You have never been more desirable: Goo is leaking out of your eyes. Your nose is dripping like a psychedelic painting. Microscopic spores have lodged in your sinuses and you're sneezing so hard that a tiny piece of brain has turned up in your handkerchief and now you've forgotten everything from high school calculus.

For the remainder of hay fever season, you should seek out those who appreciate how beautiful you are.

They're waiting for you at "The Sneezing Web Ring," a confederation of web sites for those who are attracted to people sneezing. They have pictures of attractive people sneezing, movies, audio recordings. They even have pornographic stories – the people in them just happen to be allergic to tree pollens.

"My first love of sneezing came from the Smurfs," writes a woman in "Diary of a Sneeze Fetishist." "I doubt anyone else looked twice at a little blue, sneezing midget (aptly named 'Allergic Smurf'), but I remember seeing him in a few episodes of my then-favorite cartoon (I must have been, what, all of 4 or 5 years old) and thinking he was the best Smurf ever."

Now she writes and dreams about sneezes. Her boyfriend tries to please her by faking sneezes. Occasionally when they're together, she imagines other people sneezing*.

From her Web page, we jump to EuroSneeze, "The first Europe-base sneezing fetish web site." And then Sneezing Fetish Online, including a Gilligan's Island video clip in which Ginger is allergic to Gilligan.

And Sneezing Males4Males, "A site for men who enjoy other men sneezing, or who enjoy sneezing themselves, and for their friends," according to the site's mission statement. Here, we discover family-friendly pictures of celebrities who are known for sneezing (such as Howie Dorough, "The sneeziest of the Backstreet Boys," according to the site) or who are having sinus problems in the photos (New York Mets first base man Todd Zeile, in the dugout, wiping his nose on his wrist guard).

Then there are the erotic writings on a site called Serotica.

"Embracing him again, she felt her nose begin to tickle," starts a passage from the romance, "Almost Quiet Evening at Home," "and this time, without shame, sneezed twice directly onto his shoulder, letting the sneezes rack her slender body as they left her, echoing through the room sharply, `hh-Cshh! Hhh-CSHOO!.' Josh couldn't stand it anymore. He knew then and there that he had to have her."

What's the appeal here? Some Web writers say it's because the sneezers are so helpless. Then, too, a sneeze is an intense physical release: A sensitive area in the sinuses is tickled to the point where the mind goes blank, then suddenly the whole body clenches involuntarily – the abdomen, chest muscles, vocal cords, throat and eyelids – with a sudden burst*.

For some, sneezing is even transcendental. One man, for example, discovered inner peace when he accidentally made himself sneeze during a meditation session, according to Donna Barrow, author of "Sneezing Made Easy, A Step by Step Guide for the Everyday Sneezer."

"He stopped meditating altogether," Barrow writes, "and began devoting just a few minutes a day to self-induced sneezing, achieving what he calls the 'highest plateau' of relaxation."

Barrow also said another group teaches people to make themselves sneeze. It operates a summer camp in northern California where meals are prepared with heavy amounts of pepper, and participants are encouraged to add more from rubber pepper shakers shaped like noses.

OK, even I – who can accept everything else that's been said so far – have to admit that Barrow's article sounds like a hoax, particularly since she claims the title of "Ph.S., Licensed Sneezologist." But it's pleasant to think that sneezing can heighten our experience of life – that carnal and spiritual advancement approach whenever funguses bloom. Whenever water gets in our noses. Whenever dust from an old lounge chair flutters up our inflamed nasal passages, tickling and touching and itching and....

I can't stand it anymore. I must have you.