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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Urge: Naked World
Thai cock-cutting catastrophe
Dozens of Bangkok penises are annually "fed to the ducks" by vengeful wives.
By Hank Hyena
[12/07/99]

Urge
Thank heaven for little girls
Underage-looking aspiring starlets are lining up for the chance to make $2,000 a day in the flourishing imitation child-porn industry.
By Stephen Lemons
[12/04/99]

Column
Unhappy meal
How to eat yourself to death.
By Mary Roach
[12/03/99]

Urge: Naked World
Clitoral creams and sex cues
NexMed contributes to female orgasm with topical cream; humming helps, too.
By Hank Hyena
[12/03/99]

The culture of secrecy
Docs make mistakes, but proposed regulations to make them talk about it won't change that scary fact.
By Dr. Jeff Drayer
[12/02/99]

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Yeah, I do. I, like a lot of San Franciscans, live in this bubble of sexually liberal thinking and it's easy to think that everyone else has this sort of honesty about their sex lives and their relationships. What made that really clear was when I went to England and started talking about the book. And everybody said, "What would make you possibly want to write about your relationships?" Or, "Why would your friends want to tell you this stuff?"

Although the British in some ways are way more open than Americans are. Like the women, the way they talk to each other is much more detailed, much more clinical than our girl talk.

How did you transform your material from the columns into your book?

Well, that was hard because one of the criticisms, I think, of the column -- which is justified -- is that I would come across as too glib. I would skim across issues that were probably a lot more complicated than I was able to deal with in a 1,000-word column. It was kind of a relief to be able to write the book and have that room to explore stuff.

How did you end up weaving all these stories together -- it's an interesting form because it's sort of a nonfiction novel.

It's hard, because life doesn't follow an arc, the way you want it to in a book. It has highs and lows. But it doesn't have Aristotelian closure, which made it difficult.

I knew I had people in my life who were gabby and funny and interesting. And I also knew that they all kind of represented different aspects of women's sexuality and relationships.

I think one of the things that was the most difficult was when my agent came to me and said, "You've really got to decide how much you want to be in this book. Because either you've got to be in it all the way, or you've just got to step out of it and look in." And I really wanted to step back and look in. I just thought, I don't know how I can deal with that kind of exposure. Then I realized I just can't step back. I would have to be in it, otherwise it just would be this totally glib thing.

What was the hardest thing about depicting yourself?

Admitting that I hadn't treated people well in some ways, like Aiden, the guy I was dating. As I was writing the book, I was still in the midst of a relationship with him, and realizing that I wasn't treating him well. I was doing all the things that I hammer men about.

And I also realized as much as I profess to wanting to be this sort of independent, I-don't-want-to-be-involvedin-a-relationship kind of person, that I was one of them. It turns out I'm just like [laughs] ... like everyone else! Maybe all those women's magazines do have something to tell me. It was a real shock to suddenly understand that having some kind of significant relationship was going to matter to me at some point. And I'd been so convinced that didn't matter.

I'm glad you made the choice to include your contradictions, because it gives the book all these interesting tensions.

If you're a writer, you're usually a person of strong opinions. And you're probably one of these people who has spent a lot of time arguing with people throughout your life about different issues. So it's easy if you're that kind of person to sort of turn it on other people, and turn it into print, and then end up sort of looking like an asshole. But that's just not -- in the end it's not honest, and it's also boring.

The most interesting writing that is done is when people actually really expose themselves and are willing to be vulnerable to say what they want to say, but also do it in such a way that it isn't like I'm the moralist, I'm right, you're totally wrong. That's why I hate -- I can't stand Maureen Dowd. You know? I just think she's such a good writer, she has so many great opinions, but the way she comes off is so fucking glib and snide. She's just boring. She just ends up being boring. Because it's like, oh, so here you are on your high horse again. That's not interesting. Anybody can do that.

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