Erica Jong and Molly Jong-Fast
( Nigel Perry/Courtesy of Erica Jong )
ALEC BALDWIN:
Happy Holidays. I’m Alec Baldwin and here’s the thing: The impact of divorce on children is something I think about a lot. I’m divorced and have a daughter.
Erica Jong knows a lot about divorce. She’s been married four times. That’s why I wanted to I sit down with Erica and her daughter, Molly Jong-Fast.
Both mother and daughter are writers. Erica is best known for her 1973 book Fear of Flying, a feminist classic about liberation, in many forms.
Molly, a mother of three kids herself, published her second novel, The Social Climber’s Handbook, earlier this year.
Molly’s father is Jonathan Fast, Erica’s third husband.
ERICA JONG:
I lived with Jonathan for two years before we got married. And -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But how long between Jong - Alan Jong and Jonathan Fast?
[OVERTALK]
ALEC BALDWIN:
How long between Dr. Jong and Jonathan Fast?
[SEVERAL AT ONCE]
ERICA JONG:
About two years.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
No!
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yeah -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Not between them!
ALEC BALDWIN:
How much between?
ERICA JONG:
You weren't there.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
You were with Alan Jong when you met my dad!
[ALEC LAUGHING]
ALEC BALDWIN:
When these two get going, you step back and get out of the way.
ALEC BALDWIN:
What did you learn about marriage from your parents?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Mom, can I answer that question honestly -
ERICA JONG:
Of course! Honesty is the only way.
[ALEC LAUGHS]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Well, I would say - have you seen "Kramer vs. Kramer?"
ALEC BALDWIN:
Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE],
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
That was my general impression of marriage from my upbringing. But, you know, my mom had some good useful - suggestions but ultimately I sort of had to - find my own way, though she did eventually marry a really great guy, and they've been married for 21 years.
ERICA JONG:
Twenty-two.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
And he's a divorce lawyer.
ERICA JONG:
Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].
ALEC BALDWIN:
He's a practicing divorce lawyer -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Yeah.
ERICA JONG:
He is. And Molly used to say when I married him, "And then she married the one you can never divorce, the divorce lawyer."
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
'Cause you can't really.
ALEC BALDWIN:
But is he a good guy? Obviously -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
He's a really good guy.
ERICA JONG:
He's a totally menschy person. And I like him better than when I married him.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Which was easier for you to write about, sex or divorce?
ERICA JONG:
[PAUSE] Sex. Divorce was the hardest thing I ever went through. I have a friend who said to me once when he was getting divorced from his wife, "Who could believe that after we were in the delivery room together, after I watched that baby come out, who could believe we'd ever be apart?" Divorce is - terrible. Divorce is difficult. We have - it's a chaos. We have no rules for it. It's so incredibly painful.
ALEC BALDWIN:
What was it like for you to deal with your parents' divorce, your parents' divorce, as an only child? Who did you talk to? Who did you deal with?
[OVERTALK]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
I had an obese nanny from Trumble, Connecticut. And she was my - confidante.
ALEC BALDWIN:
And you ate what like what -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Everything.
ALEC BALDWIN:
- moon pies together? You ate -
[LAUGHTER]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Moon pies, crumpets, those Tasty Cake crumpets -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yeah, Ring-Dings.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Yeah.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yodels.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Everything. I think - I mean, "Kramer vs. Kramer" was a great movie, be - because that was my story. And it was a lot of kids' stories -
[OVERTALK]
ALEC BALDWIN:
What about it?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
It was just a really gruesome seventies divorce. And that's what they had. During that time divorce wasn't set up the way it is now. Now if you have a divorce, there's no way that a mother's gonna lose custody. Certain things are known. Back then it was a totally unknown world of divorce.
ERICA JONG:
Alec, let me just - I don't want to get carried away by - divorce being different in different decades 'cause I'm not sure that's true.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Right.
ERICA JONG:
I think it may look that way to you, Molly, but I think divorce is a catastrophic event for children, for women, for men. It's very, very difficult to go through. It is traumatic. When you come to the other side of it, you say, I will never do that again.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But-
[OVERTALK]
ERICA JONG:
Which is why I was single for nearly a decade -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But I -
[OVERTALK]
ERICA JONG:
- between Molly's dad and, and Ken, because I wanted to make sure I would never make that mistake again.
[OVERTALK]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But -
ALEC BALDWIN:
But after you had three divorces -
ERICA JONG:
Yeah?
ALEC BALDWIN:
You were divorced thrice!
ERICA JONG:
Yes [LAUGHS].
ALEC BALDWIN:
What made you believe success was awaiting you with your current husband? How - what gave you the courage?
