1. Age five: Girls have libidos, and I'm terrified of them.

Case in point: the neighbor up the block, aged seven, proposed a little game of Show and Show underneath the picnic table in her back yard. She put a blanket over the decayed wood, we crawled underneath; she showed me her "girl thing"; I chickened out, showed her my butt, and ran home.

2. Age eleven: "The Clint."

My friend Robby was very excited to tell me something. So we went and sat on the junior-high-school bleachers after class let out, and he explained to me about "The Clint." "It's just the same as the pussy," he said. I asked why it had a different name. He didn't know. I wouldn't find out till later that it was neither the pussy nor a Western-film fighting technique. Youth = misinformation.

3. Age twelve: Girls give blowjobs, supposedly.

When I was twelve, in the corn country of Illinois, blowjobs were not what they are today. In fact, they were so rare and mystical-sounding, Robby had to drag me out to the bleachers again to share a rumor he'd heard: that there was a senior girl in high school — a cheerleader even! — who apparently gave blowjobs! "No!" I said. It was too wonderful. "Yes," he said. "And she even deep-throats." Misinformation = youth.

4. Age sixteen: You don't kiss like that, you kiss like this.

I was the least popular kid in my high school, but the day the new girl arrived, she didn't know that and sat next to me at lunch. We talked for a while, and I volunteered to help her with her homework after school. After that, she kissed me as a thank you (oh, rarest of recompense!), but even better, she stopped me mid-tongue-ram and said, "You don't kiss like that. You kiss like this." Jenny, everything good that's happened to me since then is thanks to you.

5. Age eighteen: The washing machine is a great thing to sit on and receive a blowjob.

Power off: good. Power on: spectacular.

6. Age eighteen: Disco dancing is attractive to a certain set.

My house was a disco house; I didn't hear "Hey Jude" or "Sympathy for the Devil" till my senior year of high school. We danced a lot, and the dancing was entirely pelvic. My freshman year of college, a savvy friend took me down to New York for a loft party. I had never heard such good speakers, much less such incredible DJing, so I just got lost in a solitary dance trance in the middle of the crowd. But then, mid-sashay, I felt a pressure against the entire back of my body, moving as I moved (and in my hometown, nobody moved as I moved). I looked up to see the shaved head and giant pirate earrings of a six-foot-eight-inch man, who leaned down and said, in a deeper-than-Ving-Rhames voice, "Baby — you the only one here I can dance with." I thanked him, quiveringly, and fled.

7. Age twenty: A wise man learns to cook a vegetarian dish, to serve wine, and to put on Billie Holiday.

Seduction is easier than we think.

8. Age twenty-five: A wiser man replaces all overhead lighting with adjustable lamps and spends the extra money for very high-threadcount sheets.

Seduction gets easier and easier.

9. Age thirty-four: A woman's left and right breast do not need to receive equal amounts of attention.

I always tried to divvy up my strokes and kisses, thinking that the one breast or the other would feel slighted if it didn't get equitable distribution. Even now, knowing that they are not sentient entities that feel covetousness or rejection, I still suspect that the woman is paying attention and judging if I'm only paying attention to Righty. They tell me they don't; I guess I believe them.

10. Age forty: Women have libidos, and I'm still a little terrified of them.

Yes, as much as I want every woman to be a sex-crazed tigress, when they are (and Lord, thank you), I can still get a little jumpy, a little anxious, a little unsure of my gameplan and quarterback. But you know what? That's not a bad thing in a man; it keeps us humble (which we desperately need); sometimes it makes us wait to have sex till we're a little more comfortable (and less Cuervo-ed), and it lets the woman in on a side of our vulnerability. And more than Billie Holiday, Egyptian cotton, or spinach-and-walnut orecchiette, women really like that: when the façade is down, when we're real. Seduction really is easier than we think.