“It’s more like ‘Daddy Day Care,’” I usually quip. And while that's meant to be a joke, there’s also some truth to it. I spend a good amount of my work time offering support and advice to men in their 30s and 40s who are just coming out of the closet. Surprised? I was too, at first. But then I thought, where else are these guys going to catch up on two decades of sexual and social experience? Until someone comes out with “Gay for Dummies,” the next best thing is a trained professional.

A few years ago, for example, a charming man from Vancouver hired me every night for a week while he was in Las Vegas for a conference. By the time he went home we'd checked off every item on his wish list, and he was finally comfortable lying naked with another man. It was strangely gratifying to help a guy learn the ropes.

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I've been with my boyfriend for a year and a half and having sex with him for a year. I'm getting concerned. I haven't had an orgasm with him at all. He does please me and I've been so close to climaxing a few times but something always stops me.

I've had orgasms before but only by myself or in my dreams. The most troubling part is that I don't dream/fantasize about having sex with him. Or any straight guy for that matter.

I've had a few dreams where I orgasm in my sleep while fantasizing about gay men having sex. Even more disconcerting is that in one of those dreams I was a "bottom" gay man who had female parts. I've also had deviant dreams and fantasies where I orgasm and they also do not involve straight men. I don't fantasize about females either because it doesn't do anything for me.

I am very confused. Am I normal?

-- Confused Woman

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We sat together at our breakfast counter, she with a mug of Bengal spice tea, me with a glass of OJ. My mother was, and is, a very pretty woman, with bright blue eyes, skyscraper cheekbones, and an easy laugh. She sipped her tea and took a breath.

“Karen and I aren’t just friends, honey.” Her features tightened, but her eyes met mine, clear and steady. “We’re more than friends.”

“Yeah, I figured that out,” I said.

“You did?”

“Of course!” I gulped. “Jessica and me aren’t just friends, either, you know.”

“I had a feeling about that.” She nodded with a faint smile.

Mine was the most amiable coming out story I knew. If only the experience of my early sex life were so breezy.

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There is part of me that wishes that I was not tied to the relationship I have so that I could continue exploring. It is not that my wife is not interested in joining me so much as it is that we are at different stages. I have a firm grasp on what I want coupled with a bit of fearlessness while she is still coming to know her wants and desires and is not entirely comfortable with where they sometimes lead. What I have been struggling with is: a) Will we ever be at the same place and b) What I am supposed to do in the meantime?

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Let me put that another way. From watching porn you'd think this or something like it is the heart's desire of every straight man, indeed the natural culmination of the sex act.

Nothing wrong with people who do like it, men or women. But you'd think this is the norm in straight sex. Even the amateurs do it -- presumably because they think anything else is some sort of kinky perversion.

Aw, buddy. This is the second week in a row where I have to come straight out and say it: There's nothing wrong with you. Nothing. Not a thing. (OK, so there might be something wrong with you, seeing as you're human, but this isn't it.)

Porn represents a popular fantasy norm, but it doesn't necessarily reflect what people want to do, or are actually doing, in real life. Researcher Debby Herbenick, a sexual health educator at the Kinsey Institute, tells me, "There are probably many, many things that are shown in porn in our culture or other cultures that he or his partner don't have any interest in doing and that's OK," she says. "Having some sense of self-awareness about your sexual likes/dislikes is a far better place to be than being clueless as to your own boundaries. So, good for him for having some sense of this."

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If you’ve ever pulled over to a rest area, you’ve been near men having sex. I’m one of those men, I’ve done it a hundred times; we go into the woods or a truck with tinted windows, in a stall under cold light. It never stops, not for season or time. In the winter, men trudge through snow to be with each other, in the summer, men leave the woods with ticks clinging to their legs. Have you ever stopped at a rest area and found it completely empty? There’s always one man there, in his car, waiting to meet someone new.

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“I usually sit with my feet together and my knees splayed,” she continues tentatively, “for one final stretch before I take shavasana.” I nod her on. So far, I follow. “Leaning over to bring my head down to my feet, as my breath regulates I feel a sort of … tingling and pulsating down (ahem) there. And … the feeling isn’t entirely unwelcome.” She exhales, as if a great weight has lifted. “But I mean, that’s pretty weird, right?”

