits.

Though the thought of my parents rutting like wildebeests continues to activate my gag reflex, even decades later, the act itself (performed by others, thanks!) became less foul the older I got. By the time I was a teenager, "it" actually seemed like something I might want to investigate myself. In fact, by 17 I was coming up with variations that would've caused my mom's rosary beads to melt had she been informed.

What I'm trying to say, in my rambling, all-about-me way, is it's perfectly natural to expand upon one's sexual repertoire as you get older. If you knew everything that gave you a chub by puberty, you'd be bored and uninterested (not to mention flaccid) by 40. You always knew you liked feet; you just found a new thing you like to do to them. I'm willing to guess you'll come up with a few more ideas in good time. FYI, I've always found the Industrial Revolution to be an extremely sexually inspiring era.

I just started the online-dating thing about two months ago, and after one month of writing 50 girls with no responses, I have gotten six responses in the past three weeks after writing about 25 more.

There is one girl who responded, but ended her email mid-sentence. That was three weeks ago and she still hasn't written back. I don't think I said anything offensive in my emails to her, but do girls ever choose not to follow up if they have met someone else? I know she is still active on there. I'm not hung up on her or anything, but what is the etiquette of online dating?

Do some girls just respond to you to be polite? I mean, all she said in her e mail was about some comment I made about Six Feet Under, and she ended her e mail with, "I'm a writer too, but I get distracted sometimes." Why do you think she hasn't written back?

-Drowning Under Six Feet Under

Perhaps your would-be paramour is just not into having her feet tongue-worshipped.* Then again, maybe she thought you looked too much like Nate from Six Feet and decided you were probably also an unrepentant philanderer who would end up schtupping his stepsister and then dropping dead, leaving her with a bun in the oven and saddling her with a toddler she's not even related to. Perhaps by ending your correspondence she saved herself a world of hurt and you an aneurysm. You might want to thank her. (Obviously I have to stop watching so much tv.)

Some girls do write back out of politeness. I used to be one of them. But I've found that many men don't take rejection well, and no matter how kind you are, there's always some mental case happy to go ballistic on your ass. No, the fact that I don't want to date you does not make me a lesbian, nor am I suddenly "too ugly anyway." Sigh.

Dating-online or otherwise-is a numbers game. You meet enough people, you're bound to find someone who'll watch HBO with you and let you lick between her toes.

*What our young reader here doesn't realize is that your intrepid sex and love advisor has a degree in criminology. Thus, using superior detective skills honed at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, she was able to determine that these two letters were composed by the same person. (Confidential to Mike: If you're going to use separate email accounts, remember to change the name on one of them.)