Sex summer school

Dear Sasha, I’m a 19-year-old girl and I’m heading up to the family cottage for about three weeks at the end of July. I’m aiming to be a sex expert by the time I’m back in August for my university debut. I’m not exactly a virgin, but I have had pretty lame experiences and I’d really like to be more confident and knowledgeable. I’ll be bringing my laptop with me and would like some suggestions of Web sites and maybe a couple of books I can read lakeside without the covers giving my mother and aunt—both of whom are brutally uncool despite growing up in the late ’70s with all that coke and disco around—heart attacks.

—Gonna Be Cool for School

Dear Gonna,

I can’t guarantee you’ll become a sex expert or even a (blech) sexpert for your freshman inauguration, especially in three weeks (or ever, actually), but I can direct you to some sites that will get you thinking.

It’s been a while since I’ve expressed my deep affection for Susie Bright. Her Web site susiebright.com is updated daily and features audio clips of interviews with people like Debbie Nathan (genius investigative journalist specializing in, among other things, sex panics—visit debbienathan.com. I’ve just received her new book, Pornography, and I can’t wait to dig into it). Susie is an upbeat, analytical voice in the arena of sexual politics and has a lot of respect for young people’s agency in issues pertaining to their sexuality.

Violet Blue (tinynibbles.com) is on the frontlines of Internet and paperback sex advice and trends. She’s sassy and articulate and apparently doesn’t need to sleep or else she’s figured out a way to shit books, because she puts a new one out almost every day and it’s always solid. Visually, her how-to guides (from blow-jobs to porn to female ejaculation) imply romance and not outright fucking—I’ve seen some Norma Klein covers that are as steamy, if not more. Violet is someone you’ll probably end up with a bit of a crush on too, because she’s punkabilly cute and posts impish, arty photos of herself on her Web site and she has eyes that put out fire with gasoline.

You know those sex surveys you’re always reading that suddenly make you realize that you too are uncomfortable with the size of your labia, or that you too feel your penis just isn’t functioning to its full capacity? Along with providing accurate and unfussy sex advice, Dr. Petra Boynton’s Web site (drpetra.co.uk) debunks the hell out of those idiotic “studies” that start universal hysteria, often for no other reason than to benefit big pharmaceutical.

Susannah Breslin, who writes hilariously about her experience covering the porn industry, is at reversecowgirlblog.blogspot.com and Cory Silverberg, worker-owner at Come As You Are, writes a really good sex column posted on about.com. But of all these esteemed online resources, the absolute number one I would recommend for advice and sexual health tips is the clear, concise and far-reaching scarleteen.com. It’s geared towards teens, but who isn’t just a little dude when it comes to sex, right? I turn to it often myself.

More lit sources: Sallie Tisdale’s Talk Dirty to Me was published the very year I became a sex columnist. Thirteen years later, it stills stands as an excellent, illuminating collection of essays, and the cover is a simple design of a woman’s hand holding a peach. This forbidden fruit image segues beautifully into a tract by a fellow named Sam Harris called Letter to a Christian Nation. Harris is the author of The End of Faith and won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award in 2005. Letter to a Christian Nation is a short, incisive rebuttal to the criticism that The End of Faith incurred, and though it’s not a sex book per se, it addresses the fact that so much sexual information is universally controlled and disseminated by dangerous religious fanatics.

I could quote relentlessly from it, but I’ll just leave you with this instead: “While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our lives.

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.” Consider the impact of that on our collective sex lives for just one moment.

Got any questions for Sasha? E-MAIL: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM