Time Out New York, May 22, 1996
"Late Date With Sari" on Lifetime TV
By Jason Cochran
There is no foreplay. When sex educator Sari Locker pounces on the six guys backstage who are preparing to discuss their sex lives with her on Late Date with Sari, there's no time to worry about performance. Blithely cheerful and garrulous, Locker hastily learns their names. Jeff, she discovers, is a pretty-boy charmer. "Did you just wink at me?" she asks. "Good. Save it for the show." You can't help but wonder, this is an expert? On the air an hour later, Jeff is reduced to admitting: "I can't reach orgasm." Locker is by now every inch the authority. Exuding charm, she smiles and tells him gently that he needs help.
Although at 26, she may seem a bit young to be dispensing hardcore coital advice, Locker has all the credentials, as well as a whip quick tongue and impossibly high energy. "When I was nine, I was trying to breed a hamster that would have the pattern of a panda bear," she says between shows. "I mean, what kind of freak child was I!" A calculating one, it seems, who later turned to the study of human breeding and devised a strategy to educate the masses.
After completing an undergrad degree in educational psychology and a 1992 master's in human sexuality education at the University of Pennsylvania, she immediately began working steadily as a TV talk show "guest expert." From '92 to '94 she had a weekly WBAI radio show on sexuality, and last year wrote a nervy book, Mindblowing Sex In the Real World, an advice manual pertaining to the bedroom realities of the '90s and the MTV generation.
Now, finally, she presides over her own no-holds' barred, unscripted roundtable, one of the only shows to tackle human sexuality with forthrightness. But Locker, a self-avowed pop culture maven, doesn't limit her sexual studies to just flesh-and-blood subjects. "Donna is the only virgin on TV," she says, referring to Tori Spelling's Beverly Hills, 90210 character. And herself? "I don't sleep around, but I date around. I'm looking for the ideal boyfriend," says Locker. Well, if she courts him with even half the enthusiasm that she's summoned for her career, the lucky guy won't know what hit him. Men with performance anxiety need not apply.
