And four years later, in a teen magazine, I did. It was my first published piece, and it confirmed what I'd always suspected about writing: Sometimes, in order to be successful, it helps to get a little slutty.

Publishers have long been partial to young women willing to open up about their private lives in memoir or thinly veiled fiction, from Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying" to Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation" to Emily Gould's "And the Heart Says Whatever." After Jezebel ran an item that detailed a Duke graduate who created a PowerPoint detailing all the men she slept with, agents and editors pounced, comparing her to a female Tucker Max and praising her self-empowerment. The woman in question may be humiliated now, but trumpeting her sexual conquests opened doors that would have otherwise remained closed -- should she take advantage of it? For that matter: Should I have?

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I was about to embark on a career as an escort.

The week before -- with $75 in my bank account, no more unemployment checks and hundreds of résumés and carefully crafted cover letters sent and ignored in a rotten economy -- I bypassed the typical job ads on Craigslist and went straight to the "adult gigs" section, just out of curiosity.

What I found was an eye-popping number of help wanted ads. These ads weren't looking for how fast you could type or if you knew PowerPoint, but they were also discreet about what skill set, exactly, was required. One posting caught my eye: "Make up to $2,000 a week!"

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My husband, who had been hesitant to hire what sounded like a New Age-y junior doctor, shot me a skeptical look across our kitchen table. I knew he was thinking, "Of course the doula has a great placenta recipe." But after a year's immersion in the halls of modern medicine, I was ready to absorb all the earthy wisdom I could. The world of science no longer held the answers it had promised, so I was open to a new perspective. Trying to conceive had been an anxiously deliberate process, involving ovulation thermometers, injections, surgery and a scheduled date with a test tube; in vitro fertilization loomed on the horizon. Our doctor told us we had a .0001 percent chance of getting pregnant on our own, so we had almost -- almost -- given up trying.

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This is one reason it seems strange to be at a fertility clinic very early in the morning waiting for my turn to jerk off into a plastic cup and produce a specimen that, I devoutly hope, will soon impregnate my wife. I want another child. Though my son has done much to prove the "good fucks make good kids" theory, my wife has not been able to conceive again. Working against us are advancing age and intractable self-doubt; even as I sit in this waiting room, I'm nervous. But I want another child. I know it when I watch my son resting on my wife's belly, the two of them luxuriating in one another's love. This, I realize, is what the Old Masters were trying to capture in their countless paintings of Mary holding the infant Jesus -- the most beautiful thing in all creation. I want more of this beauty alive in the world. I want to share again my tiny portion of the spark.

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On one hand, I understood. On the other, who hasn't popped a pimple? Who doesn't get a painful little prick of satisfaction from doing so? I didn't see why my revelation deserved such a disgusted reaction. In our current gross-out moment, when Lady Gaga's labia can become water cooler fodder, when Tiger Woods' golden shower-related texts are read by millions, and when there are popular websites -- and best-selling books -- devoted to excrement, pimples reside firmly in the socially radioactive TMI zone. Discuss at your own peril.

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Now, the man I want to sleep with and I can both be home, with our children safe in their beds, watching movies on our respective couches with our respective spouses snuggled up beside us, while we wait for that slight vibration against our skin, that sexy electronic zing, that signals a new e-mail. It sits there waiting until the spouse gets up for another glass of wine, or to use the bathroom, whereupon we slide out the phone with eager fingers and devour the missive: pithy, suggestive, tantalizing. Then, despite our best intentions to wait an hour, a day, forever, to respond, we find a way to sneak off for just a moment and fire back the perfect, crafted little retort.

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That was the problem, of course. There was nothing to stop me, no brakes. In the six years since I'd been capital-d Drinking, I hadn't wrecked my life, my relationships or my health. (I'd consider that an act of God, if I were arrogant enough to believe he would protect me from asphyxiating on my own bad choices instead of, say, saving a toddler with leukemia.) But my guilt told me I was pressing my luck. If the drinking were only once in a while, it wouldn't be a problem. An occasional glass of wine with friends? Fine. But using every happy hour as an excuse to get bombed, coming back home and drinking more? Not OK. Getting drunk Sunday afternoon because you don't want to slog through the hours until bedtime? Not OK. I felt powerless over this, and I hated being powerless. Finally, two days ago, I admitted the truth to myself:

I am 24, and I am an alcoholic.

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I had never heard of this magazine, which seemed a compelling reason to go: If I hadn't heard of it, it must be cool. My friend had left by the time I arrived, or had never shown at all, and I lingered on the sidelines of the party, not talking to anyone, sipping a free drink and hoping to pass off my crippling shyness for entitled reticence when a fairly well-known nightlife photographer approached me. He was one of these guys like Ryan McGinley or Terry Richardson, a specialist in the school of "Look at This Awesome Party You Didn't Go to Full of Amazing People You Don't Know." (The fact that said party is a sort of Beckettian constructed wilderness, at once everywhere and nowhere, is something you don't figure out until you're closing in on 30.) He told me he thought I was pretty and looked cool and asked if I would pose for some pictures. The party was winding down, so he suggested we go to a place down the street -- a very private, very under-the-radar, very hip club I had only read about -- and take some pictures there.

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Just Tuesday, we welcomed Jesse James, whose publicist issued the statement that he came to our undisclosed location for "treatment" for "personal issues." What does that even mean? Wouldn't you like to know!

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I admit, the whole domination-submission thing is beyond my ken. I've administered a measured spank or two, when it seemed appropriate. And I'm aware that there exists a widespread subculture of BDSM enthusiasts. But I've never devoted any thought to the practice. It holds no interest for me.

Still, I congratulated myself that, as Leena's warm brown eyes tracked my face, I displayed no sign of dismay, disorientation or disapproval. Instead, I asked her to please tell me more about her sideline business.

Apparently, it involved no actual sexual contact. Apparently, there is a kind of therapeutic value to what she does for her clients. Apparently, there is surprisingly high demand for such services in the City. And apparently, Leena rather enjoyed her work.

We'd met a month previously, at a cigar terrace in Belgravia. I was in town for a few months, working on a project, and some colleagues decided to end the week by wasting our hard-earned money on unhealthy things shipped in from Scotland and Cuba. 

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We talked amiably over the phone a few times, but I never asked her out. Then one day, I came across an ad in the Village Voice for a workshop called "Erotic Bondage and Dirty Domination," given by the adult sex shop Toys in Babeland. I was not involved in the BDSM scene -- in fact, I'd never even considered bringing sex toys, far less weapons, into the bedroom. But I thought it would be a kind of anthropological adventure for Darla and me. It might speed up the expensive and psychically exhausting courtship ritual, and give us a shared experience to discuss. At the very least, it was more original than a bar or a club or a show. A friend of mine had just been to an S/M party, and returned swearing that everyone should try it. That night, I sent a text message to Darla, suggesting we attend.

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The doors open and three women step on: a blonde, a brunette and one whose hair has been bleached and blown dry so many times it's not a discernible color. All of the women could stand to have a good 3 inches cut off their hair. They wear slight variations on the Little Black Slut Dress. They wear too much makeup, a pair of shoes that doesn't quite match the dress, towering heels.

The man in the corner rolls his eyes and thinks to himself, "And I'm the hooker."

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Well, that's not why I did it. And that's good, because that's not what happened. So when you see my friends and me nude in New York's Time Out this week, don't assume I'm making a big statement on behalf of my sex, or presume I'm trying to be an example to anybody else. Get your own self-esteem role models, girlfriend.

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