I remember being shocked, in 1999, after setting up my hulking desktop and connecting my dial-up for the first time, to hear “You’ve got mail!” And I remember being even more shocked, in that first session, to receive an chat message asking what I was wearing—and if I could take it off.

Now that I’m in my 40s, I can look back on my sexual history with a better understanding of who I am and what has traditionally worked for me.

When I was younger, if a guy asked how many partners you had, it was assumed that a woman would knock a few numbers off. I remember one guy I’d been dating for a few months asked me about my “body count,” as he called it. I told him I’d had five partners. He raised an eyebrow and said: My dad told me that whatever…

When I was about five years old, my parents and I visited my dad’s extended family in Houston. For a family portrait, my distant cousin Jack, a beautiful dark-chocolate stunner with a bright smile, hoisted me on his shoulders for the photo. I remember feeling…something. Looking back, I understand that it was an early…