When I was 13, I kissed a girl. Many times. I was feeling pretty good about it until I overheard my mother, a head nurse at the Veterans Administration hospital, mention something to a colleague over the phone about the treatment of venereal disease. When you wanted to learn about something in those days, long before the internet, you went to the library. In the dictionary, I found out that venereal disease (see syphilis and gonorrhea) was the result of sexual activity. Kissing, it sure seemed to me, was sexual. Then I looked up syphilis and gonorrhea in the encyclopedia. There were pictures. It was horrifying. It was also a little unclear how you got the diseases. In something approaching panic, I dove into the card catalog. (This was before computer catalogs, too.) I looked up the logical heading: “Sex.” And right there on the main card was typed “For Sex: See Librarian.” I want to make it clear that the library was not offering sexual services. I think the idea was that if you wante...