Gay men have the same questions as heterosexuals: What did Hillary know and when did she know it? Did she throw a hissy fit or was she calm, cool and collected? Was Bill Clinton sufficiently apologetic? Did she forgive him? Did she stick by him because she's a "feminist doormat" or a forgiving Christian? Is their marriage a monument to political expediency or a testament to the resiliency of love?

But gay men also came up with a question that seems to have escaped most heterosexuals: Do Hillary and Bill have an open marriage?

The press has no problem writing about thongs in the Oval Office and cigars in oval orifices, but they get oddly uptight at the thought of unconventional marriage.

That's because their readers -- mainstream America -- do not believe it's possible to be in a deeply loving, committed relationship and still have sex with other people.

But many gay people do. And that's a fundamental difference between gay and straight perceptions of the Clinton scandals.

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According to the CDC, the 17-state Southern region, from Texas to Washington, D.C., not only has more residents with HIV and AIDS, it also has the ugly distinction of being the only area in the country with a significant increase in infections (9 percent). And worse, the CDC says the South accounts for 40 percent of people estimated to be living with AIDS and 46 percent of the estimated number of new cases.

Why did the South get this most unwanted distinction? There are a lot of demographic reasons. We have the highest concentration of the group most likely to be infected: African-Americans. We have the highest concentration of another group most likely to be infected: poor people. We also have the highest concentration of the group most likely to stop effective AIDS prevention efforts: Bible Belters. But there's something more. A context that amplifies these demographic factors: the southern culture of politeness and indirectness.

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Patrick Califia used to be a woman. The kind of woman that liked other women. But now she's a man. The kind that likes other men. Basically, what we have here is a carpet-licking lesbian who turned into a cock-sucking queer. It just doesn't get any weirder than that.

Actually, it does. See, Califia has a son, Blake, of whom he shares custody with his ex-girlfriend, Matt, who also used to be a woman, but is now a man. He stopped taking male hormones so he could give birth. They have no plans to write "Heather Has Two Daddies That Used to be Mommies."

Instead, Califia wrote "Speaking Sex to Power, the Politics of Queer Sex." The book is a collection of essays spanning the last six years, include those written when she was a woman wishing she was a man doing a woman, and those written when he became a man wishing he had a dick to diddle other men while wondering if women found him attractive.

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You either end up with overwrought clichés ("It was a Dark and Stormy Vagina"), inaccessible literary metaphors or laugh-out-loud porn lines ("Help, my skirt keeps coming off").

But every once in a while somebody comes up with the ability to describe the mechanics, the emotions, the raw energy of sex in such a way that you get a soaring -- and sometimes searing -- experience of it.

Steve Almond is the latest somebody. The Boston College teacher's collection of short stories, "My Life in Heavy Metal," will leave you gasping, gulping and guffawing from beginning to end. Each of the 12 stories has sex as the destination, the vehicle or the journey.

The beauty of the book isn't just that he managed to write about sex in a daring, fresh and provocative way, but that he writes it within every conceivable context. Some of Almond's most enjoyable descriptions are of tongues, and where they are put; here he is describing a session with a plain-Jane lifeguard:

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The hope and hoopla are understandable. In America, 850,000 people are infected with HIV, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While AIDS is considered a "manageable" condition, 17,000 Americans still die of it every year.

But there's nothing manageable about AIDS in Africa, where 40 percent of the population in many regions is infected with HIV. Experts believe that nearly 6.5 million Africans will die annually by 2020, when they expect the epidemic to peak.

The fight against AIDS is branching from treatment toward vaccination. In 1996 the entire NIH budget for AIDS vaccine research was $111 million. President George W. Bush's budget proposal for 2002 is $357 million.

In addition, 17 different vaccines have reached small clinical trials, and dozens more are in various stages of research in monkeys and other animals.

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It's a pretty safe bet you're not going to see this kind of classified ad in the personals sections of gay newspapers and Web sites.

Even screaming queens don't want to torch their beds with the flames of other queens. And this sets up an interesting contradiction about gay life: The culture that celebrates effeminacy as a social ideal ridicules it as a sexual ideal.

Gay men encourage effeminacy by venerating drag and calling each other "girl." They love bitchy humor and consider camp an art form. But you'll never see effeminate men idealized as sexual partners.

Nobody has a more fascinating take on the subject than Tim Bergling in his new book, "Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behavior." Bergling analyzed the personals section of dozens of gay newspapers across the country. He looked at code words like "straight-acting/straight-looking," "military," "frat boy," "blue jeans and sweatshirt" and counted up all the ads.

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That's why I'm so furious at my girlfriends. As more and more gay guys adopt straight-girl dating strategies (no sex without dating), people like me are getting less and less sex.

I'm from the old school. I believe in sex before dating. The reason is, nothing kills sexual attraction more than having dinner with a guy so dull that even the corn on the cob covers its ears.

