New lesbian chic

A Phoenix story on a new trend:

Sincero didn't think she was a lesbian. A former punk rocker with a little-noticed novel under her belt, she was in her late 30s. She'd always liked men. She still did. And yet there she was: "All of a sudden, I found myself with an incredible woman who got it and me, and the sex was hot as hell," she'd later write. "And before I knew it I was in a relationship."

There weren't any books on that.

So she wrote one herself.

Sincero used to be an advertising copywriter, so the title was the easy part: The Straight Girl's Guide to Sleeping With Chicks. Solely on the strength of its catchiness, she sold the book to Simon & Schuster. She had yet to write even the opening sentence.

But write it she did, and fortunately for Sincero, the finished book tapped an Important Generational Trend. ...

The Straight Girl's Guide made it to number 7 on the Los Angeles Times best-seller list. Sincero's Web site started getting 8,500 hits a day. And Sincero began teaching workshops to girls who want to learn more, including one next week at Phoenix's MADE Art Boutique. The workshops almost always sell out.

We've had them here at the local university for a few years. Some people call them Lesbians Until Graduation (LUG).

A new government survey says:

About 4 percent of men and women described themselves as homosexual or bisexual, but in a finding that surprised the researchers, 14 percent of the women aged 18 to 29 reported at least one homosexual experience, more than twice the proportion for young men.

It also reported high oral sex figures for young people. The study is available at cdc.gov.