But there’s an awful lot that’s suspicious about Our First Time, too. Why would these kids go through with their first, perhaps clumsy, no doubt anxiety-ridden sexual encounter on the Internet, of all places — their embraces captured by Webcams and streamed to hundreds of thousands of lascivious spectators?

The site’s HTML code includes search keywords like “voyeur, forbidden, tasteless, gross, naked” that aren’t exactly going to draw an audience seeking educational fare. The photos currently displayed on the site aren’t pornographic, but they are somewhat cheesy in a pin-up kind of way — and black bars cover the faces of “Mike” and “Diane,” as in an old-fashioned pulp. And then there’s the matter of an e-mail spam of suspicious origin “protesting” the site; it hailed from a spoofed Juno.com address and was supposedly signed by the Christian Coalition, but that organization has disavowed any involvement. So has Our First Time.

Are “Mike” and “Diane” sex-ed crusaders? Virginal exhibitionists? Performance artists? Or is this some new permutation of “barely legal” porn?

On the one hand, no one has before proposed to lose their virginity online in a tastefully shot way –”This won’t be shot any different than on ‘NYPD Blue,’ except they don’t have a script and are going to be nervous as hell,” Wells says.

On the other hand, video feeds of people having sex aren’t exactly scarce in the Web’s red-light districts.

Wells says that the idea for Our First Time arose in a chat-room discussion with Diane in the wake of the live Internet birth of baby “Sean” on June 16. Wells recalls trying to access the site during that media event — and being turned away because of the site-traffic overload. “It referred me to an area about family planning,” he said, “and there were people bitching and moaning about this event, but there was one woman who was the voice of reason, and she was Diane. She said it was educational and beautiful and it pissed her off that if this could be shown live and considered beautiful, then why not Step One of the conception process? And why are people so spastic about it?”

“Then she said, ‘If I could, I would lose my virginity on the Internet,’ and I, being a programmer, contacted her,” he said.

- – - – - – - – - – - -–>

Wells says that Diane and her boyfriend, Mike, who apparently agreed to go along with Diane and Wells’ proposal, are both virgins who finished high school last May “and plan to get married after college in four years.”

On the big night, scheduled for Aug. 4, Wells will give the Southern California couple “their honeymoon,” albeit one in front of nearly 200,000 onlookers (the number of viewers Wells says he hopes for, and the maximum capacity of his site’s servers).

Along the way, he promises, site visitors can read about the pair’s first AIDS test, follow their trip to purchase condoms, discuss the ethics of the act in bulletin boards and vote in polls. The bulletin boards and polls are on the site already, although the journals kept by the pair won’t be made available until Saturday, says Wells.

So much secrecy surrounds Our First Time that it’s impossible to take it at face value. Who are these kids? Are those pictures really them? Are they really virgins? Is it really going to be Webcast free? And why are they waiting for 18 days from the Saturday opening until Aug. 4? To chronicle their sexual journey — or to let the media build up their hype? And why is “ourfirsttime.com” registered with Internic under Wells’ production company, “First Time Productions”?

Wells says he’s received death threats from “religious nuts” who have forced him to exercise extreme secrecy about the location of Mike’s and Diane’s act, and about the technologies that will be deployed to broadcast it. And both he and his site host say the site is under constant attack from hackers. That might explain why the site was unreachable all day Wednesday — or maybe its servers were simply overloaded in the wake of widespread media coverage.

About the production company, Wells says, “My attorney said, ‘You’ve got to do something to protect yourself personally.’ And I’m hoping that A&E or someone might be interested in this project later.” Wells says his personal interest in Diane and Mike, beyond altruistic reasons, is self-promotion for his Web design skills.

The pair’s identities, Wells says, will be revealed Aug. 4. “I just hope they don’t start following me to find Diane and Mike … We’ve gotten e-mail that says, ‘You are Satan’s spawn and it is my duty to make sure you don’t spawn yourselves.’ On the 18th day, everything will be open. [Diane and Mike] just want to get there.” He also says that because of the hostile reactions, he is giving the pair until Friday night to decide whether they really want to go ahead.

But Wells would not show us that e-mail, nor allow us to interview Diane or Mike before the site’s opening, nor see any other sites he has designed. His secrecy could be justified — or it could conceivably be the cover for a scam. He takes such skepticism in stride, saying, “As for legitimacy, I don’t know how to prove this any more than to just do it.”

Wells says he’s trying to keep a low profile — but he and his attorney have already talked to Salon, Wired News and Reuters. The first mention of his site in mainstream media came last Friday, when Conan O’Brian made a joke about how the first event would be followed shortly by the first live Netcast of a murder — by the girl’s father. That night, Wells said, hackers exploited a security loophole left by a “hit counter” on the site’s front page — and deleted the entire site. It’s been under attack ever since, he said.

