Dan Savage’s “Savage Love” performance on Nov. 4 was completely sold out. In fact, every seat in the house was occupied and seating on stage behind Savage had to be utilized.
“I’ve never had to do a presentation with so many people checking out my ass,” said Savage when he came onto the stage to begin the presentation.
The Center for Gender Equity, along with financial support from the College of Arts and Sciences, brought Savage to campus.
Professor of Mathematics at Pacific and friend of Savage from college, Nancy Neudauer, introduced him.
Members of CGE passed out index cards and pencils for audience members to fill out questions before the show. The whole presentation was in question answer format. Savage said this format was on purpose so that people are less likely to think he is bringing his “big, fat, sweaty gay agenda,” to the table rather than audience members concerns.
“However inappropriate we go tonight for a college setting, it will be your doing,” said Savage.
Savage’s performance was explicit and verbally graphic, but he had the audience laughing continuously. He discussed anal sex, gay sex, politics, sexuality, relationships, religion, reality television, family, monogamy and bullying of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual kids.
Savage had a serious tone at many points making the gravity of some issues being discussed clear. He also had people choking with laughter at times, all in response to Pacific’s questions.
Savage told personal examples from his life and answered questions from,
“How can I help my friend who’s threatening suicide?” to “Who gives better head, democrats or republicans?”
After two hours of anonymous questions, Savage had to move on to audience questions even though there were many more left over.
“No university crowd has ever asked this many questions,” said Savage. “You all should be proud.”
Other topics Savage discussed were how the United States government “refuses” to recognize gays and lesbians as a group of people even with Obama as president and the “It Gets Better Project.” Savage started the project with his husband which started a chain reaction of Youtube videos intended to support kids struggling with the realities of middle and high school.
Since there were so many questions asked by Pacific, Savage wrote an entry titled PU on his Savage Love blog, answering all the questions he did not have time to answer and some of the highlight questions from his visit. Savage’s blog can be found at http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=5466300.
‘Savage’ advice on relationships:
Some of the advice Savage gave included: “If you can stand the smell of their farts and like the taste of their saliva, marry that person.”
“Sex is bigger than we are, more powerful than we are. Sex is a big deal.”
“[Have sex with] your spouse or someone else will.”
“What’s so bad about getting hurt? It means you have a heart.” And,
“All relationships in your life are going to fail until that one that doesn’t, and you’ll only know that they are the one when one of you dies, but that’s life.”
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