|
...writing scenes literary fiction. Not long after that, there would be more to my moniker than The Observer--or my students--knew. For the next two years, while instructing my young charges in the elements of serious fiction, I wrote a monthly column called "Girl Talk," under a pseudonym, for the Japanese edition of Playboy. Each piece was a mini-play starring four saucy New York women in their twenties--though I hadn't seen my own for some time--who met at trendy bars and ski lodges to discuss their latest sexual exploits. It was lively banter and a smidgen of soft-core porn.
I hadn't sought out either publication. Until a publisher asked me to write The Joy of Writing Sex, I kept busy teaching and writing literary novels (each with a few sex scenes), book reviews, and the occasional travel piece or personal essay. But the publisher's idea appealed to me. Before I knew it, I was conceptualizing theories and strategies involved in writing about sex, collecting examples from contemporary work, and interviewing writers including Russell Banks, John Updike, Dorothy Allison, and Alan Hollinghurst. In New York, I happened to meet a Japanese editor and book scout and sent her the finished manuscript, hoping she might interest a Japanese publisher. Instead, she phoned me some time later with a far more exotic invitation.
Japanese Playboy needed a monthly woman columnist after their New York-based writer suddenly quit. Was I interested? At first I was flummoxed. Writing about sex in fiction came easily to me, but what could I possibly dream up, month after month, that would hold in thrall tens of thousands of randy Japanese men? I balked until she mentioned the mini-play format, which suits my taste for writing dialogue, and the hyper-generous fee--every month for a year. Surely, I could think of something. Once I did some novelist's research into the sex lives of Gen Xers and New York's latest hot spots, I was turning out my spicy columns the morning they were due. Readers were happy. I was prosperous. The contract continued for a second year, until the editor in Tokyo moved to Venice.
Her departure coincided with the end of my four-year appointment at Princton in 1998. Perhaps as a result of this series of losses--the job, Playboy, and the cherished Sex Priestess title--my body soon lurched into another phase, the phase of losing all the estrogen I'd been born with, and then the phase of taking little blue pills every day that gave me back the estrogen in another form. All of these events spanned the period in which we witnessed the collapse of the NASDAQ, where I'd put my Playboy winnings; the election of George Bush; September 11; and the warning, issued by the NIH on July 2, 2002, that the little blue pills, also known as hormone-replacement therapy, caused small but distinct increases in a virulent strain of breast cancer, and we all had to stop taking them.
It was one thing for a part-time sex-writing expert to lose a cushy magazine gig and a teaching job with a pension, but quite another to lose the essential hormone that regulates libido and keeps the equipment working. A woman minus her estrogen is like a car with no oil--and no shock absorbers. With my estrogen flowing, in real or synthetic form, it had been easy to imagine the hyperbolic escapades that filled my monthly column. But without it coursing through my blood, I could barely remember what desire felt like. Or do I mean I didn't want to remember, didn't want to be reminded of what was no longer there? Gone was the World Trade Center, gone was my libido.
In this maelstrom of loss, I conflated the personal, the political, and the grim news of the day, more and...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
Looking for additional articles?
Search our database of over 3 million articles.
Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication
name or publication date.
About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company
analysis or best practices in managing your organization,
Goliath can help you meet your business needs.
Our extensive business information databases empower business
professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible,
authoritative information they need to support their business
goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting,
company research or defining management best practices -
Goliath is your leading source for accurate information.
|