Wells’ Web host is The Entangled Web, a one-person hosting service with experience in running pornographic live video feeds. Wells explained that other service providers rejected him, forcing him to work with someone unfazed by the nature of the content. The Entangled Web’s owner, who asked not to be named, confirms Wells’ story: “I want to support him, and get this thing up and running. To me, this is no different than the feed I run from Amsterdam.”

About the hacking, he adds, “We learned last Friday not to put up any [Microsoft] FrontPage extensions. I can’t believe someone managed to pop the counter.” He said on Tuesday the site was under continuous threat from “SYN flooding” — a technical attack to overwhelm the site’s server and make it inaccessible. At the time, the site was functioning normally, but by Wednesday morning, its servers were not responding. The webmaster said he’s currently reading three books on network security, and is prepared to delay the unveiling should hackers interfere.

That is, if there are hackers. The obsessive need for security that Wells and his Webmaster invoke for everything from the kids’ identities to the technical methods of streaming video and sound to a target of 200,000 people makes large chunks of their stories unconfirmable. As a result, healthy skepticism is the order of the day. Visitors to the site are leaving cynical predictions on its bulletin board, like “come back in two weeks and this will be a pay site.”

If they are to overcome the swirl of doubts that surround Our First Time, it looks like Mike and Diane and their impresario, Wells, will simply have to “just do it” — and prove that their motives are as unmercenary as they claim. At this point, the most far-fetched scenario is that everyone involved is telling the truth. But stranger things have happened on the Net.

We cut the connection.

For years, videoconferencing has been hyped as the next breakthrough “killer app” for the computing world. But it has consistently failed to live up to its sci-fi, Jetsons-future promise. It was too geeky, too hard to configure and required too much hardware, bandwidth and computer processing power. It just wasn’t easy. But over the past year and a half, the tide has begun to shift — due in no small part to a decision by Microsoft to give away millions of free copies of NetMeeting.

Microsoft, as always, has ambitious plans. The company considers the videoconferencing software to be an “integral” part of the Windows operating system, just like Internet Explorer. The stakes are huge. If Microsoft can succeed in seeding the entire universe with NetMeeting, it will not only help Bill Gates further lock customers into the Microsoft software orbit, but could also goose the entire computing industry into another hugely profitable sales cycle, as consumers rush to buy new computers that can handle the videoconferencing load.

But Microsoft’s encouragement has resulted in some very un-Microsoftish behavior. For Microsoft is not only giving away NetMeeting with every copy of Internet Explorer 4.0 and every new installation of the Windows operating system, it is also providing the default gathering place for NetMeeting users anxious to fire up their software and gain entree into the world of Internet videoconferencing. In essence, the company is hosting a set of virtual singles bars — mix-and-match points for people with cams who want to learn how to use them. Microsoft has imposed no rules at these “Internet Locator Servers.” And the hands-off, laissez-faire approach has led to a hands on, anything goes atmosphere.

Or, as one amazed NetMeeting experimenter discovered, “a 24-hour international sex orgy is being hosted by Microsoft.” If you’re looking for a cybersex “show,” Microsoft is where you want to go today.

- – - – - – - – - -

This is not exactly how Microsoft planned it. While some critics of the Internet might argue that all of cyberspace is one vast red-light district, it’s hard to imagine that Microsoft is pleased with its unlikely role of X-rated matchmaker. Even if the company is reluctant to talk about it publicly, Microsoft, like most other vendors of videoconferencing software, is all too aware that technological obstacles aren’t the only roadblocks preventing videoconferencing software from going mainstream. The chance of unexpectedly running into a graphic greeting card from “HORNY4U” from Amsterdam is equally intimidating.

Microsoft gives NetMeeting away free because it wants to “make Windows the preferred platform for Internet conferencing,” says NetMeeting product manager Tom Laemmel. But by no means did Microsoft intend to launch an orgiastic free-for-all, he says.

“It is a problem,” concedes Laemmel. “We’re not comfortable with it, and we’re not happy with it.”

Laemmel is also quick to assert that the majority of NetMeeting users are not sex-crazed exhibitionists. He says NetMeeting receives high marks from business users for its “application sharing” abilities — features that allow geographically separated colleagues to work on the same Excel spreadsheet or Word file. And he notes that anyone can set up his or her own NetMeeting server (technically referred to as an “ILS” or “Internet Locator Server”) and institute whatever rules for behavior they want. No one is forced to go to Microsoft’s home servers.

But for the first-time user, the Microsoft NetMeeting servers are likely to be the first stop. That’s the default setting of the software, and so that’s where the crowds are. And while horny adventurers from as far afield as Taiwan or Denmark are having a field day cruising the NetMeeting servers looking for “netsex” action, other would-be videoconferencers are shying away from the technology. As one NetMeeting user puts it, “I’m tired of making a call to someone who seems innocuous and having them drop their pants.”

