A most amusing man: Stephen McCauley talks about his newest novel, Alternatives to Sex--all about a nice gay guy who can't keep his cursor out of chat rooms.

Bostonian novelist Stephen McCauley made a splash in 1998 when his 1987 book, The Object of My Affection--about a pregnant young woman and her gay roommate--became a high-profile film comedy with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. McCauley's fifth novel, Alternatives to Sex (Simon & Schuster), focuses on a 40-something gay Realtor with an Internet sex addiction and his relationship with a married couple who become his clients. Speaking with The Advocate, McCauley observes: "In American culture we treat aging as a disease to be treated with surgery and injections and compulsive exercise."

William, your protagonist, admits to having a "predictable midlife malaise." What happens to gay men as they turn 40?

Turning 40 can be a real crisis point. I recently turned 50. I don't feel particularly old, and I really love being 50. I've stopped worrying about a lot of things. But the bad side is that there's a fear of being sexually irrelevant, and that's some of what William is feeling in the novel--the fatalism of the "better get it while you can" variety.

How do you think the Internet has changed sexual behavior?

It has changed everything. Addiction to Internet sex is rampant and not just among gay people. For a lot of people, that's fine; they can get what they want--or what they think they want. A friend who owns a bar in Boston told me that since all those sexual Web sites came along, people don't go out to bars the way they used to. They can go online and get right down to business. It has opened the door for people who would never have sex with other men--deeply closeted or married men. It's a way to dabble in this world of titillation, and in many cases it progresses into meeting and to sex.

What role does lying (or misrepresentation) play?

In terms of lying, if you are going to meet someone, you finally do have to face them, so they'll figure out what you are lying about. In another sense, I think lying is really beneficial in any kind of work of fiction. If you have characters telling the truth and saying exactly what they mean, it's just boiling dialogue. But if you have characters who are lying on some level, there's so much more to work with--greater possibilities for humor and irony. My great belief is that we all have these fictions in our lives and we cling to them.

One reviewer said that you've moved "beyond the genre of gay fiction" and that in your work "sexual orientation is largely a peripheral matter in the long run." Is that accurate?

It's not possible that sexual orientation can be a peripheral matter because we live in a world where there isn't a level playing field. No matter how well adjusted we are to being gay, we still all grew up in a world where being gay is some kind of hurdle.

You incorporate 9/11 into your novel in surprising, touching, and even funny ways--how did you deal with that?

After 9/11, I wanted to write about what I was observing in the people around me: the entirely forgivable and somewhat comedic confusion--genuine moral confusion--people felt in the immediate aftermath. A question at the center of Alternatives to Sex is, Do I want to put selfishness aside and do what would be good for the world, or do I just want to forget altruism and eat, drink, and be merry because the world could end tomorrow? To me it's touching but also funny that people's reactions are so confused.

Freeman has written for publications that include Daily Variety and The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide.