DEAR MRS SALISBURY – “I don’t feel anything when I’m intimate with my guy”

The above is an offering on the Stuff website. I didn’t bother reading “Mrs Salisbury’s” advice for it’s odds-on she’s in fact a scruffy middle-aged, unshaven hack, writing on behalf of both parties. Who reads this crap?

It brings to mind American novelist Nathanael West’s famous 1933 novel Miss Lonely Hearts. Miss Lonely Hearts, whose advice to the love-lorne column appeared in the New York Post, was in fact a cursing, hard drinking, chain-smoking, cynical middle-aged journo’. It’s a very good read.

But back to Mrs Salisbury’s alleged advice-seeking woman who felt nothing when having it off. That brought back the delightful memory of a Lower Hutt criminal court case in the 1990s.

Specifically, a stable-hand was charged with bestiality, he having been found up a ladder at the Trentham race-course, piling into a stabled mare. This apparently was his second such offense following an identical episode in Blenheim. His lawyer offered the woeful defence that he was lonely, which needless to say didn’t wash with the Judge.

In the lawyer’s place I’d have tendered two defences.

First, by way of background, I’d point out that I understand bestiality with horses is a widely practiced traditional cultural activity in Blenheim, which as an aside, I gather it actually is.  Apparently everyone down there is at it. Best of all, mention traditional culture to a New Zealand Judge and they immediately become alarmed for fear of being accused of insensitivity.

But more salient, I’d suggest, while technically a bestiality offence, in practise it’s inconceivable the mare would even know anything was happening for obvious significant relevant measurement discrepancies between the parties.

I would then draw analogies, such as for example, if a car driver is required to signal turning when changing direction, can he be charged with failing to do so when there’s no following traffic to signal to? A signaller by definition needs a signalee to be described as a signaller.

So too with the stable-hand who’d have had immensely greater physical contact with the mare had he been gently stroking its nose. If he was to be charged with anything at all, then at best it should have been attempted bestiality.

As said, I didn’t read Mrs Salisbury’s response, which I suspect would have discreetly suggested different positions. In fact the correct advice would be to change her bloke, but, do her homework first. Look for a stallion.