Being With A Mannequin Is Better Than Being With Another Person(?!) and Advice On Stealing Mannequins Or, In Other Words, the Weirdest Thing I Ever Read

In Chicago, there is this newspaper called "The Reader". It is sort of odd, and it the closest thing to the underground press around here. Anyway, there is this advice column called "Savage Love" and this was a letter that was published on Friday, March 26, 2004.

Being with a mannequin is better than being with another person. (I like to think of myself as half of a mannequpple.) They put out and they do whatever you want. The harder ones to get your hands on are the mannequins in high-end designer stores. These companies have their marketing gurus design their mannequins, and they're the best looking ones out there. Unfortunately you can't get them at any mannequin warehouse, and most salespeople don't respond positivly to inquiries about purchasing them. So I've resorted to stealing them, which is easier than it sounds. The best way is to dress up looking like you're from "corporate", bring a clipboard with an "Artificial Model Inventory Sheet", remove the clothes from the mannequin, and pick it up and walk out like you're doing nothing wrong. If they question you (which has NEVER happened to me and I've stolen dozens of them), just tell them to call Wanda at some number you give them should they have any questions. Then keep walking.
-AB in Annapolis

Don Savage's reply: Thanks for the tip, ABIA, but I was just kidding around about thr mannequin fetish thing. While there IS a clothing store near my house filled with skinny male mannequins wearing the kind of clothes that turn my head, I haven't developed a fetish for hot, headless hipsters despite what I wrote in this space a couple weeks ago. So to you, ABIA, and all the other mannequin fetishists out there who wrote in, and to all the folks who wrote in to tell me that I had a fellow fetishist in comic-book artist/walking freak show R. Crumb, and to the dozens of you who wrote in to point out the upside of f*cking a hot, headless hipster boy (you won't have to listen to him talk about his vinyl collection or read the stuff he's planning on submitting to Vice magazine), and to the one person who offered to send me what he thought might be snuff porn featuring a hot headless hipster boy- enough already. I prefer my hipsters with heads, thank you very much, and I have no desire to hang out with R. Crumb or be the lesser half of a mannequpple. It was a joke, and it's one I've come to regret.

PHERBER: I judge not, but let me tell you, that this is probably the strangest thing I have ever read....