.

A L S O_ T O D A Y [IVORY TOWER] The teachers we loved Writers send valentines to the people who opened their minds [MOTHERS WHO THINK] Drama Queen Candidates The strangest declarations of love [COLUMNISTS] Sexpert Opinion: A call to hearts By Susie Bright Being single on Valentine's Day doesn't have to be a downer 21st Log Slate rejoins the Web The 21st Challenge No. 18 Results By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau Microsoft antitrust haiku   T A B L E__T A L K Is Opera the best browser around? Find out more about this desktop contender in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk   Search for technology books, software and more at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y The scandal domain name game By Patrick J. Shields Viewed through the lens of domain registrations, Monicagate looks tawdry in a whole new way (02/11/99) To catch a thief By Wagner James Au In this new 3-D game, the emphasis is on stealth instead of shooting (02/10/99) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Video killed the Microsoft star: The company's tape demonstrated its own ruthlessness (02/09/99) Lawyers, guns, money? By Janelle Brown Pundits and insiders reveal their personal preparations for the Y2K disaster (02/08/99) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Why is it so hard to find a valid yardstick for measuring Web traffic? (02/05/99) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - -

CONFESSIONS OF AN ONLINE SEX COLUMNIST | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - I don't want sex with my husband at all. I am pregnant just 4 month. If I have sex with him it is just because he wish. And it seems he want all the time. What am I to do? Sorry, about my English. -- Jurate in Lithuania I would like to congratulate about your very good and benefit site. I have a very danger problem. I'm 15 years old. I love sex very, very much and I'm horny every time and I feel that I want to practice sex with any girl or bitch but I can't because I can't find any bitch or a girl who wants to practice sex with me so I have the secret sexual habit and I have been doing it since I was 11 years old. Please help me. -- Abokff in Egypt What kinds of people write letters to an Internet sex and relationships columnist? The same kind who write to the Lady's Home Journal wanting their marriages to be saved, for the most part. But there are some interesting exceptions: fully one-quarter of my e-mail comes from people living outside the United States -- from places like Canada, Britain and Australia, where one might expect slight regional variations in sexual mores, of course, but the same norms and expectations, more or less; but also from places like India, Nigeria, Kuwait, Egypt, Japan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Lebanon, South Africa and Eastern Europe, where sexual politics play out in very different ways. In such cultures, sex education is presumably not available in many places, although one does see the pervasive reach of other American cultural influences -- as in the case of polite young Abokff, who's learned to call girls "bitches" from gangsta rap and has no idea this is not the preferred term for potential lovers. It's interesting, if slightly unsettling, to learn that access to the Internet outstrips access to basic public health information. I am 15 years old and no guy will kiss me. Here is my question: How can I make a guy kiss me? How do you? Do you just like stick it in their mouth and start to chew? What's the 411? -- Sheena in Michigan My friend found out she was pregnant a couple of days ago and she is only 15. If she keeps the baby can the welfare people take it off her???? -- Pat in Florida Another sizable chunk of mail comes from adolescents. Normally I'm suspicious of anyone on the Internet who self-identifies as being under the age of consent, particularly if the questions are salacious; some of these writers turn out to be 45-year-old men in undershirts with twisted libidos and too much time on their hands. But then again, I was a teenager once, and many of these questions have one stamp of authenticity -- they're the same ones I would have asked when I was 14. These are often the hardest questions for me -- particularly when the mailbag brings desperate pleas from pregnant 15-year-olds begging me to tell them what to do. I couldn't possibly, of course; there are too many liabilities. That's the heartbreaker. Is it really possible that these young women have no one else to turn to? I have no life! Nor a sex life. Oh, but I have goals! Dreams. Hopes. (Of being employed!) This life is not any sort of a life really! Sex? What sex? Am I a freak? -- Elise in Kansas Is it really possible that none of these people has someone else to turn to? Of course, the vast majority of my correspondents aren't in desperate straits at all; they're just sitting in front of a computer, reaching for the mouse as a talk radio show fan might reach for the telephone to click and connect. Is it a delusion of grandeur or an occupational hazard of the advice columnist's job, then, this occasional sense of being overwhelmed, these fantasies of setting up a Hotmail account and personally answering each and every letter -- all those bits and bytes in electronic bottles tossed into the ether by flailing souls shipwrecked on the rocks of their own libido? Maybe I should write to Ann Landers and find out. SALON | Feb. 12, 1999 Patrizia DiLucchio, sex and relationships columnist at Women's Wire, suggests satin sheets and two seats to Paris this Valentine's Day. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.