Michael Castleman

Long a poster child for the damning effects of drug addiction, she suddenly found herself being upheld as a different kind of role model: living proof that a needle treatment could help even the most chronic crack addict. In her new job she does outreach to crack users, telling them her story and giving them information about Lincoln’s acupuncture treatment.

This week, with the publication of a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Wilkerson may have some powerful ammunition in the battle against crack addiction.

Acupuncture began to be used in addiction treatment in the United States at Lincoln and a few other places in the mid-1970s. Over the past 25 years, the number of facilities has grown steadily and is now estimated to be several hundred. But some doctors have continued to reject the ancient Chinese needle therapy because findings have been contradictory. Some studies show significant benefits; others show none at all. But this study, conducted by Yale researchers, seems destined to bring acupuncture closer to the medical mainstream. The largest and most scientifically rigorous to date, the study shows that acupuncture can be highly effective in treating cocaine addiction, in conjunction with a comprehensive treatment program.

This new study comes at a time when the Western disregard for this Eastern treatment is finally giving way. A growing group of studies suggests that acupuncture is effective for many conditions: from hives to fibromyalgia, from back pain to PMS. Even the National Institutes of Health recently endorsed incorporating the ancient needle therapy into mainstream medicine.

“This study provides further validation for what many of us in drug rehabilitation have been doing for many years,” says Michael Smith, director of the substance abuse rehabilitation program at Lincoln Hospital and developer of the treatment procedure used in the new study.

“There aren’t many other effective treatments for cocaine addiction,” says Arthur Margolin, Ph.D., a research scientist in Yale’s department of psychiatry and the new study’s principal investigator. “In addition to its effectiveness, acupuncture is a low-cost treatment and has few, if any, side effects.”

“In my experience,” explains, “acupuncture not only minimizes cravings and withdrawal discomforts, but it also has longer-term benefits. People who get acupuncture tend to stay in treatment longer, and as a result are less likely to return to drug use.”

The new study involved 82 heroin and cocaine addicts. They received methadone to treat their heroin addiction, plus counseling. In addition, they were all assigned to one of three experimental groups. Some received true acupuncture, needles into four classic points in the ears. Others received sham acupuncture, an equal number of needles inserted into non-acupuncture spots around the ears. And some viewed relaxing nature videos.

Participants received treatments five times a week for eight weeks. Each treatment lasted 45 minutes. They submitted urine samples three times a week that were analyzed for the presence of cocaine.

By the end of the study, the group receiving true acupuncture had the most cocaine-free urine samples — 54.8 percent — compared with 23.5 percent in the sham acupuncture group and just 9.1 percent in the relaxation video group.

“Not everyone with an addiction problem responds to acupuncture, but many do,” says Patricia Culliton, an acupuncturist with the alternative medicine division of the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis who participated in some of the earliest studies of the needle therapy as an addiction treatment more than 10 years ago. “We’ve had good results with men and women of all ages, races, ethnicities and drugs: alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and prescription drugs such as Valium. And compared with other treatments, acupuncture is very safe and inexpensive.”

Use of acupuncture in addiction treatment began serendipitously in the early 1970s, when H.L. Wen, M.D., a neurosurgeon in Hong Kong, used the needle therapy to treat postoperative pain in a man who also happened to be withdrawing from heroin. He noticed that the man’s withdrawal symptoms had disappeared. Wen subsequently began treating narcotic addiction with acupuncture, and reports of his success reached Smith at Lincoln Hospital, who adopted the approach in the mid-1970s. Since then, it has spread to hundreds of drug-rehab programs around the world.

“It’s not clear why acupuncture helps treat addiction,” says Smith. “The usual explanation, shown in several studies, is that it releases endorphins, the body’s own pain-relieving compounds. I believe that endorphins are involved, but that they’re only part of the story. Acupuncture’s effects are more complex. Most of our patients say it relaxes them, but some say it makes them more alert. I come back to the Chinese view that addiction is an imbalance in the body, and that acupuncture helps restore balance.”

“Acupuncture research is still in its infancy,” Culliton says, “so we don’t really know how it works. In addition to releasing endorphins, it also changes levels of hormones and liver enzymes. It’s complicated. Personally, I believe that it boosts the body’s innate ability to heal.”

Chinese-Americans have used acupuncture since the first Chinese immigrants arrived in this country. But the needle therapy was unknown to most non-Asian Americans until 1971 when Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the People’s Republic of China. During that visit, TV news programs broadcast astonishing footage of people having major surgery while fully conscious — their only anesthesia being a few acupuncture needles. New York Times columnist James Reston accompanied Nixon and witnessed acupuncture anesthesia firsthand. As fate would have it, Reston needed an emergency appendectomy while in China. He decided to try acupuncture instead of narcotics to control his postsurgical pain. It worked, and Reston’s praise for the needle therapy spurred tremendous interest in acupuncture.

The origins of acupuncture are lost to history, but legend has it that an ancient Chinese soldier suffered an illness his physicians could not cure. In battle, he was hit by an arrow, receiving a superficial wound. The wound healed, and oddly, so did his illness. Intrigued, Chinese physicians began recording the places — or “points” — around the body where stabbing wounds produced improbable healing. Their observations led to acupuncture and its offshoots: acupressure (which uses finger pressure instead of needles), shiatsu (Japanese massage on acupuncture points) and reflexology (acupressure massage of the feet or hands).

Chinese medicine postulates that acupuncture works by restoring healthy circulation of qi (pronounced “chee”), humans’ invisible life force. Qi circulates around the body along meandering pathways called meridians. Like qi, the meridians are invisible and cannot be found by dissection. When illness blocks qi, acupuncture can help unblock it, which restores health.

Nonsense, say Western medical critics, who scoff at invisible meridians and qi as unscientific concepts. At worst, they say, acupuncture is a form of primitive superstition, and at best, it’s nothing more than a placebo effect. In the words of Robert J. White, M.D., a professor of neurosurgery at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, acupuncture “has the same scientific validity as astrology or alchemy.”

But according to studies by acupuncture researcher George A. Ulett, M.D., at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, acupuncture is neither alchemy nor placebo. Placebos produce benefits in about one-third of those who use them, Ulett explains, but most well-designed studies of acupuncture pain relief show effectiveness in the range of 55 to 85 percent.

“The evidence suggests that acupuncture works neuroelectrically,” Ulett explains. “In my view, the meridians are not invisible. They are the motor nerves, the ones connected to the major muscle groups. Stimulating acupuncture points changes the flow of bioelectrical energy along these nerves and triggers the release of neurotransmitters, which produces its effects.”

Acupuncture still has its critics. “Some won’t accept anything that can’t be fully explained in Western scientific terms,” Culliton says. “and acupuncture still can’t be, at least not yet.”

The critics have a point. Over the years, quite a few studies have shown no benefit for true acupuncture over the “sham acupuncture” typically used as the control in recent experiments. Margolin, author of the cocaine study, thinks he knows why.

“It’s quite possible that the ‘sham’ points some researchers used actually had some activity.” Margolin eliminated this possibility in a study published last year that showed activity for the classic ear points used in addiction treatment, and no activity for specific sham points he investigated. He then used the “certified” sham points in his new study on cocaine addiction, confident that they really were sham points.

Questions remain about the methodology of acupuncture research, but in recent years, the critics’ numbers have dwindled. “Lately, I’ve noticed greater acceptance of acupuncture by the medical community,” Margolin observes. A key reason, he says, has been the increasing number of rigorous studies published in mainstream medical journals documenting its benefits.

Recently, in addition to the new study of addiction, there have been several meta-analyses of successful acupuncture treatment for temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ), fibromyalgia, back pain and hives as well as studies showing its effectiveness on arthritis, asthma, diabetic nerve damage, headache, impotence, menstrual cramps, postoperative pain and tennis elbow.

In 1998, the National Institutes of Health asked a panel of experts from major U.S. medical centers to evaluate acupuncture. Their report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded: “More than 1 million Americans receive acupuncture each year. The data in support of acupuncture are as strong as those for many accepted Western medical therapies. There is sufficient evidence of acupuncture’s value to expand its use into conventional medicine.”

The United Nations World Health Organization agrees, endorsing acupuncture for more than 40 conditions.

The NIH panel was also impressed with acupuncture’s safety: “The occurrence of adverse events in acupuncture has been documented to be extremely low,” its report said, “lower than that of many drugs or other accepted medical procedures.”

Whatever the experts decide, however, acupuncture has found a true believer in Valerie Wilkerson. So much so that she now devotes her life to getting out the message to addicts in her old crack-ridden neighborhood while working as a community liaison for Lincoln’s substance abuse treatment program.

“I encourage users to come in for treatment. I tell them I tried other programs, but finally got off drugs at Lincoln. Acupuncture had a lot to do with it. It definitely helped me, and I’ve seen it help many others.”

Roger is not alone. There are no studies on the prevalence of virginity over 30, but many of the nation’s sex therapists report a small, steady stream of older-virgin clients. During 23 years in practice, California psychologist David Johnston says he’s counseled 50 middle-aged virgins, collaborating with various surrogate partners. “One was 72. A few have been women. But the vast majority have been men in their 30s or 40s.”

Dr. Louanne Weston has practiced 20 years, also in California, and has teamed up with surrogates to treat approximately 40 older virgins, all men. “There are more older virgins out there than people imagine. Many are tech guys. They’re often charming, but they tend to be nerdy, so women don’t go after them. They don’t feel socially adept enough to handle the challenges of the dating scene.”

Los Angeles surrogate partner Dr. Vena Blanchard, president of the International Professional Surrogates Association (IPSA), says older virgins account for 50 percent of her practice, or a half dozen men a year. Like other legitimate (that is, non-prostitute) surrogates, Blanchard works only with men referred by psychotherapists. “Some live in Southern California. They see me and their therapist weekly. Others live elsewhere and come to Southern California for two weeks of intensive therapy, seeing me every morning and the therapist every afternoon. Most are Americans, but I’ve had clients from Canada, the U.K., India, China and Australia. It’s a real commitment for them: air fare, a hotel room and food for two weeks, a rental car, my fee, and the therapist’s fee. Intensive therapy can run $10,000. But they do it because they’re tired of feeling stuck in their lives. They’re determined not to be alone for the rest of their lives.”

It’s not clear if older virgins are disproportionately men, but it’s the men who seek therapy. “It’s possible that there are as many older virgin women,” Weston explains. “But men generally have more insistent libidos. It’s the men who eventually decide to do something about it.”

Johnston says that in the last few years, he’s seen an uptick in the number of middle-aged virgins seeking therapy. The reason, he says, is the World Wide Web. “Before the Internet, older virgins were isolated. Now they can go to sex information sites and hear about surrogates. They search ‘surrogate partners,’ find IPSA, and through the organization, find a surrogate and psychotherapist.”

That’s how Roger found Blanchard. Still painfully shy, he consented to be interviewed only under a pseudonym. But he says he feels “a mission” to publicize the plight of older virgins to encourage them to get the kind of help he received.

Except for his college years, Roger Andrews has lived in Fort Lauderdale his entire life. He recalls his childhood as a happy time, with a warm, nurturing mother compensating for a cold, distant father. As a boy, Roger was no loner. He had male friends. But around girls, he was always shy. “My first relationship with a girl, in junior high, went very wrong. We liked each other and went out a few times. But I felt totally inept. I didn’t know what to say or do. So I stopped seeing her, cut her off. I couldn’t tell her why. She was hurt, and cried. I felt awful.”

Roger’s experience describes many people’s adolescent relationship fumblings. But instead of soldiering on and learning interpersonal skills by trial and error, he became socially paralyzed. “I shut myself off. I can’t really explain why, except to say I was very shy. I was keenly interested in women, but I felt intimidated by them. I had no idea how to get beyond casual friendships to anything romantic. And I haven’t improved much to this day. The teen years — that’s when you should begin to experience intimacy, not just sex, but the ability to feel close to potential lovers. That part of me got stuck at 12 years old — and here I am, 49, still trying to figure out how to grow up.”

“Every older virgin has a unique story,” Johnston explains. “They run the gamut from terrible shyness to emotionally barren families to sexual abuse. But all older virgins feel terrible shame. They feel embarrassed and humiliated by their lack of relationship experience.” Age 30 seems to be a line of demarcation. “By 30,” Blanchard explains, “older virgins feel so socially awkward and out of sync with the world around them that they choose to hide.”

Roger hid. Throughout his teens, on Saturday nights, he stayed home. His parents noticed. To encourage him socially, his father pushed him to play a musical instrument. He picked drums and gravitated to jazz. “I was into Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Chick Corea. I was in a decent garage band. We played weddings, and I played in theatrical orchestras for musicals.”

Roger’s work in musicals led to an interest in acting. In college at a university in the South, he became involved in theater and won Best Actor his junior and senior years. “It was surprisingly easy,” Roger says. “You have a script. You have lines and you say them. You don’t know if you’ll get the laughs you want, but you know you’ll get the girl because it’s in the script. My shyness was never a problem onstage, just in real life, where there is no script.”

Friends invited him to parties, but he never attended. After a while, they stopped asking. “I became skilled at pushing people away. I don’t think anyone ever tried to fix me up. I wouldn’t let them. I think they thought I was gay.” But he knew he wasn’t. At one point, he tried a dating service, but that went nowhere. “I just didn’t have the social skills for dating, and the older I got, the more different I felt from everyone else, the more handicapped.”

Living in near isolation, Roger found solace in computers. It was the mid-1970s. He became a hobbyist like the young techies who invented PCs. After college, his computer skills and family connections landed him a job with a data-management company. “The work wasn’t difficult. The hard part was dealing with customers. But I needed the paycheck. I used the phone a lot. It was easier than face-to-face contact. When I had to meet people, I forced myself.” Co-workers and clients invited him out for lunch or drinks, but Roger declined. “I couldn’t shift from technical topics to social conversation, so I never socialized. I couldn’t. After work, I just went home and spent my free time by myself, except for the one night a week I had dinner with my parents.”

In his solitude, Roger developed what he calls his evening ritual. He drank a beer while smoking cigarettes and cooking himself a nice dinner. Then he downed more beers and smoked more while watching the TV news, followed by cooking shows or tech programs on cable. He ended his evenings polishing off what became a daily six-pack while smoking, watching movie videos, or reading bestsellers: Grisham, Clancy, King. “My ritual isn’t just about killing time and getting drunk. It’s really a substitute for human relationships. It’s comforting. I don’t really feel lonely. I could easily go on like this for the rest of my life — until I got cirrhosis or lung cancer. Except that I yearn to have a meaningful relationship with a woman.”

Roger found many women attractive. With some, he was able to overcome his shyness and initiate casual conversations, but nothing more. The only woman he saw over time was the girlfriend of a close friend. “But she was unattainable; therefore she was safe.” He also kept a diary. “It was filled with agony and despair over my social ineptitude.”

Roger never went to prostitutes. “It crossed my mind, of course. A few times I even went through the phone book looking for escort services. But I knew my problem wasn’t just a lack of sex. Hell, I could masturbate and often did. The problem was — and is — my inability to develop an intimate human relationship. You don’t get that from a prostitute, so I wasn’t interested.”

As the years passed, he became obsessed with the intimacy and sex he was missing. By age 31, Roger realized that he would never find intimacy on his own, that he needed professional help. “I pulled out the phone book, looked up psychiatrists, and called one at random.” He’s been in therapy for most of the past 18 years.

Roger’s psychiatrist prescribed anti-anxiety medication (Xanax) and an antidepressant (Anafranil). But he wanted more than drugs, so he contacted a clinical psychologist, who urged him into group therapy to deal with his shyness. “I hated the group. I didn’t want to talk. I was too shy and clammed up.” The group quickly learned that his issue was profound shyness, especially around dating, and reassured him that it was challenging for everyone. “They seemed to think that their reassurances would allow me to step out and date. No way. I just couldn’t.” At one point, a man in the group confessed sexual frustration and said he might go to California and have sex with a surrogate. (Most surrogates work in California because it’s unambiguously legal there.) Roger had never heard of surrogates. Soon after, he left the group and opted for individual psychotherapy. He’s been with his current therapist, a woman, for six years. He likes her and feels she’s helping him. But he still wasn’t dating. He was still a virgin.

Last year, Roger recalled the man in his therapy group who had mentioned surrogates. On a whim, he did an Internet search. “I got tons of porno, and then I noticed IPSA.” He e-mailed the organization and heard back from Blanchard, now in her mid-40s, who’s been a surrogate for more than 20 years. She provided a phone number and invited Roger to call. He learned that she was not a prostitute, but more of an intimacy coach and therapist; that surrogates don’t always have intercourse with clients; that they introduce a client to loving touch and relationship skills. Blanchard said she would send him an application and asked for a $200 good-faith deposit, which would be applied to her fee. “The deposit discourages frivolous inquiries,” she explains. Roger agreed.

The application asked why Roger wanted to work with a surrogate. He replied: “I feel alone and anxious because I haven’t had any intimate, sexual relationships.” It asked for his treatment goals. He listed seven: “(1) To learn to touch and be touched to ease my yearning for physical contact. (2) To feel better about myself because I’ve had sexual experience. (3) To increase my chances of relationships with women. (4) To end my confusion about the appropriate place for sex in relationships. (5) To satisfy my burning curiosity about women’s bodies. (6) To better understand my own body and feelings. (7) To find out what the ‘joy of sex’ is all about.”

Blanchard presented Roger with his options for surrogate-partner therapy: He could involve his local therapist and bring a surrogate to his area, or he could travel to California to work with a therapist and surrogate team there. He wanted to stay in Fort Lauderdale so that his therapist could be involved. Blanchard was willing to go east, but before that, she talked with his therapist.

Roger’s therapist was very skeptical. “She kept saying, ‘This can’t be legal. It’s prostitution. I could lose my license.’” Roger urged her to read an Internet interview with Blanchard and to call her. The therapist balked. Finally, Roger said, “Your license is safe if I see a prostitute and tell you about it. What’s wrong with seeing a surrogate and telling you about it? I want to work with you on this, but if you won’t work with me, I’ll go to California and see a therapist there.” His therapist relented (and has since become a big supporter of surrogate therapy for older virgins).

Frequently, however, it’s the psychotherapist who suggests surrogate therapy to older virgins. Weston has arranged for several middle-aged virgin clients to see surrogates. “The surrogates I work with rely on me to screen the guys, to make sure they’re safe and not crazy.”

Before embarking on surrogate therapy, Roger felt he had to tell his parents. “We’re close — and not close. It’s like a business relationship, which might explain why I’m good at business relationships, but no good at intimate ones. I told my parents I was taking a two-week vacation to do something unusual. When I explained, they were surprised, shocked. I’d never told them I was a virgin, and they’d never asked. I left a copy of Vena’s Internet interview with my mother. She wrote me a note expressing concern and support. My father had no reaction and has never mentioned it.”

Last July Blanchard flew to Florida. Roger took two weeks’ vacation, and spent about $8,300 for her transportation, hotel and fee. He felt excited to meet her, but also apprehensive. “Initially, most clients feel anxious,” Blanchard explains. “They don’t know what to expect. But in deciding to work with a surrogate, they’ve already confessed their big, dark secret. They don’t have to hide anymore, and that’s very liberating. They quickly discover that surrogate work is a slow, gentle process of building relationship skills. I don’t promise they’ll have relationships, just that they’ll feel more comfortable with the process of trying.”

Over several daily three-hour sessions, Blanchard and Roger talked extensively about his life, past and present, and Blanchard directed him in relaxation and touching exercises. “First, she had me touch an apple, then a comb, then other objects to experience what sensual touch feels like.” They talked about what he felt. “Next, she asked me to touch my own arms and face.” They talked some more. Then she offered her hands, arms and eventually her face for him to explore, and she touched his arms, feet and face.

“Gentle, nurturing touch is new for most older virgins,” Blanchard explains. “Many don’t recall ever being touched that way before by anyone. Imagine what it must feel like never to have known gentle touch, and then to have someone hold your hand, stroke your arm, run their fingers through your hair. It’s a profound experience. Often, clients cry.”

Meanwhile, every afternoon, Roger met with his psychotherapist, and discussed what had happened that morning. “Vena asked good questions and was a very good listener,” he explains, “but it helped to have someone else listening to me and asking questions, too. I needed the extra support and perspective.”

Weston says it’s important to have a therapist back up the surrogate. “Many older virgins can hardly believe it when they kiss a woman’s lips or touch her breasts or vulva. I reassure them, ‘Yes, it really did happen. You really did that.’”

Blanchard talked with Roger’s psychotherapist daily. She also provided Roger with basic sex education. Many older virgins have never had much, she says. “I often lend them books written for adolescents because developmentally, around sex, that’s how old they feel.” Blanchard also answers clients’ sex questions: Does my penis look weird? What’s a tampon? How do you unfasten a bra? What’s the real story about the clitoris, G-spot, and women’s orgasms?

As their sensual explorations continued, Blanchard told Roger she was open to becoming more intimate, but that she had one firm rule: Before every move they would both ask the other’s permission and would absolutely respect each other’s answers. He agreed. Roger asked if they might kiss. Blanchard consented, but first instructed him to practice by kissing his own arm, then hers, and finally her lips. “At first, kissing felt very awkward,” he explains. “I’d never kissed anyone before.” Andrews encountered the problem many young teens have with kissing — where your nose goes. “Vena showed me how to position my head and lips so our noses didn’t get in the way.” They practiced kissing quite a bit. “As I relaxed, I began to enjoy it. Kissing is great.” But they stuck to lip kissing with closed mouths, no tongue action. “I didn’t feel comfortable with open-mouth kissing.”

