SOMETIMES, BAD SEX REALLY IS WORSE THAN NO SEX:

Anna, a 22-year-old graduate student in Manhattan, said she remembers clearly how she was introduced to one of New York's sauciest underground social scenes. It was via an instant message from a stranger who had seen her personals ad online at Nerve.com... he wanted to know if Anna would be interested in going "with me and my hot tattooed girlfriend"...

To gain entry, Anna first had to send an erotic essay and a photo of herself... Anna made the cut, was given the party's location and a pass phrase -- "untie my corset" -- and on a chilly night last year donned fishnet stockings and high heels and headed out to her first sex party....

Porn fans might be drawn on, as the promise of hotness redeems even the worst prose. But since this story appears in the New York Times, the more judicious ones will be filled by a creeping dread that the promise will be hideously betrayed:

...a quarter of the women -- most in their 20's and early 30's -- were topless, save for dabs of body paint on their nipples, to comply with the city's public nudity laws. Downstairs in the midst of a crowd of around 200, half a dozen women were packed tightly together in a sort of group rub, undulating in time with the techno soundtrack. In a corner, a stunning young woman with blond hair preppily styled like Gwyneth Paltrow's...

Well, there goes my hard-on.

"It's not just, 'I'm going to go to this party with my boyfriend to have sex in front of other people,' " said Melinda Gallagher, 30, a former graduate student in human sexuality at New York University... "The philosophy is that women need their own space to explore sexuality. The women in the room direct whatever happens."

Well, there go my next three hard-ons.

Still, given some of the pathetic stories I've been hearing about sex-averse attitudes among our young folk, it is encouraging to hear that some kids, at least, are within hailing distance of getting laid.

The orgy does sound depressingly like a launch party for some energy drink, but that's probably the fault of the writer, who approaches his urban satyrs from the Marian-the-Librarian perspective used by Times lifestyle reporters since before "boo" became "grass." He even sinks so low as to solicit a dissent to the debauchery from "a clinical psychologist and sex therapist at Beth Israel Medical Center." The swingers, says the shrink, are "so overstimulated in this environment that they may not understand sexual intimacy in a more monogamous relationship." Well, who does?

So let us be optimistic. Maybe when the kids finally get fucking right, they can work on that shitty music they've been listening to.