He went on to note that it was not helpful to his business to attempt to demonstrate NetMeeting’s advantages to an interested corporate exec and be constantly interrupted by videophone calls from people identifying themselves with such comments as “let’s jack off” or “want to see naked woman.”

“The filth one has to endure just logging on to the servers is enough to discourage our family’s use of the product,” says former NetMeeting user Lee Sanders. “The comments and names with their suggestive connotations are not for families.”

“From what I’ve heard even Bill Gates has complained to the [NetMeeting] team about it,” says Robert Scoble, webmaster for a site devoted to NetMeeting. “One of the more humorous things about it that I’ve heard directly from the team is that whenever they wanted to test NetMeeting’s ability to receive calls, they’d set NetMeeting to join the ILS servers with a female name.”

“The challenge we are facing is that many of the most enthusiastic early adopters of this type of technology are primarily interested in sexual content,” says Tim Dorcey, one of the original creators of Cu-SeeMe, the Internet’s first publicly available videoconferencing software program. “This lopsided interest, relative to the general population, creates an environment that is unappealing to the general population and serves to maintain the dominance of this kind of behavior within the community.”

As science fiction author William Gibson pointed out back in 1984, “The street finds its own uses for things.” Certainly, Microsoft’s experience is nothing new. Sex fiends have always been the first to take advantage of new technological breakthroughs, and videoconferencing software for the Internet has been available since at least 1993.

Dorcey, who is currently working on iVisit, another videoconferencing software program, remembers being surprised by how quickly Cu-SeeMe began being swamped by sexual content. John Becker, a student at Cornell University, where Cu-SeeMe was invented, still remembers the momentous night in 1994 when a Japanese couple logged on to the Cornell Cu-SeeMe “reflector” — and engaged in a passionate bout of love-making right in front of a stunned (but appreciative) audience.

Consensual videophone sex has been popular ever since. As one outgoing netsex devotee, Michael Stewart, notes on his Web page, “Finding fun is easy when you’re living in New York, but when you’re under three feet of snow, the roads are closed and you’ve worn out all your porno tapes, yanking the crank with an e-buddy is a perfect solution.”

But because of technological limitations, Cu-SeeMe was never the perfect solution for cybersex devotees. Cu-SeeMe requires would-be videoconferencers to log on to a “reflector” capable of hosting multiple Cu-SeeMe users. At these reflector sites, every user can see everyone else who’s simultaneously logged in. Such reflectors, if they become popular (as those that feature a high percentage of nudity tend to do), place a huge load on the computer hosting the reflector. For years, Cu-SeeMe cybersex addicts have been forced to migrate from one reflector to another, moving on after each new host crashes or is shut down by administrators.

The reflector approach solved the fundamental problem facing Internet videoconferencing enthusiasts: Their lack of a permanent videophone number for people to call. To conference with someone over the Internet, you must know their “IP number” — their numerical Internet address. Unfortunately, most Internet users who log on from home don’t have a permanent IP number; instead, they are given a new one by their Internet service provider each time they dial in.

Microsoft has addressed the server load issue by setting up directories for people to find each other, rather than actually hosting the video stream itself. That’s what the Internet Locator Server is: an online phone book listing the current address of each NetMeeting user. You find who you are looking for, click and create a direct one-to-one connection. The load is on your computer, not Microsoft’s.

Microsoft’s unintended support for the Internet’s bizarre mating rituals is widely appreciated, particularly by the online gay community. As Michael Stewart observes, “Microsoft’s contribution to queer cyberspace is already enormously popular in Europe, and a few hours online can garner you friends from all sorts of exotic places.”

“Microsoft has done a good job — it’s free, it works well and it loads really easily,” says Matt Skallerud, owner of gaywired.com. “Folks have a hard time with software. NetMeeting just kind of works.”

Indeed, NetMeeting is working so well for the gay community that, quite frequently, NetMeeting users listing themselves at the Microsoft NetMeeting servers specifically designate themselves as “not gay” in the “comments” section of their listing. Or, as one user wrote, “not naked, not gay, not interested.”

The question is, if Microsoft is indeed “not happy” with the situation, why hasn’t it taken steps to segregate the sexual hubbub? Two of NetMeeting’s competitors, ICUII and iVisit, both avoid the problem of users encountering undesirable sexual content by setting up separate rooms.

Bernie Hoffman, president of Cybration, which sells ICUII, says that his company has a “G-rated room,” an “adult room” and a “gay/lesbian/bisexual room.” Hoffman says the policy works fine — people seem generally willing to head to the appropriate room. If they’re sexually explicit in the G-rated space, they receive a warning. And if they ignore the warning, they are blocked from further server access.

