Erica Jong, most famous (I think) for "Fear of Flying" and generally for talking about sex at a time when it was daring, has a daughter Molly , who contributed a piece for a new collection of essays edited by Jong called "Sugar in my Bowl: Real Women Write about Real Sex".
And it begins...
My mother fought for free love and the right to sexual expression. I fight the traffic as I squire my kids up and down Madison Avenue. Both sets of my grandparents had open marriages. I have a closed marriage (that’s where you only sleep with the person you are married to). My mother’s mother tells stories of sleeping with my grandfather in the woods and smoking "grass." There are not a lot of woods where I live in Manhattan. If it is every generation’s job to swing the pendulum back, then I have done mine.
My father’s father (Howard Fast) was famous for his communism, Spartacus and his various exploits with members of the opposite sex around Hollywood. One of my aunts is known at her prep school for being straight then gay and then straight again. A deceased grandaunt of mine was notorious for being one of the most sexually active octogenarians at The Hebrew Home for the Aged.
And what of my parents? When I was but a young girl I wandered into my eighty-year-old grandfather’s bedroom to find on the bedside table the book Beyond Viagra staring back at me. Yes, the Jongs, and the Fasts may have little in common but their love of freedom, fear of oppression, and their need for lubrication.
Growing up I knew we were weird.
Being a prude in a family of libertines by Molly Jong-Fast, Salon.com