Turns out it’s actually not. Exercise-induced female sexual pleasure has been the subject of casual discussion and un-researched speculation for years. Even sexologist Alfred Kinsey mentions the phenomenon in his "Sexual Behaviors in the Human Female" (1953). But until now, the experience was mostly anecdotal. Now, a study by Indiana University researchers offers scientific evidence that confirms confessions once incredulously traded in gym class locker rooms.

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William, as he introduced himself, was tall and handsome, and his hair had a slight red tint to it as if it were burnt around the edges. I guessed he was maybe a year older than me, although it was hard to tell because all the Namibian students wore the same uniform, a polo shirt and khaki pants.

“You’re from the United States!” he announced upon sitting down. “New York or Los Angeles?”

“Chicago,” I said. Now on my third week in Africa, I had learned this could not pass without some explanation. “It’s in the middle of the country.”

It was the kind of school field trip that seemed perfectly natural during the boom years of the late '90s. My cohort of 15 high schoolers had traveled through South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. Namibia’s dusty capital, Windhoek, was our final stop — and on this, the second-to-last day of the trip, our group leader launched a last-ditch effort to get us to actually interact with African people, by offering the students of a local school seats on our bus for a lift across the city.

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You, friend, are normal. I usually build to such a proclamation, but in this case, it seems important to acknowledge right off the bat. Your reaction to what you’ve experienced is not only understandable but very common. It’s typical for survivors of sexual abuse to disassociate during sex -- in simple terms, to separate themselves from the physical act -- or avoid it entirely, and it sounds like both apply in your case. Therapist Wendy Maltz says your email makes it sound like you experience sex as something being done to you, “as opposed to really engaging fully as an equal and mutual partner in the experience.”

But pleasurable sex is possible for you.

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The week before, jumping out of bed and quickly throwing on my pants, I had retreated from my girlfriend’s bedroom, spooked by the phantom sound of her mother on the stairway. To face my own parents in a similar situation would be out of the question. I was glad to have become sexually active after going off to college, to skip the awkward sneaking around that I associated with high school romance. But out of school and out of work, I had returned home to find my sex life seriously hampered by the weird fact that this was the same bedroom where my diapers were changed.

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“Do you have anything like this for women?” I ask the cashier, nodding at the display.

“Those are for women,” she says.

I place the vibrating sex toy, which is packed in a plastic container with the words “Diving Dolphin” written in a wavy blue script, on the counter along with my American Express card. It’s been about one week since Deb and I argued at the Wig and Pen. That’s one week without sex.

“They are?” I say. I pick up a package of the Viagra Substitute, which appears to contain two pills. I scan the label. “No,” I say placing the packet of pills back in their box. “They’re for men.”

The cashier removes the Diving Dolphin from its package. It’s a complicated-looking thing with two vibrating eggs, each fitting into separate rubber compartments. She inserts two double A’s and pushes a button on the little plastic control panel. The Diving Dolphin hums loudly. “I might argue,” she says.

I laugh. “Yeah,” I say, “but what I need is something that makes a woman, you know … want to, you know … in the first place.”

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My husband had a stroke last summer (a brain hemorrhage) at 35 -- coincidentally, I noticed something was wrong right after we had sex. He survived with some relatively minor mobility problems and some issues with aphasia (speech problems) and we're attempting to get our lives back together after a week in the ICU, five weeks inpatient rehabilitation, and several months of outpatient rehabilitation.

I am certainly not blaming the stroke on sex (although the EMTs sure had a field day with the information!), but I am having trouble getting back into having a sex life. For so many weeks and months, I was solely in charge of everything: schedules, medication, work, food, finances -- the whole deal. Being sick, particularly with neurological deficits, unfortunately tends to infantilize a person to a certain degree, and I'm having some trouble coming away from the role as Sole Adult in Charge of Everything.

In addition, since he still has little feeling and some mobility problems on his right side, sex seems more like therapy than, well, just sex (that is, I sometimes come away with bruises since he doesn't realize he's elbowed me in the ribs or whatever).

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But does it really? In recent years, a small number of researchers have been working to develop the science of post-coitus -- a field that's barely been touched.

