Transcript: “Love, In So Many Words”
LAURA STASSI
Hi, I’m Laura Stassi. I’ve been a podcaster for about four years now. I’ve been a writer for many years longer than that. Nonfiction is my specialty. I’m so accustomed to a precise presentation of factual information … that I sometimes forget, there can be so much beauty in writing. Even when we’re telling it like it is … and especially when it comes to romantic entanglements.
“Love, in So Many Words.” That’s this episode of “Dating While Gray: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships.”
Write what you know. Perhaps you’re aware of this advice. But those who have succeeded in the craft understand that the familiar is merely a jumping off point.
Take Susan Coll. She’s the author of seven novels, including one that’s set in a bookstore. Susan herself handles events at the indie Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.
In Susan’s latest book, the main character is a woman with an empty nest and a crumbling marriage. Susan has experienced both.
Now, Susan’s career was already launched when she went through a gray divorce. I asked her if this made the split feel less discombobulating.
SUSAN COLL
No, I was very discombobulated. There's no way to be in a relationship for that long and not have it be a very jarring thing, even with adult children. It was very discombobulating.
LAURA STASSI
How long were you married?
SUSAN COLL
That's a good question ... 30, 32 years, I think. Or we'd been together 32 years. Yeah, we'd been together since college, so probably married 28 years at that point.
LAURA STASSI
The classic gray divorce – I mean, classic meaning a longtime first marriage ending.
SUSAN COLL
Yes, but I think it definitely helped that I had a career. I was in the middle of a book that was under contract, so I did have that already established. I think it would have been much harder if I was starting from scratch at that point. I mean, who knows, maybe that gave me the ability to sort of do what needed to be done, because I felt good about myself and my life at that point. So it did make it a little easier to go the next step, but still very discombobulated.
LAURA STASSI
Yeah. And the book that you were in the middle of, was that The Stager?
SUSAN COLL
That was The Stager.
LAURA STASSI
The Stager. And I wanted to ask you about that because you mentioned your latest book, Real Life and Other Fictions, and we know from the early pages that the protagonist is in a difficult marriage and is trying to figure out next steps. And with The Stager, it also sounds liketroubled marriages or families in transition, that shows up in that book as well. And I’m wondering if it was difficult to sort of tap into your creativity after your divorce, even though this book was already started. Or did it turn out kind of as a muse for that and your later works?
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, I think I -- I mean, I have always been interested in writing about dysfunction and I sort of absorb wherever I'm living or wherever I'm working. I had a first novel that was mercifully never published, but at the time I was living in India. So I wound up setting a novel in India. I wish you know I could write historical fiction, but I am more of a contemporary novelist and I write about wherever I happen to be, even when I'm trying not to do that. My second novel, the one that was finally published and became my first novel, at that time I was living in London and it was in part set in London. I just tend to absorb where I am.
But I wasn't setting out in either of those two books to write about my own life and I don't think that I did. I try very carefully to not be writing about my own life for people. I know I sort of go out of my way to fictionalize events and characters, so I'm just more interested in where I began saying-- the sort of dysfunction of life and suburbia and what's really going on. In The Stager, it was what is really going on inside this glamorous-looking McMansion and this glamorous-looking family. In fact, things are not as they seem.
You know, what I did take from that -- that was inspired in part by putting our house on the market and having a stager come in and this woman kept saying to me, you look familiar, and I didn't recognize her. But after about a week of her being in my house, going through my closets, rearranging everything, which is a very personal experience, she then said I know where I know you from. And in fact, it was a slightly uncomfortable interaction. So that inspired that book. Just the idea that somebody can come in and kind of meddle in your life. But again, it's completely fictionalized.
LAURA STASSI
Right.
SUSAN COLL
Yeah.
LAURA STASSI
Oh gosh, I'm curious. OK, so it doesn't sound like you were writing thinly veiled fiction. These were sort of familiar situations, I guess. Is that a fair assessment?
SUSAN COLL
Yes, and in Real Life and Other Fictions, the most recent novel, I had never set out to write about divorce. I had set out to write about this story to do with the legend of the Mothman and a tragic bridge collapse in West Virginia in the 1960s, which was a real event. But I needed, you know, with my writing instructor hat on and people reading it telling me I needed a propelling incident, an inciting incident. I needed a reason for this woman, my protagonist, to get in her car and leave home. And what better reason than having her marriage falling apart. So I was almost surprised by the reviews to see that that was one of the takeaways from one of the reviews, that this is a novel about a woman in midlife crisis fleeing when to me, it was a novel about a bridge collapse and the Mothman. So you know, maybe, even when I'm not thinking about it, that's what I'm writing. What can I say, my subconscious.
LAURA STASSI
The thing I really appreciated about that book is some of the details that you have in there are just kind of like throwaway details. But they're just like ouch at the same time. Like, some other woman's retainer. It's like, oh my gosh, that is so gross and so specific. It's outrageous and yet what about breaking up is not outrageous sometimes, you know.
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, I came up with that idea on a morning dog walk. I've now remarried and my husband is a writer also and a lot of my plot points are developed on our morning dog walks. And I was thinking out loud. You know, I don't want the cliche of she's left her earring in the room or, you know, negligee …
LAURA STASSI
Underwear …
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, underwear. And then I thought what is just the most hideous thing to find -- someone's retainer, Because it's not just that it's a gross item, but the implication of her feeling so at home that she can just leave her personal items lying around felt even more invasive in a way.
