Whenever I mention my occupation to a non-wired person, it seems to generate the same response:

"Isn't there an awful lot of porn on the net?"

The question floats toward me like a smoke ring and forms a halo around my face, framing me as a pornographer, nymphomaniac, and all-round corrupter of innocence.

I expect that from my mother, but it's not the public image I strive to cultivate. I never have a good response ready.

"Hmmm," I nod coquettishly, "I'll have to look into that."

The subtext of my vapid reply could be "Yes, the internet is a modern-day Gomorrah and I'm in it up to my quivering loins," or, "I really haven't heard that, but I'm so pathetically hard-up that I'm gonna race right home and look."

Neither is what I mean to convey, but the truth is probably just as perverse...

I've never really looked into sex on the net.

I always plan to, but I never do. I think I've always been very nervous about what I might find. Who knows? Maybe I myself would become corrupted - lured into the nether regions of psycho-sexual depravity and cyber-sensual abandon... never, perhaps, to return.

(I shudder at the thought... several times.)

Well, that sort of cloistered naivet