I blame Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer. They had that ridiculous Friends episode where Ross revealed to Rachel that his deepest, most furtive desire was to fuck someone wearing Princess Leia's gold bikini... and in Rachel came, not only wearing the damn costume but also (inaccurately) putting her hair in danishes just to out-Leia the Leia. And suddenly, it was like a long-held suspicion exploded into full-blown cultural law: Slave Leia is the secret sex fantasy of every Star Wars geek on the planet.

Nuh-uh.

This post occured to me because at the current moment I actually have Slave Leia toys in three different scales staring at me from my shelf, which is unusual, but merely a coincidence. Slave Leia does not make me hot. She has never made me hot. I've asked partners to slip into the old Catholic uniform, used fake fangs to draw real blood, and even had a fairy detailed fantasy about wrapping one shivering young woman in my Jedi cloak and playing lightsabre games till dawn... but have never, ever, ever, ever wanted anything to do with that gold bikini.

Why? Because having lusty thoughts about Leia is like having lusty thoughts about my mom. In fact, I think there's a good possibility that for at least the first five or six years of my life, Princess Leia might very well have occupied the exact same psychological space in my brain as my mom. They kinda look alike, they certainly talk alike, and what six-year-old doesn't want a gun-toting rebel senator as a mommy?

When I hit the pubes, this maternal connectivity (thankfully) did not morph over into "boy I hope one of the stage crew girls will favour me with some metal swimwear bondage action." (Mmmm... stage crew girls.) In fact, it wasn't until watching the saga last week that I was caused to notice that (when wearing her Hoth jumper, not the bikini) Leia has a cute bum. Think about that: it took me (me) 29 years to notice that Carrie Fisher's ass is respectable. Even that girl at Celebration wasn't quite enough to push me over the edge into a full-blown slave girl fetish... although I did spend about twenty minutes trying to get a good low angle on her rather superb butt.

Now, I've spent a lot of time with male Star Wars fans and yeah, they're a desperate lot and perhaps for each and every one of them, the apotheosis of sexual experience on the planet Earth really is getting a girl to dress up like Leia and wrap her chain around your neck. (Mmmm... chain play.) But I prefer to live in doubt. Doesn't a good spot of role-playing generally require more than the usual amount of confidence, inventiveness, and willingness to shoot down the item of your idolatry with a bit of in-the-muck love-ruttin'? Sure, they've all got the nude beach photos of Natalie Portman saved on their hard drive, but when was the last time you saw a Star Wars geek sully the maiden virtue of the saga's original turbo-hottie?

Exactly. Bullshit posturing....