I’m reading with Rachel Resnick, author of the stunning new memoir about her love addiction, Love Junkie, at Powells on Burnside, November 12th at 7:30pm.

This is also the launch of our new joint website (up Friday) called www.loosegirlsandlovejunkies.com, where we will have guest interviews and blogs and you can join in the discussion about sex, romance, and relationship addictions.

Listen to how my grandmother in her final years was getting more action than I probably ever will again in my interview with the crazy kids at The Unholy Matrimony Show. Click on November 9th and move the bar to right around 74 minutes in.

I thought this was great http://roadretro.blogspot.com/2008/10/i-love-bus-in-chicago.html

I’m no Stephenie Meyer, but somehow I got to talk about my YA novel on TV. Local TV, but still. AM Northwest has been so supportive of me and my work. Best part was that I got to hang out with Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson in the Green Room. Nicest, funniest guys. Go here, then scroll down to “The Good Girl” to watch my segment, and then be sure to check out “Science Fair” to see them too.

On October 14th my new young adult novel, The Good Girl, arrived at bookstores. It is my first published book that has not one thing to do with sex…and you thought I had only one thing on my mind.

In truth, The Good Girl is about some of the same things as my earlier books. It’s about growing up in a family - and culture - where one’s true feelings aren’t allowed, and how those feelings get submerged into negative activity. In The Good Girl, that activity is stealing.

The Good Girl is about a teenage girl whose brother was killed in a car accident a few years before. In the aftermath, her whole family fell apart, and the world became an unsteady place, a place where she felt the responsibility of having to keep it together. But the truth is, she’s angry and sad, and no one is there to contain her feelings. So, she begins to steal, and secretly hopes she will be caught.

Most everyone I know shoplifted at least once when they were young. It’s like trying pot, or drinking. It’s experimentation. But when it becomes a habit, or carries into adulthood, like it did, for instance, for Winona Ryder, stealing is generally a cry for attention.

This is why I don’t want my kids to feel like they have to be anything - and certainly not “good” - for anyone. Of course I want them to behave themselves, to be polite, to be kind and empathetic. But this is different from being “good,” which in our culture generally means being happy, nice, and to show no feelings that make other people uncomfortable. More than I want them to behave themselves, I want them to feel that they are safe to have their full range of feelings, that this - not being good - is what makes them worthwhile in the world.

But enough with the preaching. Really, The Good Girl is just a novel with themes about taking and giving and being whole. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Here we go - it airs tomorrow night, September 23rd on the WE Channel, and then will air many times in the following couple weeks. I’m terrified about this. Why? Because the bottom line is that I don’t ultimately consider myself a sex addict, yet I did the show to bring the people who can relate to my story to it so that they might understand themselves better. Still not sure whether this was the best idea, but I guess I’ll find out soon.

I should say that because I don’t want to give too much focus to the sex addict approach to my story I turned down an appearance on Tyra. On Tyra! Ah well.

Oh, and here’s a blog post I did about the SLoW taping:

When I stepped back into the bar where I had lived out a fair chunk of my “loose girl” days, I had not been there for many, many years. Also, the last time I did not have a cameraman, a sound guy, and a producer from “The Secret Lives of Women” leading the way. If someone had told me back then that my behavior with guys was going to wind up on television some day, I would have laughed. I would have said, “I highly doubt anyone wants to see how pathetic I am.” I might have added, “Besides, I’m sure for most women, it would be like looking in the mirror.” And then I would have paused, thinking about this, and then I would have rushed off to write Loose Girl.

The producer asks, “What were you looking for when you came into a bar like this one?” 

“I wanted to find someone to fill my emptiness,” I told her. “I was always looking for boys to do that.”

In the corner, in my peripheral vision, a customer stands and listens. Doesn’t he have anything better to do than listen to some girl tell her sad tale of desire? But I don’t turn to look at him, to try to gauge what he’s thinking, because I’m supposed to talk to the camera. I straighten my back, hold my hands tightly in my lap. 

So silly, isn’t it? I published a memoir, after all, revealing the terrible neediness that drove me through much of my life, all culminating in promiscuity. It’s not like I have a right to be embarrassed. At my recent annual with my gynecologist, trying to assess how often I needed to be coming in, she asked, “Would you say you’ve slept with less than, or more than, five people since you’ve been sexually active?” My answer? “Um, read the book.”

Nothing is secret anymore. People write me emails. “I hope you’re doing okay,” some well-intentioned readers say, and I feel immediately ashamed, embarrassed by my own vulnerability. Others are not so well intentioned. One told me I’d shamed the Jewish community. Another sent an email with the subject line, “40 dicks.” I will leave to your imagination what that one entailed, but will say that he also berated me for writing a book about sex when I have two small sons.

Of course, all of this is my own fault. I did write a book about sex when I have two small sons. Once, a reader wrote me, “Thank you for taking the firestorm on this.” It’s true. I made a decision to reveal myself, to be more vulnerable – honestly – than I’ve ever allowed myself to be, not even during sex.

