E-Mail This Article to a Friend Bright ideas Best-selling author and former Playboy columnist Susie Bright discusses the politics of sexual liberation, erotica trends, and taking pleasure into your own hands BY TAMARA WIEDER

A REPORTER LEARNS very early in speaking with Susie Bright that the question "Do you ever get tired of talking about sex?" need not be asked. The better inquiry, perhaps, is whether Susie Bright can ever stop talking about it. The best-selling author and former Playboy columnist, who edits the annual Best American Erotica collection and hosts a weekly radio show, In Bed with Susie Bright, has been consumed with the subject for decades. But these days the 46-year-old sexpert is also talking about motherhood (her daughter, Aretha, is 14), politics, and the perils — and orgy-related possibilities — of being single on Valentine’s Day.

Q: Why sex?

A: You’d really have to go back to my teenage years, in which the question "Why sex?" would be sort of obvious, because what teenager isn’t interested? I had the usual curiosities and insecurities and daydreams like anyone in high school, and I just by accident met up with some kids who were selling this underground newspaper on campus that had all these wild articles, everything from tearing the principal a new asshole over his racist remarks at the last student assembly to debates about the Vietnam War to sex articles. Basically how to have a sex life without your parents mucking it up. And I thought this was great.

I got more and more politically active and just followed the course of feminism and sexual liberation. At that time, there was general agreement among everyone involved in women’s liberation that women should have a defined sexual self-interest. You know, things like The Hite Report were at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Think about the kind of self-help books that are popular among women now. It’s all about how "You should really change your attitude, and never call a boy back," and all this really reactionary, doubt-yourself-and-stay-in-it-for-the-money pep talks, instead of saying, "Hey girlfriend, if you figure out how to have an orgasm, and what you like about sex, you’re going to feel a lot more confident, and a lot more in control, and be able to make more intelligent decisions about the kind of sex that’s meaningful for you." That’s not in vogue now, unfortunately.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: Oh, God. The hairs I’ve pulled out of my head asking that question! In some ways I think you’ve had these two parallel tracks competing with each other. It’s not that sexual liberation or feminist messages are dead. The girls do know that there’s supposed to be something about sex that’s for them, that isn’t just for impressing others. But the messages are so mixed. You know, if you’re anorexic, your libido, your periods, and your ability to orgasm just go out the window. So that would be a classic mixed message to young women: you should look a certain way that’s going to destroy your reproductive system and your sexual appetite, but at the same time, you should be interested in sex!

We come back to the idea of, should we nurture people, and really take a lot of stock in their health and their education and their sense of putting a stake in community? If that’s the case, then to be quite honest, sexual liberation’s going to be part of that, because having healthy, informed, sex-positive women is really good for the herd. Keeping people neurotic and depressed and ignorant and self-doubting is oppressive.

And then we have this extra ladle of hypocrisy, which is the gap in America between the extreme wealth and power versus the scrambling-to-tie-your-shoelaces crowd, and the eradication of what used to be called the middle class. Getting rid of that middle really makes the hypocrisy more intense, because the elites, they have access to abortion, porn, kinky affairs, sexual shenanigans of any type, with complete protection and discretion and shelter. They have no interest in limits for themselves. It’s just limits for everyone else.

See, I told you: I come from a political background on this. I know a lot of people say, "Why sex?" And they expect me to say, "I was a nympho at an early age, and I never stopped swinging from that chandelier!" But that actually isn’t my big motivator.

Q: Tell me about working at the vibrator store Good Vibrations back in the early 1980s.

A: [It] was this teeny little, like, missionary outpost, run by a woman who cared nothing for profit and was strictly in it for therapy and education. We only had a few people come in a day; sometimes I had one or two customers all day long. So I sat around and read all the books. I loved that it was so quiet in those days, because you could have a conversation. I wasn’t under any pressure to sell them something. I mean, of course I was happy to say, "Yes, this vibrator’s going to make you real happy," but it was like, let’s talk about other things, because it’s not just a product that makes you happy or informed. It was great to have that freedom. And one thing we really noticed in terms of our little library at the store was that there was quite a bit of nonfiction for women, like how-tos and political sexual philosophies, and here’s what masturbation’s all about and find your clit and so on, but when it came to erotica, the most contemporary thing we had were Anaïs Nin’s books from 1927. It was just ridiculous. I said, "We have friends who privately write erotic fiction; why don’t we put together some stories?" We were like, we want to publish stories by women describing what their own authentic experiences in this day and age are. First we tried to talk to big publishers, and they said, "Women want romance, they don’t want smut. You’re so stupid; you’re not going to sell a single copy." There were medium-size presses, and we went to some of the feminist ones, and they said, "Are you nuts? Women have been so degraded by so-called erotica; we’ve just had it!" This was really at the heart of the feminist sex wars at the time. We’d all been in one happy little feminist cabal when it came to discussing anatomy; I mean, everyone was perfectly happy to discuss their clitoris. But if you wanted to talk about what you thought about in your mind when you were rubbing your clitoris, everyone got terribly upset.

We had a great, insightful group of authors, and it became this massive hit. That got me into all kinds of things: I started a sex magazine called On Our Backs, I got asked to do Best American Erotica, then one day I got a phone call from Penthouse Forum, and they said, "Would you like to be our new erotic-movie reviewer?" And I said, "You mean your porn critic?" And they said, "Yeah." And I said, "Do you have any idea what I do? Like, what my opinions are? I’m not going to be writing stories about, Debbie’s Double D is just the hottest thing ever. I’m going to be real. Are you ready for the Pauline Kael of pornography? Because that’s what I want to do." And this editor was very open-minded. He wanted something new. He just said, "Yeah. Go for it."

In the meantime, I wasn’t a complete nerd! I mean, I did have lovers! I learned a lot from personal experience, and I’m glad I had entrée into a counterculture where you could experiment, and you could really dispel the romantic headlock in your own personal life. And by romantic — that word can have so many meanings. I am romantic when it comes to flowers and chocolates and valentines and kittens and being sentimental and crying easily. But when it comes to "You’re going to wear a white dress and get married and then everything’s going to be perfect" — ooh. I still want to smash that with a hammer.

Q: Tell me about this year’s Best American Erotica book, which was just published, and the process of choosing the stories.

A: It’s changed a lot over the years. Now I have to have the biggest P.O. box in the entire post office to get all the manuscripts coming in. I used to beg people to write. I suppose the big secret about BAE is that it’s literary fiction, with very strong, compelling sex as part of the characters and narratives, but it’s not gratuitous, and it’s not predictable, and that’s what I look for. I also look for something that will reflect a certain Zeitgeist about what’s happening in the world. Like, you could put this book in a time capsule, and then when the Martians come a century from now and find it, they’ll go, "Hmm, so that’s what they were up to." I look for that feeling, and it’s always there, and it’s one of the funnest parts, because of course the authors aren’t on the telephone with each other saying, "Let’s all write about vampires this year."