Eventually, Blanchard suggested they discuss the possibility of undressing. “That was nerve-racking,” Roger recalls. “I was a blubbering fool for a few minutes.” So Blanchard encouraged him to imagine how disrobing would feel. They discussed it. She asked how far he wanted to go with undressing. The first time, Roger chose to stop at their underwear. “I really wanted to see her breasts and genitals, but I didn’t want her to see my erection.” They stood facing each other, Roger in his bulging shorts, Blanchard in a bra and panties. “She talked me through looking at her body. I looked at her hair, eyes, nose, shoulders, and on down, scanning everything very slowly and methodically, getting accustomed to it.” The next day, Roger felt comfortable getting completely undressed and revealing his erection. “It was fine. It just took me a little while to get used to the idea.” Next they spent time looking at each other together in the mirror. “Seeing himself in the mirror next to a friendly naked woman helped make it real for him,” Blanchard recalls.

Once they both felt comfortable being naked together, Blanchard eased Roger into mutual whole-body massage. Roger caressed her face, arms, belly, legs — and eventually, with Blanchard’s permission, her breasts. “Touching her breasts,” he recalls, “was very intense. Vena’s breasts are fantastic. I think it’s the most wonderful thing in the world to touch a woman there.” Eventually their massage exercises included genital caressing with lubricant.

Roger continued to see his psychotherapist daily. “It was very valuable. I can’t overemphasize it. She helped me process things and gave me great feedback about what was happening with Vena.”

Roger felt uncomfortable with the idea of oral sex, so they didn’t explore it. But by the end of his second week with Blanchard, he asked if they might have vaginal intercourse. Some surrogates don’t do this, but Blanchard agreed. “The intercourse itself was not that big a deal,” Roger explains. “I mean, I was glad to have it. I was glad I wasn’t a virgin anymore, that I’d finally ‘done it.’ But I didn’t need it more than once. Our whole process of becoming physically intimate and talking about it was much more important to me. I felt freed from some of my shame about being so naive and confused about sex. I actually enjoyed whole-body massage more than I enjoyed intercourse, especially touching Vena’s face and breasts.”

But finally having intercourse was important to Roger in another way: “Once I’d done it, I felt I could move on and think about dating and getting into a relationship.”

One potential hazard of surrogate work for older virgins is the possibility of falling in love with the surrogate partner. This is not surprising. The surrogate knows their terrible secret and doesn’t think the less of them. She is friendly, supportive, and willing to become physically intimate. But Roger did not fall in love with Blanchard. “She’s very attractive, but I was clear that ours was a professional relationship. I consider her a friend, and hope she thinks the same of me.”

During their last few days together, Blanchard and Roger talked a great deal about his next step — dating. “It’s hard for me to imagine,” Roger says. “People say: Just do it, just ask someone out. But I’m still so shy, so inexperienced. The prospect is frightening.” Blanchard suggested some books for him to read, among them, “Dating for Dummies.” And he’s been discussing the challenges of dating with his psychotherapist as well.

Weston says dating issues are a major stumbling block for older virgins who have completed surrogate therapy. “I support them to date,” she says. “I help them figure out their best approach. Some want to place personals ads. I help them write their ads and respond to anyone who contacts them. Some want to use professional matchmaking services. I help them with their personal profiles. Some like speed dating, where a roomful of singles spend five minutes with each other and afterward declare who they’d like to see again. If there’s a match, the service puts the two people in touch. And when clients begin dating, I help them evaluate the relationship and decide if they should pursue it. It’s often slow going, but most of my older-virgin clients have dated and had relationships.”

“I can’t claim that every guy I’ve worked with has fallen in love and gotten married,” Blanchard says, “but I’ve received quite a few wedding and birth announcements.”

Roger says he’s “getting ready to date.” He’s working to quit smoking, and he’s drinking less. “They’re bad habits that turn women off.” He’s decided not to place or answer any personals. “They’re too impersonal. I want human contact.” He’s toying with joining a gym, in part to meet women and in part to break the habit of his isolated evening ritual. He plans to join a scuba club that caters to singles. And he says he’s intrigued by speed-dating.

Roger is still processing his work with Blanchard and doesn’t know how he’ll fare in the dating game. But already, he says, he feels better about himself. “Working with Vena has made a big difference in my life. I’m less ashamed of my sexlessness. I don’t feel so stigmatized, or as naive about how intimate relationships work. I’ve realized that T&A is much less important than sensual touch. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the nonsexual touching we did. I feel more open to other people than I ever have. I feel like a real person now, like I’m becoming a citizen of the world.”

Steinberg, 59, grew up in Queens, N.Y., a child of leftist activists. He graduated from high school in 1960, with two passions — mathematics and peace. “I was a member of the Student Peace Union, the group that invented the peace sign,” he says proudly. He attended Oberlin College intent on becoming a math professor, but became a civil rights activist instead. He switched to political science, and wound up working in Washington, placing college students in community organizing projects in impoverished areas around the country.

A fascination with the counterculture led Steinberg and his wife to San Francisco. In 1972, they moved 60 miles south to Santa Cruz, a beach and university town that, in recent years, has become a suburb of Silicon Valley. Steinberg bought and expanded a small business that distributes culinary and medicinal herbs to health food stores and restaurants, which he still owns. He also began writing about sexuality, and became a cornerstone of the Bay Area’s burgeoning sexual underground with, according to San Francisco TV station KRON, a “cutting-edge reputation for the erotic.” He currently writes a monthly column, “Comes Naturally,” a commentary on sexual culture and politics.

Steinberg’s e-mail address, at EroNat, hearkens back to “Erotic by Nature: A Celebration of Life, of Love, and of Our Wonderful Bodies,” the lavish, groundbreaking coffee-table book of erotic photography, poetry and fiction he published in 1988. “Erotic by Nature” was Steinberg’s personal addition to the feminist critique of porn: “Men and women I respected were criticizing porn for being sexist, too male, too genital, too mechanical, and disrespectful of women. I thought, if we were criticizing porn, we had a responsibility to come up with an alternative, something that reflected our own sexual values.” The book contains more than 100 black-and-white photographs Steinberg considered fine art — beautiful, imaginative, thoughtful and very different from commercial porn.

A few months after “Erotic by Nature” appeared, Steinberg was contacted by the editor of Cupido, a Norwegian sex magazine, that was eager to distribute the book in Scandinavia. “And by the way,” Steinberg recalls the man saying, “since you seem to know so many photographers doing the kind of work we publish, would you become our photo rep in the U.S.?” In 1989, Steinberg did. The gig allowed him to delve deeper into the exciting but semi-underground world of serious erotic photography. He discovered that dozens of photographers were making intriguing erotic pictures that no one in the U.S. wanted to publish. “The sex magazines said their work was too artistic, and the art magazines said it was too sexual.” When he told them that Cupido was looking for exactly what they were doing, he was greeted like a long-lost brother. Those relationships eventually led to “Photo Sex.”

Salon interviewed David Steinberg in the San Francisco offices of his publisher, Down There Press, an offshoot of the woman-friendly sex shop Good Vibrations.

Your subtitle proclaims “Fine Art Sexual Photography Comes of Age.” But photographers have documented sex ever since photography was first invented. What do you mean that sexual photography has “come of age”?

It’s fine-art photography that has come of age. Sure, there have been photographs of sex for as long as there have been photographs of anything. But the vast majority of those images have been in the pornographic style — images that draw their power from being “naughty,” and breaking social taboos about sex. Porn’s outlaw stigma and appeal are the underbelly of our antisexual culture, and the cultural marginality of pornography has limited and distorted the way sex has been portrayed in photography. There’s a lot more to sex, and to sexual photography, than what porn offers.

Fortunately, starting in the 1970s, and gathering momentum in the last dozen years, many thoughtful photographers have developed sexual aesthetics that go far beyond the boundaries of porn. They have made photos — imaginative, artful, complex, perceptive photos — of every imaginable aspect of sex, from playful caresses to intense bondage. Unlike the nudes that have long been accepted as legitimate art photography, the new sexual photography is unapologetic in claiming sex as its subject. Unlike porn, this new fine-art sexual photography invites viewers to think about — and maybe even experience — sex in new ways, as a subtle, profound, humorous, intimate, perhaps even mystical experience.

I believe that fine-art sexual photography has come of age because, for the first time, sex is being taken seriously and seen as a legitimate subject for complex and artful photography. The resulting — and rapidly expanding — body of sexual photographic work is delightfully imaginative and diverse. It’s as far removed from the conventions and limitations of pornography as it is from the photographic conventions of nonsexual photography. Unlike porn, which is remarkably uniform in its emotions and aesthetics, the styles and interests of the photographers in “Photo Sex” are as different from each other as Picasso is from Monet. I find that very exciting. It says that there’s more than one way to be sexual, more than one way to be sexy.

In your view, what are the key differences between fine-art sexual photography and porn?

The basic purpose of porn is to be a masturbation aid largely for men, to provide images that turn people on and help them get off. The basic purpose of fine-art sexual photography is not to arouse people (though that may happen) but to say something truthful about sex and about who we are as sexual beings. A.D. Coleman, the photo critic who wrote the foreword to “Photo Sex,” says he wants a sexual photograph to have a point of view, to say something about sex beyond the simple fact that sex is happening and we get to watch. I think that hits the nail on the head.

Sex is such a complex and important part of life. Does anyone really understand it? What makes it so powerful, so confusing, so exciting, so frightening? It’s more than lots of nerve endings firing at the same time.

One of the functions of art is to talk about big, complex issues in big, complex ways — to help us appreciate life in ways that are unreachable through academic treatises, technical manuals, or literal narratives. What’s revolutionary about fine-art sexual photography is that it applies the intelligence we associate with fine art to the complicated subject of sex.

The book includes the work of 31 photographers. How did you find them? How did you decide whom to include?

I’ve been Cupido’s photo rep in the U.S. for 14 years, and have been writing about erotic and sexual photography for most of that time. Through that work, I met the people I call the “new sexual photographers.” Finding skillful photographers was not difficult. The most difficult task in editing “Photo Sex” was finding ways to represent the diversity of sex in just 115 photographs. I managed to cull about 600 favorite images down to about 250.

The final criterion that let me get the book down to workable size, suggested to me by my good friend, photographer Mark I. Chester, was to demand that each photograph make a unique contribution to the book, that it have a particular magic no other photograph had.

Can you describe the range of sexual imagery in “Photo Sex”?

It’s all over the map. Some of the photos are journalistic, others are intensely intimate and personal. Some are warm and tender, others are confrontational. Some of the sexual activities are familiar: dancing, kissing, touching, intercourse, masturbation, or voyeurism. Others may be seen by some people as radical, even disturbing: S/M, group sex, sex in public places.

I hope viewers will think of the people in the photos as people like themselves, even if the ways they express themselves sexually might be very different from viewers’ own sexual tastes. It’s not my desire to shock anyone, but at the same time I didn’t want to restrict “Photo Sex” to images that everyone could view without any discomfort. I want it to celebrate sexual variation. There are heterosexuals, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals. There are young and old people, fat and thin people, people with disabilities, people from a wide range of races and ethnicities. There are couples, people alone, threesomes and groups, people having sex in the privacy of their homes, in sex clubs, even out on the streets.

Some of the photographers focus on tenderness and intimacy, others on fierceness and intensity. Some images are softly focused, others sharply graphic. There’s humor, sadness, irony, strength, vulnerability — the whole gamut of emotions involved in being sexual. The photographers express their own particular fascination with sex in their own unique ways.

