Dan Savage, American author and renowned sex columnist of Savage Love, visited the University of Oregon Tuesday and gave a Q&A formatted lecture on sex advice and relationships to a sold out show of 300 UO students, staff and locals.
As 7:30 p.m. drew near, people were scurrying to find their last-minute, first-come first-serve seats. Upon each was a blank notecard and pencil for audience members to write an anonymous question for Savage to answer.
When Savage strolled onto the stage, members of the audience cheered and praised his presence. There was not an empty seat in the Lee Barlow Giustina ballroom at the Ford Alumni Center.
“You guys are setting the agenda tonight, so however dirty or inappropriate the conversation gets — it’s your fucking fault,” Savage said followed by laughter and amusement from the audience. And from there, the night progressed.
Savage has been writing his advice column Savage Love since 1991, touching on issues relating to his passion, opinion and beliefs of sex and relations. He has been known to push the boundaries of sexuality and the pursuit of sexual desires by opening people’s minds to the many different representations of sex. This is his second visit to the UO since 2011.
Throughout the lecture, Savage addressed questions of a wide variety of sexual topics including the importance of sexual education, to kinks and fetishes, experimentation and communication as well as same-sex marriage.
As he flipped through from card to card, he answered questions dealing with the sexual act of fisting to gorilla suit fetishes; the roaring response from the audience was unanimous. With his witty, vivacious rapport and strong visual images through his casual conversation, it is clear Savage will say what is on his mind.
For the past year, Keith Van Norman, Marketing Manager of Health Promotion at the UO health center has been working to bring Savage back to the UO and believed that the hard work has paid off. Van Norman thought the night turned out fantastic.
“It’s really important to make his time as rich of an experience as possible and I think this really did that, which was really great,” Van Norman said. “The crowd seemed really stoked to have him.”
Savage has been pushing for same-sex marriage for more than 20 years. Last year gay marriage was legalized in Savage’s home state of Washington. “We can push on multiple issues, we will have breakthroughs and successes,” said Savage, one of these successes being his marriage to his husband.
The last question of the night left Savage stumped, and that doesn’t happen often.
“Ha, this is a terrible last question, for me; not that somebody couldn’t knock this out of the park but I am not the guy … ‘How do you teach a man to go down on a woman properly,’” Savage said, “fuck if I know!”