Ruby didn't want him to get the wrong idea. And she had been noticing a new phenomenon among her close friends since Tuesday. The world had changed; so had relationships. Now, just about everyone she knew was having what she and her friends call "terror sex."

It sounded so inappropriate. We are experiencing horror and disbelief at what happened. We are grieving for friends, family and even strangers, who were alive just last week. Thinking about sex in a time of crisis seemed cheap. It reeked of bad-movie cliché: Cue the majestic music. The sounds of war outside as the barrel-chested man comforts the weeping woman. She tells him she doesn't want to sleep alone tonight. "Hold me," she cries. And he does. A fighter plane zooms overhead.

Wait.

A fighter planed zoomed overhead. Really. They are flying over my house even as I write this, so nothing seems far-fetched. Anything can happen.

Sonia doesn't know exactly how it happened with her. Exhausted after a nearly 10-mile walk last Tuesday, she watched the news at a bar with friends, and one of them came home with her. The two went to her roof to watch the incomplete Manhattan skyline, still burning. The next thing she knew, they were making out.

"I didn't think about it at all," she said. "When you walk home from Manhattan to Brooklyn with people covered in dust and blood you don't care." She didn't want to be alone. She was in a daze, traumatized.

And the sex was incredible.

"We thought it was the end of the world." She paused and grinned. "Whoops." Still, the sex felt as if their lives depended on it. "We had sex like it was the end of the world, and if I could do it over again, I still would."

How can we make emotional room -- amid the fear and confusion and personal loss -- for any thread of sexuality? People are talking about their deepest emotions with total strangers; message boards are popping up all over the Web. We feel we need to connect with others more than ever before.

Connecting with others is almost an understatement in this case, says Dr. Peter Salovey, professor and chair of the department of psychology at Yale University. We have never faced anything like this before. People are questioning everything and reassessing their priorities. We are feeling that "life is precious and civilization is precarious," he says. In the anxiety and uncertainty, people are reattaching their bonds.