What about Robert Mapplethorpe? Why doesn’t his work appear in “Photo Sex”? What do you think of it? Is it fine-art sexual photography?

Oh, yes, definitely, Mapplethorpe’s work is fine art. He was a very significant figure in the trend toward fine-art sexual photogaphy. I saw his retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1988, and was completely blown away. His images were so sexual, and so controversial, and they were being shown in the hallowed halls of a major museum. It’s not every day that you see huge beautiful photos of people having oral sex, or engaged in S/M at the Whitney. On the one hand, his show was a major breakthrough — and I should add that everywhere it appeared, the public liked and supported it. But, on the other hand, it generated enormous political and legal controversy because it coupled the S/M images, which were controversial enough, with two nonsexual photographs of naked toddlers. The upshot was that, in Congress, Jesse Helms attacked the show. The Corcoran canceled it. And the curator of the Cincinnati Art Center was brought up on obscenity charges. He was acquitted, but that kind of controversy set fine-art sexual photography back because it made — and still makes — galleries and museums reluctant to show this type of work.

I wanted to include some Mapplethorpe photographs in “Photo Sex.” But unfortunately, his estate wanted more for the rights than I could afford, so I couldn’t include him.

A few of your photos appear in the book, exuberant shots of joyous sexual play, your subjects often sporting broad grins. How long have you been taking sexual photographs? What are you trying to show? And how do you persuade couples to make love with you standing over them?

I’m probably the least experienced photographer in the book. For Cupido, I’ve brokered thousands of sexual photographs by hundreds of photographers. I like their work. But inevitably, their perspectives are different from mine. For a while, I tried to coax the photographers I knew best into capturing what interested me most about sex — intimacy, tenderness, love, joy, the emotional connection between lovers, more than their physical coupling. But of course, they wanted to pursue their visions of sex, not mine. So I decided to try my hand at creating the kind of sexual photographs I wanted to see.

I’d taken family photos and vacation snapshots all my life, and people told me I had a decent eye for composition. But I never saw myself as a photographer. I had almost no technical training. But I was intrigued with the question of how to get people to be comfortable, real and sexually open in the presence of a third person and a camera.

I asked some friends if I could photograph them, and they agreed to be my guinea pigs. We did a long shoot — all afternoon and into the evening. We had a wonderful time and, to my surprise, produced some images that captured their sexual connection. When I showed the prints to other couples, several asked to model for me. The same thing happened. The couples were all able to be remarkably open, even though I was fluttering around them, moving lights, sometimes standing practically on top of them, snapping away. Each couple was different, but from each shoot, something genuine and personal emerged.

Cupido began publishing my photographs. They even put one on the cover. That was tremendously validating. Since then, sexual photography has been at the center of my creative life. In the last four years, I’ve photographed 40 couples, and I’m finding that other magazines and book publishers are interested in my work.

None of the subjects in the book are professional models. They’re all ordinary people. Why does fine art sex photography focus on ordinary folks?

For me, the most powerful art is work that talks about real life, about universal emotions, not about the rarefied glitz of being a celebrity, of being “special.” Despite what the media tell us, most “ordinary” people are both sexual and sexy. I wanted “Photo Sex” to reflect that. The photos show that there are many more loving, wonderful ways to be sexual than what we see on TV, in the movies, or in porn. In my view, sexual diversity is cause for celebration.

If fine-art sexual photography is, indeed, “coming of age,” then are art and photography galleries more interested in showing it than they were, say, 10 years ago?

Most museums, galleries and photography publications are still very afraid of sexual images. Many of the photographers in the book have told me of going to photo shows where gallery representatives and museum curators say they love their work but could never show it. I hope that the collective power and beauty of the images in “Photo Sex” help legitimize sexual fine-art photography, but it’s definitely an uphill climb.

There has already been one exhibit of prints from photo sex at a small San Francisco gallery, and Good Vibrations in San Francisco is going to exhibit them through the end of the year. Several other traditional galleries are considering mounting shows. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

It’s important to understand that how we think of sex, and how we think of ourselves as sexual, is shaped by the images we see around us. Images that trivialize sex — what we generally see on TV — encourage us to regard sex as simplistic. Images that portray sex as naughty and forbidden — most pornography — encourage us to think of sexual desire as suspect and dangerous. But images like the ones in “Photo Sex” that portray sex as joyous, nurturing, intimate and ecstatic, encourage us to think of sex as a source of warmth, pleasure and emotional satisfaction. They encourage us to open ourselves to sex as multifaceted, deep and powerful.

Veronica Monet is a prostitute. But she is more like a 21st century geisha or Renaissance courtesan than a street hooker. She’s a well-informed, intellectually exciting, sexy woman who uses her brain as much as her body in pursuit of her professional goal — to make her clients feel like kings and make a good living for herself. The men want sex, of course, but the reason they are willing to pay Monet her sky-high fees is that she offers them much more than the T&A they could get from any hooker. As she says, “The more I charge, the less sex I actually do.”

Monet is also a writer, actress, video producer and outspoken activist for prostitutes’ rights. Her essays have been anthologized in “Whores and Other Feminists” and “Porn 101.” Playboy called her video, “Real Women, Real Fantasies,” “a groundbreaker in the feminization of porn.” She has appeared on dozens of radio and TV shows, among them, “20/20,” “Politically Incorrect,” A&E’s “Love Chronicles” and several shows on the Playboy channel. And she’s happily married to the love of her life, a computer-industry executive who knows exactly what she does and is well acquainted with the Web site she uses to market her services.

The client picked her up at O’Hare in a limo and had the driver take them to a gallery in the Loop showing the oils of a hot Belgian painter. On the way, she lavished all her attention on him, making him feel very special as she unzipped and sucked him, while he ran his hands under her skirt and blouse. After the gallery visit, there was more sucking and groping on the way to a four-star hotel by Lake Michigan, where they enjoyed the view and fooled around some more as she changed into her dinner dress. They met some of his colleagues at a five-star restaurant. He showed her off proudly. Her top was cut low enough and her skirt high enough to raise blood pressures around the table without looking trashy. Her client enjoyed hinting that he could snap his fingers and Monet would fly across the continent to be by his side. He also enjoyed the fact that she held her own in table talk ranging from Middle East politics to the restoration of antiquities at the Acropolis.

After dinner, back at the hotel, they had sex — once. He liked half and half, some oral, some vaginal. She worked hard to make him feel like the luckiest man in the world. The next morning, he sent her back to O’Hare in the limo, and she flew home wearing her conservative suit made zingy with high ankle-strap heels and bright red lipstick. She spent part of the flight reading “When God Was a Woman” by Merlin Stone.

Then she chatted up her seatmate, dropping oblique hints about what she does. He figured it out and seemed interested. She slipped him a business card with her 800 number and URL. She also pondered what she would tell her husband about this job. The view from the room, she decided, the panorama of the Lake and the Loop. That was special.

When she pulled into her two-car garage and entered her four-bedroom, three-bath home, she was tired and hungry. Her husband was out back, playing with the dog by their swimming pool. He came in, embraced her, and announced that dinner was takeout sushi and steamed asparagus. She changed into jeans while he put the food on the table. Over dinner they talked about the past two days. He’d seen a deal involving a large computer system unexpectedly fall apart, and another unexpectedly come together. She told him about the art gallery, the fabulous restaurant, and the spectacular view from the hotel. Afterward, they cleaned up and turned on the History Channel. By the end of the documentary, they were cuddling. They went to bed and made love. Later, as she drifted off to sleep, Monet thought about how lucky she was to have a career she enjoyed and a husband she adored. And to think she’d once been a feminist crusader against prostitution.

Veronica Monet grew up with a different name near Portland, Ore., in a working-class family. Her mother was a homemaker, her father a welder who never made much money. “My parents know what I do. My mother and I are very close. We talk all the time. My father disowned me. That’s been painful, but he disowned my sister too, and she’s not a prostitute. She’s a security guard, so we figure it’s his problem.”

With a talent for writing, Monet put herself through Oregon State on scholarships and with a job tutoring jocks in grammar and composition. She majored in psychology and minored in business. “It’s funny — in my line of work, I use them both every day.” She also became a feminist, with strong feelings about prostitution: “I viewed it as one of the many ways that male-dominated society degrades and oppresses women — and then stigmatizes them for it.” In 1982, she graduated with honors.

She moved to Silicon Valley and for six years worked secretarial jobs for computer companies. Then, incredibly bored and in search of a creative outlet, she became the volunteer producer of a public-access TV show, “Survival Skills.” “Nobody watched, but it was fun, and I had this dream of getting a job in television.”

At work, she met the man she eventually married, whom we’ll call Adrian. He was 13 years older, a Vietnam veteran. “He was a computer technician, I was his dispatcher, and there was instant electricity between us.” He was just her type physically: tall, dark and handsome with blue eyes and a full beard. “I’m a sucker for beards.” He also had a huge personality. “When he walked into a room, he lit it up.” Monet felt so attracted to him that it scared her. So did other things. He had two ex-wives, several kids and a few girlfriends. He was also deep into alcohol and cocaine. The drugs didn’t bother her. “I was young and it was the ’80s. Alcohol was everywhere, and back then we thought coke was nonaddictive.”

They flirted. Then Adrian moved to Los Angeles for a year and they had no contact. When he came back, he turned the full force of his personality toward winning Monet’s heart. She felt ambivalent. “We fucked a lot and fought a lot. I was very possessive and jealous and insisted he get rid of his other women.” Eventually he did. “He kept calling me the love of his life. I was head over heels for him, but I wasn’t convinced he was the love of mine. What did I know?”

Monet and Adrian moved in together in 1983. It was a tempestuous relationship. “Looking back, I blame it on the drugs. We were doing a great deal of coke and booze. We had violent fights.” To hurt one another, they had affairs. “He’d fuck a woman he picked up at a bar, and then I had to fuck a man I met at a bar. Several times I woke up with no idea where I was, in bed with men I didn’t remember fucking.” Monet was going to work drunk. She had several alcohol-related fender-benders. Then she got arrested for drunken driving.

The arrest led her to an A.A. meeting, which she hated. “The people seemed like losers, and I didn’t believe I was an alcoholic.” She tried psychotherapy. “The therapist said, ‘No one can help you until you realize you’re an alcoholic.’” Monet decided to quit drinking on her own and went 30 days. Soon afterward she was injecting cocaine. “I looked at that needle in my arm and realized I had no control. On Sept. 4, 1985, I stopped drinking and doing drugs. I haven’t had any since. I went to A.A. every day for years. I still go about once a week.”

Once Monet sobered up, she urged Adrian to do the same, but he refused. They broke up in 1986, and she didn’t see him for five years. She dated A.A. friends and invested in psychotherapy. “I worked on myself. I grew up.”

