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Urge: Naked World
Thai cock-cutting catastrophe
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Urge: Naked World
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[12/02/99]

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No. No, I'm not going to write a sequel.

Do you see yourself moving away from writing about sex?

I don't feel like I ever wrote about sex per se. But I see myself definitely moving away from revelations.

When you started the column you were the everywoman single gal living in an urban setting.

Right.

And now you're in a relationship, right?

Yeah, a serious relationship.

And so you can't play that role anymore.

It's not that it would bother the person I'm with now, but I don't want do it anymore. The change has been with me. It's a really hard, tight road to walk because on the one hand you want to be honest. You're going to get shit for doing that. Like why are you so important that you think you can write about yourself? But you don't want to walk into your house feeling like your whole life has been ripped open. You know, there was a point when I was doing the column where I actually considered being a prostitute. And I thought about it really seriously. And then I thought no -- most of the stuff that I've done is just being a voyeur.

But I was thinking, Well, what would it be like if I were to just be a submissive for a week? To just try it out, what would it be like? Because I was curious. And then I said, wait a minute, I can't do that. A lot of people that do this kind of writing are a little nuts. They have to be. Because otherwise they don't survive it.

What do you want to write about next?

Infidelity.

I don't know what form it's going to take. But I find that whole issue of betrayal fascinating. Why did they do it? How people get over it. How they don't get over it. What does it mean?

Over all these years has your initial attitude about sex changed?

Yeah. I think at one point in my life I could've been called a nymphomaniac. I mean I really liked sex and I liked one-night stands and I liked doing different things and I liked experimenting and making love wasn't that interesting to me. Now I find making love to my boyfriend unbelievably exciting and interesting. More than anything that's come before.

But before you met him, were you learning and changing from the column?

I think women, young women who consider themselves sexually liberal, put themselves through a lot of things to kind of figure out what it is that they want and need.

That's sounds a little like Wendy Shalit's theory that modern young women are forced by feminism into casting pearls before swine and giving their milk away for free. She's talking about strong women feeling obligated to be sexualized in a certain way. And then that's not always what they want in the end.

I have a hard time thinking that Wendy Shalit and I would ever agree about anything, but with these sort of young, upper-middle-class, white, educated, fairly liberal women -- it's almost like they feel they owe it to themselves to go and experience as much as they possibly can. They just don't protect themselves in a way that I think women in their 30s start to learn how to do.

You positioned yourself in the book as very anti-marriage in the book. Has that changed?

I don't know. Some days I feel like going all the way, go to the altar, have a big wedding, get all excited about it. It's a stupid Pavlovian thing where all my friends are getting married. I don't know if it's really my desire or my dumb jealousy thing or something I'm supposed to do. And it makes me really mad, actually, that I can't figure this out, whether it's cultural or whether I really want it.

It is so weird. I had four of my best girlfriends call me within one month and tell me they were getting married. And I just felt like, "What's wrong with me?" [laughs] Then I think: Get over it!
salon.com | Dec. 7, 1999

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