The fruits of my labor are finally paying off...sort of. A few days ago I got an email from a friend of a friend who works at Playgirl magazine, the moral and ethical equivalent to Playboy, but for women. "I've read your website," she wrote, "and your style would fit in at Playgirl." Apparently all my talk of anal fisting have caught the eyes of the right readers, and I, my friends, may one day be printed in an actual pornographic magazine.

I had to get my hands on a copy of this magazine, though, before I could respond to the email. I wanted to make sure that my story queries about subjects ranging from armpit sex to anal bleaching were both tasteful and appropriate. So, as my father and I got into our new Chevy Malibu (a rental) and he innocently asked if I needed anything for the two-and-a-half hour drive to the Jersey shore, I quickly blurted out, "A copy of Playgirl."

This led to us stopping at nearly every rest stop on the turnpike, searching for this particular compendium of tributes to the phallus. "Excuse me," I would say brightly, as my father lurked in the doorways, consumed with shame, "Do you carry Playgirl?"

After the first few episodes of this, my father decided that he would rather wait in the car. The last time, I skulked back to the car muttering, "By the way they reacted you would have thought I had asked to fuck their children," and it was then that we decided that perhaps there were no Playgirls to be had that night. Apparently, New Jersians didn't hold the male figure in very high regard.

Today though, my mother gamely suggested that we try the XXX store out on Route 9, that she had been eyeing for a while. My father declined to join us, so together, my mother and I set off in search for the one magazine that published tasteful pictures of rock-hard erections.

We approached the cement bunker that housed the XXX shop, and with a snicker, walked in. I spent the first few minutes inside not searching for magazines, but rather, trying to get my mother to touch the lifelike "Spanky Butt" that came with its own paddle. "Touch it," I cried, camera ready to capture the moment.

"Oh I couldn't," she said demurely, "I'm not wearing makeup today." Her concern was clearly not in touching the Spanky Butt, but in how it would look when it inevitably appeared on this very site.

Before long, my fun was ruined by the clerk, who gruffly told me that no pictures were allowed. The clerk had blond hair, with straight bangs across the forehead. The clerk had clearly been born male, and was now in the midst of some sort of womanly transformation process. However, this was easily the laziest transsexual I had ever encountered. Most drag queens put bio-women to shame with their elaborate preening, sequins and makeup. This clerk though, seemed loathe to do much beyond the dutch boy haircut, and a quick, uneven shave. He wore a baggy t-shirt that hid what could have been either small, saggy breasts or the lumpy memories of pectoral muscles. The denim cutoffs were short, so short that this clearly wasn't a man just having a bad hair day. I quickly asked about the Playgirl and the clerk shook his head.

"Only Playboy," he said. We scuttled out, and sat in the car, mouths open, looking at one another.

"It was like Pat," my mother said, a modicum of wonder creeping into her voice, as she referenced that ambiguous SNL creature. We finally ended up at a newsstand, somewhere in New Jersey that had a large amount of hardcore pornography. Because my mother appeared to be enjoying leafing through it so much, I forced her to ask the clerk. She put down her copy of "Huge Butts" and approached the counter. Finally, it seemed, I would have my very own copy of Playgirl.

When we got it home, my grandmother looked at us disapprovingly. She picked up the magazine and said, "Well let's see what all the fuss is about." She began leafing through it, and gasping, she held up a picture of a reclining man with a large erection. "Look at this," she cried, horrified.

I did, and innocently asked, "Oh, haven't you seen one of those before?" I had a pretty good idea of the answer, based on the existence of her four tiresome children. She glared at me, and continued to gape, before finally retiring to the couch, Playgirl in hand.