She was still producing her TV program, and one day, she filmed a male strip show. “The phones lit up. People were actually watching. I learned an important lesson: Sex sells.” She also started dating one of the strippers. “I loved his shows. He had a sexy body and was a great dancer. Watching him got me so hot.” She didn’t care that every night dozens of other women became equally aroused and stuffed bills deep into his jock. “They all wanted him. But I got to go home with him. I got turned on knowing my lover was desired by so many other women.” But there were complications. He was also involved with a woman who stripped at the Mitchell Brothers’ San Francisco strip club. They had a child together. Eventually, he broke up with the stripper and moved in with Monet.

The relationship was Monet’s introduction to the world of sex work — and to consumers of those services. One was a man who was hot for her. “He introduced me to a woman he knew who was a prostitute. He was interested in a threesome. She and I hit it off. I had no idea I was bisexual, but that quickly became apparent. I wound up going to bed with her instead of him.”

Becoming a prostitute’s lover pushed all of Monet’s feminist buttons. “I felt sorry for her. She had no college education. She wasn’t a feminist. She had no intellectual framework to understand how oppressed she was, how she was selling out to the enemy.” But the two women had great fun together, and the relationship deepened. Monet was surprised to learn that her lover was married, the mother of three children, with a husband who worked for IBM. They were also swingers who made amateur porn videos. Monet and her stripper boyfriend entered the swing world and were welcomed with open arms — and other limbs. “I was running with a sexually wild crowd and loving it. I was 29, and my libido was just kicking into high gear. People talk about the raging hormones of teenagers. Well, they have nothing on a woman hitting 30 who discovers her sexual self.”

Monet felt that her life was finally flowering, but at work she had nothing but trouble. “My boss said I wasn’t obsequious enough, that a mere secretary shouldn’t be producing TV shows. Finally I resigned.” A few other jobs didn’t work out. In spite of herself, Monet began considering prostitution. “I kept thinking about my girlfriend. She was her own boss. Sure, she rented her body, but no one owned her. On the jobs I’d had, they wanted your soul.”

In the fall of 1989, Monet became a prostitute. Her lover set her up with clients for one-third of the fee. She also insisted that Monet get organized. “She helped me get a fictitious business name, showed me how to pay quarterly taxes, and how to list my occupation as ‘relationship consultant’ for tax purposes. She told me, ‘Screw your clients, but never screw the tax man. Report your income. Prostitution is a misdemeanor. But if you run afoul of the IRS, they take your life apart.’” Monet’s business acumen came in handy some years later when the IRS audited her. She’d not only paid all the taxes she owed, but she’d also kept impeccable records. “My secretarial experience came in handy.”

Monet’s lover ran a high-volume, low-cost operation, and the pace — sometimes 10 men a day — wore her out. In addition, Monet’s lover was deep into amateur porn and wanted her to participate. Monet did a few scenes but didn’t enjoy the experience. “Porn is mean and boring. The amateur stuff felt dirty to me. As for mainstream porn, well, I like to fuck, but I don’t like to get fucked over.”

After nine months with her mentor, Monet went out on her own, intent on developing a lower-volume, higher-priced career. She advertised in the Spectator, a Berkeley-based sex weekly. “I realized that the feminists were wrong about prostitution, at least the kind I was doing. It wasn’t demeaning at all. In fact, the clients wanted me to have a strong personality, to tell them what I thought about the world, and sexually, what I would and wouldn’t do — and mean it. Their libidos fed off of my personality, my energy. I’m more assertive as a prostitute than I ever was in any of my jobs in the computer industry.”

Monet developed a clientele with several regulars. “I didn’t work that much, just enough to pay the bills.” The rest of the time, she was at A.A. meetings or in therapy. She began to see herself as a kind of therapist. “Men go to prostitutes for many of the same reasons they go to therapists: They’re lonely. They’re unsatisfied with their marriages. They’re frustrated in their careers. And they want a relationship without emotional complications. With a therapist, you just talk. With me, men talk and then get something extra — which lets me charge a lot more than therapists get. Over the years, I’ve met a surprisingly large number of women psychotherapists who moonlight as prostitutes.”

The hardest part of prostitution, Monet contends, is not the men and not the sex. It’s the public’s narrow-mindedness. “Prostitutes elicit pity or contempt, but never respect.” Monet set out to change that. She became a public advocate for prostitutes’ rights and was eventually interviewed by Geraldo Rivera and profiled in the business section of the New York Times. Her mission, to get some respect for whores, was good for her soul and the media attention was good for business. “Even when the media dis me, the phone rings and the e-mails come in.” Her business prospered.

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In 1991, three years into self-employment and five years after her breakup with Adrian, he called her. He was completely sober, reveling in it, and he wanted to see her.

No, you don’t, she warned. “I told him everything — the prostitution, the porn, everything. I figured my career would put him off, and I’d never hear from him again.”

But Adrian kept calling. He claimed he didn’t care how she made a living, that she was the love of his life and he had to be with her. “We’d talk on the phone, and everything I’d always liked about him came flooding back to me. He was so charming. And once he got sober, his drug-induced nastiness disappeared, and he was the sweet, fabulous person I always knew he was. I realized I missed him and still loved him.”

Still, Monet was reluctant to see Adrian. Their relationship had been so rocky, their fights so disturbing. But he kept calling and wore her down. Adrian was living in Tahoe. Monet was in San Francisco. After several months, he talked her into meeting him for dinner in Sacramento. Monet agreed but insisted that their date be nonsexual. He agreed. “But once we got together, there was enough electricity to power a small city. We jumped into bed, and it was great.”

Adrian got a job in the Bay Area, and he and Monet moved in together again. They were married in 1992 at the chapel in Yosemite. “It was hilarious,” Monet recalls. “My mother was there. Adrian’s friends were there. I’d invited lots of prostitute friends, and they all showed up dressed in conservative business suits. Then my old girlfriend-mentor showed up wearing clothes right out of Frederick’s of Hollywood. My husband’s friends were scandalized.”

Monet was still bringing in business with Spectator ads. But she became dissatisfied with the paper. “It was seedy. I wanted to project a classier image, one that would attract business travelers with lots of money to spend.” It was the early 1990s. Several early computer bulletin boards invited her to advertise for free. Her posts didn’t bring in much business at first, but as bulletin boards gave way to Web sites, Monet saw the potential. She launched her own site in 1997. It features photographs that leave no doubt about her occupation. In one, she’s on her hands and knees, wearing a black teddy, her shapely butt raised and receptive. In another, she’s on her knees unzipping the fly of a well-dressed man, her black chemise partially exposing her breasts. It didn’t take long for her to start making the big bucks with local rich men around the Bay Area who wanted a courtesan. That work led to even higher-paid gigs as a jet-set escort.

“On the street,” she explains, “prostitution is all about the sex. To make a living, the girls have to do everything — anal, blow jobs without condoms, and submissive scenes with guys who can be scary. But when prostitution moves off the street, into apartments, it’s less about the sex and more about the ambiance, the relationship. The girl becomes more of a mistress. She fucks, of course, but what keeps guys coming back is who she is, how she makes them feel. At my level, it’s even less about the sex. My job is to make my clients feel very special, to stroke their egos as well as their cocks, to look glamorous, speak intelligently, and give them my undivided attention. If my clients wanted just sex, for the fee I charge for a one-day date, they could buy an entire Nevada brothel with several girls for a whole weekend. But they want more than sex. They want to be treated like kings, which is exactly how I treat them.”

What do ultra high-end prostitutes do sexually? Monet says she is happy to have vaginal and oral intercourse, to give full body massages, and play with S&M and bondage as long as she’s the top, the dominant one. “I’m never submissive, never. And I don’t do anal. At my level, very few women do.”

Monet doesn’t look her age, especially on her Web site. She works out regularly and is particularly proud of her firm, compact ass. But surprisingly, in an occupation dominated by young women, she is completely candid about being 42. “Men who are looking for young girls shouldn’t call me. I don’t have the face of a 20-year-old. But lots of rich, successful men aren’t interested in young bimbos. They want intelligence and personality. They want to be fascinated. They want to feel pampered. They want a peak experience, and I give it to them. You’d also be surprised at the number of young, rich businessmen who want an older woman. So far, my age hasn’t hurt my business at all.”

But Sept. 11 did. Before the terrorist attack, in addition to her local business around the Bay Area, she was flying several times a month all over the country. Afterward, business travel plummeted, and so did calls to jet off to meet rich business travelers. But with her public advocacy of prostitutes’ rights and her writing, she projected an image of iconoclastic accomplishment that gave her some celebrity. “Rich men like that.” A year after Sept. 11, she says business has bounced back.

Of course, Monet knows that in another 10 years, when she’s 52, her Web site and her notoriety may not work their current marketing magic. She’s already preparing for the next phase of her career: She’s toying with the idea of actually doing what her tax return says she does — working as a relationship consultant, providing “professional sex advice from a pro.” She’s also been lecturing more at colleges. “I love talking to college kids. We always have great discussions.” And she’s focusing more on her writing. She recently finished a book titled “Porné.”

Monet says she hopes to become a sexual philosopher: “Porné was a Latin term for both prostitution and idolatry. The fact is, prostitution was a key element in many pre-Judeo Christian religions. Many ancient temples had prostitutes and were constructed to resemble women’s wombs. There was a great deal of sexuality around ancient religious rites, which focused on the fertility of women, animals and the soil. With the rise of Judeo-Christian monotheism, religion became less about the body and more about spiritual purity. My book is a collection of essays about prostitution and its place in the world. I haven’t spent all these years sucking dick just to pay the mortgage. I’ve done it to learn about humanity, about how men often use prostitutes to preserve their marriages. I have a great deal to say.” Her agent is shopping the book to publishers.

When Monet and Adrian got back together, he accompanied her to some media appearances. They once had sex together on camera for Playboy TV, and he appeared with her on the Montel Williams talk show as the husband of the prostitute. But a few of his business colleagues saw him, and he didn’t like all the teasing. He decided to withdraw from Monet’s public career. “He’s not ashamed of my work. Quite the contrary: He’s proud of my Web site and my media credits. His close friends all know what I do and are cool about it. But Adrian no longer does interviews or appearances as the husband of the prostitute.” Adrian declined to be interviewed for this article.

Part of the reason Monet and Adrian no longer speak to the media as a couple is that it’s boring. Everyone asks the same few questions. To Adrian: What’s it like to have a wife who’s a prostitute? What’s it like to have sex with her when you know she’s fucking so many other men? To Monet: What’s it like to be a prostitute, then come home and have sex with your husband? And when you and Adrian socialize with your prostitute friends, aren’t you nervous that they’ll try to steal him away?

To hear Monet tell it, her husband relates to having a prostitute wife the same way other men relate to having wives who work in other occupations. “My job really hasn’t been that big of an issue for us. I only do safe sex, so he’s not concerned about catching anything. I screen my clients carefully and have my regulars, so he’s not concerned about my safety. We’re pretty much like other married couples. He tells me about his day. I tell him about mine. One of the things I really love about Adrian is that he’s supportive and nurturing. If an issue comes up for me at work, he’s very good about providing perspective.”