[OVERTALK]
ERICA JONG:
We stamped on our wedding invitation "A triumph of hope over experience."
ALEC BALDWIN:
Which came as the result of what? How did you triumph?
ERICA JONG:
Ken had been married three times, I had been married three times. We were very cautious - about tying the knot again.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
You were not that cautious 'cause you'd only been together for three months - when you got married.
[OVERTALK]
ERICA JONG:
We both -
[ALEC LAUGHING]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
That's right, am I right?
[PAUSE]
ALEC BALDWIN:
Is she right?
ERICA JONG:
We married after we knew each other three months.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Isn't that amazing, and it's been most successful with him.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Yeah.
ERICA JONG:
But there are certain things about me and Ken -
[OVERTALK]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
He's a fabulous guy.
ERICA JONG:
We - we grew up in similar circumstances. Our parents - were Depression era people. We knew that you couldn't be married and fool around, you couldn't be married and not work on it -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Can I tell you the two secrets to their marriage?
ERICA JONG:
What?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
They have different bathrooms. Right? They each have their own bathroom.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Critical.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
And they're tired. They're too tired to - screw it up.
ERICA JONG:
To do new curtains and bookshelves.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Yeah.
ERICA JONG:
The reason why we got married rather than live together was because he said to me, if we just live together one day we'll have a fight and you'll say, I'm leaving, or I will. We have a bad record. If we get married, we know we're going to make it work.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Marvin Worth.
ERICA JONG:
Marvin Worth?
ALEC BALDWIN:
The great Marvin Worth. He was Lenny Bruce's manager, then went on to become a famous movie producer, produced "Malcolm X," the movie with Spike Lee -
ERICA JONG:
Uh huh-
ALEC BALDWIN:
- famous movie producer. But he was from Brooklyn. He had the heaviest New York accent of any man I've ever heard.
ERICA JONG:
Mm-hmm.
ALEC BALDWIN:
And I said to him, "How did you and Joan do it, how have you and Joan been married for over 40 years." I go, "What is it, you don't fight?"
And he said to me, "Uh, do Joan and I fight? We fight every day."
ERICA JONG:
Yeah.
ALEC BALDWIN:
"We fight all day. All we do is fight."
ERICA JONG:
Mm-hmm.
ALEC BALDWIN:
He said, "But then after we're done fighting, I say, 'Joan, I'm not going anywhere, and you're not going anywhere, so what are we gonna do about this problem? I'm not going anywhere.'"
ERICA JONG:
That's what Ken and I wanted -
[OVERTALK]
ALEC BALDWIN:
Like leaving is not an option.
ERICA JONG:
And, actually - this is very funny because he says, "I'm not going anywhere." Just [LAUGHS] -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yeah.
ERICA JONG:
- what Marvin said. And I say, " couldn't stand anyone else." And part of it is we really make each other laugh all the time. When we have a disagreement, we always get it out there. We don't hold it in.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Now that I have kids I feel like what they don't tell you about marriage is that marriage - I mean, I - there are two -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Well, what don't they tell you about marriage?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
That marriage is incredibly hard work.
ERICA JONG:
Molly got married at 25.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Tw - 24, I -
ERICA JONG:
Twenty-four. But Molly's whole childhood and upbringing had been different from mine. I married my first lover, my college sweetheart. I had no experience with anybody else when I married him. That was very much my generation. Molly sowed her wild oats during college, and when she met Matt she knew this was the man she wanted to be with. It was a totally different pattern.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But I think all -
[OVERTALK]
ALEC BALDWIN:
How much wild oats did you sow? What -- did you travel with the Stones?
[LAUGHTER]
Did you tour with the Stones? Come on!
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
I think I - I really grew up because I got sober when I was 19. So I went to rehab when I was a teenager, so that I was - until I went to rehab very - crazy, but then once that happened, I then started to focus on, you know, what was important. So by the time I got married, I was already, you know, sober a long time. My grandmother was very bohemian and my mother was very bohemian.
ERICA JONG:
And so were the Fasts.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Yeah, and they - all my grandparents had open marriages, you know. And I asked my dad about that, and my dad said, actually, it was just that your grandfather cheated on your grandmother.
[ERICA LAUGHING]
And that was what they called them in the fifties.
I also wanted a bourgeois life. Like, I didn't want to be bohemian. I didn't want to be single and -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yeah.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
- have a boyfriend who had a motorcycle -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yeah.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
- and cowboy boots. None of that appealed to me.
