Working boy: Premier New York City sex columnist Grant Stoddard explored America's sexual underworld and lived to tell about it.

"I was shrink-wrapped in latex by a dominatrix. A 55-year-old woman was rubbing ice on my balls through the latex. I didn't want to do this. I was convinced I was going to die," says Grant Stoddard, the author of Working Stiff." The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert (Harper Perennial, $12.95) and self-proclaimed romantic at heart, via phone from his home in Manhattan, the milieu for his sexcursions as a columnist at Nerve.com.

Stoddard, who's 30, stands out among Manhattan media wunderkinds as being smart, sexy, and funny while never pandering to his audience. He's been given a podium in numerous publications, including Men's Health, Glamour, British GQ, and New York magazine (where his piece on people who shroud themselves in plastic wrap or have stopped having sex altogether to avoid sexually transmitted diseases is a must-read).

I was expecting a sort of Johnny Knoxville of literary sex before I read Working Stiff. But moments into it, I realized that Stoddard has written one of the best works of creative nonfiction since Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and he should be very proud of himself. Instead, he comes off as a man full of vulnerability, and his postmodern erotic/neurotic story is an offspring of literary heroes Isadora Wing and Alex Portnoy.

It all started when Stoddard was 23 and an intern at Nerve.com. His visa was nearing expiration, so to avoid being sent home to London he took an assignment to write about having sex with a life-size doll, a gig that led to his now-in famous column "I Did It for Science."

Stoddard upholds the standards of traditional reporters--even when he recounts urinating on a masturbating man, his undercover assignment at the "no press allowed" bondage and S/M camp Leather Retreat in northern Maryland--he will do (almost) anything for the story.

It may appear to be shock sensationalism on the surface, but when you read more closely you begin to realize Stoddard is one of the very few writers of his generation whose voice is more vulnerable than glib and disconnected. He rips off his bandage and shows you the bloody mess he is. At the conclusion of his stint at the camp, he is not afraid to admit, "If you want to know the truth, I almost had a little cry."

And he has his limits: "'Would you have sex with an animal?' my editor asked me when I was stranded in a ranch in California and he was about to cut off the column. I told him, 'No. I'm not prepared for that.'"

Stoddard, who is straight, was up for some gay experiences. "I had a good night," he recalls fondly. "I made out with 16 guys at the [Manhattan] gay bar the Hole. There was so much anonymous craziness going on, but the column gave me an excuse to do things I would not have felt comfortable doing. Sure, I pissed on a guy, but it was for work. It gave me carte blanche. I felt like a guinea pig, really. I had no control over what I did.

"A lot of straight guys were asking me, 'How could you go to a gay bar?' but my gay readers wanted me to step it up. They thought that I was a bit tame and not really letting go like I should. THey wanted me to bring it to the next level."

My coital curiosity piqued, I ask whether the guys called him a good kisser. "There were no critiques." Would he be a top or a bottom? "I'm blushing," responds the proverbial wallflower at the orgy. "If I were to go back and do it all again, I would have sex with a man. I'd be a bottom. It's more of what I'm used to."

After all, Stoddard did have anal sex with his own penis--his own personalized, plastered penis, which he was not very proud of. "It did not catch my best likeness. It ended up being like a naked baby photo that you don't want anyone to see," he says with characteristic self-deprecation. At one point in Working Stiff, he likens his chest to two aspirins on an ironing board.

It remains to be seen whether Stoddard's gay-adjacent experiences will make it to the big screen--Paramount Vantage recently optioned the book--but it seems some gay experiences. "I had a good night," he recalls fondly. "I made out with 16 guys at the [Manhattan] gay bar the Hole. There was so much anonymous craziness going on, but the column gave me an excuse to do things I would not have felt comfortable doing. Sure, I pissed on a guy, but it was for work. It gave me carte blanche. I felt like a guinea pig, really. I had no control over what I did.

"A lot of straight guys were asking me, 'How could you go to a gay bar?' but my gay readers wanted me to step it up. They thought that I was a bit tame and not real that having sex with a man is the one thing missing from Stoddard's pansexual gonzo journalism. Still, Stoddard's work gives his readers an outlet to do just that without ever leaving the sanctity of their homes, which may ultimately be what we all want. He says, "I kept on thinking all throughout these situations what a friend had told me, that it's never really an adventure until you're feeling you'd like to be tucked safely in your bed."

Lasky is a Los Angeles-based reporter and has written for The New York Times.