The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
Dan Savage, the renowned journalist behind the sex advice column, Savage Love, is surfing the Sugar wave! He links to Sugar’s last column, agreeing with her relationship advice:
“…when I say that people should be realistic, and when I say that people should be able to forgive, and when I say that realism and forgiveness strengthen relationships—this is what I’m talking about.”
...moreDue to second thoughts about preserving the anonymity of one of Sugar’s advice seekers, Dear Sugar will run a little later than expected. (As Sugar put it on twitter: “Oy. Last minute switch up: the person who wrote the letter that was to run in today’s column rescinded her letter this morning so I need to write a new one (which will be a lot like the old one, revised to address a different letter with similar concerns).”)
Fear not, advice-seekers!
...more
“SUGAR SAYS” Posters are on sale!
Printed on high quality matte paper, this beautiful infographically-inspired poster features quotes from Sugar, everybody’s favorite advice columnist. It’s an aesthetically-pleasing way to appreciate the sweet weekly wisdom!
...moreThe Awl has got a sweet interview with none other than our very own advice columnist, Sugar, who is always ebbing our existential qualms with her eloquence.
But what’s it like to be Sugar, negotiating intimacy with anonymity, keeping up the mystique and having such a well-known persona?
...more
In this very special Rumpus interview, Lidia Yuknavitch interviews our beloved Sugar:
A letter from Sugar:
Dearest sweet peas whose letters have been published in my columns,
I need your help. As many of you have suggested, I’m pursuing the possibility of publishing a book of my columns. In the course of this, I realized that I needed to make explicit what has been implicit all along:
...moreDearest Sugar, Light of My Thursday Afternoons:
I teach a few creative writing courses at the University of Alabama where the majority of my students are seniors graduating in May.
...moreDear Sugar,
For those of us who aren’t lucky enough to “just know,” how is a person to decide if he or she wants to have a child?
...moreDear Sugar,
I’m jealous. I’m jealous of people who succeed at what I do (write literary fiction). I’m jealous of them even if I love them or like them or respect them. Even when I pretend to be happy when my writer friends get good news, the truth is I feel like I swallowed a spoonful of battery acid.
...moreDear Sugar,
For many years, to varying degrees, I stole compulsively. For many of the years I stole, I was on a “cocktail” of psychotropic drugs for depression, anxiety, and insomnia. In retrospect, I think the drugs made me powerless to fight against the compulsion to take things.
...moreDear Sugar,
I’m a 38 year-old guy and engaged to be married this summer. My fiancé is 35. I don’t need romantic advice. I’m writing to you about my fiancé’s mother, who passed away from cancer several years before I met her, when my fiancé was 23.
...moreDear Readers,
It’s March, my anniversary month as Sugar—on March 11th last year The Rumpus published my first column.
...moreDear Sugar,
I read your column religiously. I’m 22. From what I can tell by your writing, you’re in your early 40s. My question is short and sweet: what would you tell your 20-something self if you could talk to her now?
...moreDear Sugar,
I love your advice column. I am a 64 year-old man who has been single for the past five years.
...moreDear Sugar,
I am a young woman in an American city. I’ll be out of a job in a few weeks. Gulp. I’m in the process of entering into an arrangement with a man: we will rendezvous once or twice a week and he will pay me an “allowance” of $1,000 a month.
...moreDear Sugar,
My twenty-year-old daughter returned home from university after suffering a bout of depression in late May.
...moreHello sweet peas! It’s become my tradition that every time I reach a new decade of columns, I do a Q&A, in which I whip out short answers to several brief questions instead of the usual longer, single column. Happy holidays!
Dear Sugar,
A half decade ago, I met a man and fell in love with him and then moved in with him too fast, as people do. Once I moved in with him, I realized our incompatibilities were so vast that I wanted out.
...more
Dear Sugar,
I’m a twenty-one year old guy. I’m in college right now. Though I work full-time to pay for some of my bills, I’m still dependent on my parents for room and board. I also use their car. I have no problem with living with my parents—at least I wouldn’t if I wasn’t gay.
...moreDear Sugar, Sugah, Sage,
I’m a spry 47 year-old feisty broad. For the past three years I’ve been deeply in love with a woman. The timing of our meeting was atrocious.
...more
At the end of The Social Network, a new indie flick that no one has ever heard of, I turned to my friend, and out of every intelligent comment I could have made, I said, “There was so much testosterone in the movie that I feel fucked six ways sideways.”
We’re building a store that will go live any day/moment. Once the store is built you’ll be charged shipping on your orders but if you buy them today there is no shipping charge.
1. The Adderall Diaries. ($11, signed)
2.
...more
A lot of people have taken to sending direct messages to Sugar on her Twitter feed. Instead of the regular question and answer column this week, Sugar answers multiple questions she’s received via DM:
Dear Sugar,
I write like a girl. I write about my lady life experiences, and that usually comes out as unfiltered emotion, unrequited love, and eventual discussion of my vagina as metaphor.
And that’s when I can write, which doesn’t happen to be true anymore.
...more
Dear Sugar,
I am the lucky mama of one darling baby and oh, how I treasure every moment! Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—the baby’s daddy does not follow suit on treasuring every moment.
...more
Dear Sugar,