Monet says her husband relates to having sex with her the same way she felt about sex with her stripper boyfriend. “It turned me on to know that other women found him so sexually magnetic. Adrian feels the same way. But there’s a big difference between my professional sex and our married sex. At work, it’s business. Sucking and fucking well happen to be part of my business. At home with Adrian, it’s not business at all. It’s love, and that makes a tremendous difference. I care about my clients, but I don’t have the same spiritual connection with them that I have with my husband. What I have with Adrian is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I couldn’t possibly confuse it with any other relationship. I enjoy being sexual with my clients, but in terms of love, I consider myself monogamous. The only man I love is Adrian, and that makes our sex very different from my business sex.”

Monet says she and Adrian have about the same level of libido. “We’re both pretty horny. Sometimes he comes on to me. Other times I come on to him. We don’t turn each other down much. It’s comfortable.”

Monet and Adrian socialize with some of her prostitute friends, but says she never feels that they threaten her marriage. “Most of them are happily coupled themselves. They’re not lonely and looking for love. And they make very good livings, so they’re not stuck with their husbands or boyfriends because of money. That’s not the case with many wives. Wives often feel bored, and unloved, and horny, and financially trapped. Put my husband in a room full of prostitutes and I’m much less concerned that someone is going to try to steal him than I would be if he were in a room full of other men’s wives.”

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A few days after Monet’s trip to Chicago, she and Adrian have lunch together at home. They rarely eat breakfast together. His alarm is set for 6, while local clients often keep her working until 2 a.m., so she doesn’t get up until around 10. But Adrian works close enough to the house to come home for lunch fairly regularly. Monet has prepared a salad. He pops open a Pepsi. She sips water. Monet listens as Adrian discusses all the money his company has riding on the project he’s just been assigned. She wishes him good luck. Then he listens as she discusses the client she’s seeing that afternoon after the guy leaves work, a referral from a regular. She mentions the name of the hotel where they’re meeting and says she’ll be home late for dinner. Adrian says he’ll wait to grill the steaks until she returns. He finishes his soda, takes Monet in his arms, and kisses her.

“Have a good day,” he tells his wife.

“You too,” she tells her husband. “See you tonight.”

Adrian leaves. Monet pulls out the paper and reads the business section. Her new client is deep into the stock market, so she needs to bone up on the latest financial news. Then she opens her closet and selects an outfit she thinks he’ll like, one that will make him feel like a king.

Some 1,700 years after it was written, the English-speaking world is about to get its first glimpse of what the real “Kamasutra” says, thanks to a new translation scheduled to appear in June. It rights the many wrongs Burton did to the text, and reveals the “Kamasutra” for what it truly is — a guidebook for cultivating a highly eroticized life. It’s “Sex and the City” circa A.D. 300, only the focus is on men instead of Sarah Jessica Parker and her girlfriends (though some of the text is clearly intended for fourth century Indian women).

The new translation reveals a “Kamasutra” in some ways remarkably modern and progressive: Women are as sexual as men, and men should work to provide women with erotic pleasure, including orgasms. But before you embrace the book as your new sexual bible, be forewarned. Some of what it says is controversial: Adultery is a fact of life and it’s all right, even fun — for men only — as long as the women’s husbands don’t find out. Some of the “Kamasutra” is callous and repugnant: If a woman persistently refuses a man’s advances, he is justified in raping her. Perhaps most remarkable, the “Kamasutra”‘s vaunted sex advice is surprisingly tame. For example, the book expresses considerable ambivalence about oral sex, a very popular universal element in modern Western lovemaking.

The new translation (published by Oxford University Press) has been compiled by Wendy Doniger, a professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, and Sudhir Kakar, an Indian psychoanalyst and senior fellow at Center for Study of World Religions at Harvard. They returned to the original Sanskrit, and produced a translation at once more honest and more erotic than its Victorian predecessor. They also include copious notes that place the text in its historical and linguistic context, rather like a well-annotated edition of a Shakespeare play. I doubt the Doniger-Kakar “Kamasutra” will make the bestseller list, but if you’re a serious student of sex, or of India, or if you and your honey want to read each other a different kind of pillow book, the new translation is fascinating, thought-provoking and occasionally even amusing.

“Kamasutra” literally means “treatise on sexual pleasure.” Unlike the Christian view that the sole purpose of sex is procreation, in the fourth century Hindu world that gave birth to the “Kamasutra”, the cultivation of sexual pleasure, independent of procreation, was considered one of life’s highest callings. The ancient Hindus believed that life had three purposes: religious piety (dharma), material success (artha), and sexual pleasure (kama). All three were equal, and the erotic was celebrated as the seat of earthly beauty. In the Hindu world the pursuit of sexual pleasure was revered as a sort of religious quest. Imagine a world where getting laid was just as important as going to church on Easter. As a result, the “Kamasutra’s” erotic passages are vastly outnumbered by those with a serious tone. Its intended audience probably looked to its advice with the same seriousness that new car buyers bring to Consumer Reports.

The “Kamasutra” was written by one Vatsyayana Mallanaga, about whom nothing else is known. However, from the text, it’s clear that he was upper-class. He takes servants for granted, and assumes his readers have the leisure time to seduce virgins and other men’s wives, and the money to buy the gifts he recommends giving to do so. Vatsyayana also claims to have written his treatise “in chastity and highest meditation.” It’s hard to know what to make of this. Some commentators have scoffed that, given the subject matter, this seems highly unlikely. But considering the reverence with which the ancient Hindus approached matters sexual, it’s also possible that Vatsyayana wrote his book with the gravity of, say, a modern-art critic discussing a cache of just-discovered erotic paintings by Picasso. We’ll never know.

The “Kamasutra” may be the ancient world’s most famous sex book, but it was by no means the first. The Chinese had sex manuals 500 years earlier, and Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria,” a handbook for courtesans, preceded the “Kamasutra” by some 200 years. The “Kamasutra” is not even the first Indian sex guide. Vatsyayana mentions several sages who trod his erotic path before him. What makes the “Kamasutra” unique in world literature is that it’s the first comprehensive guide to living an eroticized life. It’s an ancient “Joy of Sex” meets Miss Manners.

The sexual culture it describes is also surprisingly like our own. While the “Kamasutra” describes girls and women as dependent on their fathers, husbands and adult sons — in the manner of women in today’s Arab Middle East — in the India of the text, they enjoyed an independence and freedom of movement Saudi or Pakistani women can only dream of. While their wealthy fathers and husbands were running businesses and the government — not to mention fucking around — young women were often free to date men and select their own husbands, and married women were free to select lovers and entertain them.

The “Kamasutra” is organized in seven sections that track men through life. In Book 1, the bachelor sets up his pad. In Book 2, he perfects his sexual techniques. This is the book that has inspired the videos, games and everything else that flies the “Kamasutra” flag. In Book 3, our young man seduces a virgin. In Book 4, he marries and sets up a household for his wife and servants. By Book 5, he has grown sexually bored with his wife, and turns to seducing other men’s wives. Eventually, as he ages, the effort necessary for such dalliances loses its charm, so in Book 6, he takes up with courtesans, who work to please him — but for a price. Finally, in old age, he fears he is losing his potency and attractiveness, so Book 7 contains recipes for herbal potions to preserve them.

Although Vatsyayana was a man writing for men, some of the “Kamasutra” speaks directly to women: Book 3 tells virgins how to attract husbands. Book 4 instructs women how to be good wives. Book 6 deals with the skills required of courtesans — including how they should provide for their own old age by stealing from their patrons. This information does not seem odd until you realize that in fourth century India, few if any women could read. It’s not clear how they obtained the “Kamasutra’s” information. Apparently, some did. Presumably literate men read it to them, as clergy a few centuries ago read the Bible to illiterate congregants.

Of the “Kamasutra’s” seven sections, Books 2 through 5 are the most interesting — unless you have a mistress, in which case Book 6 is worth a look.

Book 2, the sex manual, recognizes women as full, lusty participants in sex, and exhorts men to learn ejaculatory control to last long enough to bring them to orgasm: “Women love the man whose sexual energy lasts a long time, but they resent a man whose energy ends quickly because he stops before they reach a climax.” (Apparently, Vatsyayana didn’t know that many women never reach orgasm solely from intercourse no matter how long it lasts.) Nonetheless, the “Kamasutra” is very attentive to women’s pleasure, a view that arrived in our culture only a few decades ago, a view still lost on many men.

Book 2 also instructs men to treat women in such a way “that she achieves her sexual climax first.” How can a man do this? By following Book 2′s extensive discussion of the fine points of what today we called “foreplay” — embracing, kissing, and other types of touch calculated to heighten sexual arousal. The “Kamasutra” gets a little wild here. It touts slapping and spanking with accompanying shrieks and moans, and is particularly enamored of scratching and biting: “There are no keener means of increasing passion than acts inflicted by tooth and nail.” It even sings the praises of scars caused by erotic scratching. It considers them advertisements of erotic prowess: “Passion and respect arise in a man who sees from a distance a young girl with the marks of nails cut into her breasts.”

Book 2 advocates use of sex toys, and suggests sex while bathing. It also describes how a man can best satisfy two women at the same time (fondle one while having intercourse with the other), and how two or more men should comport themselves when sexually sharing one woman (take turns having intercourse, and while one is inside her, the others should fondle her).

Earlier I mentioned the “Kamasutra’s” unexpected aversion to oral sex. Vatsyayana declares, “It should not be done because it is opposed to the moral code.” But apparently, he understood that ancient Indian men enjoyed blow jobs as much as men do today, because after condemning oral sex, he provides elaborate instructions to women on how to perform what the “Kamasutra” calls “sucking the mango.” Then Vatsyayana reiterates his condemnation of oral sex, saying it should be enjoyed only with “loose women, servant girls, and masseuses” with whom a man “does not bother with acts of civility.” Finally, in an ambivalent aside, he allows that some men enjoy sucking each other’s mangoes, and that some even perform cunnilingus: “Sometimes men perform this act on women, transposing the procedure for kissing a mouth.”

In Book 3, the “Kamasutra” insists that men who seduce virgins do so very tenderly. It advises courting a virgin for many days before bedding her. The suitor should engage her in interesting conversation, shower her with gifts, play board games with her, and work to win her trust, all the while remaining sexually abstinent to set her at ease. As the big moment approaches, he should send her little sculptures of goats and sheep with major erections. If she takes the hint, she should signal her willingness by flashing him — “revealing the splendid parts of her body.” Finally, they make a date to meet and have sex.

But tenderness toward women goes only so far in the “Kamasutra.” If a virgin is unwilling to go all the way, men are instructed to have a brother ply her with liquor, and “when the drink has made her unconscious, he takes her maidenhead,” i.e. he rapes her. In the “Kamasutra’s” view, rape is acceptable not only for reluctant virgins, but also for other women: “A man may take widows, women who have no man to protect them, wandering women ascetics, and women beggars … for he knows they are vulnerable …”

The “Kamasutra” devotes only nine pages to the care of wives in Book 3, but almost three times the real estate, 26 pages, to Book 4, the seduction of other men’s wives. It exhorts wives to be doting, dutiful, careful managers of servants, and always well-mannered, well-dressed and faithful. But it also assumes that wives eventually bore their husbands. As a result, a man is perfectly justified in seducing other men’s wives, who are exciting, challenging, worthy of indefatigable pursuit, and great fun in bed. If a wife discovered that her husband had been unfaithful, she was over a barrel. In fourth century India, she couldn’t leave him as a modern woman might. She was obligated to remain dutiful. But the “Kamasutra” allows her to be “mildly offended” and “scold him with abusive language.” However, she was forbidden to resort to “love sorcery,” i.e. herbal potions, to win him back, presumably because that might ruin his well-deserved adulterous fun.

