At one point, when you are kind of freaking out leading up to the Tantric massage, you say, “I cannot function without societal expectations.” Do you think, without these expectations, you would have missed having an orgasm?

I think that, yes, I would have, because I think it’s one of those things that’s really human in a way. It’s one of those things that – a small percentage of us can’t orgasm at all, if you work really hard at it and try and dedicate yourself. So I think it’s one of those things that is just like a human experience that you want to have, and it’s something that creates a nice release after a buildup of tension, and it can be a great way to relax after a long day. After I found my orgasm I was even able to take breaks when I was really frustrated writing, and it would kind of refresh myself. So, just hearing women talk about the closeness that it makes them feel with their partner, or even with themselves, is something that I wanted, not necessarily like every woman has to come to be a woman, you know?

To me the most striking refrain in the book actually has nothing to do with sex. You keep saying, “There’s so much to do.” You get away from this overachiever pressure briefly in Peru, but most of the time it seems like that’s what’s driving the book. Where do you think this comes from?

If I knew that, I’d probably be a much healthier person. That’s something that I’m still working on. My nature is just to go, go go. I think a big part of American culture is that we’re not a successful person or a valuable person unless there’s something tangible that we are either doing or have done to show that you have been alive for that long, or you are a valuable asset to the country, or to your community. But I still have it, and I still can’t quiet it down, and I wish that I could do the Buddhist thing in which meditation and doing nothing are the most valuable things, but it’s not working.

I love the observation that everyone at the sex conference is a baby boomer. Why doesn’t our generation seem to care about sex the way that they did, and do?

I would say that there is this kind of backlash, in a way, after the ‘60s, ‘70s, kind of openness. It happens in cycles and I think that we might be in a time of opening it up again, not just having pornography but being able to talk about the real kind of sex stuff and orgasm. I say that, but at the same time, we are trying to publicize my book and we are having a lot of trouble with TV and certain places that say that women’s orgasm is too risqué. So it’s really marginalized in a way that’s super strange. But I want to do some stuff that will help people talk about orgasm, but not in a way that makes it seem too porn-style, which makes it difficult, but thinking about doing art, like what does the orgasm look like to you if you could visualize it, and doing collages of your orgasm and then being able to describe what it is as a sensation.

What’s the line? Where have you had trouble getting on the media?

Lots of programs say it’s too risqué. I have friends at Good Morning America, Today Show, and it’s just not where they want to go.

At one point you dare the reader to Google you, after recounting how the publicity around your writing the book was, by messing with your love life, messing with your chances of achieving the book’s objective. How did you deal with the swirling interest around the book’s topic, leading up to and during writing it, and how did you decide how much of it to put in the book itself?

I don’t think I put that much in the book of what was going on around it, except in that place. I think some of it I was writing it out just to get it out of my head, just because it was consuming my own mind. But it wasn’t something that the reader needed to be aware of. I’d say once the book deal happened, and I started going on my quest, and I wasn’t writing a lot of articles that Gawker would link to, that kind of died down.

But more of it would be me talking to someone, and the question would come up, What are you doing? It’s kind of fun to be able to say something like “writing a book about female orgasm” and shock people. And you usually have to repeat it. The hardest part about writing the book was wanting to have men be a part of it, and men having different types of reactions.

By the end of the book, you’ve accrued quite a staff of sex counselors, therapists, doctors, professional dominants, sex gurus and even a sacred whore. Did you get to keep any of them?

Yes, the Zola woman [the Tantra teacher]. She’s a very close friend now. We hang out quite a lot.

And Eric, the sacred whore?

We keep in touch.

Mara Altman will be giving readings of Thanks for Coming: One Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm this week.

Thursday, May 21
In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series
Happy Endings Lounge (LES)
8pm (arrive 7:30 for good seats).

Friday, May 22
Volume 1: Reading Series
Bar Matchless (www.barmatchless.com) (Greenpoint)
8pm

Copyright Last Exit 2009