I'm on hiatus while working on a manuscript for a new book. In the meantime, please enjoy these classic Savage Love letters pulled from previous columns. I will be back when the book is finished. —Dan

Originally published March 26, 2009:

The two things that I dig most on a woman are a nice big pair of... swim fins. Some of my earliest sexual fantasies revolve around Jacqueline Bisset in The Deep. It's frustrating to have such a bizarre fetish. There is a small subculture devoted to scuba fetishism on the internet, but it's a total sausage/snorkel fest. One day I'm heading somewhere tropical like Hawaii, where I hope to meet scuba divas. Until then, what do you suggest? Give up my fetish and embrace vanilla? Or redouble my efforts to find one of the maybe half-dozen women in the world into this?

Fin Fun Fan

My response after the jump...

It's amazing how the sight of something as innocuous-yet-titillating as the poster for The Deep can, if a young man lays eyes on it at just the right moment, endow that boy with a lifelong/love-life-complicating fetish. I ponder this phenomenon every time I see that ad for Old Spice's new Live Wire body wash featuring an impossibly hot centaur soaping up in the shower. (While you regard your fetish as a burden, FFF, at least you can find scuba gear. Where are all the fetishists being created by Old Spice supposed to find centaurs?)

The odds that you will one day meet one of the very few women out there who share your fetish are slim, FFF. But let's say you manage to track one down. What are the odds that you'll be attracted to her physically? And emotionally? Slim and slimmer. Your best bet is to date women you find attractive, demonstrate that you're a decent and loving guy who can enjoy vanilla sex, and then roll out your fetish.

Some would argue that withholding info about your fetish is dishonest. I would argue, however, that "withholding" info about a harmless fetish—FFF just wants to play dress-up, he's not into shit or shunts or shin splints—demonstrates a certain degree of emotional intelligence. Waiting about three months says to prospective scuba babes, "Hey, I wanted you to get to know me before I told you this, because I realize that it might strike you as odd. And while I'm kinky, I'm not obtuse or insensitive."