Magazine's Sex Columnist For Men Is No Longer A Woman Of Mystery

OK - she lied. But she didn't mean to.

Anka Radakovich was simply placing a personal ad so she could write about its responses in her monthly sex column for Details magazine.

And in the interest of seeming more youthful and alluring - and getting a date - she listed herself as 29.

Then on July 1, Radakovich's hometown newspaper blew the whistle: She is not the breathy, 20-something dream girl who writes about dating, relationships and sex for millions of young, male adults.

She is their older sister. Their Mrs. Robinson.

Radakovich is 37.

"So sue me, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Nancy Reagan when she was in the White House," Radakovich said, waiting for tea water to boil in her suite at Los Angeles' Chateau Marmont. "The women understand why I did it."

No matter. Radakovich's advanced age makes her the perfect "woman of experience" for a job like hers. Going to swinger clubs. Hiring male prostitutes for research. Embarking on cruises with singles and writing it in her "been there, done that" tone that not only entertains but uniquely teaches her male readers what women want.

"American men I don't think have an idea of what romance is," she said. "And if they could give us a few compliments, that would help."

What else do they need to learn?

"Where should I begin?" she said, laughing. "Well, I think they should have a little more interest in what women are thinking about. They just focus on female body parts without focusing on us as people."

As for women, well, they shouldn't put themselves aside for a man. Nor should they be controlled by a man.

"Although," Radakovich added quickly, "We love them. We love the men. That's why we talk about them so much."

A collection of her Details columns was released recently as a book called "The Wild Girls Club: Tales from Below the Belt" (Crown, $18). The rights were just sold to Paramount Pictures, and Radakovich is working on the screenplay.

"I write about my personal experiences for a male audience, and I inadvertently teach men without trying," she said. "I'm kind of joking about male behavior, and the guys, I thought they would get mad at me, but I get fan letters thanking me . . ."

Women like Radakovich as well, for telling it like it is. Twenty percent of her readers are young women who agree with all she says: Men's apartments are "cootie zones" with lumpy mattresses. There is more to relationships than sex. And there is more to women than their bodies.

"I'm nothing like Helen Gurley Brown," Radakovich said of the Cosmopolitan magazine editor, whose book "Sex and the Single Girl" gave young, '60s women permission to have a sex life.

"I'm beyond Cosmo. I'm more rock 'n' roll."

Radakovich claims she has been fired from every job she's had, from answering phones to writing advertising copy. A native of Hagerstown, Md., Radakovich attended graduate school at Georgetown University before heading to New York City to be a writer.

What kind of writer, she didn't know. But after doing two stories for Details, she was hired as a columnist. A sex columnist.

"Basically, I created my own gig because (Details editors) didn't know what they were doing," she said. "But they did know they wanted a woman's perspective on what men think.

"So I said, `Boy, that gives me a great opportunity: writing for male readers in their 20s.' Single men. A great audience. An audience who needs to learn. Who wants to learn."

She speaks the last line like someone named Natasha, all Slavic and sultry, then falls back into the tone of a bored New Yorker.

She placed a personal ad and got 80 responses, whittled them to 14 dates - and met no one.

She went to a swinger's club with three friends and took notes. ("I'm sort of a social stenographer," she said.)

Indeed, over the three years she has been writing it, the column has become "more depraved," Radakovich said.

"I am having more and more adventures," she said, letting go of a sultry laugh. "People are so embarrassed to talk about sex. I mean, everyone has sex, and they try to pretend that they don't. I don't know what the big deal is.

"So I like to look at the goofy side, the silly side of sex. Because I always found it amusing."

On this day, Radakovich is dressed in black. Her hair is dyed just as dark and ratted at the top. Her makeup - foundation, lipstick, a little eyebrow pencil - is perfectly applied; she frequently checks to make sure.

When Radakovich poses for a picture, an interesting thing happens: All her Georgetown intellect and Maryland-grown earthiness flitter out the window she is perched on. She purses her lips, leans forward to show off her bosom and takes on the guise of a sex kitten.

Go figure.

"I mean, I do have a tough side," she said later. "But I'm sweet and (readers) think that I'm this big dominatrix who is going to spank them and show up with whips.

Radakovich's female readers tell her they appreciate her honesty.

"Apparently men and women don't talk to each other about these things," she said with a shrug.

Radakovich's personal life is no different from any normal girl raised in a "nurturing" family, she said. The only reason she hired a matchmaker, went to dominatrix school and spent a few days dressed as a man was to write about it in her column.

"The column gives me an excuse," she said.

Her parents are proud of her. Her father came to her book party and ended up posing for pictures on a bed surrounded by some of his daughter's "hot" girlfriends.

She lives in New York City by herself and had to change her telephone number after resourceful readers found it in a 9-year-old phone book. She likes to read and has the same birthday as Tammy Wynette.

"I'm kind of chronicling the adventures of being a single person, a single woman in New York," she said. "I'm kind of like Margaret Mead with a push-up bra."