To people who ask, "Are you really uncomfortable with people knowing you write about sex?"

An excerpt from Available to Chat

“Look, my Mom talked to me exactly three times about sex and marriage. The first time, I was in fourth grade and Nina Murman told me that boys put their penises in girls’ vaginas. I’m not sure she used the correct anatomical terms. Anyway, I didn’t believe her, so I went home and asked my Mom how babies were made. She handed me a book and I read the first two pages, which were so spectacularly dull I knew immediately Nina must be right.

“The second conversation was at the end of the four-hour drive to college my freshman year. We had just pulled up to my residence hall. I was going to point out a parking spot, when my Mom, sitting in the backseat, said, ‘Olivia, whatever you do, don’t get pregnant.’ That was talk number two.

About marriage, she said, ‘It’s nice to get a three piece ensemble for the dance. Hiring a DJ looks tacky.’”

“Did your family have religious parameters?”​

“No, it was the eighties. There was no such thing as Sex in the City, yet.”

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