Tradionally, women are socialized to "hang on to it," as a girlfriend put it, until they get something valuable in exchange. Men, on the other hand, are socialized to "let go of it." And the exchange rate has nothing to do with it.

Women have what men want, and this sets up a classic seller's market: huge demand and a tight supply. The twist is that the suppliers want to give it away, too, but they can't because the market is regulated by outside forces -- religion, society and empty ring fingers. So even though it's a seller's market, the sellers aren't happy.

Sex between men, however, is the classic example of what happens when supply meets demand: Everybody's happy.

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And what you get is tits and ass, Kinsey style.

Alfred C. Kinsey, the man who jump-started sex research with a good pinch in the ass, stunned the country in 1948 with his pioneering study, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male," and in 1953 with "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female." No one, least of all Kinsey himself, expected the scholarly work to become what it did: a bestselling mirror of America's sexuality.

Kinsey's work forced people to see the dichotomy between their beliefs and their actions. Everybody assumed, for example, that most women were virgins when they married, yet Kinsey's surveys revealed that 50 percent of women were doing the hoochie-koochie before they got hitched.

Kinsey scandalized the country, and the only reason he wasn't dismissed as a crank is that he walked and talked like he had a cork up his ass. This was a buttoned-down professor of biology at a Midwestern university, after all; a scientist who brought rigorous discipline to the 18,000 interviews his team conducted for the studies.

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His book, a history of homophobia beginning with antiquity and ending with the passage of the first civil union law for gays in Vermont, is without question the preeminent historical account of the hate that dare speak its name.

How did love and sex between men start out as a noble ideal, practiced by the majority of the population and approved for centuries by both religion and law, and turn out to be one of the most vicious and sustained persecutions in recorded history?

How did sex between men start out as an admired act of masculinity and end up as a shameful badge of effeminacy? How did homosexual love and sex, which were seen as important to the development of virtue, nobility and the foundation of a strong society, become an enemy of the state?

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A new book, "Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity, and Homosexuality" (St. Martin's Press), by art historian Micha Ramakers tries to make sense of the invisible hand that jerked off a generation of gay men. It's a schwing-for-the-fences treatise combining the rise of the gay movement, the world of fine art, and of course, porno.

The gay characters in Tom of Finland's art are so masculine they make straight men look like girlie-boys. Recognized as the originator of macho gay porn, the artist died nine years ago but his work lives on in the hearts and crotches of millions of gay men.

Touko Laaksonen, aka "Tom," was born in Finland in 1920. His first commercial gig was drawing half-naked men for Physique Pictorial, a 1950s gawk-and-load homosexual firearm disguised as a straight men's magazine. You know, like Men's Health.

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In other words, it's just another day in the South.

But this time, the professors are white and the school is predominantly black. White Southerners are experiencing what black Southerners confronted 30 years ago on college campuses: persecution, discrimination, verbal abuse and an openly hostile administration.

Discrimination is unethical, no matter who's practicing it. But why shouldn't black colleges fill their leadership posts with African-American professors if their mission is to provide role models for a black student body?

The only thing that chaps Americans more than discrimination is reverse discrimination. The former may be a repugnant violation of fairness, but the latter is a stinging reminder that paybacks are hell. In a status-quo world where white professors are consistently dealt the upper hand, is it valid for them to rage that they've been cheated? When university administrators have to promote certain faculty members to right historic wrongs, is it justifiable to overlook someone else who is qualified? Can a seesaw maintain equilibrium?

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Pussy may be fictional but his ailments aren't. Tens of millions of Americans are suffering from rashes, headaches, sour stomachs, back pain, panic attacks and other conditions for which doctors have no explanation.

More and more often, physicians are laying down their stethoscopes and uttering words guaranteed to make any patient recoil in shock and fear: "There's nothing medically wrong with you."

It's a polite way of saying, "It's all in your head." But if there's no physical explanation for a backache, does that mean it isn't real? Most physicians would agree that pain with no discernible source is real, but they couldn't begin to tell you why. And they can't begin to tell you how much they wish you'd bother someone else with the problem. In the absence of a medical diagnosis, you're a "pussy" in the eyes of physicians.

Hypochondriacs are ruining it all for us neurotics. Hypochondriacs believe they have illnesses they don't have. The rest of us don't believe we "have" anything, but we still suffer with mysterious pains, rashes, fatigue, hyperventilation and other ailments.

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There were no white sheets, hooded masks, cross-burnings, bullets or hate speeches. It was just college kids in black ninja-warrior Halloween costumes with fencing masks, holding tiki torches. That didn't stop outraged faculty at Atlanta's Emory University from thinking the robed students paid homage to the Ku Klux Klan. The professors organized, mobilized and struck. It used to be students who took over buildings and held faculty hostage. Now it's faculty taking over pep rallies and holding students hostage.

Welcome to the modern university protest, Southern style.