“If you don’t give them a place to go and do what they want to do, they’ll go anywhere,” says Hoffman. “The problem is it is not 100 percent infallible. It’s like trying to stop obscene phone calls.”

So why doesn’t Microsoft try to rope off separate directories? Microsoft observers suggest that doing so would put Microsoft in the potentially uncomfortable legal and moral position of appearing to “condone” the behavior that occurs on X-rated servers.

NetMeeting product manager Laemmel says most of the queries he hears about sexual content on the Microsoft NetMeeting servers come from reporters rather than actual users. But he also says that Microsoft put together the entire Internet Locator Server system as an “afterthought” — once it realized that NetMeeting users would need some help locating one another’s IP addresses.

But ultimately, Microsoft would rather not host servers at all, says Laemmel. “Microsoft is not in the business of trying to host servers and directories,” says Laemmel. “It’s not what we want to do, and it’s not what we want to do well.”

That’s fairly clear from the NetMeeting documentation. Nowhere on the NetMeeting Web pages or in the help system for NetMeeting itself is there any acknowledgment of the potential problem of encountering sexual content on the Microsoft NetMeeting servers. The only hint comes from a configuration feature that allows a NetMeeting user to voluntarily specify whether their information is “personal,” “business” or “adult-only.”

“There is a feature in NetMeeting that allows a person to identify themselves as an adult-oriented person … but it didn’t seem to work,” says Bob Summers, author of the official Microsoft book on NetMeeting. “The people who want to expose themselves aren’t necessarily following the rules as a programmer might want them to.”

The best advice to those who are offended by what they find on the Microsoft NetMeeting servers, says Summers and Scoble, is to go elsewhere. Scoble recommends using other tools, such as the Internet-based chat system ICQ, to find the people one might want to chat with.

Regardless, despite the incongruity of a virtual meat market operating under the Microsoft logo, Microsoft’s efforts to make NetMeeting the industry standard appear to be succeeding. NetMeeting has quickly established itself as a major force in this software market. The ubiquity of the program has encouraged most other makers of videoconferencing software to ensure that their products work with NetMeeting. Even White Pine Software, which makes the commercial version of Cu-SeeMe, is selling a videoconferencing server solution called MeetingPoint — designed to enable NetMeeting users to go beyond NetMeeting’s current limitation of one-to-one video contact.

Microsoft’s competitors respond to Microsoft’s NetMeeting giveaway with resigned acceptance and some grumbling. It is hard to fight against 50 million free copies — the number Laemmel cites for total NetMeeting distributions. White Pine’s vice president of marketing, Brian Lichorowic, says that Cu-SeeMe’s growth has dramatically slowed since NetMeeting’s introduction.

But iVisit’s Dorcey sees a silver lining.

“Microsoft has a nasty habit of scaring other people out of any market they dabble in,” says Dorcey. “That is a major impediment to innovation, but perhaps to our advantage if it scares away our competition as well.”

Everyone in the Internet videoconferencing business will gain if the overall visibility of videoconferencing is raised, even if such visibility includes naked genitalia here and there. To some videoconferencing fans, the social benefits could be enormous — and are crucial to why the Internet has been so successful in the first place.

“It’s great that you can get information on various topics,” says Gaywired’s Skallerud, “but people want to meet, and they want to communicate. That’s the fundamental reason why the Net has exploded.”

Sex is a big part of that explosion — as just about anyone who has ever hung out in a private America Online chat room could tell you. The giant companies that are building the Net today often yearn to deny this — to try to disentangle sex from the business of cyberspace. But that’s an impossible task. Microsoft is just the latest corporation to face these facts of life.

I don’t think that’s good news myself. I’m probably one of a handful of
Americans willing to say in public that I think sexual exploration and
intimacy between young people has the possibility of being beneficial, not
just traumatic. Why is it so frightening to admit what so many of us know
from experience? The idea that sex, by definition, is psychologically
harmful to teenagers is repugnant to me.

In my rant two weeks ago, however, I got a couple of major facts completely
wrong, and I’d like to correct and apologize for those now. I said that
Oregon endorses a sexual education program for young people called S.T.A.R.S. (Students Today Aren’t Ready for Sex). That’s true, it is a state program,
but it is not mandatory in every Oregon school, and in fact, the
Springfield schools don’t use it.

After my story was published, I got an e-mail from Kathy Dimond, a founding
board member of the S.T.A.R.S. foundation in Oregon. She explained to me that
S.T.A.R.S. “does not preach against masturbation. We refuse the demands of
some conservative parents who want us to tell their kids to wait until
marriage to have sex. We won’t. We tell SIXTH graders it’s better to wait.
Not how long, or until what age, but we hope until they can make a better
decision about their bodies … What S.T.A.R.S. really teaches is refusal
skills.”