When it comes to seducing other men’s wives, the “Kamasutra” is not above a little shameless self-promotion either. It asks: Which men are the most successful at it? Those “who know the ‘Kamasutra.’”

The “Kamasutra’s” matter-of-fact acceptance of infidelity is tempered by only one caveat: Men were not to go that route if it was likely to “bring disaster,” i.e. violence or financial reverses. To prevent disaster, the “Kamasutra” lists women who should be avoided, notably those who are “well guarded or with their mothers-in-law.” Once a man has selected an eligible extramarital target, the “Kamasutra” instructs him to woo her with all the focus and creativity he would bring to courting a virgin, except that in the case of another man’s wife, he had to be more stealthy and deceptive, which made the chase all the more exciting and intellectually diverting.

Of course, if a man seduced another man’s wife, chances were good that some other sexually itchy gent might decide to seduce his. Wives were expected to be faithful, but with so many men getting action on the side, many wives must also have been cheating. The “Kamasutra” concludes its discussion of extramarital affairs by saying that it does not advocate philandering, but rather seeks to prevent it by describing all the ways libidinous lotharios might cuckold them in order to warn husbands worried about their wives’ wandering eyes. Given the extraordinary detail with which the “Kamasutra” describes infidelity, I doubt that any fourth century reader believed this. (The “Kamasutra” does not discuss how a husband should deal with a wife’s infidelities, but I doubt that all she got was a scolding.)

In the end, the “Kamasutra” describes a highly sexual world, one that does not condemn unbridled pleasure as our culture does, but prefers amoral pleasure that’s somewhat restrained simply because it’s easier for all concerned. It’s a sexual world committed to erotic tenderness, yet capable of casual cruelty, a lusty world that venerated sex for its own sake, not just for procreation.

What good is the “Kamasutra” today? The book deals with many of the erotic and relationship concerns we have. It’s about love, lust, flirtation, courtship, seduction, rejection and marriage; it’s about sexual power, manipulation and deceit. It presents a vision of the lives many 21st century Americans are struggling to create, lives that are simultaneously safe, sane and erotically rich. In reading the “Kamasutra,” we enter the bedroom of an exotic society long ago and far away — and find an ancient mirror in whose reflection we see aspects of ourselves.

“Oh sure, we got Harold-and-Maude teasing,” Betty recalls. “So, I’m so much older. But so what? When men have girlfriends or marry much younger women, no one bats an eye. But the other way around is a big deal. What we have here is a sexual double standard. The teasing stopped pretty quickly when our friends and families accepted our relationship. In our social circle, things feel comfortable now.”

Dodson and Wilkinson live together in her apartment on Manhattan’s East Side. They also work together: Dodson has produced several sex education videos and sex toys. Wilkinson handles the business end, tracking their sales and working with the webmaster to keep Dodson’s Web site current. Their relationship is not like most, but some of the lessons they’ve learned together would intrigue any couple.

When Dodson first announced that she’d spent a weekend having fabulous sex with the man she affectionately calls her “young pup,” her friends were less incredulous about their age difference than they were about the fact that Wilkinson was male. Dodson hadn’t had sex with a man for 10 years.

Dodson is not your ordinary senior citizen. She has a Ph.D. in sexology, has been one of America’s leading sex educators for more than 30 years and is the author of the minor classic “Sex for One.” She has also been the nation’s most outspoken advocate of masturbation and critic of what she has dismissed as “codependent partner sex.” That’s why her friends were so amazed by her tryst. For the first time in many years, the godmother of masturbation was doing it consistently with a man. Next fall, the author of “Sex for One” releases “Orgasms for Two,” which, she says, she “would not have written without Eric. I’d never write a sex book about something I wasn’t currently doing.”

Some matches are made in heaven. Dodson and Wilkinson’s was made in bed. “When we first got together,” Wilkinson explains, “we didn’t have many work projects going, so for a good year and a half, we had plenty of time for lots and lots of sex. Then the work side got busier — ‘Orgasms for Two’ was a big job, and running Betty’s business took time and energy. Like any couple, more work has meant less time for sex. But we still have great sex regularly, and still enjoy each other a great deal.”

Dodson says that other factors have contributed to their recent sexual moderation: “Hey, I’m feeling my years. I still love sex, but I can’t fuck around the clock like I used to. Sexual frequency isn’t the issue. It’s sexual quality, and after three years, that’s still great. Sometimes we have quickies. Sometimes we spend all morning in bed sharing orgasms. Sometimes we don’t fuck for a while. It depends on what’s happening. Of course, we also masturbate. I walked into the living room the other day, and Eric was beating off to some porn. And I keep a vibrator within easy reach.

Dodson wasn’t born a sex goddess. She is from Kansas, and in the 1940s she worked as a commercial artist, drawing fashion ads for Wichita department stores. In 1950 she moved to New York to attend art school, where she continued working as a commercial artist and painted on weekends. In 1959, she married an advertising executive but was not orgasmic with him. They divorced in 1965 but remained friends.

After her divorce, Dodson discovered orgasmic partner sex, bisexuality and nonmonogamous relationships with Grant Taylor, who is currently her webmaster. She soon began producing erotic art and had several exhibitions, which led her into New York’s cultural underground and something she never expected to experience or enjoy — group sex parties.

“I must have had sex with a thousand men and women,” she recalls. “It was a wild time. But in hindsight, I was also exploring sexuality, preparing for my life’s work as a sex educator.”

Dodson made her first splash as a sex educator in 1973 at the National Organization for Women’s first conference devoted to sex. Before an audience of more than 1,000 women Dodson, then 43, presented a slide show entitled “Creating an Esthetic for the Female Genitals.” People were not sure what to expect. She clicked the first slide, a close-up of the well-groomed vulva of one of the 15 friends who’d posed naked, legs spread, genitals wide open for her. The audience gasped. “All our lives,” Dodson proclaimed, “we’ve been led to believe that our cunts are nasty, ugly, smelly, and shameful. But I’m here to show the world how beautiful they are.”

The audience was shocked. Some booed when Dodson used the word “cunt.” But she pressed on, promoting her view that women’s genitals are a joy to behold. As the slide show progressed, the heckling died down. At the end of Dodson’s performance, the audience gave her a standing ovation.

That presentation certified Dodson as a sex educator to be reckoned with. She made more heads turn the next day with a workshop called “Electric Vibrators for Masturbation.” Those appearances launched Dodson on a 25-year-long career producing weekend workshops around the world, bringing her message of assertive self-loving to thousands of women. Her motto is: How we make love to ourselves determines what we bring to partner sex.

Dodson also continued to have an extraordinary sex life. After the group sex parties of the ’60s and ’70s, she spent the ’80s bisexual but mostly lesbian. In the ’90s, she returned briefly to heterosexuality but eventually decided to go solo. “One reason I opted for masturbation was my discovery that most of my male contemporaries — I was in my 60s at the time — were not that much fun. They had relationship baggage and health problems. They were not into — and usually not capable of — extended sex. And they wanted to dominate the relationship, always wanted to have things their way.”

Enter Eric. Wilkinson grew up in Virginia, the only child of a businessman father and homemaker mother. At 14, he became interested in sex. He read self-help books and masturbated over the few girlie magazines that came his way. “I was raised Protestant and thought masturbation was a sinful expression of lust. I struggled over that for a few years, but by 17 I was sick of feeling guilty. I decided: If I burn for beating off, so be it.” He lost his virginity at 18.

In college, Wilkinson wanted to study sexuality. “But they didn’t have any courses in what I wanted to learn. I wanted better sexual skills. I wanted coaching in how to eat pussy and how to have anal sex without hurting the woman.”

Then Wilkinson read Dodson’s “Sex for One.” “I’d read dozens of sex books. I’d reached the point where I didn’t think I could learn any more from books. Betty’s was the best book I’d read by far. It had such great information.” He wrote her in care of her publisher.

By the time Wilkinson’s letter arrived in 1999, Dodson had received tons of mail from people who’d read her book or seen her videos. She usually sent form-letter replies. “Eric’s letter was different. He asked questions I’d never heard from a young man. He was well-informed about sex, more reflective than most, and curious about sex in the same way I’ve always been. He was this odd combination of the eager student and a remarkably self-assured man. I was intrigued. I remember thinking: This kid is something else.”

They e-mailed for several months. “We’re so cool,” Dodson laughs. “We met in cyberspace.” She loved his e-mails. Eric was an English major, a gifted writer, and he related his sexual experiences with the young women he was seeing. His e-mails became Dodson’s favorite porn: “I’d get turned on and masturbate fantasizing sex with a handsome young man.”

Wilkinson asked if he could visit. Dodson declined. She wasn’t into complications, especially heterosexual complications with a man young enough to be her grandson. But Wilkinson persisted. Eventually she relented but insisted on keeping him at arm’s length. The deal was that he would stay with a friend, and they would just have lunch.

Wilkinson had other ideas. He wanted to have sex: “Women lovers my own age were not sexually experienced. They were inhibited, not very creative. What I wanted was a sexual mentor, and Betty seemed like the perfect woman.”

Dodson’s resolve to keep her distance quickly evaporated when Wilkinson walked into her apartment. “The kid was so desirable, a gorgeous 6-foot hunk. He wanted me to be his sex teacher. It was very flattering. We went out to lunch, returned to my apartment and had four hours of very hot sex. Eric went to his friend’s place, got his suitcase and spent the weekend with me. We had all kinds of sex he’d never had before: I did deep-throat on him. I played with his balls, and slid a dildo up his butt while he played with his peter. It was not only great fun, it was first-rate sex.”

In addition to his sexual curiosity and enthusiasm, Wilkinson endeared himself to Dodson by saying he’d always wanted to use a vibrator during sex. “Many men feel threatened if a woman pulls out a vibrator during partner sex,” Dodson says. “They feel like she’s saying: You’re not good enough. But Eric welcomed the vibrator. His cock was inside my pussy, and I had my Magic Wand on my clit. It had been a long time since I’d had a penis-vagina orgasm with a man.”

Dodson also enjoyed Wilkinson’s sexual sophistication. “Eric was more advanced sexually than lots of men who were my contemporaries. He’s a dedicated student of sexuality. And he’s fantastic in bed: sweet, sensual, playful, experimental, and he has great ejaculatory control.”

Wilkinson wondered what it would be like having sex with a woman so much older than himself: “When we got naked that first time, I was very pleasantly surprised. Betty looked nothing like my vision of what a 69-year-old woman ought to look like. She’s taken very good care of herself. She’s definitely not an old lady. She looks like she’s in her mid-50s.”