I spoke with Daniel Kruger and Susan Hughes, evolutionary psychologists at the University of Michigan and Albright College in Pennsylvania who have been working on uncovering the secrets of post-sex behavior. “There is so much attention, in the popular literature in psychology and even in evolutionary research, looking at everything leading up to the act of sex,” said Kruger. “But then there isn’t anything about what happens after.  It’s as if the attitude is, ‘oh, of course sex is the end goal, right?’ We’re making the point that the time that couples spend together after sex is an important part of healthy sexual relationships.”

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This was the same male friend whom I recall some 10 years ago telling me -- with a mix of pity and disgust -- how he'd accidentally found a "fake pussy" under his buddy's bed. This wasn't just a personal attitude shift: penetrable sex toys for men have been revolutionized over the past decade.

"Pocket" vaginas have long been ridiculed as objects of desperation and creepiness: Most are misproportioned and rubbery -- some even have synthetic pubic hair sewn into faux flesh (they aim for far greater anatomical literalness than most vibrators or dildos). These types of toys range from a few bucks to a couple hundred, but are generally known for being pathetic imitations of the real thing. Thanks to a couple lof eading companies, though, masturbatory sleeves -- which are generally soft tubes that go over the penis -- are becoming sleeker, sexier and more high-tech. As a result, attitudes toward "jerk-off" toys are changing, ever so slowly.

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"I just really wanted to come for the group sex," I admitted, panicking a little. The 35-and-Under Safe Sex Orgy was happening that evening and with my work schedule I knew that I wouldn't have time to learn how to play poker before then. And aren’t poker players known for being very, very serious? What if nobody wanted to have sex with me because I didn’t know when to hold ‘em, or when to fold ‘em, or whatever you do.

Lance assured me that playing poker really loosened the guys up before the action started. Lance had a very sexy telephone voice, so I believed him. "We don't even let people in the room if they show up after the poker starts," he added with an undercurrent of firm authority.

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I don't think there's anything wrong with what I've said so far, except for the fact that I date and have sex with men who are significantly younger than me. I'm talking about ages 19 up to 35, more or less. I feel extremely conflicted about this. I realize that my chances of having a romantic relationship with younger men are not so simple, and the old adage that "age is just a number" may suit men more than women due to expiration date on beauty and fertility. However, I cannot get myself attracted to men my age or even slightly younger. I've tried dating some, but I can't get past that.

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It wasn't the first time the "m" word had been mentioned in our dirty talk, either. But when it came up on the phone, I could just laugh it off or pretend I hadn't heard him. Not this time. Now, it was real. He wanted me to pretend to be his mommy — his naughty, flirtatious, sexy mommy. Even for a professional sex writer like me, with 19 years of adventures behind her, "age play" was out there.

A subset of the catch-all term BDSM, age play is defined by the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health as “sexual role-playing where one partner pretends to be older and in control while the other pretends to be much younger.” This could mean fantasizing about being siblings, or teacher and student. According to "The Toybag Guide to Age Play" by Lee Harrington, the most popular form is parent-child. People like it for all sorts of reasons: to be silly, the taboo factor, to give up control, to explore an inner identity, to enjoy "never having to grow up." I'd heard of it, but it definitely didn't sound like my thing.

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But beyond just being a novel, tongue-in-cheek use of technology, "Dudes From Views" raises interesting questions about the subtle ground between what one might call voyeurism -- secretly taking pictures of attractive, half-naked people and posting them in a public space -- and public information. To get more insight into this Big Brother-meets-peepshow hybrid, Salon corresponded with the blog's creator, Brad, over email, about his method, issues of privacy and the Google gaze. Click above for a slide show of images from the site.

How did you come up with the idea for Dudes From Views?

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He's not looking for a "professional." Liam wants to pay for “cuddles” and "fun" from a "hard-up" student. Call it what you like -- an arrangement, a delicate excuse for sex work or modern love at its most upfront -- there are hundreds of thousands of men all over the world looking for it, and as the job market explodes, more and more women are desperate enough to take them up on it. The women call themselves sugar babies; men like Rian are known as sugar daddies.

For me, it all started with an innocent bit of apartment hunting. Scrolling through online listings for only slightly bedbug-infested sublets in the Bronx last year, I noticed several offers of free room and board "for the right girl." Wealthy, professional middle-aged men -- or people pretending to be wealthy middle-aged professionals -- were advertising rooms in their houses for "students" or other young women "having difficulty meeting their costs." In exchange for free rent, an appropriately pretty and poor girl would need to offer sex, affection -- and perhaps a little housework.

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