I also found some material on the Web that I erroneously believed to be
S.T.A.R.S. curriculum on the subject of masturbation, but I was wrong. As Dimond
corrected me, “The word (masturbation) never appears in S.T.A.R.S. curriculum.
If kids ask about it, the student mentors say, ‘Stick around after class
and talk to whoever the health department sends along as the adult
facilitator.’”

Why isn’t S.T.A.R.S. being used in Springfield if so many Oregonians think it’s
great? I have called several junior high school principals in Springfield
to ask what kind of sex education program they use, but despite my most
respectful requests, I have yet to get an answer. Dimond speculated that,
“the reason that S.T.A.R.S. is not in all classrooms is that some communities
feel we are too liberal.”

My encounters with these how-to-say-no programs made me think even more
closely about my own public school memories. I first learned about the
evils of marijuana in seventh grade, where we viewed a whiz-bang of a movie
about a clean-cut boy who goes from smoking one joint to a heroin stupor in
a matter of hours. It would have scared me good if it hadn’t been for my
friend Michelle, who walked with me over the railroad tracks to the
satellite campus where we took home economics class. She lit up a joint en
route and balanced on the railroad ties like a pro. An hour later, her
buttermilk biscuits were as good, if not better, than anyone else’s. The
news that my school was dishing out drug propaganda only confirmed my
cynicism about the status quo.

That year, I had no interest in real boys, although I was aware that others
did. I was passionately in love with my girlfriends and would write them
14-page letters about how screwed up the world and our families were. I was
so immersed in the schoolgirl equivalent of hard-core pornography –
romance novels — that I thought an orgasm was a sign from God that Prince
Charming had just whisked you off your feet. If I could change anything
about the sex education I got in school, I’d have had someone
mentor me about the absurd conflation of sex and love in young women’s
minds.

I would say most young women I meet these days on high school and college
campuses are struggling to liberate themselves from the pitfalls of sexual
passivity and Prince Charming fantasies. They know how to say “no”
repetitively, but they’re utterly at a loss as to what to say “yes” to, or
what form their own sexual initiative might take. Consequently, their
refusals often wilt into guilty compromises and resentful ambivalence.

Nothing much has changed in how Rules Girls are made, I’m afraid. I was
entertaining a group of first-grade girls last week, and they asked me to
play a fortune telling game. I had to write predictions on little slips of
paper for them to pick at random. I asked them what kind of predictions
they liked– “Scary ones? Funny ones? Ones about love?”

“LOVE!” they cried. One little girl got so excited she began dictating to
me. “Say something like: ‘A boy will kiss you!’” she urged. The others all
jumped with delight. “Really?” I replied, nonplused. “What if I put,
”‘You will kiss a boy’?”

“NO! EWW! NO!” They found my suggestion appalling.

Boys, I believe, are getting a different message than they did when I was
prepubescent. Part of the old-style double standard was that young men
weren’t given a great deal of grief about masturbation or their sexual
appetite. They were expected to have sexual desires and to cope with them
the best they could. No one was pushing the “hair will grown on your palms”
line in the ’60s — except to the kids suffering in parochial schools.

Today’s conservative abstinence movement, while it still places the greater
emphasis on girls keeping their legs crossed, is devoted to convincing boys
that their sexual desires can lead to an addiction, a scary loss of
normality. That bogeyman, the Sex Crazed Male, keeps cropping up — like
the recent, horrified speculation that a U.S. president might be a “sex
addict.”

One of the agonies of adolescence is the fear that we might be weird or
abnormal, and that no one will ever be attracted to us. Our bodies go
through a hideous revolt against all aesthetics. When the grown-up world
says that thinking about sex “too much” or masturbating every day is a
danger sign, it feeds right into that anxiety.

The tone of the abstinence movement today, which is felt in public
education more than anywhere else, seems to be that if we can bottle up
these nasty boys by spooking them into believing they are deviant, we can
restore the sexual mores of the 1950s — or at least the 1950s as the
fundamentalists fantasize they were.

I’ll never forget the time I was on some inane talk show and the host
suddenly demanded to know what age I was when I first “had sex.” “Sixteen,”
I answered, and he blurted back, “Wouldn’t you say that was child abuse?”

No I wouldn’t, Mr. Donahue. Actually, it was one of the best days of my
whole life. I wouldn’t trade the maturity, joy and insight I gained from my
teenage experiences of sexuality, love and affection for anything in the
world. And with a little candor and courage, I think a lot of other
post-teenagers would agree with me.

I got plenty of flack back then from the Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic crowd who said that these classes were some sort of crass commie plot designed to get middle-class naifs to strap on an ax and wear a beret. I do think I look rather fetching in a beret — but that’s beside the point. Students in classes about Marxism debate Marxism, and in classes about erotic films students debate blue movies just as fiercely as they would wrestle with “Das Kapital.” Yes, they might have their minds opened to something they never talked about in high school — but isn’t that the point at this time in their lives?