In Dodson’s mind, her weekend with Wilkinson was a lark. She had no interest in a long-term relationship, and even less in having him move into her apartment, the private sanctuary that had been shared with hundreds of workshop women for decades.

After Wilkinson returned to Virginia, they stayed in touch. “We e-mailed and talked on the phone,” Dodson recalls. “He pressed me for another visit. He wanted to stay a week. I told him he could stay a weekend. He came up and wound up staying a week.”

Their sex was fabulous, but even committed sensualists like Dodson and Wilkinson spend more time together out of bed than in it. Dodson was equally astonished how comfortable it felt having him around. “Beyond the sex, we’re remarkably compatible,” she explains. “We have similar personal habits. Neither of us is a morning person. We’re both night owls. We’re both hard workers, but we like lots of time off to play. I grew up with three brothers, so having Eric around struck a familiar, familial chord for me. I’m not only his lover, I’m his big sister, mother, granny and auntie. In any of those roles, we’re both very playful.”

A few months later, Wilkinson graduated from college and wanted to spend more time with Dodson. She agreed to let him stay one month: “I said, OK. I need an editor to go over my memoir [still unpublished]. I gave him the job. It worked out well.”

At the end of the month, Wilkinson asked to be Dodson’s apprentice, to carry on her sex education work. “It was very flattering,” she recalls. “Of course, I hadn’t lived with a man since 1970. No one bad-mouthed heterosexual relationships — which I called ‘pair bondage’ — more than I did. But Eric is very sweet and helpful and smart. When he saw how conflicted I felt about his request to stay, he suggested that we could stay in the moment and take things one day at a time. He swore that the minute I wanted him to leave, he’d go.” That reassured Dodson.

So did the fact that Wilkinson took his position as her business assistant seriously. “I’m not a boy toy on the dole. I have the self-respect that comes from working productively and earning a salary.”

The months passed. Wilkinson told his parents about his relationship: “They were shocked. At first, my mom was afraid Betty was taking advantage of me. She’s from the South and saw our relationship as evidence of the evils of New York City. My dad didn’t say much beyond, Come on home. Drop this fantasy. Get a life. For a while, Betty’s friends thought I was taking advantage of her, that I was sponging off her. That stopped when they saw how much help I was and how happy we both were.”

“Age is just a number,” Dodson insists. “I feel more comfortable, more compatible with Eric than I do with most men my age. He’s more alive, more interesting, more energetic and absolutely beautiful to look at. People ask me: What do you see in this kid? He doesn’t have the big job, the big salary. I don’t care. I don’t need a man to pay my rent or take care of me. I want a young man who’s interested in what interests me and who wants to learn. Our society forgets that the mentor/student friendships of the ancient Greek philosophers are a time-honored tradition. The way the world sees it today, Eric is my boy toy, so I’m taking advantage of him. Or I’m his sugar mama so he’s taking advantage of me. Guess what? We are both taking advantage of each other and enjoying every minute.

“I’ve never met Eric’s father,” Dodson explains, “but once his mother realized I had her son’s best interest at heart, we became good friends. When she visits, she stays with us. We talk on the phone. One of the many things I like about her is that for a fairly conventional Southern gal, she’s quietly sexually progressive. She never had a problem with Eric masturbating as a child, which is a major issue for many parents.”

Dodson continued to view the relationship as a transitional arrangement until he got his own apartment. A year after Wilkinson moved in, a few close friends sat her down. “They said ‘Why do you keep saying Eric is a temporary fling? He’s devoted to you. You’ve never been happier.’ It was true. There was no reason to push him out of my life. So he stayed.”

Then Dodson had an epiphany: “I realized that Eric was my reward for 30 years of service, being a sex educator, teaching women about orgasm and masturbation. He found me because of my work. Finally, I accepted his delightful presence.”

Her publisher approached her about writing another book, and she agreed to write “Orgasms for Two.” “In the new book, I revisit heterosexuality from the perspective of a wise woman, an elder of the tribe, and Honey, by now I’ve got grandmotherly wisdom up the wazoo.”

“Orgasms for Two” is more than just a love letter to Wilkinson. The book touts masturbation as key to enjoyable partner sex. “Couples have to liberate masturbation,” Dodson says, “accept self-pleasuring in each other, show one another how they do it. And if a man can’t handle seeing his lover use a vibrator, my advice to the woman is: Keep the vibrator and recycle the man.”

The book also promotes women as men’s guides in heterosexuality: “For partner sex to be good, the woman must know what she wants and be able to show her lover,” says Dodson. “Women have to teach men about female sexuality, not pattern our sexual desires on what men want. That’s the opposite of what typically happens — young men who know little or nothing about sex end up taking the lead, and young women blame themselves when they can’t have orgasms. So after years of saying that women need to be the leaders in partner sex, this gorgeous, sexy young man enters my life and says he wants to learn everything I can teach him. Is that great or what?”

“Orgasms for Two” also deals with the power struggles that mark all long-term relationships. “I could never figure out why I ended up hating every man I fell in love with.”

“In my marriage and most of my other previous relationships,” Dodson says, “there was this ongoing struggle over who makes the rules — and women usually end up on the short end of the stick. Power struggles kill the joy in sex. This time around, both Eric and I talk about our power issues. Now that he’s so good at sex, he’s usually the top [leader] in bed, and I’m the boss in the business. But because I spent so much time feeling powerless in most of my relationships, I’m very conscious of not abusing my power.”

Both Dodson and Wilkinson agree that the hardest part of their relationship involves issues of who’s in control, in part because on the business side, she’s his boss. “It’s hard,” Dodson says, “to be a good lover in bed and also be an effective CEO. But I can’t be a wimp either. Sometimes a task has to be done a certain way, and I have to make sure Eric understands why he has to do it that way.”

Wilkinson agrees: “We both work at not taking conflicts on the job personally. If I make a mistake, Betty is good about telling me how to correct it, and I know she still loves me. And if I call her on being overly critical, I always let her know I love her. We give each other lots of affection, and that helps.”

“People enter couplehood with this idea that they’ll share power equally,” Dodson says. “But that rarely happens. It never happened to me. The question for couples is: How to balance the power?”

They work at conflict resolution. “We get irritated with each other. That’s natural for two headstrong people. But we try not to let irritation boil over into anger. There are no wars between us. We don’t hold grudges. There’s no suffering in silence. We talk things out. We don’t let hurts fester. We’re good at resolving our conflicts without hurting each other’s feelings.”

They work at staying in the moment. “I don’t treat this relationship the way I treated my marriage and other heterosexual relationships,” Dodson says. “There’s no expectation of living together happily ever after till death do us part. No pressure to buy into that fantasy, which is a lie anyway. We’re committed to staying together as long as it feels good to both of us. Things stay lighthearted and pleasurable.”

They give each other space. “We’re together so much that we needed to create some time apart. We have some separate friends and often socialize without the other. We also have our own beds in separate bedrooms. But the first one to go to bed gets tucked in by the other, and we cuddle every night for 15 minutes or so going over our day.”

The final element in the Dodson-Wilkinson balance of relationship power is nonmonogamy. Since her divorce in 1965, Dodson has been militantly and very happily nonmonogamous. When Wilkinson entered her life, she considered herself beyond jealousy.

She was wrong. “A girlfriend of mine was attracted to Eric, so with his permission, I gave him to her for her birthday. Afterward, she wanted to see more of him, and it pissed me off. I got angry — and then felt embarrassed about it. I had to relearn what I’d learned in the ’60s — that we have a choice between being monogamous or enjoying the big wide world of sex. Since I’ve already had a fabulous sex life, it seemed unfair to Eric to demand monogamy. Especially since part of the foundation of our relationship is the mentor-student thing. He wants to carry on my sex-education work. But nonmonogamy made me uncomfortable at first. I was afraid he’d find some sweet young thing and run off. Finally, I took a long look in the mirror and said: Dodson, get it together. I knew that holding Eric back would ruin things between us. I made a decision to get over being jealous.”

“Neither of us was into monogamy,” Wilkinson says. “In our view, monogamy cheats each member of a couple out of being fully sexual by shrinking the world down to two people. By saying you’ll limit your screwing to one person, you’re screwing yourself. But believing something intellectually doesn’t mean that it’s easy to accept emotionally. So we spent a good deal of time discussing how we could make a nonmonogamous relationship work.”

They came up with one simple rule: No one brings anyone else home or stays out all night without first checking in with the other to make sure it feels OK.

Since agreeing on this rule, they’ve had a few threesomes and foursomes, and Eric has had sex with a few women he’s met through friends. “That’s been fine with me,” Dodson says. So far she’s gone out with a few of her old girlfriends and has had sex with only one other man. Currently, neither one has any other regular lovers.

Both Dodson and Wilkinson view their nonmonogamy as one advantage of their big age difference: “I don’t think I could ever have this kind of relationship with a woman my own age,” Wilkinson says. “They’re fixated on marriage and children. They’re very threatened by nonmonogamy. It takes an older woman, a woman with Betty’s experience, to let go of sexual possessiveness.”

“I have a former lover,” Dodson says, “a man I almost married, who is now 80. His wife is 40. She loved him at first, but she’s in a different place now. She’s chomping at the bit to have a life of her own, including sex with other men. But her husband insists on monogamy. In a relationship where one is much older than the other, I don’t think it’s fair for the older one to own the younger one’s sexuality like that. If age brings wisdom, the older person should be wise enough to allow the young one to experience sex in all of its fullness. By insisting on monogamy, my old friend is no different than an overly possessive parent. Kids rebel against that — and rightly so. I predict his young wife is going to bail out on him.”

Dodson and Wilkinson also credit their nonmonogamy with keeping them devoted to one another. “We never take each other for granted,” Wilkinson explains. “We make the decision to stay together every day.”

Another thing that keeps them together and happy is affection. “We’re always hugging, and cuddling, and smooching,” Dodson says, “not just before bed, but throughout the day. In most couples that falls by the wayside pretty quickly. But not with us. Physical contact, sexual or not, helps keep us connected.”

Some people — usually women — say that a good relationship makes for good sex. Others — usually men — counter that good sex makes for a good relationship. Dodson and Wilkinson are both solidly in the latter camp: “When I have a great orgasm with Eric,” she explains, “I feel this welling up of love that deepens my appreciation for him. Sure, I can have great orgasms by myself, but Eric is so dedicated to my pleasure that being with him increases the intensity of my orgasms. At my age, I think relationships should be fun or why bother? Many women expect love to be profound, deep, meaningful — and last forever. My adult relationships are based on sex, and sex is play. Remember, in our puritanical society, play and pleasure are very suspect.”

Wilkinson agrees: “Many people believe that good sex is this magical thing that somehow falls into your lap when you’re with the right person. I’ve never believed that. Good sex is like any other skill: It takes knowledge and practice. I was frustrated with lovers around my own age. I’d say: ‘Let’s try this, or talk about that,’ but they weren’t into it. They weren’t as experimental as I wanted to be, and that caused conflict. Betty not only wants to experiment as much as I do, but afterward, we both tell each other what we liked, what didn’t work, and what we can do better next time. She’s a great person. She’s had an amazing sex life, and now she’s passing her wisdom along to me.”