I adore sensuality and sex and life and feeling alive and being free and all that stuff. I am libertine at core, believing, despite (or maybe BECAUSE OF) my Catholic upbringing, that God gave us all bodies and minds so that we may enjoy them FULLY.

Which is why most sex writing out there bores the FUCK out of me. Always has, and I suspect always will. Writing about sex is NOT having sex, it is not thinking about sex, it is not SEXUAL.

IT is 'thinking' about the map, not being in the territory.

It is also, often, distorted and sensationalized. Women are notorious for not comprehending what it is that turns us men on. So when women write about sex and they want to direct their writing at men, it is often with an inaccurate model of what is sexual to men. (if the idea is for women to write for other women or not to care what men think, ironically this leads to better, more sexy writing, in my opinion, because the blinders are off and, frankly, honesty is SO DAMN SEXY).

It all bores me, this sex writing, as do all the prepackaged tarts that wash up on magazine covers months after they become a known public entity. (As an aside) it has gotten to the point where I absolutely DREAD seeing a new young woman becoming famous and, in a matter of months, beginning to appear on those dreaded magazine covers, all dolled up with the latest trends in hair, glopped on makeup, skank fashions. It has gotten to where I wonder how many months before she is taken over by these fashion gremlins. Frankly, I've always adored, "aw shucks gee whiz" down to earth girls, with their imperfections and all. I KNOW many, if not most, guys think as I do, from reading about this phenom for years.

So yeah, the sexiest writing I think is some of the personal anecdotes and admissions I read on these letters pages, for instance. IT doesn't take a pro to write well about sex, and like a porn shop owner, those who do not do it all the time are not jaded by it, so the writing shines.

I do not know what it is about America, but it seems whenever I travel or see something from another country that involves sex, it is always so much SEXIER and more alive than it is in America, where it seems like it is embalmed in formaldehyde and flogged like some vague threat at people. One can point to the natural and easy sexuality of Brazil, or the sensual, girly fashion photography of Spain or Italy, or the hot sexuality of Sweden, or the sophisticated and playful sexuality of Japan, or the simmering eyes down low come-on of the Indian subcontinent.

Three examples that continue to stick in my mind after DECADES are how sexy the females were in the movies Wings of Desire, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Jean de Florette, to name only three examples. Natural, unaffected, self-driven these women.

But in America you feel like you are looking at the mythical dirty old whore of the Bible herself whenever you look at any depiction of a supposedly sexy person. Top examples I can think of that disgusted me, but were supposed to be considered sexy, are the sister in 27 Dresses (don't ask why I saw this), the fakey tarted up look as portrayed in Legally Blonde or Sex and the City, the hard nasty body of Madonna today (not film, I know), or the sorority sluts as epitomized in the Girls Gone Wild series, for example.

There are exceptions, of course, but this seems to be much the norm in American media. Is it all down to the latent Puritanism?

of course it has all been written, and to write about strange and novel acts or positions or perversions is dull, dull, dull.

Did I say DULL?

As in movies, where people talk blithely about a movie script being rote and done 100 times, the VERVE is not in the script but in the way it is handled, in the details, in the twists.

So, you are writing about sex. Write about it in a new, more intimate fashion. Incorporate, god help us (America is too sophisticatedly feminist for this), romance and love into it. Talk about the scent of her neck, the small habits he has in the morning, the regrets and the urges and the strange thoughts you have.

THAT is sexy, or at least sexier.

I still would not read it, since I prefer to DO it rather than read about someone else's adventures (unless it leavens my own sex life, however paltry it is).

But I think it might be the boot in the ass sex writing needs in this sad, lost culture.

Men don't date Dowd because she's ugly physically. They avoid her like the plague because she's still a little girl who STILL blames all the world's ills on "daddy." She refuses to be responsible. Every problem is always the fault of men.

If there is ONE lesson feminists need to internalize is that guys really cannot stand pushy, unforgiving hypocrites who refuse to grow up and have that internal dialog.