Nudity Content Must Be Over 18

Amy Sohn

Amy Sohn hit the world of New York letters with a bang that left men whimpering. Her confessional column “Female Trouble” in the New York Press was the precursor of today’s explicit blogs only distributed on newsprint and available for free weekly from little green boxes chained to lampposts across the city.

Readers took voyeuristic delight in following the twisted course of Sohn’s dating game, and when they caught a glimpse of the beautiful Jewess, every man (and probably a lot of women) was hot for this hip and literate Hebrew.

That was close to ten years ago. Sohn has since evolved into a novelist. Her first book, Run Catch Kiss, was published in 1999 and her second, My Old Man, came out from Simon & Schuster last year. She now pens a column for New York magazine called “Mating”.

Look for Sohn on the VH1 special Celebrity Best Friends, or check out her website, AmySohn.com. In the meantime, read on as she tells how marriage changed her writing, exposes her early lesbian experiments, and pontificates on circumcised versus uncircumcised penises.

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What motivated you to become a sex columnist at the New York Press?
I never considered myself a sex columnist. I considered myself a columnist. I was never told by the editors, “We want you to write a sex column.” They just said they wanted a column about my life.

I sent in an autobiographical story called “The Blow-Up Boyfriend” to the paper in May 1996 and they bought it, I think for $50, and ran it in their “First Person” section. Right away they got a letter from a guy who was offended by a remark I had made about uncircumcised men (and who sort of propositioned me after criticizing me).

A few weeks later they offered me a weekly column. They named it “Female Trouble” after the John Waters movie (and everything else “Female Trouble” connotes). I think one of the editors there, Sam Sifton, came up with that, but both John Strausbaugh, who hired me, and Russ Smith, the paper’s original editor, are from Baltimore and had founded the Baltimore City Paper, so I think they liked the idea of naming it after a Waters film.

Are you comfortable revealing intimate relations in print; are you an exhibitionist?
I used to be. I am less so now. I still get a high off of performing but I am not so sure I feel the need to tell the whole world about my intimate life. I recently married so this may be an adaptive change, purely out of fear of damaging or hurting someone else.

It is much harder to be a married exhibitionist than a single one because there are no stakes. I can deal with airing my own dirty laundry but it is dicier to air someone else’s. You have to have an understanding spouse. Although yesterday at dinner my husband said, “You should write a movie about our marriage.” I should have gotten him to sign something right then and there.

Have you ever posed naked?
The most recent naked picture of me is at three looking out a window. I believe it was taken by my mother. I have no interest in posing naked and never considered it. I consider myself an artist and not someone who peddles her physical image.

About five years ago I was profiled in Penthouse by Ralph Gardner Jr., and they wanted to run photos even though my interview was running on the cheap paper. I went to lunch with the art director and it became clear that he also art directed the one-handed shoots too. I think he said he and his wife were going through a divorce and he was dating a woman who had posed for the magazine. I couldn’t believe those sorts of things actually happened.

We discussed a concept for the shoot and he said that I should pose like a Hasidic man with peyas since my book had some Jewish themes (though not Hasidic). I said that seemed like a dumb idea and since the book was about a female columnist who gets in trouble for fabricating affairs she didn't have, that maybe I should pose like a 1940s newsgirl instead.

The stylist went for it and we got all these period clothes from a wardrobe house. I wore red lipstick and long nails and we did a lot of sexy but not naked shots of me penciling in a fake seam on my legs, that kind of thing.

At the end of the shoot the art director rode in on his motorcycle (it was a huge loft building) and tried to get me to get naked. To piss him off I stripped to my top and granny panties and he was really disappointed. He couldn’t even get a good panty shot! (And of course they never used the pictures.)

How’d you lose your virginity?
I was fourteen, in a public park in Rehoboth Beach, Maryland, with an eighteen-year-old stoner I met in the water. Not an experience I recommend or want to relive. First-time sex for girls is rarely good. Better to love the guy and then he can hold you after you cry. Will my parents find this if they Google me?

