Ah, They Still Have Sex on Their Minds : Relationships: Famed researchers in the ‘60s, Masters & Johnson are reaching out to the jaded ‘90s with the same line--relax, you’ll love it.

They aren’t carrying stopwatches and thermometers--or wearing white lab coats--but no two people have ever talked so candidly about sex as much as Masters & Johnson and continued to be so hopelessly unsexy.

They motor into the lounge at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., looking like two senior citizens in desperate need of a Caribbean cruise.

Divorced after 21 years of tireless study, research and experimentation, they have just finished collaborating on a gigantic, comprehensive book, “Heterosexuality”--not an academic text for die-hards like them, but a guide for your average sexually curious person.

Pulling up a chair to a clear plexiglass table, Virginia Johnson, 69, carefully sits down and places her tiny Bottega Veneta handbag--closed up tight--on her lap, a rather telling position if Sigmund Freud were here. She is likable and a little secluded emotionally. She doesn’t talk in terms of the subconscious, or dark lingering monsters, but uses words like response and impulse and then, finally, refreshingly, something as unmedical as intimacy .

“There was a rush to make sex recreational, to make it fun and games,” Johnson says of the ‘60s and ‘70s. “And ignoring the things that make sexual response occur, things that deepen a relationship, that give it color and endurance.”

Ex-husband William Masters, 78, finds a chair beside her. He is bald, seems to have trouble making eye contact and keeps his lips pursed so firmly that they appear to have vanished. It’s clear he feels misunderstood. Most people still think of him as the pervert with a clipboard, peering through a two-way mirror as couples made love in his lab.

When his first book, “Human Sexual Response,” was published in 1966, critics complained it was too clinical, too much about bodies and physiology and not enough about love and feelings.

“The reason for our laboratory was to study the normal, in order to understand the dysfunctional,” he says a little defensively.

“We’ve paid a bit of a price,” Johnson says, “for the fact that Dr. Masters sought to provide a basic science of human sexuality . . . a foundation for the work.”

A younger, livelier fellow in blue pin stripes named Robert Kolodny--yet another co-author--keeps chiming in. A physician who has worked at the Masters & Johnson Institute in St. Louis for 25 years now, he is infinitely more amusing and accessible than his former teachers and mentors, but he suffers from the nagging problem of not being nearly as famous.

Years ago, Woody Allen made jokes about them. This is because, let’s face it, the idea of these two cerebral people zealously studying sex in a lab is funny.

But why?

“I think the reason people are uncomfortable with sex,” Masters says, “is that we still know so little about it.”

“Some people still believe that sex is dirty, even after matrimony,” Johnson says. “Sometimes it feels like nothing has changed. In spite of the incredible availability of sex-related material--in entertainment, in education--I feel like we’re back where we started.”

Kolodny provides another viewpoint: “Why is sex embarrassing? Think of all the people in our society with serious body-image problems. The women with weight problems who are constantly on diets. Men who are worried about the size of their penis or their bald heads or whatever. Anybody worried about their own inadequacy.”

“Perceived or real,” Johnson says.

“Right,” Kolodny says, “and these are people who create sexual problems for themselves inadvertently, by worry, by self-fulfilling prophecies that start out as simply poor sexual confidence or poor self-esteem.”

Sounds so complicated it’s amazing anybody does it.

“Shows you,” Johnson says, “how strong the reproductive impulse is.”

The book covers all kinds of new fronts--AIDS, infertility, teen-age sex, plus endless problem-solving (“skills that people can try on their own,” Kolodny says). It answers silly questions you might have--like, why sexual desire for somebody you’ve seen naked a million times can fade--backed by the most amazing clinical research.

And?

“One thing we’ve seen over and over and over again in our clinical work,” Kolodny says, “is a couple who appear to have a great discrepancy in their desire--and they seem like a horrible mismatch--but in fact, the actual level of desire is not that far apart. It gets magnified to seem far apart.

“Men usually have affairs to find sexual variety and excitement,” he says, “while women are more apt to have affairs looking for emotional returns. To put it another way, men have affairs seeking genital strokes, women have affairs to get ego strokes.”

At the institute, there’s still a very popular two-week program for couples--for $3,500 they get all kinds of advice and a year’s worth of telephone contact with a sex therapist.

Some people arrive with huge problems, others simply for “an enhancement,” Johnson says.

And what if you’re married and just don’t want to have sex anymore?

“If people have no interest in sex, is it possible to have a healthy, happy, contented marriage?” Kolodny asks. “Sure! Why should any experts be the arbiters?”

“Let’s just hope,” Johnson says, “that these people not interested in sex are married to each other.”

“If they’re not,” Kolodny adds, “they’re going to come see us.”