Dear Steve,
I’ve been on a couple dates with this girl and I feel like she might want to go a little further than kissing and cuddling. The only problem is, I’m a little nervous about my sexual capability. What if she’s not impressed with how I am “down there” or what if I can’t satisfy her? Please help!
Nervous Northern Muriqui,
It’s perfectly natural to be nervous, especially if it’s your first time. But you should count yourself lucky to be a Homo Sapien. In terms of the animal kingdom, you’re very well-endowed for your body size, with the average human male genitalia about twice the length and width of that of a chimpanzee’s. That might just make her go bananas! Additionally, human intercourse lasts about three or four times as long as that of other primates. That’s a heck a lot of monkey business! So, all in all, I’d say makes you a very impressive catch. Of course, you should remember that a good relationship is made outside of the bedroom. Take the time to talk to your partner. You might think everything is fine until you find out someone’s been monkeying around behind your back!
Dear Steve,
I’ve been married for about two years now and almost everything is going great. The only problem is that my wife hates my model train hobby. She says that I spend too much time working on my train set and not enough time with her. I love my trains but I also love my wife! What can I do Steve?
Dear Hobbyist Horned Beetle,
If your trains are important to you, then keep chugging with them. Look at the dung beetle. Some dung beetles will roll balls of dung weighing fifty times their body weight for miles! Now that takes some serious dedication. They don’t care about anyone bugging them to change their priorities, saying things like “Steve, you’ve been spending an awful lot of time at the zoo lately,” and “please just talk about something besides animals,” and “Steve, if you make one more goddamn animal pun, I’m leaving you.” You just have to ignore their criticisms. Eventually, they’ll buzz off.
Dear Steve,
I’ve been seeing my girlfriend for about six months now. She’s so incredible, but I’m starting to feel like she is getting a little distant. Is distance just a part of getting more comfortable with each other or am I losing her?
Help Steve!
Worried Wedge-tailed Tuskfish,
Sorry to say, but you’re definitely losing her. If you don’t act fast, she’ll be gone forever. We can take the example of the anglerfish. The male anglerfish is small and weak, but that doesn’t stop him. He finds a female anglerfish and burrows into her flesh, sharing her body and circulatory system. The male anglerfish is always there, all the time, even when his anglerfish wife Stacy forgets about him, he’s still watching, waiting for the exact right moment. Try following your girlfriend around when she doesn’t know you’re there. You won’t have to be a brain “sturgeon” to figure out what’s going on! You might hear your girlfriend say things like “Steve’s been making me nervous,” or “He’s been awfully distant with our daughter lately,” or “He gets this weird glint in his eye when he starts talking about animals.”
Sure sounds fishy to me!
Dear Steve,
I’ve been married for about five years now and I love my wife more than anything. However, I recently lost my job and we’ve run into some money problems. I keep getting into arguments with my wife over our car payments. I think the car is too expensive to keep but she doesn’t want to get rid of it. What should I do Steve!
Dear Broke Boat-Billed Heron,
Your problem, my friend, is that you lack ingenuity. Take a look at the cuckoo. The cuckoo doesn’t have the time to raise its own young, so it finds other bird species nests, pushes their eggs out, and replaces them with its own for the other bird to raise. That doesn’t sound bird-brained to me! There’s something that you need, animals or financial security or whatever, and something important to your wife, a car or your daughter or whatever. You know you’re right, so all you need to do is sneak around and replace your wife’s car with a cheaper one when she’s not home. She’ll never know the difference! But be sure not to ruffle any feathers. When I did something similar, everyone started squawking at me.
“Steve, why the hell does our house smell like the zoo?”
“Steve, I’m getting worried. I haven’t seen our Sarah all day,”
“Steve, why the fuck is there a wombat in our daughter’s bed?!”
All I could say was: “Hawkward!”
Steve the Zookeeper is a syndicated advice columnist whose work appears in over 400 collegiate publications.
– ASG ’18. Illustrated by EAB ’17.