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I don't think anything is at stake. I made a promise to myself a long time ago -- back during Vietnam -- not to be political. People act as if their candidate winning is a life and death matter. It's not. They think things will get better if their guy wins. It doesn't. I don't like stepping on people, don't like to be associated with that kind of distraught energy. I have broken my vow not to vote a few times -- McGovern, Carter, Hart. And though I've given money to Bradley I dont intend to vote this election. We're going to be so well off in the coming century, and it has nothing to do with politicians. The computer economy is what's driving the prosperity. It's the Yahoos, Apples and Microsofts that are creating a better life, not politicians.

The greatest problem we have in society is the widening gap between the rich and poor. If there's one thing the next president should try to do is to redistribute wealth a little more equitably. I don't have the vaguest idea how to do that. All I know is that here in Silicon Valley, the richest place on earth, there are people with families working seven days a week and they dont have enough to live on. That isn't right.

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The first rule of real estate -- location -- explains the eye-widening, mouth-puckering shame associated with hemorrhoids. Everyone has hemorrhoids. Three to be exact. When they act up they become a mass of swollen veins in the lining of the anus and rectum. There are internal and external hemorrhoids. You don't want to know much more than that.

Hemorrhoids are characterized by swelling, pain, itching and bloody stools. First time I saw the blood I did what any man would do in my position: I ignored it. For years. Mercifully, bloody stools are rarely a sign of cancer.

When I finally realized I should see a doctor, my physician pointed to the special "head down, buttocks up" table and asked me to assume the position. When I heard the urethane glove snap on his hands I thought to myself, "Why couldn't I have attention deficit disorder like everyone else?"

"Things could be worse," he said, noticing how mortified I was. "You could be me."

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Controversy surrounds the NTSB's current method of investigating commercial air crashes. Experts in a given field, such as engineers, designers and psychologists, are invited to serve on fact-finding committees headed by NTSB investigators. These experts include employees of airlines, aircraft manufacturers and other suppliers. In other words, the people with the biggest potential financial liabilities in the crash are helping determine the cause of it.

The NTSB commands a rare level of respect among government agencies. Admired by both Democrats and Republicans, it has a golden international reputation for thoroughness, fairness and heroic achievement.

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"I can have dick delivered to my door faster than a pizza," says Steve, an Atlanta P.R. executive who cruises for men in America Online's chat rooms. (Like many of the men in this story, he asked that his real name not be used.) Within minutes of entering one of six AOL chat rooms designated for gay men in Atlanta, he exchanges naked photos with other men -- some with their faces cropped out -- and arranges a sex date.

What AOL lacks in steam rooms and towel-wrapped men it makes up for in steamy chat and naked pictures zooming across its servers. "GayOL," as many gay men have christened it, is home to hundreds of thousands of men "window-shopping" in the M4M (men for men) chat rooms.

There are, of course, several Web sites devoted specifically to the gay community -- like gay.com and Planet Out. But none of these has the reputation among gays that AOL does as the go-to place to get laid.

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Fish oil to be more accurate. Omega 3 fatty acids to be exact.

In the first controlled, double-blind study of the effects of a dietary compound on psychiatric disorders, a Harvard psychiatrist has proved that omega 3 fatty acids alleviate depression and bipolar disorder.

Well, sort of.

He almost proved it. "Almost" was good enough for the National Institutes of Health to commission a $1.5 million follow-up study, and for Harvard to commit $100,000 for a separate test on depression.

"Almost" hasn't gotten this kind of press since the "worst-to-first" Braves almost won the 1991 World Series. The stakes are so high, the evidence so strong and the implications so profound that nobody dares ignore the potential for omega 3 to revolutionize our understanding of the human brain.

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The absence of pain is different from the presence of pleasure. Luvox didn't
give me any pleasure. It didn't change my personality or give me an "edge"
socially. It didn't make me more charming or outgoing. It didn't help me focus or concentrate better or do my work more effectively.

What it did was escort the sisters of seizure out of the room. Out of the house, really. After a few weeks of 150 milligrams a day, most of my
physiological reactions were gone -- the air "hunger," the weak spells, the
panic attacks, the obsessive thinking.

I dropped out of therapy soon after my symptoms disappeared. I walked out the way I walked in -- without knowing what was wrong or what I needed to talk about. I had done with pills what I could not do with willpower, prayer, meditation, yoga or therapy.

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My heart accelerates, my eyes dart. I pretend I'm not in danger, but my body betrays me. I'm trying to catch my breath, but the thing is, I'm not out of breath.

Stay calm, I think to myself; it isn't real.

Or is it?

I'm not sure.

I step hard on the gas trying to get away from it, but it hits me anyway. I pull off the road the first chance I get. I know there's no damage. There never is. I lean my head against the steering wheel at the hopelessness I've come to.

Anxiety attacks hit you like an oncoming car you can't swerve away from; you're nothing but pavement to them. Rapid breathing, heart palpitations, odd chest pains, crippling weak spells, obsessive thinking patterns -- because
there's nothing causing the symptoms, you're convinced of a pending psychotic break. In fact, the fear of going insane is one of the most common symptoms of anxiety disorder.

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