Suzanne Portnoy's Visible Life Between the Sheets
Posted at 4:44 PM Apr 18, 2008
Suzanne Portnoy, an American expat who lives in London, had great success with her erotic memoir The Butcher, The Baker and the Candlestick Maker in 2006. Her follow-up book, The Not So Invisible Woman was just published this week. She's in NYC now promoting the book, which details more of the naughty adventures she gotten up to since her first book, with an added twist: some of her lovers now know that she wrote an erotic memoir.
Naked City editor Audacia Ray emailed with Suzanne to ask her about non-monogamy and the effect writing about sex has had on her sex life.
Audacia Ray: Many people seem to believe that on a long-term basis, being sexually active with a variety of people is not sustainable (especially for women), and that you'll end up lonely and crazy. How do you respond to that assumption?
Suzanne Portnoy: I think that on a long term basis being monogamous is unsustainable and that ultimately being polyamorous is a more natural and healthier way to be. Polyamory acknowledges that it's perfectly possible to care for more than one person or have a primary partner and other partners who might be only sexual ones. Above all, I think it's an honest way to be and alleviates the need for cheating and affairs.
Having said that, I think that being sexually active or having more than one partner is much harder in one's twenties and earlier thirties. When I was twenty-something, I slept around and I wasn't very happy back then. I was preoccupied with looking for a partner or a baby dad. I think I was pretty typical of a lot of young women who pretend to enjoy sleeping around but aren't.
It wasn't until I had a family and my children were older that I looked at my options and realised that I didn't want to be monogamous. That's true for a lot of busy, professional women my age who find it easier and more fun to juggle a portfolio of partners than try and find a single one. Finally, I think that right now being sexually active with lots of different partners works for me but I think life is fluid. Who knows, one day I might go back to monogamy!
AR: Do you have something of a photographic memory for recording what happens during sex and writing about it later, or do you use your artistic license to fill in details that might be blurred by hours of sweaty orgasms?
SP: My best writing comes from putting it all done hours or days after it happens. Blogging is a great way of recording snippets of conversations that help me fill in the blanks when I can't remember it all. The sex is all true; the dialogue isn't always entirely accurate but a close enough approximation. Unfortunately, I don't have a photographic memory.
AR: Though there is this idea that women aren't interested in finding guys to hook up with for just sex through the internet, I know quite a few women who do so. Why do you think there is this idea that women aren't bold sexually and don't go after what they want?
SP: Well, one only needs to look at the number of genuine men advertising on craigslist versus the number of genuine women to realize that it's still men who are hunting and women who are taking the more laid back approach of choosing who they want. Let's face it, it's still women who decide what they want. Men just wait to get picked. Girls are out there just as much as men only we are much more cunning! We strike when the time is right - we don't adopt the scatter gun approach the way men do hoping if they run a few ads, they'll attract more women. Generally, women put one ad out, get hundreds of replies and then decide. We have a far easier time finding casual hook-ups than men, only we tend not to shout about it.
AR: Tell me about the first time you were identified as the author of The Butcher, the Baker, and the Candlestick Maker by a sex partner. Has being the author of erotic memoirs gotten you laid more, or has it made potential partners more wary of you?
SP: Quite a few of my sexual partners I've had for years, way before I wrote 'Butcher, Baker.' They haven't changed their attitude towards me. I have had failed relationships with men who treated me like a star fuck and not like a woman. That was rather annoying. I find the fan letters I receive charming but I rarely follow up on them simply because I'm pretty happy with the group I have at the moment. I don't really have time for any more men in my life. After seven years of being single, that's what happens.
