"I'll bet 40 percent of the people here are kinky," she told the Georgia Straight in an interview at the food fair. "But do they label their kinks? Surely there's a lot of people here who like to have their nipples pinched really hard before they come. Or get scratched. Or feel the full weight of someone lying on top of them. Or have their bums spanked a couple of times a year. I'll bet there's a woman here who likes to dress up in heels and bustiers. And that man over there wearing a Betty Boop jacket, he's probably wearing red silk undies. Someone here has got his wife's panties in his pocket and sniffs them each time he goes to the washroom today.

"These people are alive with sex. But many of them are denying that they are."

Skrukwa isn't a denier, inside or out. At the food fair, she wore a turquoise lace tank, push-up bra, and black stilettos. Her lipstick was perfectly applied, her eyes popped under heavy mascara, and her long dark hair was immaculately teased and sprayed. That evening, at the Love Nest sex store across from Metrotown, she taught cock-sucking to a full house.

Vancouver wants what she is selling. The 35-year-old mom leads 170 workshops per year on subjects ranging from "butt sex and anal pleasure" to "finding and stimulating the G-spot", which features a live demonstration "where you can actually see the G-spot spurt", she said. Skrukwa claims she's hosted about 7,000 people each year since she started her business, Libido Events ( libidoevents.com/ ), eight years ago. On Saturday (November 24), she's throwing a 120-person sex party at 595 Hornby Street that will include: eight queen-sized beds; one bondage suspension rack; a sex room; a dance floor; a flogging station; 4,800 square feet in which to frolic; and a set of house rules.

This isn't porn or prostitution. It's grownups of diverse sexual preferences consensually and shamelessly getting their freak on. And Vancouver has become one giant sexy experiment, with Generations Y and X leading the way.

Sin City's fetish nights at Gastown's Club 23 West attract 500 naughty schoolgirls, goths, and others monthly and boast 1,085 Facebook members. Kitsilano's Art of Loving offers classes in sexual massage, kissing, how to "make her moan", and other subjects. The CY Club, Vancouver's oldest swinging club, offers "hump day" once a month. The two-year-old Club Eden, a warehouse-sized club in Delta, charges $50 for a couples membership, $90 per event, and another $100 to stay overnight. This summer, it expanded to Calgary. "Polyamorists" (those who love more than one person) are finding each other on the Web, and UBC PhD candidate Danielle Duplassie believes their numbers may reach the thousands in B.C.

"There seems to be a trend that one person cannot meet all of another person's needs," she told the Straight . "There's certainly a trend to more openness."

This is just the tip. Almost every night of the month, there's some easy-to-find kinky event where consenting adults can get off.

But are you getting any? You, Straight reader, who bought into the monogamous "lifestyle", as sanctioned by society, law, the church, the synagogue, the temple, and the mosque. How much sex are you having?

In the absence of any recent, local, decently sampled research on sexual frequency, it's impossible to know just what you and your neighbours are up to. In his work, local sex therapist David McKenzie refers to The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States , by Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels (University of Chicago Press, 1994). They found that about 10 percent of adults are sexually inactive, and about a quarter have sex a few times a year or not at all. In total, they found, 60 percent of adults are having sex a few times a month or less. Not exactly burning up the bedrooms.

Burnaby counsellor Dawn Schooler see