You see, CP has the sort of storied history that makes me proud to be a part of its sex-positive staff. (Fun fact: The CP masthead was once home to a former Mr. Philadelphia Leather, a two-time Playboy model and an amateur nudie photographer who was fired for allegedly using the office as his personal studio.)

"[Sex] is a freedom issue," says CP founder Bruce Schimmel. "We don't fear taboo. We pull it out of the bedroom and into the public. [The message is], 'It's OK to be queer. It's OK to be T.S. It's OK to be different. It's OK, it's OK, it's OK."

In its quarter century on earth, CP has run thousands of adult escort ads, the earliest of which appeared in 1987. Before that, we stuck to naughty phone listings ("Love Life a Bust? Dial 976-LUST." Actually, don't — it's disconnected.)

We've been accused of pandering to "base instincts," and applauded for championing free speech. Conservatives found the ads morally reprehensible, and liberals accused us of human trafficking. Schimmel says he views the paper as a microcosm of Philadelphia, and the ads in the back are representative of the red-light district. "It's part of life," he shrugs. "People live, die and survive by smut."

When the cops came knocking in the early '90s, Schimmel told them, "Come back with a warrant, assholes." They never did, and to this day, publisher Paul Curci lets the marketplace determine what is and isn't permissible. "We scale back when it costs us other forms of [non-adult] advertising, but the paper reflects larger cultural patterns."

Over the years, we've run ads for fully equipped air-conditioned dungeons, male housekeepers for "executive ladies," and cleverly worded classifieds for every predilection ("Male Basketball Aficionado: Dribble and shoot expert, seeks female backboard and rim specialist," reads one from 1992.)

My personal hall-of-famer, though, has to be a 1994 ad for "scented lingerie" that invited readers to mail $40 to an address with a 19123 ZIP code; in return, an "ex-model" would masturbate and mail you her unwashed panties.

While the ads were always a force to be reckoned with, the editorial department was hitting the Eros Highway, too.

Hot topics included RU-486, sperm banks, couch dancing (back when it was illegal), the crumbling state of monogamy and, notably, illustrator Matt Freedman's Naked World Leaders series. (The full-frontal roundup: Mikhail Gorbachev, George Bush Sr., Margaret Thatcher and Dan Quayle.)

And, in 1991, we introduced my predecessor, syndicated sex columnist Isadora Alman. "She was very how-to and unembarrassed," says Schimmel. "She helped build a sense of trust and intimacy between readers and the paper."

The late '90s and early '00s saw "smut queen" Tony Flynn join the fold, catapulting the adult ad section to new and unexplored heights. (Hello T.S.adelphia!) Choreographer Brian Sanders bared his buns on our cover (prompting La Salle University to temporarily pull its CP distribution points), and Bigsby in Center City wrote to say that a Passional ad picturing a vinyl-clad French maid shoving a feather duster up the craw of a naked guy "didn't complement my roast duck and steamed greens over rice very well."

Why, just last week, T.S. Hallé asked, "Wanna taste my Berries?" Carry on, little devils, carry on.