Sex for Dummies (IDG Books), the “Fun and Easy Way to Have Great Sex in the ’9s,” sat in the window of my neighbourhood bookstore and I bought it because, as a twenty-three-year-old, I was curious about what sex was like before my time. In Sex for Dummies, the author, Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, writes that lovers in the ’9s who want to keep things fresh should give each other a sponge bath in the kitchen, clean the bathroom together naked, re-enact their first date, watch TV without channel-surfing, feed each other spaghetti with sauce (naked), go rollerblading, clean out each other’s belly buttons and play onion ring toss with an erect penis as the target. The book contains an entire section called “Cybersex: Sex and the Computer,” which talks about “e-mail ecstasy, wicked World Wide Web, naughty newsgroups and frenzied file transfers.” In the book, Dr. Ruth claims that the future of virtual sex, which in the ’9s was apparently known as teledildonics, will require special headsets, clinging penis holders and vaginal prods.

Sex for Dummies taught me a lot about having sex pre-Y2K, but I am disappointed that I have to file teledildonics away under “things that the twenty-first century has yet to deliver,” alongside the robot maids from The Jetsons and the hoverboards from Back to the Future.