Lorelei Sharkey (bottom), 31, was born in Manhattan and studiedEnglish. After graduating, she went to Boston where she worked on asmall literary publication. In 1998, she began working at thehighbrow sex website, Nerve. She and Emma Taylor have now launchedtheir own site, www.emandlo.com, and have written `The Big Bang:Nerve's Guide to the New Sexual Universe'. She lives in Brooklyn withher filmmaker boyfriend Joey Cavella.
Emma Taylor, 31, was born in Buckinghamshire and, at 16, moved toNew Jersey with her family. She studied German at Princeton and thenworked on an on-line community magazine. A fan of Nerve, she met thefounders and, in 1999, became half of the site's cult sex advice teamEm & Lo with Sharkey. She is single and lives in Manhattan. The pairwill be touring the UK later this month.
LORELEI SHARKEY
I'd been working at Nerve - a website about sex and relationships -for a year and they hired Em while I was on vacation. I was a littleshocked that I didn't get a chance to meet someone I was going to beworking so closely with but, thankfully, she was just perfect: smart,experienced in the on-line business... I was a little worried for myjob, actually, but we really hit it off.
We were working 12-hour days together and weekends and yet stillwanted to hang out after work and talk about our own sex lives. Lotsof people who read the book like to think we have tickle fights andwrite together on the couch in our negligees. It's so not like that!We wear sweatpants and she has no problem farting all the time. She'sa very gassy girl.
When we met, it was the whole Internet-boom period and Nerve wasquite high-profile so we were invited to so many parties, partiesthat were definitely more glamorous than we were. I think it's every25-year-old girl's party trick to go out and make out with her bestgirlfriend. My boyfriend worked at Nerve too and early on, I think inan attempt to win him over, Emma and I asked him to come home for athree-way when we were very drunk. Thank God he had the judgment tosay no! But there's no sexual tension between me and Em. I used tokiss her - she's a great kisser - but we'd never do it alone. It wasalways a public thing, a drunken thing - there was always an ulteriormotive.
We agree on everything but maybe I was more feminist than Em and Ibrought her over to the dark side. I'm very much about doing theright thing and not lying and always wearing ` protection. Onoccasion, she's been bad and I give her hell for it. She'll forget touse a condom and I take her to task over that because I think weshould practise what we preach and I care about her - I don't wanther catching anything.
We had very different growing up experiences. Em was a goodChristian girl and swore to never have sex until she was married.Then, in her senior year, she finally decided to cheat on Christ. Sowhen she came to New York aged 25, she'd only been having sex for acouple of years, whereas I've had sex since I was 15. Slowly shebegan to have more crazy experiences than I was. Now she's donethings that I never would.
I think she's very British in a way. She has a hard time beingemotional and expressing her emotions. She won't cry at real-lifesituations but she'll cry at Julia Roberts movies. She's a total sapin that way. It's weird to be so close and yet have that. Because wehave this very intense relationship where we work together and we'refriends, sometimes, just like in a romantic relationship, we have tohave a State of the Union sit-down and I'm always the one to initiateit. I'm like, "OK, we need to see where this relationship is going. Ifeel like we're not communicating very well." After a couple ofglasses of wine she opens up and we have a very heartfelt exchangeand it always ends in hugs and is very mushy and sweet.
EMMA TAYLOR
I was nervous about moving to New York, I thought everyone wouldhave their own lives and it would be hard to make friends. But acouple of days after I arrived, Lo was trying to get everyone atNerve to see this movie. I was like, "I'll go!" and it ended up beingjust the two of us. Then we went and had a drink and somehow movedthe conversation round to our own sex lives. I was intimidated by Loat first; I'd only had sex with three people and felt I was going toget busted for not knowing enough about it!
I was overawed by Lo's self-confidence when I first met her. Shehad a short, funky haircut she bleached platinum blonde and I hadthis waist- length, curly natural hair. I just thought she had somuch energy and was so crazy and wacky. We've definitely switchedroles a bit as the years have gone by. Part of what happened is thatshe got more serious with her boyfriend and I've been single for mostof the time. I grew up fairly Christian and didn't have sex until mylast year of college when I was 21, so I've definitely come to sexualeducation fairly late.
As we've been writing it's sort of been an education for me. Whenwe were doing The Big Bang we both had boyfriends and we'd send eachother home with assignments like, "Try out these five positions andtell me which one works best for you, which works best for him andwhich you can do for the longest." But a month before we had to turnin the manuscript, we each broke up with our boyfriends within 24hours. We were completely heartbroken but we still had a few moreintercourse positions to try out so we were on my bedroom floor inour sweats, trying to get into these positions!
Sometimes we're a little shy about sharing our sex lives with eachother, especially for Joey and Lo because I know him as well. If Ihave a one- night stand, I'll go into ridiculous, almost offensivedetail because I know my friends will never see him. We laugh aboutbeing terrible at taking our own advice. Sometimes it's like, "Whatwould Em and Lo tell me to do?" And we laugh when we take our ownadvice and find that it's actually good advice!
It's funny: it's like a marriage in that we have those talks onthe state of the relationship. I think people have the notion that ifit's a friendship, you don't need to have those talks, but you do. Wespend more time together than most couples and stuff can build up.I'm bad at confrontation and expressing my feelings so she's alwaysthe one to force that - which I hate. But once we've done it, itfeels so good. It's like colonic irrigation or something. n
`The Big Bang: Nerve's Guide to the Sexual Universe' is publishedby Hodder on 12 April, priced pounds 12.99
No comments:
Post a Comment