"What will your mother think?"

This is the single most-asked question I answer when telling people about my new job as City Paper's sex columist. Some folks are concerned for my journalistic well-being ("You'll get pigeonholed," warned one co-worker); others wonder how it'll impact life beyond the boudoir ("You'll be needing these," said another, rosary beads in hand). But mostly, it's not my reputation they're worried about—it's my mom's.

To understand what compels a 24-year-old woman to write 650 words about sex once a week and share it with 100,000 strangers, you've gotta meet her mother: the artist, the nudist, the free-spirited polytheist.

She's the kind of woman who talks enemas at Perkins Pancake House and once drew a naked lady on our kitchen door. She meets men on the Internet and sometimes makes out with them in the parking lots of chain restaurants. But to see her in frumpy jeans at the Turkey Hill, she looks like any other homemaker. She and my dad have been married 29 years. And yes, he knows about her boyfriends.

My mother raised me like an open book. Sex was never a four-letter word, despite her own intercourse-is-evil upbringing. She talked openly about "the beauty of making love" and taught me how to roll condoms on bananas in the fifth grade. She wasn't angry when I got booted out of kindergarten for masturbating during nap time and never punished me for drawing pubic hair on my Barbies.

We only grew more honest as the years wore on. If it were 1 a.m., she'd know where I was, whom I was with and (more or less) what I was doing. She was quick to remind me throughout high school that it was OK if I liked girls more than boys and wasn't a lick surprised when I chose sex as my newspaper beat in college. Word of an online porn-reviewing gig was met with, "Can I watch the DVDs when you're done with them?"

That's not to paint my mother as some spandex-clad, boobs-pushed-up-to-there nympho who throws herself at every UPS guy that knocks on the door. She was weirdly conservative when it came to clothes, thinking I wore everything two sizes too small, and always made a point of saying, "You know, you gotta be really careful about AIDS these days. It only takes one screwup."

When I first told her about this column, she wrestled with the "What kind of a mother am I?" question. I thought it best to discuss her reservations. Openly. At Perkins Pancake House. With my dad carving his Deli-Ham & Lots-A-Cheese omelette in silence at the end of the table.

By conversation's end, we both agreed that writing a sex column was a natural extension for someone with my prurient interests. It's a way to let it all hang out while staying relatively clothed. There was just one caveat, courtesy of my father: "Get a .45."

So what's in it for you, dear reader?

Aside from hearing about my lusty endeavors in lascivious detail, I'll be your personal escort on all things debaucherous in Philadelphia, reporting from the front lines on who's doing what, how, when, where and to whom. Future columns will tackle everything from foul-mouthed Catholic boys and high-end escorts to Cosi flashers and fist-a-thons. I'll teach you how to politely disentangle from a post-coital engagement, make your own sex toys and masturbate at work. We'll have sex with the ex and chaperone a rainbow party. We'll talk daddy myths, trannie mafias and why making out with Iggy Pop wasn't nearly as hot as it should have been.

What can I say? Like mother, like daughter.

Questions? Comments? Want to show me your birthday suit? E-mail ashlea.halpern@citypaper.net. No phone calls please.