MTV's 'True Life' gets sexy

I'd planned to go out Saturday, but after it took 20 minutes to get out of uptown Friday night (complete with dudes in the surrounding cars peering in, trying to get a good look at me), I decided I just didn't have the energy. So that's how I found myself on the couch, sipping a beer and watching an episode of the MTV series "True Life," this one entitled, "I Work in the Sex Industry."

I've seen the "True Life" mini-documentaries before, and they've always been informative, if a bit shallow. Really, how much of a person's life can you cover when it's an hourlong episode and you're featuring three people? Still, I enjoyed the recent installment.

Man, I thought I was having trouble with relationships! "I Work in the Sex Industry" features the relationship difficulties of a 22-year-old chick who works on the business side of porn (she can't get a boyfriend), a 23-year-old dude who says he's straight, but does gay porn for the money (he wants to tell his family what he does for a living), and a girl, 22, who parlayed her many sexcapades into fodder for a college radio show called "Sex on the Beach" (she has fallen in love and her co-host is afraid it'll ruin the show).

My thoughts:

• The show serves as a reminder that sex is darned complicated. The girl from the business side of porn -- she does everything from file paperwork to scout for new "talent" to assist on movie shoots -- can't find a man comfortable with her career choice. Or, they're too comfortable and expect her to be a non-discriminating nympho. The chick who shares her sex life on the radio loses the man she's falling in love with because he can't accept her promiscuous past and is insecure about being a part of her monogamous future. And the porn star, well ...

• Guys who do gay porn and claim they're straight will never be believed. The porn actor's co-stars cracked me up, because they were looking at him like, "girl, please." I think human sexuality works on a sliding scale, from completely heterosexual on one end to completely homosexual on the other, so I also think it's possible for a man to have sex with other men and still prefer women for relationships. But I'm probably in the minority on that one. So I'll move on.

• When you're 22, anything seems possible, doesn't it? The decisions we make then affect the rest of our lives, and each of these people, in their own way, seem full of promise. I almost wish "True Life" would do a follow-up documentary about the lives of these three in 10 years ... but I guess then it would have to be on VH1, wouldn't it?