Naked and unashamed

Have I gotten your attention now? A warning to any of my more staid readers, not to mention those of you who think that I have no personal or professional reasons to know anything about this subject: this post contains sexual content. Now don't get your hopes up. It doesn't have anything too explicit. I'll leave that to the experts. Have I lost any of you? 'Didn't think so. For all kinds of good reasons (like not wanting Dick Cheney or even Michael Chertoff to scan my browser records) I avoid websites with a lot of explicit sexual content. But there are times when the bawdy and weird can be found without a whole lot of looking.

Take craigslist, for example. Somebody sent me there for job postings, and while I was hanging out I decided to look at the personal ads. My oh my, haven't they changed since I last read the back of the book Philadelphia Magazine ads advertising Doris Day lookalikes and courtly widowers. Did you know that in the Bay Area there are men seeking voluptuous females, guys lusting after bi or bi-curious evening companions, fellows panting for stoner chicks (not the word, but this is a GP-rated blog) and gentlemen who are into foot massage?

I didn't even look at the casual encounters part of the website. I like not knowing what I'm missing sometimes.

You don't have to go as far as the ubiquitous craigslist to find some pretty far out personalities. Just open up the New York Times "Modern Love" essay on Sundays, and prepare to be amazed, amused and sometimes incredulous. How did the woman torn between two lovers maintain a bi-coastal relationship with her fiance when she was carrying the child of the fellow from New York? Just the commute would have made me crazy. How about the gay couple who adopted the child of a homeless teenager? Today's story is written by a stripper (a Williams College grad) who fronts for a rock band and is so busy with her career, her chiropractor and her vet that she doesn't have time to have sex ( it baffles me that she thought going on a couples therapy talk show would be the answer, but I'm not a stripper rock chick).

I'm not naive enough to be amazed that there are people of "diverse" tastes in love and sex out there. I am puzzled, however, by the seemingly routine nature of the kind of soul-baring (not to mention the other kinds) that appear with such regularity in newspapers and online. I would hate to think that I am so stodgy that there's been another sexual revolution and, once again, I've missed it completely (last time, at least, I had the excuse of being too young). Sexual diversity has become less a matter of "Jerry Springer" shockjock talk and more something to be discussed over coffee and bagels along with the latest Washington cabinet reshuffle or rise in mortgage rates.

Which makes me ponder why, in all of my years of counseling parishioners, and late night chats with girlfriends, I've never had the opportunity to meet a certified foot fetishist or a woman juggling two men on different coasts. I've started to look at the men I see jogging in the park or the women in the beauty salon in a whole different way. Could the guys with the golden retrievers beside them be the ones exchanging sonnets in smokey boiteries with gorgeous foreign women while their wives are shuttling the kids to the next football game? Are the ladies getting their nails painted toddler pink getting ready to parade around in seamed stockings for male admirers while their significant others are filing overdue tax returns for boss's daughter-in -law? I have no idea. The explosion of sexual revelations is another sign that many upstanding citizens, probably even school bus drivers and carpool moms, live private lives that would astonish their neighbors if they only knew. Or maybe the rest of the folks on my street do know...and its only me who has once again missed out on all the really hot gossip .