Dear Uncle Mike,
If you print my letter would you not give
my name please? I am a seventeen year old
girl and have never had sex. I don’t want to.
Being good is not why. I’ve kissed boys of
course but the other parts that are supposed
to turn me on make me go cold. I’m not
scared, I just don’t want to do i t It seems
messy and like an animal from what I ve
seen. I’m the only girl I know who feels this
way. They all want to have sex even if they
don’t. I just don’t. I thought I might be gay
but I’m not. Other than this I’m pretty
normal. I don’t know what to do or if 1
should do anything. I don’t have brother or
sisters and my stepmom is not the person to
ask, for me anyway. I would appreciate
whatever you say.
Call Me Leslie
ce.
You can now contact Uncle Mike at
mburgess@wcn.net, if you must.
Dear Leslie,
The first thing Uncle Mike would say is that no problem was
every solved by worrying. As John Prine, a singer you might want
to listen to sometime, reminds us: we are what we are and we ain’t
what we ain’t. You say you’re not scared by the thought of having
sex. If true, that’s a good thing. When confronting a mystery as
enormous and powerful as sex, being frightened can really get in
the way. As for not wanting to have sex, this is a decision many
people make at various times in their lives for unimaginably
various reasons. The difference between them and you is that they
know what it is they don’t want to do, and why it is they don’t
want to do it. This is a very good thing. Uncle Mike is not
encouraging you to have sex. If he’s encouraging you to do
anything, it’s to have fun and be happy; things he encourages
everyone to do. What makes us happiest is to love and be loved.
Uncle Mike suspects you’ve not fallen in love. It’s something to
look forward to. What happens is that you have this truly
overpowering urge to achieve unity with another human.
Intimacy, instead of something to be avoided, becomes the antidote
to a poison you seem to have taken. You experience joy and
healthy feelings of abandon. What you’re abandoning is the
hollow isolation that comes of not giving yourself up to something
larger than yourself. But Uncle Mike digresses. If you don’t want
to enter into sexual relations, don’t Life is long, change is
constant. As for sex being messy and us being animals, Uncle
Mike gives you one for two. When Uncle Mike fills his cup too
full and slops coffee onto the table, he doesn’t see a mess. He sees
coffee. Like you. Uncle Mike is now, has been since the day he
was bom, and will continue to be until the day he "dies", an
animal: a mammal, a primate whose close cousins are
orangoutangs and chimpanzees. Mating is very common in our
family and Uncle Mike is strong on tradition. Unless you make
great effort to avoid i t love will find you. Unless you make great
effort not to enjoy it, sex will teach you much about the nature of
pleasure and the art of being human; neither of which are yucky.
(7?
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Phone:
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"I regret that a private comment I made to the vice presidential
candidate made it through the public airways."—Allentown, Pa.,
Sept. 5, 2000.
Dear Uncle Mike,
This is just one of those dumb questions that occur to a person.
When you turn off a light, where does the electricity go?
Brian
Dear Brian,
This is just one of those snotty answers Uncle Mike reserves for
people who confuse him with an encyclopedia or the information
service at the library. Electricity is a flow of electrons: itsy bitsy
glops of negative charge which have, in terms of substance, every
bit as much reality as faeries. When the little switch is turned one
way, the drawbridge is down and the faeries race back and forth
through the wire (the black thing that comes out of the base of your
Roy Rogers lamp). When you turn the switch off (are we writing
this down?), the drawbridge goes down and the faeries sit around
twiddling their thumbs in their room. This is what electricians (or
faerie masters) mean by the term "grounded". Some people
believe that knocking on wood wins them good luck from the
faeries who live in trees. The faeries who live in the walls like you
to stick Mr. Butter Knife into the little door in the socket and wave.
Dear Uncle Mike,
My girlfriend is super jealous and flips out if I pay any attention
at all to another woman. It’s a problem all the time but mostly
because of my ex-girlfriend. W e’re real good friends and I like to
see her sometimes and talk on the phone. I can only do this when
my girlfriend’s not around and even though nothing is going on I
feel guilty and scared she’ll find o u t Is there anything I can say or
do to change my girlfriend’s attitude and make her trust me?
"What I am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas
they basically delineate based upon whatever. However they
delineate, quotas, I think vulcanize society. So I don’t know how
that fits into what everybody else is saying, their relative positions,
but that’s my position."
—Quoted by Molly Ivins,
Jeff
Dear Jeff,
You might try living the truth. Unless you’re a cad and your
girlfriend has good reason to believe you might, as they say, jump
the fence, what you’re dealing with is fullblown neurosis. People
either trust people or they don’t. Being with partners who, in word
or deed, lie to them is not the best of cures. Your decision has
nothing to do with who you care about the m o st It involves how
you choose to live your life. If Uncle Mike were a betting man,
and he is, he’d wager his boots the truth will eventually out. Tell
the young woman you love her; but not enough to sever your
relationships with, not just your friend, but half the human race.
Then she gets to decide how much you mean to her.
Eugene Fans o f Uncle Mike get a rare treat!!
Due to growing demand on the part of Uncle
Mike fans in Eugene, Michael Burgess will be
coming to Eugene and will be reading from “Uncle
M ike’s Guide to the Real Oregon Coast”, “Letters
from Uncle M ike”, and the newly released, and
cleverly titled, “More Letters to Uncle Mike" this
month.
Uncle Mike will be reading and signing his books
at Tsunami Books at 2585 Willamette in Eugene
Saturday, October 28th at 5PM. It’s a free event
UPPER LEFT EDGE OCTOBER 2000 ?
I