What’s your favorite body part?
My own is definitely my boobs. On a man, the hands--I am all about soft hands.

Have you experimented with lesbianism?
Just a few French kisses at Brown. That is par for the course at Brown, and all the girls are straight now. One of them should be gay even if she hasn’t come out. She made me swear never to tell anyone and obviously was really conflicted about anyone knowing what we did, especially not her boyfriend--sure sign of a lesbo.

Is there a sexual line you wouldn’t cross?
I’m not interested in public sex. I am generally too fearful to have to worry about being caught. I wouldn’t get off on it; it would just stress me out.

Do you worry about being typecast as a sex writer?
YES! So why am I doing this interview?

Why does your New York column, “Naked City”, look at other people’s sex lives, as opposed to “Female Trouble” for the New York Press, which was more confessional; do you plan to revisit your own in print again?
Definitely--in fiction and in other formats than prose. That’s the key to writing about my life now. Just twist it and disguise it enough that my husband doesn’t leave me and I can live with it.

Your new book, My Old Man, is the story of a female rabbinical student in a May-December romance. As an author known for mining her experiences, how much of your fiction is taken from your own life?
I’ll give you my standard answer: I never went to rabbinical school but I was sort of a SuperJew growing up. In a way My Old Man is about the last five years of my life in terms of veering from the upward path (law school, which I considered, or a mainstream theater acting career) toward the downward path (writing about relationships/sex, public confessionals about my life to my parents’ great chagrin).

I think I am finally okay with where I am and what I do and think that my career choice has made me a more open-minded and less judgmental person. I relate to the stigmatized more because I have been stigmatized by family and friends. It is not that different from your family knowing you are a stripper or porn star, in the way they relate to you and characterize your choices. But I consider myself a writer and not a sex writer. I hope that is a mold I am able to break out of more as the years go on. I have written for The Nation and The New York Times, not just Playboy and Playgirl.

As a married woman do you find your sexual life is narrower?
As far as sex is concerned, the narrower the hole the better.

You've been interviewed on Suicide Girls, so what’s your take on the new nudie cuties of the Internet? Empowering or just tomorrow’s cheesecake today?
I’m curious about it. I think a lot of it is branding and spin. I personally find a pierced, black-hair-dyed girl less sexy than say Bettie Page or Seka. My husband knows a lot about vintage porn, and I love amateur seventies photos, with the stockings, the bras, the platform heels, and the hairstyles. I'm not into body mutilation or this black eyeliner shit. I like girls pretty and soft.

The Suicide Girls seem to have quite a following so there is obvious interest in it, but I think mainly from guys who just like seeing nudie pics, especially amateur ones which feel more immediate and “reality” driven. Right now my favorite female body is Scarlett Johansson’s, although I don’t care for her acting. I was watching Ghost World recently and I just love that the two girls are so curvy and healthy. But I saw Thora Birch at a party in L.A. a few years ago and she was teeny-weeny. I was so disappointed. When you get skinny your boobs shrink too.

What’s your take on pornography: like it, hate it, read/watch it, avoid it?
I go back and forth. I like Seymore Butts, like many women do. I like the short amateur downloads on the Internet, and I even like Dawn from Dawn’s Place. Mainly because she says, “I want to finish you AHF” with a Canadian accent, has natural boobs, and wears her glasses a lot. But it bugs me that she sells her panties online. It was purer before she was so famous.

You write from a Jewish point of view, so being a Jew do you like your penises cut and kosher or do you have a taste for the tainted, uncut meat?
Interesting question. I have little experience with uncut, but erect there’s not much difference. You can see I have evolved since the time I felt the need to disparage uncut pups. The trend now for educated new parents is away from circumcising their sons. This includes Jews and non-Jews alike! And I think that probably makes sense. Why fix it if it ain’t broke? And anyway, [Zionist] Theodor Herzl didn’t circumcise his sons.