But there’s a reason I did it. And the reason goes beyond curiosity, voyeurism, attention, beyond any sort of personal need. When I worked as a therapist, girl after girl came through my office door to tell me the stories I came to know as well as my own. What’s more, they were my stories. We all had the same one, albeit with different details. They were the first ones to make themselves vulnerable. They spoke their stories after much waiting, much encouraging. When they were finally willing to speak them, they did so in soft voices, in whispers. They said things like, “I’m so ashamed,” and “I hate myself for this,” and “How could anyone ever love me?” They spoke their stories only because that door they had walked through was firmly shut, because no one would hear.

The harm of that silence, I knew, was greater than the acts themselves. Sex and boys and their needs had wounded these girls. But nothing had injured them more than the silence they had to upkeep.

The same had been true for me.

Writing my story, allowing thousands of people to read who I’ve been and what I’ve longed for, has been the greatest intimacy in my life. I’ve been attacked for it, yes – that firestorm. But more than that, I’ve received email after email telling me what it’s meant to them to have someone speak their secret words, to know that they aren’t alone.

In late September, the documentary in which I’m profiled will air, and there I’ll be, on camera, telling the world my deepest, most shameful secrets. I’m hopeful that someday they won’t have to be shameful anymore for any of us.

Had a delightful interview with the BBC on Saturday Live. Listen to it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/saturdaylive/saturdaylive.shtml

Just had a really fun interview with Rory and Lauren at the Unholy Matrimony Show. You can listen to me tell the world that my current sex life sucks:

kaintv.mp3

Last Friday I flew 6 hours to be on TV for 4 minutes, and then flew 6 hours back the next day. Apparently, 4 minutes is about double the time one should usually expect for TV interviews, so this was exciting. But, also, I was having a hard time trying to come up with how to get across the ideas of Loose Girl in such a short time. I was told before I came that I would be on a panel discussion of teenage girls and sex. With me on the panel would be the authors of a new book coming out about how casual sex affects the brain, another doctor-author who wrote a book about adolescence, and three teenage girls.

The morning I arrived to the green room, I was given a run down of the show, and was told that one girl was advocating abstinence; one had been having casual sex, wound up pregnant, and now is swearing off boys; and one believed she was emotionally and physically prepared to have casual sex. The show clearly aimed to present a balanced view–to show all sides of a complex situation–but there’s no way that you can get three women to represent three disparate points of view without having them come off as something as stereotypes.
I sat down for makeup, and one of the girls sat beside me.
“Are you one of the teens?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m the virginal one,” she said in a crispy voice. “I advocate abstinence.”

I nodded. Not much to say to that.

My publicist, who had come along to support me, and to help me formulate one-liners that would convey the true message in my book, said, “The loose girl and the virgin, side by side.”

We laughed uncomfortably, but Abstinence Girl, I noticed, didn’t find that funny. I thought but didn’t say, “Honey, you need to get laid.”

The woman doing my makeup, who I sensed…something from, asked Abstinence Girl, “So, you’re not going to have sex until you’re married?”

“That’s right!” Abstinence Girl said, clearly proud. A few moments later she got up and left the room.

“That girl,” the makeup woman said to me, “is in for a rude awakening. I made the same mistake.”

Soon, it was time for them to go on, and in each girl’s 4 minutes I watched them give their soundbites, the basics of their stories: I don’t have sex, and this is for my future husband and my future children (translated: the rest of you harm the people you supposedly love); I had sex, it harmed me, and now I’ve learned my lesson; I have sex, and it’s always great.

And then it was my turn. How, I wondered, would I ever say what I needed to say in 4 minutes? What was my soundbite? They asked me a few straightforward questions: when did you first become sexually active, when did you lose your virginity, what were you after? Then one spoke about how the authors of Hooked claimed my brain might be screwed up from all the casual sex. Did I think I was permanently screwed up? Um, how to answer that? I mean, I am permanently screwed up, yes, but was that because of the sex? I don’t know. I honestly doubt it. So I said, “I don’t have a straight answer for that,” and then I went on to try to explain that I’m still the loose girl and I’m well aware of that but I make the choice every day not to screw  up my marriage.

When my 4 minutes was up, they were desperate for someone with straight answers, so they asked Abstinence Girl to give a response to what I said. She gave a soundbite alright, although it had nothing to do with what I had said. Something about how everyone’s talking about maturity, well she’s mature and everyone’s looking for a man’s love in a boy. Huh? For a girl who’s never had sex she sure seemed to think she knew a lot about it.

But, I digress.

The point is, the things all of us had to say about sex - except perhaps Abstinence Girl - couldn’t quite be expressed in our 4 minute slotted time, even when 4 minutes is a generous amount of time. And perhaps only Abstinence Girl could get her full point across because, well, she had never had sex. There is no soundbite for girls and sex. The ones that exist - like the ones on this panel - are mostly inaccurate. Not to knock TV or panels like this one. The producers are doing everything they can to get the issue on the table, and I appreciate that. But unfortunately, it will rarely get at the many stories beneath the archetypes, such as the story I’m sure that makeup woman had to tell.

Here it is. Judge yourself.

Read my Modern Love essay about my tattoos this coming Sunday, July 27th, in The New York Times.  And read my op-ed, A Million Little Truths, about truth and memoirs in the Outlook section of The Washington Post. To read this one online you’ll need to register, but it’s free and painless.

 Meanwhile, you can have a gander at the infamous tattoos:

Thunderbird disguised by the raven:

Celtic anklet:

And last but, well, least, the bear: