Although Alfonso defines a sexual partner as “someone I’ve had sex with” (“Thirty? Thirty-five? At least?”), he confesses that if he’d measured that number by “people I’ve dated and had sex with,” the number would be much smaller. Like, five. But he’s in a relationship right now that has actually lasted for two months. “Recently, I’ve been trying to meet people more through other friends, or parties, and not, like, rush things too much. But it’s not as exciting.” On the whole, he’s been rethinking sex’s role in his life. “I’m wondering, what is sex about? What should it be? Should it be entertainment, should it be recreation, should it be something more?” In the end, he thinks it’ll probably be something more. “It will become exciting when you find that person in real life who makes it as thrilling as finding God-knows-who online.”

The freedom of “Queer Space”
Genderqueer, 37, 34+ previous partners (“Not including random hookups at sex/play parties, back alleys”)
Lia is a she but feels sorta like a he, even though the Boston resident has the anatomy of a biological female. She prefers the pronoun s/he, dresses in a “retro old-man” style, and tends to be attracted to more-masculine personalities, yet doesn’t plan on altering her/his organs anytime soon. “If I was going to change my body, I’d get a better ass,” s/he says, laughing in a high pitch that’s undeniably feminine. So Lia identifies as genderqueer — a flexible description for someone who doesn’t fit neatly into any sexual-orientation category.

So whom does Lia sleep with? “I sleep with anybody,” s/he says blithely. “No, I generally sleep with queer people,” s/he clarifies. “I will sleep with gay men, trannies, and dykes and trans-men and -women, depending on attraction and brain. It really comes down to, like, ‘Do they have a good brain? Are they hot in the head?’ ”

Lia identified as a straight female until her/his mid 20s. Back when s/he identified as a she, she juggled multiple boyfriends throughout high school and college. And with one exception, Lia’s romantic involvements were polyamorous. “When I think about it, I’m like, ‘God, I’ve always been a freak.’ ” But in her mid 20s, Lia realized she was also attracted to women. She dated one woman for a year and a half, and then ended up in a four-year-plus open relationship with a butch lesbian: “We were primaries and we had other lovers.” And at some point she started to realize that being a “s/he” felt more accurate than being a “she.”

Such sexual flexibility tends to confound Lia’s straight friends. “When I have conversations with them about polyamory or, like, fuck buddies, or sex parties where you go and find someone who wants to do what you want to do in whatever moment, they’re ...” S/he trails off. “It’s mesmerizing, the conversations that can happen in ‘queer space’ as opposed to straight space.” S/he adds, “As queers, we get to make this shit up. It’s an amazing privilege.”

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And so in Lia’s head space, “where your body doesn’t matter,” s/he is having sex with gay boys, but ones who treat her/him like an equal. That can be a challenge. “It takes an open-minded and specific gay man to get there,” s/he says. The last person s/he slept with was a gay man, about a month ago. “It was a long-time crush that got realized and was great. I did leave with questions.... We were pretty gentle with each other, and that’s not usually the kind of sex I have, and so I was like, ‘Wait: was I getting treated like a girl?’ It wasn’t as rough and carefree as usual.” S/he sighs. “But I think that we were traversing a long time of crushes — God, it’s so fuckin’ complicated.”

Vanilla is still a flavor
SF, 21, seven previous partners
For someone who identifies as both a feminist and an activist, Ella has a surprisingly “secret” Victorian side. “I prefer to be the one kissed on a first kiss, and I love it when boys open doors,” she types over AOL Instant Messenger. (She’s currently finishing up a semester abroad.) At camp when she was 14, the UMass Amherst junior overheard girls in her bunk debating the finer points of spitting versus swallowing. “I almost spit up.... Fourteen-year-olds think they have to, they think it’s the norm.” Seven years later, she still continues to be horrified by the prospect of fellatio. “I’m not a girl to give them.”

She did try. Once. For “about one minute.” But “that repulsed me so much that it’s not something I’ve been able to do since.” She doesn’t understand how oral has come to precede intercourse in the 21st-century base-running game. “Someone has got to explain to me how [fellatio] became less intimate than sex.” Although her resistance is largely the gross-out factor, she’s also honest enough to admit that in this day and age, refusing to go down on a male partner is both a means of wielding power and “a test of a nice guy.” (As are her blond-fuzzed legs, which she doesn’t shave.) Plus, she’s discovered that “guys are not unwilling to give even if they don’t receive.”