Month

Maybe it’s because I’m “sensitive.”  That’s what my family always complained about me.  My favorite professor said my sensitivity is what makes me a good writer. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer and words are important to me, powerful to me.  Just a few moments ago, I heard a poem on the radio, Puttanesca by Michael Heffernan.  The words that caught my ears were simple —

I don’t know where to start.  That’s not a very good thing for a writer to say.  Even if we don’t know where to start, we usually write until we know where to begin. But finding where to begin takes time.  It takes lots of typing and retyping.  Rearranging.  Starting over.  And finding our way again.  I don’t have time to do that.  There’s a book to write.  There’s freelance work that’s due.   And I’m constantly dist

As many of you know, the making of the sex book has been a long and trying process.  I started the book in December 2004.  For the next year and a half, I researched, reported, wrote, rewrote, rewrote, and rewrote the book’s proposal.  The research continued through 2007.  During those years, I traveled from Texas to New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey to California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico to Florida, Jama

The other night I dreamed I was in a strip club.  It was a great dream.  I woke rested and happy for the first time in … I can’t remember when.  But the dream, oh, that I remember.  I was working in the club.  I don’t mean stripping.  I was reporting and researching.  From afternoon to well past dark, through shift changes of day strippers to night dancers, I was there … out front, watching and talking with bot

As I sat there staring at my fingernails, I thought about my sex book.