THEY'VE GOT SOME NERVE

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Armed with $150,000 in seed money from a venture capitalist, Field and Griscom have lured big-time photographers like Andres Serrano, whose photos will appear next month, as well as the Web's Cool Site of the Year designer Joey Cavella, who has created one of the slickest-looking spots on the Net. Field and Griscom are starting to see some of the money trickle back in ads. Nerve doesn't accept ads for porn sites and 900 numbers, which is where the real Web money is at, but a dozen legit companies have signed on. Field and Griscom believe the big money is still in print--like the sister magazine they hope to publish and the "best of Nerve" book coming out next year. (In fact, they put an apartment broker's number in their phone's memory--so they could call as soon as the book deal went through. "The old bed-to-desk commute will probably go from 10 to 30 feet," Griscom crows.)

Because the stories are both smarter and tamer than the stuff meant for one-handed typists, the site has been able to attract a 25% female readership. "A woman feels more comfortable looking at this stuff than going to a newsstand where a man is going to give her a sneer," says Field. "Which is how I feel about porn." Actually, Nerve isn't really close to porn. The Webzine's sexual high jinks are more a ploy to get surfers to stop and read. Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist who writes an online sex-discussion column for Microsoft's One Click Away, remains unaroused. "There are pictures of, like, naked accountants," she complains. "It was strangely unerotic. Willing as I was to get aroused, it wasn't even close."

Field and Griscom are looking forward to moving into a bigger place, hiring an assistant and eventually selling their venture for major bucks. But for now they seem content to make their work part of their all-too-happy, too-enmeshed, 24-hour-a-day, two-year relationship. Dressed as if they're just out of bed at 5 p.m., drinking apple cider and listening to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, they look more like cooing honeymooners than the pornographers of the future. Still, signs of a breakup are imminent. "We no longer have time to have sex," Field complains, "because we're always working."