CARNAL NATION

She was the best-looking woman at the nightclub… until I got her home. Then it turned out she wasn’t a woman at all.

Before we start explaining some good ways for you to handle this, let’s talk about some bad ways. Questioning your own sexuality is a bad way. Taking it personally is a bad way. Getting violent is a very bad way (although a great way to wind up in jail, which would be the right place for you). We’re pretty sure you already know this.

On the other hand, discovering that Ms. Right is actually Mr. Right can be a strain on the savoir-faire of even the most open-minded lover.

Therapist Dossie Easton told us, “This happened to me once. I thought I was flirting with a tall, gorgeous Amazon. Knowing that tall women sometimes have concerns about their femininity, I spent a lot of time telling her how sexy and womanly she was. My friends were all watching, but they all thought I already knew, and was being very sensitive in telling my new friend what she most wanted top hear.

“Then I reached under her skirt, and got a big handful of something I wasn’t expecting.

“I took a deep breath, and decided that I was relating to the person, not to her genitals—for me, the shape of someone’s crotch doesn’t change my ethics and obligations toward the rest of the person. So, knowing that transgendered people often have a complicated relationship with their genitals and thus sometimes don’t want direct genital stimulation, I cozied up close to her and purred, ‘So, honey, tell me exactly what you like best’… and she told me, and we went on from there to have an absolutely wonderful time together.”

We think that if we were transgendered, this is exactly the kind of attitude we’d want from our potential partners. But we also recognize that not all of our readers have quite this much flexibility in their outlook. So if you’re not quite ready to explore the frontiers of gender, what do you do?

First and foremost, be gentle and polite. The situation here is that you’re turned off by a potential partner because of an external factor: the shape of her genitals. This is essentially the same situation you’d face if someone you liked a lot had any other physical characteristic that turned you off… cottage cheese thighs or a nasal voice or whatever. And it’s not her problem, is it? It’s yours.

So say so. Explain that you really like her, but that you just can’t get past this little genital-shape issue. Take responsibility for your own feelings and don’t try to blame her for being who she is.

And what if you’re just not sure about the whole thing? There’s nothing wrong with saying, “This discovery really surprised me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Can we talk again in a few days?” Or, as an alternative, “I’m not too sure how I feel about this, but let’s try fooling around a little bit to see if it turns us on, and if either of us starts to feel too uncomfortable we can just stop, OK?”

These suggestions, by the way, also apply if you’ve just discovered that the bulge was a pair of socks.

Remember what Joe E. Brown said at the end of Some Like It Hot, when he found out that Jack Lemmon was a man under his dress: “Nobody’s perfect.”