Two years ago, I started this column because I felt that women’s sexuality was being grossly misrepresented in the media. Well, OK, I really started the column just to have some fun—then quickly realized that writing explicitly about sex from a woman’s perspective had larger social implications.

More often than not, pornography is phallocentric. Het porn sex begins and ends with the penis, and the woman is often subject to compromising situations—rough, hard pumping, a too-large penis shoved into her mouth, being “sandwiched” by two men—yet, none of it seems to bother the character. We hear her groaning in apparent pleasure. I know from personal experience that a groan or gasp is sometimes from pain, yet my boyfriends could hardly tell the difference. So I set about to contribute my two cents on this matter and many others. And, dear readers, you have either loved me or hated me for doing so. Some of you have thought that I was a man, disbelieving that a woman could speak so openly about sex. Others have simply thought I was a dominatrix— a cartoonish exaggeration of a woman doing what men generally take for granted—taking control of one’s own sexuality.

I’ve learned many interesting lessons from writing about sex, but I feel it’s time for me to hang up the act and leave my private life in privacy. A larger article about my experiences as a sex columnist will be published later this month in the front section of the paper. For now, I’ll just cap off with a few quick statements.

1. Alien Boy and I are now friends. Friends! He calls me up! He sends me funny e-mail! He invites me to dinner! What’s up with that?! Lesson: As soon as I stopped pressuring him to be my eternally devoted boyfriend, he warmed up to me. Some people are better as Distant Sex Objects. Accept it. Don’t let your insecure thoughts (“Oh, I’m not attractive enough for him/her”) or your jealous fantasies of his/her future partner ruin it for you. I, and I suspect many other women, didn’t come to this realization until well into adulthood. We’re usually the recipients of unwanted attention, not the other way around. Give some space, and maybe your object of desire will return. Of course, whenever I see Alien Boy, I still want to strip and probe him, but that’s another story.

2. Never tell a secret to anyone but your cat. A few of my friends knew the true identity behind the pen name. Then they told a few friends, and so on and so on and so on. It got to a point where I was at Amazon.com’s annual picnic, and people I’d never seen before came up to me and said, “Oh, I just loved how you compared your boyfriend’s testicles to jelly doughnuts.” Blush.

3. Do not skewer your boyfriends for profit. The first boyfriend who appeared in these columns, dubbed “b.f.,” and I are no longer communicating. He got very fed up with seeing himself portrayed week after week as the Dork Obsessed With Three-Way Action With Bisexual Bunnies. In truth, b.f. wasn’t this stupid all the time— just 90 percent of the time.

4. According to you readers, the top five terms for a guy who hangs out with lesbians are: “Dyke dick,” “Dyke tyke,” “Dutch boy” (all three of these allude to the legend of the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger into the dyke), “Lesbro,” and my personal favorite, “Bushman.”

5. Writing about your sex life, or lack of one, every week is a tougher job than most people think. Not everything that I did was fun, not everything was morally correct, not everything was sexy. However, I hope readers have learned from some of my follies and laughed with me from time to time. I’m now going to pursue a boring, healthy relationship with someone who is pretty spectacular. Come what may, I won’t be telling half of Seattle about it—unless of course we break up, and I’ll have to return to dis him in public. Until then, adios!