This month I'm giving readers a choice: We can either (a) discuss the possible privatization of Social Security and its impact on 21st-century macroeconomics or (b) go shopping for sex toys. May I see a show of hands? Okay, so that would be 2.4 million women ready to hit the stores, and one retired stockbroker from the suburbs of Detroit who'd be ever so grateful if I'd start writing for BusinessWeek. Sorry, Dad—the people have spoken.

With friends like Hilda Hutcherson, MD, my go-to sexpert and the author of Pleasure: A Woman's Guide to Getting the Sex You Want, Need, and Deserve, who needs sales help? I call my fearless pal and offer to buy her lunch in exchange for a guided tour of the best sex toys currently on the market. My education begins in the personal massagers section of a discreet midtown Manhattan shop called Eve's Garden.

I check out a shelf of architecturally unobtrusive little gadgets as Hilda heads straight for a periwinkle blue confection. "See how pretty," she says, grouping it with the chartreuse and salmon ones. "They're so sculptural, you could really have them on your coffee table without anybody realizing they're vibrators." But before I can lay out what I feel is a rather cogent argument for not displaying an assortment of pastel sex toys in the middle of my living room, Hilda has moved on.