Anthony B. has a fiery fetish that he has never revealed to his significant other: He likes to light his dick on fire when nobody is around.

"I know it sounds weird," he understates, "but I totally get off on it. The act of pulling it off without getting hurt pumps up my adrenaline and I have the most intense jerk-offs afterwards."

Anthony says that "at least once a week" he douses his dork with a flammable fluid, lights it up, and manages to extinguish his flaming flesh flute before the dermis is damaged.

The 34-year-old accountant at Deloitte & Touche got the idea from a "freaky" porn video he picked up at a peep show/adult bookstore in seedy Gardena, a suburb of Los Angeles.

"I don't like genitorture or any of that stuff where you actually get hurt or feel pain, but watching this guy torch himself without even a scald excited me," he says, "and I knew I had to try it."

The pyrophile said he's never met someone with the same interest and doubts he ever will. "I just don't tell anybody -­ I know that people with weird fetishes go through hell trying to explain them to lovers and friends, and I'd just rather not deal with it."

But Anthony is not alone. According to the Center for Humans Organized Against Disfigurement (CHOAD), over 16,000 American males were admitted into burn trauma units last year with injuries to their penises. There are no substantial figures available for females.

"This just doesn't seem to be a female problem," said Abul Hazzan Batan, M.D., director for CHOAD's hazardous paraphilia division.

"We get women with jumper cables attached to their labia, but pyrophilia, at least involving genitalia, seems almost nonexistent in females."

Carl Banyan, a pyrophile in Woodstock, Illinois, admits there's an inherent risk to lighting one's manhood aflame, but that the danger is easily mitigated with a clear head and respect for the power of fire.

"You gotta remember the force that you're fuckin' around with here," Banyan said. "The difference between getting off and going to the emergency is a matter of seconds, and the minute you forget that, you're in a world of hurt."

Banyan has been torching his tubesteak for 12 years, ever since he heard someone performing the stunt on a nationally syndicated radio show. He says he's only been scalded a couple of times, and never seriously injured. According to the 37-year-old civil engineer, the key is in the fuel that pyrophiles use to create the flame. Ideally, the penis never actually burns, but is only a surface for the blue flame of flammable liquid.

Banyan's choice is butane. "There really is nothing that compares to butane," he says. "It burns clean and even. Most of the morons who go to emergency rooms are pouring friggin' gasoline on their cocks."

Gasoline, he says, contains impurities that can continue to burn after the flame has been extinguished. To put out the fire, Banyan and Anthony use either a glass of water or a cloth soaked in ice-cold water. "I like the cold cloth thing," Banyan says. "It feels great against the hot skin of my schlong. Then I grab some aloe vera lotion and jerk off all over myself."

Both Banyan and Anthony B. say they don't encourage people to try this at home. "The first time I did it, I knew what I was doing because I had seen the guy do it safely on video. But if anybody wants to try it, I would just say, 'Be careful.'"

Take it from a guy who pours lighter fluid on his johnson and sets it on fire. Words to live by.

People Do runs each Monday on GettingIt.