My students have their own set of apprehensions when they enter our classroom on the first day of the course. Urgent questions have ranged from, “Can a straight white man be in this class?” (I should hope so, since in the real world you represent the largest single group by far of erotica consumers!) to, “Will we be watching any porn that features people of color?” (Yes, although it won’t be labeled as such — pornography makers are actually more inclusive of every sort of ethnicity and body type than their elitist cousins in Hollywood).

But the most provocative demand that I’ve heard so far was the time a young woman introduced herself to the rest of the class on the first day by making a small speech:

“I am a rape survivor, and I see in your syllabus that we are to spend two weeks discussing and viewing examples of sex and violence. Given my background as a victim of violence, I want to be excused from those two weeks, or any other screenings that would graphically depict violent sex.”

She threw down her gauntlet with such precision that the rest of the class hung in suspense at the end of her declaration. Would I insist on holding her hand in the fire?

I guess I would. “Actually, you can’t skip the sex and violence portion of the class,” I said. “It’s a bit like med school, where even if you’re sincerely interested in the human body, you can’t duck out of the autopsy lab because the sight of flesh and blood makes you ill. “

“Think about it,” I told her. “The single most contentious argument about erotic expression today is the debate over whether it is a catalyst for antisocial behavior. For me to exclude violence from a study of pornography would be irresponsible and absurd. The whole nature of the pornography-equals-violence schtick is to warn people that something is dangerous without ever actually showing them the goods — as if that would turn them into a pillar of salt. In this class, you’re going to look at the variety of what gets called “violent” — from high-class films that Pauline Kael drooled over to banal little bondage loops — and you can decide for yourself whether it’s dangerous, exquisite or ridiculous.”

I could tell she was unhappy with my reply — the look on her face was, dare I say it, violently pissed. So I handed her the only olive branch I could.

“I think you have every right to judge what is the right time and manner for you to study a subject, and certainly my class is not the only way to learn about porn. You’ve already figured out that you don’t want to see certain things that are right up front in this class — and that’s why you should call up the registrar and drop now with no regrets.”

She did drop, and a few others left as well. I never got to add that I thought there were faulty and treacherous premises at work in her objections.

People who have been raped or sexually abused do not have a uniform reaction in their sexual fantasies. Some people certainly do have an aversion to any literal representation of their experience, whether realistic or farce. But other survivors find that they have rapelike fantasies, some of which were “regulars” from before their attack, and some which are reinterpretations of their assault. Some are really turned on by their fantasies, but are repelled by films or pictures that show the same thing. Others just can’t stay away from the most graphic B-movie horror flicks. All of these reactions are realistic and very human responses to coping with a trauma after the fact.

Men and women constantly take our most intense life experiences and tell the story differently to ourselves, over and over, creating a new outcome, turning powerlessness to release, pain to pleasure. Rape victims or not, we would surely all go mad if we could not use our imagination to cope with life’s dark side as well as the light.

When we view someone else’s taboo “art” — be it X-rated or Oscar night material — we may be surprised when we see that we’re not the only ones thinking about the shadowy side of the human character, or, on the other hand, shocked to see that someone has gone in a direction that we would prefer to deny.

When I first started watching porno, I soon found scenes that embarrassed me or made me want get out a 10-foot pole with a press release attached reading, “This is DISGUSTING.” I also felt like a big hypocrite for feeling aroused at the same time. That was when I formed my Pink Elephant Theory of Porn: What turns you on may not match your artistic values, your romantic choices in real life or your political views, but it is just as much a part of you, just as real and substantial as any other aspect. It’s not a defect or weakness, it’s our intuitive ability to take all that is unbearable and crazy and unspeakable about life and turn it into the juice of eroticism.

You can’t afford to be a snob or hide out as a victim claiming that someone else’s fantasies are sleazy or degrading — because without the spirit that created that imagination, you wouldn’t be alive, you wouldn’t be able to discriminate, you’d be a stranger to both your potential and your boundaries. Don’t tell me that your pain means that you have to be blind, that it’s a noble reason for ignorance — because there are too many of us who’ve been through the same suffering and found out that embracing our sexual depths was the most precious recovery of all.

Vidal’s contributions to popular culture — both as an early writer for television and as a Hollywood screenwriter — expose human folly and frailty, in a more contemporary and occasionally picaresque mode. Compare, for instance, “Visit to a Small Planet” or “The Best Man” to “Suddenly, Last Summer” or “Myra Breckinridge.” His forthcoming novel, “The Smithsonian Institution,” returns to his favorite political and sexual themes.

