Large octavo; Pavia, 1794. Hot! Sizzling! Sexy!

One of my recent antagonists on this page, in imputing to me authorial "sin," reminded me of the certain connections, too seldom affirmed, between journalism and medieval moral theology. The fa-mous "five questions of journalism," for example, originated in no newspaper office but in medieval penitentials or "confession manuals." The priest was taught in hearing confessions to probe the five "circumstances of sin" — with whom? where? why? how? and when? did the penitent entertain lascivious thoughts with regard to swiche a wenche. Of similar pastoral origin is the "journalistic" obligation of a writer to define an intended audience with utmost precision. This one comes from Gregory the Great, who directed it not to cub reporters but to preachers.

Well, the intended audience of this column consists of three female students — they know who they are! — alumnae of my HUM 206 lectures, who committed lèse-majesté in the library about a month ago. In a rare moment of freedom, I was conducting important research on a C-Floor computer while they thoughtlessly chattered nearby. I had to absent myself briefly to do something gentlemen of my age have to do with increasing frequency.

Upon my return I found them gathered, whispering and giggling, around the computer at which I had been working. On its screen, left there by inattention born of urgency, was a photograph of an eBay offering, an intimate female garment. Its material was leather, its color puce. They bolted at my reappearance and without waiting for the entirely unembarrassed explanation I could have provided.

Another editorial antagonist (they swarm like locusts) recently implied that I would do well to stick to the subject of books. Fine with me. I am in fact a book-lover, both as reader and archaeologist, and the proud possessor of an extensive personal library gathered over many decades with much care and, why not say it, skill. Since many of the books that interest me are old, rare and expensive, I often can afford to buy only seriously distressed, damaged and disbound copies. The craft of bookbinding, which I perforce took up as an amateur years ago, is a vanishing art, as can be judged from crimes committed in its name during senior-thesis season; hence "binding copies" are cheap. The same, alas, cannot be said of "official" bookbinding materials, especially prepared animal hides, which can easily run to 50 dollars a square foot.

Thinking outside the box at a church rummage sale one day, I bought my first old black miniskirt for a buck: perhaps two square feet of perfect negritude, thickness and sheen. Thus in a careless moment I began my fatal habit of bibliophilic alutation. It is a remarkable commercial and sociological fact that at any moment of the day or night there are available for competitive purchase on eBay approximately 750 second-hand leather skirts; and if you use the search-words "Hot!" or "Sexy!" you can turn up a certain number more offered by people for whom the challenge of spelling "leather" or "skirt" proved insurmountable. And you do "meet" the most interesting people. I used to get pretty good stuff from Thongs-N-Things.com, but commercial emporia are at once more expensive and less personal than the numerous private entrepreneurs such as leatherlouise@aol.com and kinkyken36 — folks with whom, over time, one can forge a sense of leathery community.

Many other interesting facts attend the market in used leather skirts. For example, availability increases markedly south of the 38th parallel and improves yet more toward the east and west coasts in that zone. Thus Tucson, Ariz. and Sumpter, S.C., are growth areas for the amateur bookbinder; Terre Haute, Ind., is a virtual desert. Furthermore, vendors of leather skirts, especially red, purple and gold ones, are much more likely to have two names than are the female vendors of the books destined to be clad therein. Willa Mae, Tammy Jo and Jan Arlene are highly probable leatherettes; and though I hesitate to offer rash generalizations, it is at the very least possible that no woman named Hortense has ever covered her loins in cowhide.

Repeated purchases of ladies' leathergoods, even when accompanied by instructions that they be sent to a man at an address in an academic department of a prominent university, raise surprisingly few questions, except, perhaps, among three presumptuous undergraduates. But they do bring in their wake unsolicited e-mail offers of ancillary commodities — and ancillary services — of a surprising, and in truth an occasionally alarming kind. Such is a tiny price to pay for scholarship! I recently had the good fortune to purchase, for peanuts, a disbound copy of an early printing of one of the great masterpieces of early Italian penitential literature, the "Specchio della vera penitenzia" of Jacopo Passavanti. The sins therein catalogued are scarlet, but the book itself, so recently covering the hips of Lou Ann in Bogalusa, La., will be red. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.