Amateur porn sites, swingers, S&M - Fringe experimentation has gone suburban. These days, soccer moms, your accountant, or even your own parents are likely to indulge in kink. Stunned by the uninhibited questions from ordinary people on his msnbc.com column, "Sexploration," Brian Alexander was driven to understand Americans' desire to get down and dirty - especially in an era in which conservative family values dominate.

To find out what people are really doing in the bedroom, he set out on a sexual safari in modern America: attending a fetish conference, trying to fit in during a wild night in a "sex positive" community center, interviewing online porn entrepreneurs, taking a Beginning Bondage class, and discussing Passion Parties with the women who created them. He even met with religious right-wingers to get their take on the nation's expanding sexual menus - and discovered some very surprising opinions.


Brian Alexander is an award-winning contributing editor at Glamour magazine and writes the "Sexploration" column for msnbc.com. His six-part online series, "America Unzipped," received more than one million viewers per month. He lives in San Diego, California.