Confessions of a sex columnist

By Nathan Downey

Sex 2.0

When I first agreed to the sex column gig I had a few trepid thoughts. First, I’d be signing my name to 20-plus articles about sex. What would that mean for my Google footprint?

Then there was the obvious: The inevitable awkwardness of having my parents and relatives reading my musings and accrued wisdom on sex.

My biggest hesitation, however, was the risk of giving bad advice, or incomplete information. After all, sex is a topic near and dear to just about everyone (outside of clergy circles, obvsies).

I took the job with one goal in mind: It’s 2010 and some people are still living in a sexual dark age. I wanted to change that, if even to a small degree.

I’d always been critical of my forebears at the Muse. Whether it was disagreeing with their views or just generally being a curmudgeon, I was determined to outdo them in every way.

Writing about sex is effing difficult though. Coming up with a scintillating new topic week after week while remaining upbeat and hilarious enough to keep people reading was at the forefront of my mind.

But as any budding sexologist knows, there are few stones left unturned in the garden of sex. What could I say that Dan Savage hadn’t said better (and bitchier)?

At any rate, I expressed my views on this most beloved of topics, got some positive feedback, stirred up some witch-hunts, and in so doing, gained a bunch of respect for the brave souls who sexed up the paper before me.

I do regret not doing an article on lesbian sex. It’s not that I don’t consider it an important topic; I just know next to nothing about it and it would have been a massive hack job.

In any case, it’s been a magnificent pleasure being the on-campus sex guru for the past year. What have you got to lose this decade? Go forth and be sexy.

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