ALEC BALDWIN:
What effect, if any, did it have on you that your mother was viewed as - and I'll let you put in the words - you know, your mother's expertise in female sexuality. What impact did that have on you when you were growing up?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
[LAUGHS] Um - I think more having a mother who was - very successful and working a lot had more of an effect on growing up than -
ALEC BALDWIN:
In what way?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Because she just traveled a lot and worked a lot and felt very stressed a lot. I think that had more of an effect on me than - I didn't particular know what she did, - until when I was -
[ERICA LAUGHING]
- in sixth grade - I went to this very progressive school, and a little boy was like, your mom writes dirty books. I went to the science teacher and I was like, he's not allowed to say that to me. And she was like, but she does! And I was like -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yeah.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
- oh my God, she does! But the fact that we grew up in a townhouse with a hot pink door and that -
[OVERTALK]
ERICA JONG:
Purple, it was purple [ ? ]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
It was pink!
ERICA JONG:
Okay.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Well, okay -
ERICA JONG:
Well, whatever.
ALEC BALDWIN:
It was fuscia.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
It was - right.
[ERICA LAUGHS]
[LAUGHS] And we had paintings of naked lesbians having sex on the walls.
ALEC BALDWIN:
You did?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Yes.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Why?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Because Mom -
[OVERTALK]
ALEC BALDWIN:
Who were the artists?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
No, they're not famous.
ERICA JONG:
Ernst Schlatterer.
ALEC BALDWIN:
[LAUGHS] Ernst Schlatterer.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
[LAUGHS] That's -
ALEC BALDWIN:
I have a Schlatterer.
[LAUGHTER]
But I keep it under my bed.
ERICA JONG:
Do you? Good.
ALEC BALDWIN:
But when I want to get things goin, you know-
[ERICA LAUGHS]
- when I want to pick it up a notch, I like to say -
ERICA JONG:
There's a whole other story -
ALEC BALDWIN:
- would you like to see my book of Schlatterers?
ERICA JONG:
- [LAUGHS] relating to the erotic art. I had live-in house guests. They had lived with Shirley MacLaine-
ALEC BALDWIN:
In Manhattan.
ERICA JONG:
- Shirley finally threw them out. I had met them on the beach at Malibu.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
They were about a hundred years old at that point.
ERICA JONG:
When Shirley threw them out, they came to live with me. And they gave me erotic art as a thank you -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Oh, you can't imagine. And there was -
ALEC BALDWIN:
The Schlatterer sisters.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
There was a ...
ALEC BALDWIN:
They're from Syosset. [LAUGHS]
[LAUGHTER]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
There was a ...
ALEC BALDWIN:
I went to camp with them.
ERICA JONG:
They were really old-fashioned bohemians, like Henry Miller. In the sixties they had lived in Paris on the Boulevard Raspail and had orgies. That was all over. In the seventies they went to India with Shirley and wrote about past life regression. In the eighties they got into anti-oxidants before anybody knew about it. They were at the head of every curve. They were not just about - sex.
[OVERTALK]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Has their fingers on the zeitgeist!
ALEC BALDWIN:
And they invented the iPad -
[LAUGHTER]
- in 1985.
[LAUGHTER]
ERICA JONG:
No, they did not.
[MOLLY LAUGHING]
But I -
ALEC BALDWIN:
I saw drawings.
[MOLLY LAUGHING]
ERICA JONG:
I admired them -
[LAUGHTER]
- because they were true bohemians.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Now, do me a favor, don't comment on this yet, 'til she finishes.
ERICA JONG:
Okay.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Describe your relationship with your mother.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
I - you know -
ALEC BALDWIN:
Don't snicker.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Um - pleasant.
[ERICA MAKES SOUND]
She's very supportive.
ERICA JONG:
Pleasant?
ALEC BALDWIN:
Well, what - what are - what are you talking about?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Pleasant - and she's very supportive.
ALEC BALDWIN:
You’re talking about if you - like she's your husband's ex -
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
No!
ALEC BALDWIN:
That's a phrase you use -
ERICA JONG:
He wasn't!
[LAUGHTER]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
She's - no.
[LAUGHTER]
ALEC BALDWIN:
Judy and I have a very pleasant relationship.
[LAUGHTER]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Affable, charming. No, my mother has always been phenomenal with me, so supportive. I don't give her things to read because she says to me - she calls me up and says, "How much of a genius are you."
ALEC BALDWIN:
She's very supportive. How would you describe your relationship?
ERICA JONG:
With Molly?
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yep.
ERICA JONG:
I absolutely adore her.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Right. Beyond that though.
ERICA JONG:
Beyond that.
[OVERTALK]
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
She's a great mother.
ERICA JONG:
I think she's — I think she's smart. I think she's funny. I think she has incredibly good judgment. I've watched her grow emotionally and she has bearded some dragons that were very hard.
ALEC BALDWIN:
What do you disagree about?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Everything.
ERICA JONG:
Everything.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Something — give me something primary.
[BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
What's consistent?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Well, she - I think of her as a very reactionary liberal and I'm much more conservative in certain ways. I, I go more towards the libertarian side a little bit.
ALEC BALDWIN:
You do it politically?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Yeah.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Do you think that some of your comservatism and this is a long shot maybe, but do you think some of your — you know, even mild case of, of being more conservative than your mother stems from your reaction to her kind of — the, the kind of sexual drum she was beating throughout her career as a writer?
[BOTH AT ONCE]
ERICA JONG:
I wasn't beating [LAUGHS] — here's the problem.
[MOLLY LAUGHS]
ALEC BALDWIN:
I, I take it — I take that back —
ERICA JONG:
Here's the problem, here's the problem.
ALEC BALDWIN:
But I take it back, that it was construed that way. You weren't.
ERICA JONG:
I was not — I was not beating a sexual —
ALEC BALDWIN:
What were you doing — in your own words, what were you doing?
ERICA JONG:
I was trying to write honestly about the way a young woman thinks and feels. And because our society is so curiously puritanical —
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yes.
ERICA JONG:
— people took that honest book which got inside a woman's fantasy life, her marital life and so on -- they took it as a horny book. And I am truly disappointed that the closest person in the world to me has bought into that view. I was trying to write honestly about how a young woman thinks and feels. Because of our Puritanism, it was construed as a horny book.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
I —
ERICA JONG:
I — it devastates me that my daughter buys that image. But okay, she doesn't have to be my literary critic. She's my daughter and I love her and she can do no wrong. I hope that some day she will read my work and see that that was not what I was doing.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Daughters do torture you in a way that — I mean that sons are not capable of in my opinion. But I also think that my mom's legacy to me was about being honest and how important it is to be honest. And I do really hate, you know, that kind of pretension or falseness and that is something that really has been your legacy.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Um, this is obviously an important subject for me because I have a daughter.
ERICA JONG:
Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].
ALEC BALDWIN:
And that is, what do you think of the state of female sexuality in the culture today?
ERICA JONG:
I think they're overwhelmed with a false image of sexuality before they're —
ALEC BALDWIN:
Specifically how so?
ERICA JONG:
Before they're emotionally ready to deal with it. I think they — they're told that giving blow jobs in class is not sex, which is not true. They use their manipulation of boys' sexuality as a power trip to get even with men for the other power men have.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But isn't that —
ERICA JONG:
I think to be a young woman today of — of your daughter's age is a very sticky wicket.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Terrible.
ERICA JONG:
And I think that you really need a parent who can guide you.
ALEC BALDWIN:
How would they guide them?
ERICA JONG:
To tell them that what they see around them in the media is not true.
ALEC BALDWIN:
'Cause I try to do that.
ERICA JONG:
If I were dealing with your daughter, I would try to reassure her that this is a very confusing time of life.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But I don't, I just —
ERICA JONG:
And that what she sees around her is incredibly confusing. Most of the women, the young women are as confused as she and are showing off by pretending to not be confused. And I would try to convey to her how difficult adolescence is, how many messages are coming at her at once and how hard it is to make sense of it. That's what I would do. I plan to do that with my granddaughter who I'm sure will say something cynical to me.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But — but I also think some of it if you just as a — you can't hear that kind of thing from a parent at 15. I mean maybe there are some kids who can. I never could, you know —
ALEC BALDWIN:
Who can you hear it from?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
I'm not entirely sure. I had a beloved child psychiatrist growing up who I really liked a lot. And I think maybe that's possible or a teacher or a school psychiatrist.
ERICA JONG:
Maybe the parent can't really say those things. I think it's right. And I also think we don't automatically know how to behave —
ALEC BALDWIN:
How do you think it's primarily different from when you wrote your earlier books? What's changed for women?
ERICA JONG:
The media's more all-pervasive and the image of women is even more confusing than it's ever been.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Yeah, I believe that's true.
ERICA JONG:
And on the one hand, you're supposed to look like a fashion model retouched. And on the other hand, you're supposed to claim to a sophistication you don't and cannot have at that age. And I think that women who are 14 and 15 are in the most difficult position they have ever been in modern society.
ALEC BALDWIN:
What do you think about that?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
I, I — I mean I agree. I think there's a lot of sexuality. I think it's not explained to young girls in a way.
ERICA JONG:
It's very confusing, Molly.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But I think that's a legacy of the feminist movement. I mean we've said we want — well, I mean it's —
ERICA JONG:
It is not a legacy of the feminist movement. It is a legacy and here I really feel fierce, it is the legacy of a distortion of women's desire for equal rights. Equal rights are not are not platform shoes.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But you can't —
ERICA JONG:
And naked clothes. Equal rights —
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
You can't, but you can't blow up an atom bomb and then choose how it's gonna go.
ERICA JONG:
But we did not —
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
I mean I'm just saying that you can't —
ERICA JONG:
Molly, we did not blow up that atom bomb. The media took our legitimate desire for equality and turned it into garbage.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
They turned it — but they turned it into what the people wanted first of all —
ERICA JONG:
I don't think so.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Because they wouldn't — it wouldn't exist if people didn't buy Britney Spears, than they would —
[BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]
ERICA JONG:
I don't — I don't think that the media does what the people want. Not at all. I disagree. I disagree.
ALEC BALDWIN:
We'll be back in a moment after a word from our sponsor, Victoria's Secret.
ERICA JONG:
I disagree completely.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But I also think — first of all, this is what the people want. People buy Britney Spears because they want them —
ALEC BALDWIN:
Well no, no, no, no, no, no — see, this is what I disagree, I blame the media and I blame the entertainment industry and I blame that whole matrix for all of it. Think of the most absurd person from — from the past. If you took Cantinflas and put him on Glee he'd become a gay icon today.
ERICA JONG:
You are so right, Cantinflas.
ALEC BALDWIN:
[LAUGHS]
ERICA JONG:
I think it's brilliant. If the Internet had existed when Cantinflas was here, everybody would be worshipping Cantinflas.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But you can't, but you can't — you just can't control —
ERICA JONG:
And it has nothing to do with feminism.
ALEC BALDWIN:
I love that you even know who that is, I love you for that.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But you can't —
ERICA JONG:
I love Cantinflas.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
You can't control what people are going to —you know, life.
ERICA JONG:
But this is not what people want. This is what is thrust upon them.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
But it's —
ERICA JONG:
And it has nothing to do with feminism.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
First of all, first of all, you are the media and you are the media and I am in some effect, the media, so we can't blame —
ERICA JONG:
No, we are not.
ALEC BALDWIN:
No, no, no, no, wait a second, I disagree with you and I don't want to get off on media. That's something — I mean I take a paycheck from media companies to do what they pay me to do. But I'm not responsible for everything else they do. Let's just say this, you take the top women in entertainment and I'm going to be generous, I'll say half — one-half of them really have talent. Mariah Carey really can sing. Beyonce Knowles really can sing. But then there's the other half, they have no talent. It's all electronically enhanced. It's all about sexuality.
ERICA JONG:
But there are many people who are talentless. But I think the interpretation of — of —
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
It's true.
ERICA JONG:
— of our — of sexuality in our culture is so twisted, sexuality is —
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Old people and lubricant —
ERICA JONG:
— true intimacy with another person.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Viagra.
ERICA JONG:
That sometimes [LAUGHS] result —
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Dolls.
ERICA JONG:
— in genitals getting together and —
ALEC BALDWIN:
[LAUGHS] What?
ERICA JONG:
— sometimes does not.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
Oh!
ALEC BALDWIN:
Why are you so cynical? Why are you so cynical, Molly?
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
The woman makes sex sound awful. I'm sorry.
ALEC BALDWIN:
No, she doesn't. You — you're making sex sound — you talk about intimacy —
ERICA JONG:
I'm talking about intimacy.
ALEC BALDWIN:
You're the one saying lubricants and dolls and Ben Wa balls.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
[LAUGHS] Right.
ERICA JONG:
I don't even think that's sex. I think that if you have real intimacy with somebody, he can touch you here and you get excited. He can touch you on your neck, he can hold your hand in the movies.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Later on I'll show you the spot I touch. It never fails.
ERICA JONG:
[LAUGHING] People have no idea what sexuality really is.
ALEC BALDWIN:
Bingo! We - I, I could talk with you about sex for a couple more hours, but we got to go.
ERICA JONG:
Well, let's do it —
ALEC BALDWIN:
Erica Jong and Molly Jong-Fast. They say they’ve toyed with the idea of writing something together.
ERICA JONG:
Oh yeah, many times.
ALEC BALDWIN:
But both agree they never ever will.
MOLLY JONG-FAST:
It would be the end of their relationship.
ALEC BALDWIN:
I’m Alec Baldwin. Here’s the Thing is produced by WNYC Radio. Let me know what you think. Email me at heresthething.org.