In his aptly titled autobiography, “Palimpsest,” the personal and the historical rub shoulders again. Jack and Jackie, Tennessee and Anaïs all wander across the playing field, without their political or literary raiments — drunk, fragile, mendacious — as if caught in the harsh, incontestable light of a Polaroid snapshot taken by a sober nephew or cousin.

Even better are the essays. Reading through the dozens of reviews, stories and editorials that compose “United States” (accounting for approximately two-thirds of his published articles), it becomes clear that Vidal’s reputation as a polemicist is something of a bum rap. He is, at heart, a brilliant pragmatist, with a great sense of humor and irony. But Americans have never cared much for irony. Perhaps it’s his extended exposure to the famous that allows Vidal not only to point out that the emperor’s new clothes are not there, but that the emperor is actually an emperor and not just the prez (as he recently argued in Vanity Fair). It was Vidal’s commentary on American empire and the Internet that inspired the following interview, conducted via fax, with Vidal at his villa in Italy.

Do you own a personal computer?

Yes, but a friend operates it.

How is your perception of American culture and politics influenced by your perspective as a resident of Italy?

I watch CNN, read the Herald Tribune, plus two Italian newspapers, the Guardian weekly roundup of Washington Post stories, Le Monde and the Brit Guardian. The Economist is invaluable. Our corporate owners lie to us about everything except money, which they have to deal honestly with, in reporting, that is. And I get faxed information I need. I’m more in
touch than if I lived, let us say, in Anahaim, Orange County. Sorry, Mickey.

In Vanity Fair, you quoted Dean Acheson’s comment about “the average American” spending 10 minutes each day “listening, reading and arguing about the world outside his own country.” What impact has the global-village effect of the Internet had on those 10 minutes?

I don’t think the Internet has hit the “average American” yet, but when it does, I should think the 10-minute attention span will probably still obtain because back of it is the refusal of the American corporate ruling class to educate the people at large. How can you find out what you don’t know — nearly everything as far as history and foreign countries go — if you have no idea of what it is you don’t know?

How great a threat is the global community created by the Internet to the American empire?

I should like to think terminal, as the empire has wrecked our society — $5 trillion of debt, no proper public education, no health care — and done the rest of the world incomparable harm.

But in the next few years, the empire is going to strike back at the Internet in the interest of protecting our children from porn, drugs and terrorism — all of which the U.S. government will claim is being peddled by the Internet. There is not a trick they won’t pull to get control. After all, what better way to control everyone’s mind, or at least the input of information?

Does the distribution of pornography over the Internet influence your position on pornography — or your position on the Internet?

I am for the First Amendment and so pornography is protected along with really damaging stuff like CIA disinformation on public matters or false-claiming commercials. No child was ever raped by a book or a picture. Actually, pedophiles are turned off by explicit sex and adolescents can’t think about anything else anyway.

One effect of new technology and new media is an increased demand for speed: instant news, immediate communication between disparate points on the globe. What does this mean for the writer/reader of tomorrow?

Not good in the sense that the more rapidly a story is told, the less well it is told. It is also hardly understood at all if there’s another story on its heels. So — slow down what’s important and provide context.

Who are your favorite authors? Are there other historical novelists whose work you continue to enjoy?

I’m obliged to read history, not novels.

Do you find fiction easier or more difficult to write than nonfiction?

Writing is writing for a writer. Others, I’m told, have problems.

Do you keep a journal?

No.

What is your current writing project?

“The Smithsonian Institution,” a novel.

What is the novel about?

In 1939, the Smithsonian Institution takes in a 13-year-old genius from St. Albans School to help build an atomic bomb in the basement. But he is more ambitious; manipulates time; stops Hitler. Exhibits come alive at night and he has an affair with a first lady, who is a chicken hawk.

In the United States, the small amount of government funding that is available to artists is about to disappear entirely. Which environment do you think is more conducive to creating great art — a competitive free market like the U.S. or the European model of government support for the artist?

One can make the case either way. Dictators and oligarchies have usually made the most beautiful cities — imperial Rome, Medici Florence. But does one want to pay that price politically? I’m a Darwinian in the arts. The artist, if good, will find his way through the dreck of his time.

“The City and the Pillar” was published 21 years before Stonewall. What effect has the contemporary gay movement had on literature?

Writers are freer to write about same-sexuality but, in the long run, all that matters is writing well, no matter what one’s sexual preoccupations.

Do you have any thoughts about “queer studies” in the academy?

I’ve always thought the academy pretty queer itself, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Since most of what they study is fairly useless, long lists of same-sexers — particularly champion bowlers — may make for greater tolerance.

Is the fight for gay marriage a legitimate objective for homosexuals?

