DEAR ANDREA: Dunno what the guy with C.P. is into, but if he just wants a helping hand, I'm sure there are plenty of gay guys who would oblige (me included, and I'm neither old nor scary). Tell him to post an advert on Craigslist or something (or hell, give him my address if you do that sort of thing); there are plenty o' options besides monetary compensation (either to a prostitute or to his aide for the lawsuit).

Love, Helping Hand

Dear Hand: You do have a point: there are people who would like nothing better than to pop over and offer "manual release" to pretty much anyone, our guy included. And why not? I can't help thinking, though, that while there are people who want to do our guy, our guy would not necessarily wish to be done by them. He is missing some faculties of movement, but not discernment or taste. Maybe he wouldn't like you. Maybe he's a 100 Percent All-American Straight Boy. Who knows? Let's just put the idea out there, and he and others in his position can do with it what they will. It's certainly easier and less offensive (not to mention less illegal) to ask a friend to type up an ad than to get an underpaid employee to jack you off.

While we're on the subject, I also received a note from the engineer at a rather nice sex-toy Web site called MyPleasure (www.mypleasure.com). Like some of the others, it has a section for people with disabilities, and it does look as though MyPleasure put a lot of time and thought into it. I must quibble with a few statements, but would I be me if I didn't? For instance:

"Women with non-traditionally shaped vaginas or other issues impairing their ability to experience intercourse can place this canal made of realistic material between their legs and simulate intercourse with their partner."

Mmm. No. That would allow the woman's partner to simulate intercourse with her. How rewarding. I'd like to know the sales figures on this one; are there really that many people who would opt for a "canal," no matter how realistic the material, over, say, inserting themselves between their partner's actually real thighs? I'm curious.

My other quibble is tiny: "You, a partner or a personal assistant can control the intensity of the vibrations." Yeah, great. I'm with them as far as the "you, a partner" part, but there, at the end, is that poor, beleaguered personal assistant getting dragged into it again. Aren't we going to all this trouble specifically to avoid getting P.A.s involved?

Love, Andrea

Dear Andrea: In "Liar, Liar" you said:

"I'm afraid I've come to the less than comfortable conclusion that, for much of humanity, the natural state is neither perfect monogamy nor polyamory, but monogamy plus cheating."

Whether or not it's natural is a question I'd like to leave to the biologists. However, I have recently concluded that our cultural viewpoint makes monogamy plus cheating easy, which is part of the reason so many people do it.

Cheating is incessantly discussed in mass media, in suspense movies, talk shows, self-help books, and advice columns. It is always portrayed negatively, but it is so constantly referenced that it forms a ready-made cultural script for people to follow. In other words, our culture teaches people how to cheat, how to hide cheating, how to react to cheating, and what cheating will get you. We ensure that cheating will be an intrinsic emotional player in the monogamous experience, always present though rarely active.

Love, Careful Reader

Dear Reader: OK, nicely stated, but when do you think it was, exactly, that people began learning how to cheat from the media, and how mass do the mass media have to be in order to count? Does Le morte d'Arthur count, for instance? That was pretty popular, I hear. How about Boccaccio, Chaucer, or the ballads of the troubadours? Ovid, Virgil? Homer? Am I being annoying enough?

I think you make a good point; romance novels, movies, talk shows, and the like do provide a handy primer on how to cheat and (more interestingly) how to respond to being cheated on. I will not grant, however, that people didn't know how to sneak around, make "an arrangement" with a spouse, hit a philandering husband with a skillet, or stone an adulteress until the advent of Jerry Springer.

Love, Andrea