SEXIS WRONG

that you could catch homosexuality, like a cold. From an inanimate
object, no less. No amount of explaining would calm her
down, so we eventually hung up on her, but it was an alarming
reminder of just how stupid people can be.
talk about it, the more powerful we are. I mean, they’re so
easily distracted by it. Isn’t there some way we could use that
to our advantage—“Look, George! Buttsex!”—and then take
back the country?
Another humdinger was an email I got from some guy in Nebraska
the day after I appeared on the Howard Stern show:
I heard you on Howard Stern the other morning.
The book you wrote and your lesbian experiences
sounded ridiculous and terrible to me.
Your last name is interesting. Some people may
see “sincere” but all I see is the “sin” part.
I pray for you that one day you will see that God
never meant for girls to sleep with girls. He gave
us bodies to respect and cherish and you are doing
neither when you use your body that way. I hope
some day you find the shame in what you’ve done.
Imagine, writing a book about it! That’s horrible.
True, we are all sinners. But the point is to ask
forgiveness for our sins and ATTEMPT to live a
wholesome life. Your life will be nothing but pain
and heartache if you keep living this way.
The thing that really struck me about this guy was that he
listened to Howard Stern—talk about pain and heartache! He
must love being upset all the time. Which is one of the most
notable differences, I quickly realized, between us and them.
They just love to crash our parties, while we can’t be bothered
with theirs. We’re not spending our precious time hanging
around fundamentalist churches or calling into Christian
talk shows to explain how liberating a really good blowjob can
be. Not only would it put me in a deep sleep, but it’s terribly
rude.
I managed a few emails back and forth with
Mr. Nebraska and learned that he was listening
to Howard because he believed Howard
could be saved (and because Howard has hot,
big-tittied women on his show, I suspect). He
prayed for Howard daily, and now me too apparently, and was
unreceptive when I suggested he instead pray for himself to
be less judgmental.
All this obviously goes way beyond bad manners and kinky,
voyeuristic tendencies, to much more serious things like hate
crimes and laws that strip us of our rights. But as I try to do
my part in fighting the powers that be, I take some solace
in the knowledge that people are their own worst enemies.
The “moral majority” will no doubt contract a slew of stressrelated
diseases by constantly worrying about who is sticking
their what into whose hole, and the more we shamelessly
Regardless, I think it’s fascinating. And terrifying. And I know
part of the reason I have the cojones to be so loud-mouthed
about it is because my family, and my mother in particular,
has always been there cheering me on. Although I have to
say, this last stunt really put us all to the test. Because no
matter how wild I’d been in my past, this was the first time
I’d played the sex card. I knew we’d all somehow rise to the
occasion, but I suspected we’d probably do it with a lot of
fumbling around. Because not only were we WASPs, which
meant we never, ever, discussed the S word, but we were
family, and up until now, the only proper response to the
thought of, say, Mom and Dad doing it, was to gouge our
eyes out. I couldn’t imagine telling them all about my new
gay sex book!
In the beginning we were all quite happy to just breeze on
by the details, but the more excited I got about my project,
the more I not only wanted to tell them about it, the more I
wanted to involve them in it, too. I wanted to be open with
them, to free us all from guilt and repression, to see each
other as whole, sexual beings who could freely talk about sex
without incestuous shame standing in our way!
Mom was unamused. We were in the car on the way to visit
my sister, Jill, and I was blathering on about all the fascinating
research I was doing and all the inspiring women I was interviewing.
“Don’t think for a second you’re getting an interview
out of me for that thing,” she announced, as I put new batteries
in my tape recorder, seconds away from asking her for
She was obviously drawing the line
at telling me how she felt about
eating another woman’s pussy.
one. “I wasn’t about to ask you!” I shot back. My mom is
a sweet potato. She supported me through the punk years,
even brought friends to a couple of my shows, but she was
obviously drawing the line at telling me how she felt about
eating another woman’s pussy.
My sister, on the other hand, was all over me like a baby
chimp. “I’ve always wanted to try being with a chick!” she
said, demanding to know everything. She dragged me off to
her son’s room so we could be alone, and I got my first familial
interview. Here’s how it went:
Me: Have you ever been with a woman?
ON BEING A SEXMONGER 253