"Yep, that's all there is to sex," he mused. "Just insert tab A into slot B."

Bailey's one of my oldest friends. Sometimes, though, after a few drinks he gets a tad cynical. Especially on the tenth day of the month, when the alimony check to his ex-wife comes due.

Now me, I've managed to avoid marriage. At 40, I'm the neighborhood's confirmed bachelor, and the local eligible gals have long since given up on me. I hardly even go out on dates any more. Everyone suspects there's something wrong with me. Maybe there is.

You see, I've found a substitute for women. For real-life women, that is. I dream.

As a horny and frustrated adolescent I had begun fantasizing about what it might be like to make it with some of those unattainable cheerleaders, the cute ones with the high, musical voices and long hair down to the waist who were much too good for me. Fantasizing was better than nothing, and soon it was much better than nothing. What had begun as ordinary kiddy daydreams turned into a powerful obsession. The girls, then women in my fantasies became increasingly realistic.

Over the years, I've had quite a number of fantasy lovers. Marianne, with the big breasts and round, bouncy ass. Many's the time I bounced off it as I plowed into her from behind. Ginette, the intellectual, who liked to talk about English literature and Renaissance architecture, but was a red-hot maniac in bed. She would climb atop me and ride for hours, conjugating irregular Latin verbs and pumping me in the same rhythm. Theresa, the madonna, who swore she would have become a nun if only she hadn't been overcome with lust for me. Hotly passionate Marissa, the Spanish grandee's daughter whose jealous family would surely murder me in gruesome fashion if they discovered our clandestine liaison. Helga, the professor of Human Sexual Studies at a prestigious German institute, who taught me all she knew... and then some.

Melissa, the latest in my series of dream girlfriends, was my finest creation. True to life in every respect, from the dimples in her cheeks when she smiled to the dimples in her bare buttocks when she bent over and presented herself to me. She even had a personality, and this was starting to cause problems. Big problems.

She was getting to be uncomfortably real. I'd have to sweet-talk her and do the kiss-kiss bit before we could get down to brass tacks. Then she began telling me to "knock before entering," meaning to go down on her prior to inserting. Sure, that's supposed to be arousing to a woman, but what the hell does a dream phantom want with arousal? Then she wanted to try anal sex. Now that's not really my cup of tea, not even in a fantasy. It turned out to be more pleasurable than I expected, and it's become a regular part of our repertoire now, but where the bloody hell did that particular idea come from? My subconscious? The dark corners of the psyche?