Dirty Old Women: Author Susan Kuchinskas Talks Sex and Aging
[Editor’s note: Interview has been condensed and edited.]
Recently, I had a conversation with friends about the lack of representations of older women’s sexuality. I decided to interview journalist and author Susan Kuchinskas after reading about Dirty Old Women, an erotica reading series she started at the Octopus Literary Salon. The next event in the series is at 7:30 p.m. June 28. Below, we discuss the reading series, Kuchinskas’ erotic memoir, and what has changed about her relationship to sex.
Nina Foushee: Tell me about your Dirty Old Women reading series.
Susan Kuchinskas: Let’s make no bones, we’re not older, we’re old. Dirty old women. We’re owning it! Every month we have two featured readers reading their erotica.
NF: How should we think about an erotic memoir? What’s the point?
SK: I realized that I traveled through a lot of different sexual cultural milieus throughout the years. I was a go-go dancer; I was in porno movies; I was, you know, “free love” because I went to college in 1967; lesbian feminism and, most recently, orgasmic meditation. So to me these different stages reflect what was going on in the culture. Sex is actually a reflection of how the culture sees women and women’s sexuality from the ’60s to today.
NF: How does our society see women as reflected through sexual mores at these different stages? Give me examples.
SK: I went to an all girls school [college] in 1967. The school was kind of old fashioned. You had to wear skirts to dinner and freshman had little hats. You had a senior, who was talking about how she was going on a trip with her fiance, and he wanted to share a room to save money and how she just [drops her voice dramatically] couldn’t do it. I first had sex the second semester of my freshman year. I didn’t know who I could talk to about it because it just wasn’t spoken about.
NF: Tell me about the next stage.
SK: Once I started having sex, I started having a lot of it. I realize now that the free love thing was not so much about love or sexuality, but just trying to get over our parents who were so shut down emotionally. Sex biologically is supposed to be about connection. And free love was about separating sex from connection. Female pleasure was not talked about, so young girls were having sex with young guys who were very horny and didn’t know anything about how to please a woman.
NF: What came next?
SK: Then I became a go-go dancer in New Jersey. Then I moved to California, where go-go dancing was topless and bottomless and spreading and I didn’t want to do that. It was really annoying to be a woman back then. There really was a lot of male privilege and being treated like you were stupid. I was mad at men. I fell in with some lesbians and for 10 years I became a lesbian. These were really hardcore lesbian separatists. It was just the time in SF when gay stuff was really starting. There were women-owned car repair shops — it was fucking amazing. Of course now women do everything.
NF: So you identified as a lesbian for a period of time. Do you still see that as part of your sexuality?
SK: I wanted to be a lesbian. Sex wasn’t that great for me in general, and the pussy seemed kind of oozy and smelly so that part wasn’t so great. I finally gave up because I couldn’t stay away from men. But I wanted to be a lesbian. That was like 1973 to 1984, when I was between 23 and 33-ish. Then I went back to men. I started making porno movies, I worked at the Lusty Lady, I did these “live new girl” things and [doing porn] was actually when I really got turned onto my sexuality. Sometimes it was really awful, but once in awhile it was good because these guys were ones who had a lot of sex.
NF: What do you think changes in your relationship to sex as you get older?
SK: When you’re older, you don’t care as much about what people think. When you’re young, you think that that old person who is dressed really scruffy or is being sloppy when they eat is because they don’t know any better. No, it’s because they don’t really care anymore! It’s great, and that includes sex.
NF: You write erotica, which you’ve shared at the Dirty Old Women series. What’s an example of a plot line from the erotica that you write?
SK: I like to write erotic science fiction. My story, “Worshipping with Aliazan,” (Necronomicon #4) is about a family that for many generations has nurtured a green blob that they have transcendent and beautiful sex with.
NF: Something I’ve realized recently is that there are a lot of things about sex that make me sad. It’s so tied in for me with things about being a woman in our society that are sad. My mom is a sex positive person, but a lot of the things that I feel like I’ve learned from her have been about self-protection and recognizing that people are often looking to take advantage and that men aren’t likely to be faithful. I’m wondering if your writing or thinking about sex is tied into these ways of thinking about being a woman that I feel kind of burdened by when I try to write about sex.
SK: Writing erotica is very freeing because you can just make it the way you want, which is very nice. But I agree.
NF: What do you wish more people thought about when they thought about sex?
SK: Representations of sexuality in our culture are really skewed. They’re so performative. They don’t have to do with pleasure! It’s not something you need to perform or show off. I think, especially for women, it’s hard to realize that it should spring from what you want rather than what other people want you.
When I was young, it seemed like sex was something that was given to you, but really it’s something you should take because you want it.
One thing you didn’t ask me about, but that I think is kind of interesting about being an older woman — how people see you really changes and you do become invisible to people. Sometimes that’s really fucking annoying, but it’s also very liberating. There comes a point where you’re going to go to a gallery opening and young people aren’t going to look at you no matter how you’re dressed. And when I was young, it was very important to me that whenever I went anywhere I looked great and people, especially men, noticed me and it’s kinda great to not have that burden. It’s part of not caring what people think. Still, one-to-one I can be attractive and hot but it’s not something that I need or need to do.
NF: So now you are involved in orgasmic meditation. What is that about for you?
SK: One of the things that [orgasmic meditation] training does is it trains you to ask very specifically for what you want, and give very specific feedback. So if you’re a woman and someone is stroking your clitoris…
NF: [makes a pained face]
SK: What was it that you just felt?
NF: Asking for what you want sexually is just something that I don’t feel like many women in my generation are learning to do. Or any generation. I’m aware of the burden of that not being received as a message.
NF: What is your hope for the sex era of the future?
SK: That we could have celebratory sex with whoever in the spirit of genuine connection and pleasure in that moment.
Thanks for reading. Here are a few of my other stories on race, gender and culture.