I take the position that as “homo/heterosexual” are adjectives describing acts, they can never be nouns. No person can be homosexual or heterosexual and the division of everyone into two teams is part of a stupidity to which Americans and Brits are particularly prone. Everyone is a mixture of desires and who does what with an agreeable partner is of no concern to society. Why have “gay” marriage when so much of our discontents and disorder came from heterosexual marriage?

In “Pornography,” you write, “Man plus woman equals baby equals famine,” and that “since additional children are no longer needed, it is impossible to say that some acts are ‘right’ and others ‘wrong.’” Given the danger of overpopulation, doesn’t this mean that homosexuality is somehow more “right” for a crowded planet than heterosexuality?

If one were sensible — not possible in monotheistic societies as we know them — the homosexual act, as it leads to no little stranger, is “safer” than the heterosexual act as far as the planet’s future is concerned. I suspect governments will be begging populations in the next century to indulge in same-sex with the same powerful incoherence that they now support family values.

In “The Birds and the Bees,” you write, “I regard the pope and ayatollah as the somehow preprogrammed agents of our demise.” Which is most likely to destroy mankind: global warming, overpopulation, war or religious fundamentalism?

One could make the case that these are the four horsemen of the apocalypse and they will probably work together, as in the past.

What do you consider the most important political event of the 20th century?

For the United States, the Scopes trial of 1925, when the line was drawn between those who believed in science and those who believed in the Garden of Eden. Superstition won that time around, but the battle lines are ever clearer and the war goes on. On the world scene, the Soviets’
decision to liquidate their empire, something which we should now emulate.

What will be the most important event of the next century?

I’ve not yet paid it a visit. I suspect a world plague like the 1918 flu epidemic.

Of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein — praising the reduction in crime in New York during the mayor’s tenure — said: “The price you pay for a dictatorship is freedom but everything works better.” Comments?

I worship the ground Al walks on, but he is, alas, full of shit. Get the William Appleman Williams Reader — our greatest historian — and read him on “community.”

Who was the most dangerous American president of the 20th century?

H.S. Truman, who started the Cold War, followed by J.F. Kennedy, macho man with a bad back and no adrenal function, with far too much cortisone being pumped into him. The missile crisis nearly killed everyone on earth. To his credit, he chickened out, but, to Khruschev’s credit, he saw the whole apocalyptic mess and backed off as well.

Who was the best American president of the 20th century?

The FDR of 1933-37. He saved corporate capitalism. I can’t say, in retrospect, this was such a good thing, but I was a kid when the Bonus Army marched on my hometown of Washington during Hoover and revolution was in the air. The next year FDR was in office.

Following up on your New Yorker review of Seymour Hirsch’s JFK biography, how meaningful is a president’s personal life in evaluating his performance as a leader? Regarding Paula Jones, for instance, why do Americans focus on their leaders’ sex lives rather than their political accomplishments?

Sex lives are of no consequence in civilized countries; unfortunately … reader, finish the sentence yourself. The conglomerates that own the U.S. and pay for both political parties also own the media. Politics — who collects what tax money in order to benefit whom — is the one subject no politician is allowed to address. That’s why we get nothing but Paula Joneses while the fact that corporations pay little or no tax on profits is a non-subject, as is the citizen’s income tax (large), for which he gets no health service.

Speaking to the Hollywood Radio and Television Society recently, Vice President Al Gore stated the following: “When the character of Ellen came out, millions of Americans were forced to look at sexual orientation in a more open light.” And of Hollywood: “Few communities in this nation care as deeply about social and ethical issues.” Care to comment?

As a longtime member of the Hollywood community (I have a house in the Hollywood Hills and still do the odd picture), I applaud Al. But then Hollywood supports the Democratic Party. On same-sex matters, Hollywood never dares get more than an inch or two ahead of the New York Times.

As someone who has run for public office, which aspects of the artist’s personality do you think would benefit the electorate?

Empathy, without which we don’t do good work; without which demagogues flourish.

What are your thoughts on the possibility of a Gore in the White House?

I would accept, of course. Unfortunately, my cousin Al is the wrong Gore. And though I’m the right one, time’s winged wastebasket is scurrying near.

If you were president, what would be your first executive decision?

I would cut Pentagon procurement (around $250 billion) by two-thirds. Taxes for the middle class need never be raised again in the next 50 years. Then I would tax corporate profits, something hardly done nowadays. Then we could have national health and even an intelligent, accessible school system.

Are you proud to be an American?

As long as those truths we hold to be inalienable are not entirely alienated from us. You might, for the customers, quote from the Declaration of Independence.

Why is America obsessed with Jackie O.?

We saw her picture for decades and she never talked.

Why is America obsessed with Princess Diana?

We saw her picture for close to 20 years and she never stopped talking.

Reading your essays, I sometimes get the feeling that you are an optimist and at other times that you are a pessimist. Which word (if either one) would you use to describe yourself?

Realist.