Suzy Joins The Sex Club

“Suzy, we are too old to be controlled by our hormones,” Ellis says to me.

I say, “Don’t you realize that a thirty-eight-year-old woman has the same sex drive as a sixteen-year-old boy?”

“There is no scientific proof to substantiate that.”

I hit my chest and say, “Here’s your proof!”

He says, “Suzy, you know what I think of anecdotal evidence.”

“Oh, fuck you anyway,” I say.

He says, “I don’t think this is a very productive conversation.”

Later Ellis claims to have known right away, but I say, “Yeah, you figured it out, all right. After I told you about a hundred times.” Even the kids knew before he did.

Correspondence

The only thing appalling regarding Alison Clement’s “Suzy Joins the Sex Club” is Lisa Cohen’s letter [Correspondence, September 1994]. The story shows a woman making a difficult decision, one she has to live with. She did not “yield” to anyone. The story doesn’t imply that there is no sex in Suzy’s marriage. In fact, Suzy says that things between her and Ellis are “hot.” Maybe Cohen wouldn’t choose a long-term love relationship over short-term passion, but obviously Suzy would.

Valetta Smith Lebanon, Oregon

I usually read The Sun from cover to cover — even the letters. But lately some of them are starting to get on my nerves. Like the one from Lisa Cohen, who was “mostly appalled” by “Suzy Joins the Sex Club” [July 1994]. It was a good story. It had something to say, and I really related to it. People like Cohen seem to think that everything degrades women — that they’re more easily degradable than men.

Then a while back there was a letter complaining about Sally Bellerose’s “The GirlsClub” [September 1993], a fine, moving story about a lesbian with a colostomy bag. Someone said it wasn’t well written. And someone else wrote that Sy Safransky ought to hang it up as a writer — that he couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag. First thing I do when I open The Sun is check out whether Sy had something to say this month.

And how about all the bluenoses who get bent out of shape if somebody says fuck in print? If they want Reader’s Digest, why don’t they read it? Another idiot was repulsed by Bob Saltzman’s great photo of his wife, complete with underarm hair [March 1994]. And then there was Wendy Ellyn’s great little one-page breathe-through poem “Daddy” [January 1994] that some misogynist thought was incestuous. That’s where he’s at.

Sometimes an article or story doesn’t particularly blow up my skirt, but neither is it appalling, or disgusting, or badly written. And the most inspirational pieces always stop short of sentimentality. They never make me feel ripped off like the stories in the New Yorker, Harper’s, or Atlantic Monthly sometimes do.

Maybe when the dust of my life settles and I’m not holding down two jobs and my three twenty-something kids are done sucking on my tit, I’ll have time to submit something to Readers Write. I read all of those too. They’re better than the letters.

Pam Hanna Nashville, Tennessee

More Letters

Also In This Issue

July 1994