Hey Guru,
My boyfriend has suddenly decided we’re a pair of Victorian orphans and keeps begging me to speak in a cockney accent in bed—how do I get him to stop telling me he wants some more?
So, Leo and I met at an AA meeting, of all places. I’d been loitering near the refreshment table, hoping that nobody would see I’d been eyeing my third artisanal donut for more than a minute or two. I was circling that box like a vulture. That powdered masterpiece was going to finally be mine and I was sure that nobody was paying enough attention to me to notice I’d already had two already. I reached out finally ready to make my move, and my fingers brushed against another hand just as I did. We locked eyes—his wide with surprise, mine glazed—and the smile he gave me was so charming, I nearly choked on my nervous laughter.
After the meeting, we ended up wandering the streets hand in hand like we’d been a couple for months—years. It felt so natural. A dirty baseball cap stuck out of Leo’s back pocket and I was certain it would fall out at any moment and kept stealing glances at it, anticipating the moment, but it never happened.
We wound up inside a Denny’s sitting in the aura of dull fluorescent lights, a pile of syrup-drowned pancakes sat between us and Leo leaned and whispered: “Was that your first meeting? I noticed you didn’t share.”
A jolt of shock ran through my body, like something caught in the headlights, I didn’t respond at first. I didn’t know how to admit to this uncommonly attractive man that seemed to be as into me as I was to him that I’d only been attending these meetings for one reason and one alone…
I sat quiet for a while, when finally it just burst out: “I only go to steal the donuts. They’re from Tidleson’s. It’s this artisanal shop. They’re incredible. Everything from that place is incredible.” I said quietly.
“Yea, I know the place.” Leo said taking the baseball cap out of his back pocket and showing me the Tidleson’s logo embroidered on the front of it. Turned out he worked at that donut shop and he’d developed a habit of following customers with intriguing mustaches fights after his shifts are done to see what they do. Neither of us even drinks and we were both someplace we weren’t supposed to be doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing.
A stalker and a thief falling in love.
We ended up talking for hours in those sticky booths, and he mentioned his lifelong obsession with Dickensian literature. At the time, I thought that was endearing—like, who doesn’t love a good bleak Victorian tragedy now and then? We’ve been together for six months, and until recently, everything was great.
About two weeks ago, Leo got cast as the Artful Dodger in a queer, experimental theater production of Oliver Twist. I thought it was going to be cute and supportive, like, “Oh, my boyfriend’s gonna wear a little newsboy cap and be all scrappy on stage.” I was not prepared for how seriously he would take this. It started small—he’d slip into character at random moments, like whispering “verily, I do, sir” when I asked if he wanted to order takeout. Then it escalated. Now, he’s fully convinced we’re a pair of ragamuffin orphans from the soot-covered streets of London, and he won’t even cuddle unless I refer to him as “me little urchin.”
I thought it was a bit, so I played along the first night. I tried my best cockney and asked if he fancied a snog, and he just lit up like Big Ben at midnight. But, I opened a Pandora’s box that night, because now, it’s constant. He’s insisting I call him “Dodger” and asks me to “plead for me life” while he looms over me in bed. The worst part is, I swear I heard him practicing that single line over and over again quietly… “please, sir, I want some more.” For half an hour, I laid in bed pretending to be asleep as he whispered that repeatedly into the bathroom mirror at 2 a.m. last night. I love him, but this has become deeply unsettling—and I keep wondering: where did that curious man who followed mustachioed strangers go and what strange ghost of an unwarrantedly romanticised era has taken his place?
I don’t just know how to break it to him that I’m not planning to cover my face in soot and go down to the street to sell matchsticks or flowers on the corner for a penny just to keep the romance alive. Besides, we’re grown men and something about acting like we’re prepubescent and abandoned in the bedroom feels highly—highly—inappropriate.
What do I do Guru? I’m one monologue away from coughing blood into a lace handkerchief and dying from consumption.
Cheerio Guv’,
S
Desperately Seeking A Post-Industrial Era
Dear Desperately Seeking:
Pardon me while I prepare a piping-hot platter of peculiar perspective…
You’ve been ambushed by an amateur actor with an attachment to alley-skulking archetypes, my pretty pumpkin. This is what happens when a man with access to artisanal donuts and abandonment issues finds his arousal dependent on cosplaying his passion for plague-ridden period pieces. He finds that the only way he can become aroused is by adopting the persona of a patch-coated alley orphan who pleads pitifully for porridge while pacing in damp drawers and practicing his pathetic accent.
Before accepting my truth, I once considered partnering with a panromantic puppeteer who insisted I only address him as “Papa Stringsworth.” He was pleasant but the prospect of pairing with a man who played with people carved from pine bark, their limbs placed by pulling strings while he pretended to speak for them passed its expiration expressly and by the third date, I was pleading for the sweet release of a puppet plague. This “relationship”—if it can so be called by such a name—positively persuaded my early presumptions: the only acceptable actualization available for me to discover about my carnal appetites would be that there were indeed none. I absolutely abhorred any and all play-acting because I held no desire for the playtime itself.
That is not to say there is anything inherently wrong with adding a little spice to the flavor of your derriere here and there. A salad is always better when tossed with a bit of flair, and for those who partake in such desires—please, proceed. Daring to delve into depravity for the sake of that additional dash of variety is not only astoundingly acceptable but also deeply healthy.
But, listen to me closely, poopy-pie: passion play should feel like a performance, not a padded cell. If your partner’s arousal arc demands you act as a penniless, ash-dusted waif with a rattle in your lungs and a prayer for porridge on your lips, we’ve stumbled past the curtain into deliberately depraved dramatics. It’s not the accent—it’s the unrelenting audition for the part. Affection shouldn’t arrive carrying a parcel of damp backstory or apprenticeship debts owed to an imaginary plague doctor.
Here’s my peculiar but practical plan: propose a pivot. Offer a new archetype. Something adjacent or not, but absurd, and assuredly it must be aggressively less arousing. Maybe a dramatic duck farmer from Arizona who insists on speaking in angry quacks and demands a bedtime story before any adult activity begins? Say you can only get in the mood while arranging a dozen dusty dolls into an exact arc on the bed beneath a dim desk lamp. It needs to be odd enough to draw him in, but annoying enough to drain his drive. It shouldn’t take long—by the third or fourth time you’ve asked him to prepare his posterior because your new particular penchant for putting paper rolls of pristine pennies into his passage calls once more, he’ll beg to be plain ol’ Leo again.
And if he doesn’t? If he digs in deeper and demands you drape yourself across a stack of aging sacks while he drones out alley-born sonnets about ash and abandonment—then it may be time to attempt the oldest art of all: departure. Not dramatic. Not adorned with anguish. Just… aussteigen.
Detached, Darkly Amused, and Awaiting Your Next Disaster,
Anus Queer, Advice Aficionado
Dread Ostian & Disassociative Roleplay Referee