"You could eat off my asshole," you write, describing your ritual ablutions. Can it be true that you did not see, touch or smell shit during the 298 anal penetrations you describe? Is that a realistic expectation for most people?

It's true. I am a regular woman. I don't want lots of pain, lots of bleeding, and I certainly don't want lots of shit everywhere. You can help by being extremely hygenic, having good digestion ... But no, there was absolutely zero shit factor. If there had been I wouldn't have done it.

Now, I don't think that's true for all people. Some people are even into it being not like that. But I am bearing witness to my own experience and saying that it can be the way it was for me. All those gross-out factors were completely absent.

I didn't set out to write a book about sex or anal sex at all. I had an experience, started keeping notes. I was fascinated that I had this incredibly emotional and spiritual reaction to this act. The edge is fascinating to me. It's the juxtaposition of the so-called high and low.

What's high and what's low about sodomy?

I completely understand that anal sex to many people, whether they love it or not, may be the most taboo sex act or the basest sex act there is. You're going in the exit, a place you're not supposed to talk about, that you're ashamed of, where you defecate. People have a dirty association with it.

Yet I had the most transcendent sexual experience from going there many times. I started reading about it ... It started making so much sense: the contradiction of [going] in the back door. That Oscar Wilde line about being in the gutter but looking at the stars. It was also about not being a snob, of not thinking, I won't go there. It's vulgar. Balanchine believed in putting yourself out there and when I danced, I couldn't do that. I was too shy and modest as a dancer.

How is the pleasure of anal sex different from the pleasure of vaginal sex?

First of all, the g-spot can absolutely be stimulated from your ass. But to me it's much more than that. There is a great deal more trust. Because it could hurt, it could hurt like crazy. You have to be willing and open-minded in a way you simply don't have to be with vaginal sex. It's pretty easy for a guy to get in [a vagina] whether a woman wants it or not.

But it is a much more extreme physical feeling to release your muscles. We have very strong muscles there; we all know that from what we usually do there. To release it, you open your ass and you open your mind and you open your heart. For me it opened everything.

I cannot accentuate enough that it was with this one particular man. It's absolutely not that I am a woman who loves anal sex. I loved anal sex with this man who I loved. And I think most of us women know a lot of men who would like to go there, and I've said no as many times as anyone else. It takes a very gentle man to do it. A lot of men are not up to it.

At the end of your book, you have only had anal sex with one other man. Now, years later, have you had other anal relationships?

I would rather not talk about my personal life.

But you write in the book about your unwillingness to ask A-Man to commit. If you loved him so much why didn't you want to make him a committed, monogamous part of your life?

I considered all of these things. I learned things about the magic we had between us. What creates that magic is very complex ... And it only got better. [A-Man and I] discussed this: How come time 250 is better than time 249? Most committed, monogamous relationships are good for a week or six months, or if you're really lucky six years. I did not have any girlfriends who were having as reliably and transcendentally good sex as I was. And if we had a conventional movies-and-dinner relationship, I thought we would lose the magic.

I am not selling this type of relationship. I had a long and monogamous marriage to a man I loved very much. It didn't work out, and my disappointment was unbelievably huge ... I didn't want the same kind of heartbreak again. With A-Man, the sex never went bad. To me that's some kind of victory. My tolerance for certain kinds of disappointment is very low and will probably never improve. So perfection is what's strived for. That's from ballet. I saw it manifesting itself while watching Suzanne Farrell ... Transcendent things can happen in life.

But you did experience devastation when your relationship with A-Man ended?

You cannot go that high without going that low. I was devastated, but I survived. It lasted an incredibly long time at an incredibly high level. I took a huge risk with him in not being monogamous, and got extreme and incredible sex that made all other sex incredibly profane in comparison. We had sacred sex.

But now that you're not having sacred sex anymore, is all other sex still profane? Do you enjoy vaginal sex?

Oh sure, I love that too. That's great like everybody knows it's great. This was a different realm, an emotionally different realm.

Do you think feminists are going to be ticked off by your book?

My book owes everything to the feminist movement. I am a product of that. I am a woman who had this experience that was very unconventional ... I am interested in my sex: in experiencing it and in the powers it holds for me. I am interested in our freedoms: You're a woman and I'm a woman having this conversation about this kind of book -- this is fantastic! But I think some women will protest the obvious things that I am talking about: submitting or surrender. I say feminism gave me the freedom to submit. Isn't this what we all want from feminism? The ability to choose conventional monogamy is a great option but not the only option.

And my ability to submit -- I wouldn't have been a woman who could have done that even 10 or 20 years ago.

Why not?

I tried what most women do: monogamy. I have never been unfaithful to any man who thought I was being faithful to him. It's a point of integrity for me.

So I had the more conventional type of relationship until I left my marriage and began experimenting with many things. But I don't think [anal sex] would have had resonance if I had been 23 years old. It was a very sophisticated tightrope walk. It came from incredible mutual respect. Nobody begged each other, nobody nagged each other; we never talked about compromising for the greater good.

There were limitations, yes. We didn't have a commitment, but what that means I don't know. Most people who have a commitment don't have what we had, which happened incredibly consistently until we ended it. I have a great dislike for relationships [where] you get so close you start yelling and screaming at each other, blaming each other. He and I never did that. I would have never yelled at him; he would have never yelled at me.

Recent Stories