FAQ – draft answer 2….

FAQ - draft answer

2. Why do you write about sex so much?

Obviously, it's because I'm a nymphomaniac. That's the opinion that one writer who fancied himself something of an amateur psychologist offered at a dinner party one evening many years ago. If that's the explanation that satisfies you, I recommend you go with it. I certainly do personally enjoy sex quite a bit.

Other possibilities might take into consideration that sex is fascinating and dangerous, painfully intimate and terribly important. That for a fiction writer, a person whose job it is to try to understand and represent some of the mysteries of the human heart, it just doesn't get more mysterious than the place of sexuality in our lives -- especially given the tremendous cultural taboos around discussing it. The people we are when we're in bed with someone else are selves that we don't generally show the rest of the world -- they are human beings particularly naked, and not in a simply physical way. I find that irresistible.

I feel a peculiar ethical responsibility around this subject too -- a need to tell the truth about sex, as accurately and honestly as I can, because so many people can't, or won't. And that omission does so much damage. Dr. Ruth, Dorothy Allison, and Carol Queen are my heroes.

I've tried to answer this question, of why I write so much about sex, many times and in many different ways over the last decade. I think my best response comes in my piece, "Silence and the Word," so if you'd like to explore this further, I recommend you take a look at that.

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