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Enough with the "male gaze"!
By Camille Paglia
Trouncing feminist film criticism and its cadre of ass-kissing puritans

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Keith Knight: The joys of mentoring

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Scholars of smut
By Carina Chocano
World Pornography Conference: Academics cheer as porn stars theorize
(10/05/98)

Escaping college poverty
By Hank Hyena
If this campus parasite can make money and get laid, you can too
(10/02/98)

Playboy goes limp without feminist vice grip
By Nicole Nolan
Playboy's flaccid College Girls issue
(09/30/98)

As American as ethnic studies
By Joan Walsh
Strange bedfellows: Can ethnic studies survive a marriage to American studies?
(09/28/98)

Recess
A one-stop playground for weekend frivolity and fun
(09/25/98)

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And yet considering the nature and treatment of certain STDs, there shouldn't be much of a dilemma. Take the common genital warts. A medical dictionary says these start off as "soft, moist, pink or red swellings" -- probably the only time using words like "soft," "moist" and "pink" within the context of sex is actually a turn-off. The swellings then grow rapidly and may develop stalks. And, soon enough, their rough surfaces give them the appearance of small cauliflowers. Treatment ranges from cryotherapy (freezing) to anti-cancer drugs, and most methods frequently fail. Still having that dilemma?

Well, considering the libido of the average college student, the dilemma might indeed still linger. Medical books and associations aren't much help. They often dish out the same rhetoric: "We must educate people about how to prevent the spread of STDs, and especially encourage condom use." This is like a politician calling for world peace. It's all meaningless without a game plan of practical, realistic steps and guidelines. Unfortunately, the mainstream culture offers few forums for such discussion. Besides, much of the blanket advice from sex educators doesn't really take into account the complexity of the issue. Condoms and dental dams tend not to be applied during oral sex, and even then, they don't prevent certain STDs, like pubic lice. Moreover, testing for STDs is not an option for spontaneous, onetime hookups. Honesty, if you're wise, shouldn't be relied on. And abstinence, well, if that's your pleasure then this article has no significance to you anyway.

Below is a summation of the basic approaches either as offered by health officials and/or tested out by those who've come before you. Not one of them will be completely acceptable to the lustful, free-loving student. It's sadly a matter of picking the lesser of all evils:

1) Take the risk and accept the possibilities. Carpe diem! Or carpe herpum!

2) Ask your partners about their status and pray they're honest. Suspend disbelief if necessary.

3) Choose to be only with those whom you know well and trust.

4) Get a full STD-oriented medical exam with your partner. Check his or her results.

5) Obsess over the gruesome possibilities, avoid all sexual interactions with others and curse this ruinous fact of life as you sit at home with your porn collection.

6) Take matters into your own hands (not literally -- that was No. 5). If possible, look for anything out of the ordinary on your partner's body, especially in his or her pubic region: blisters, bumps, reddening, swelling of the skin, itchy rash, enlarged lymph nodes in the groin, mites (some are visible to the naked eye) and mucuslike genital discharge (prior to stimulation, of course). You should greet any one of these with something along the lines of, "Hey, I'm just going to get dressed now and go home to masturbate. Thanks for getting me drunk, though."

Sure, those involved in monogamous relationships may secretly praise the existence of these microbes as barometers of cheating. For example, what guy in a two-year relationship can brush off an accusation of unfaithfulness when he's caught feverishly scratching his balls with one hand and applying prescription Kwell to them with the other?

But for the single horndog out there, whatever approach you adopt, know this: Somewhere between having painful warts on your genitals and experiencing the most delicious time of your life is a decision that you're going to have to live with.
SALON | Oct. 7, 1998

Dan Stern is a first-year MFA creative writing student at the New School for Social Research in New York.