LAURA STASSI
Right, and it also might say something about her age.
SUSAN COLL
Right. We're beyond worrying about things like negligees.
LAURA STASSI
I love that. OK So you mention you are remarried, and I did want to ask you, tell me about your decision to start dating again.
SUSAN COLL
I think I missed the routines of family life. I was, without getting into any details, I was at some level very happily married and I enjoyed all of the boring routines of married life. I'd hoped to find some way to replicate that, I suppose, was my impetus. It never occurred to me not to begin to date again and I think it's because I knew that I really missed that, just the kind of dailiness of marriage, of having someone to walk dogs with, of Sunday dinners with the children. And I know I was fortunate that I found somebody who was very compatible in that regard and was very much looking to meet somebody who shared the same family values and putting children first and dogs.
LAURA STASSI
And how did you meet him?
SUSAN COLL
We met online just at about the time I had decided to stop trying to date because I'd had a lot of bad experiences and just decided— I was pretty happy at that point. I had a novel, The Stager was about to come out. But I was working full time at the bookstore. I'd established a pretty good routine. I'd gotten used to, you know, 18 months or so later, I'd gotten pretty used to my life and no longer felt that need the way I had at first. But he contacted me online, which he then said was a mistake, because he accidentally hit some button, which I believe because he's not very techie, but it worked out well.
LAURA STASSI
He didn't mean to contact you?
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, he didn't really know what he was doing online. So you, know, he sent me some, whatever the jargon was, and it turned out we lived very close to each other. We lived walking distance, and he was a writer and it just seemed too interesting to not at least follow up. So we met for a drink, and once I felt comfortable enough to tell him where I worked, he told me that he had just been turned down for an event there, and I asked him what the book was and he told me and I remembered the book. So that's how we began. He had a sense of humor and we'd only turned it down because of the timing. We're booking brand-new books within the first few weeks of pub date is our standard. And this had come out a little while before and there was no indication that the author was local, so it just kind of slipped into the slush pile.
LAURA STASSI
He was a writer, but you had not heard of his name. I know D.C. is a big city with different genres, but it was nobody you were familiar with, is that?
SUSAN COLL
No, but it turns out we know a lot of people in common because it's a small town. It's a big city, but it's also a small town at the same time. So we definitely had a lot of mutual friends and overlap with kids and schools.
LAURA STASSI
There was something I read about. He wanted to show you a book of his.
SUSAN COLL
Yes, yeah, that was just one of those strange stories. He kept telling me about this book called the Good Soldier Svejk, which I hope I'm not mangling the name, but it was somewhere in the house. But we couldn't find it for a year or two. And he finally found it in his daughter’s room and showed it to me. And I opened it, and he’d clearly taken it on a flight overseas some, maybe even 20 years ago. I can't remember the date offhand, but when I opened it, it was clear that it was from a flight because it had the menu in German, a lunch menu. But it also had a piece of the International Herald Tribune in there, a clip. And half my name was on the page because I used to write for them. He'd ripped it out to see the book review or to save the book review of an early Richard Powers novel. But my name was on the other half of the piece of paper. We were both just completely amazed by that. And then it was only, you know, maybe a day later, so that I looked at it again and the date of the paper was the date that we married.
LAURA STASSI
Okay, I'm getting chill bumps. I love stories like that. You had written something else. You didn't write the review of.
SUSAN COLL
No. I used to write a lot of 800-word feature stories on whatever they would ask me for, and I think It was on how the recession in Europe was affecting the restaurant business, so it's just had gone out and called a bunch of restaurants and knocked on doors. It was not an article I even remembered writing or had been attached to.
LAURA STASSI
And the date!
SUSAN COLL
Well, it's bashert, as we say.
LAURA STASSI
And what does that mean?
SUSAN COLL
That's a Yiddish word for just meant to be. Like, meaningful, yeah.
LAURA STASSI
Bashert. I love bashert stories, or stories that are bashert?
SUSAN COLL
Yeah.
LAURA STASSI
How long have you been remarried now?
SUSAN COLL
It's been six years..
LAURA STASSI
Six years, okay. So I'm wondering if just as disintegrating relationships have played a role. If you think, or is there, anything interesting about a happy relationship to read about?
SUSAN COLL
Well, that's a good question I can explore. It's not as funny, is the problem. I write dark comedy. So that's actually a pretty relevant question because even in Bookish People. I began the book with events in Charlottesville. All of my books have kind of a darkness to them, including this latest one that's about a bridge collapse. So I do begin with trouble or darkness and try to see the humor in the situation. Not to say that there's anything humorous about the bridge collapse, there's not, but the circumstances in which my narrator finds herself as she goes out to explore. So that's a good question, and I don't really know the answer to that yet.
LAURA STASSI
That’s novelist Susan Coll – C-O-L-L, author most recently, of “Real Life and Other Fictions.” You heard Susan mention bashert. Coming up next, we’ll hear from a writer who’s created poetry from coincidence. Plus, a former biotechnology writer turns to erotica. That’s all after the break.
BREAK
LAURA STASSI
I’m Laura Stassi, and we’re back with Dating While Gray: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships. After hearing about bashert from novelist Susan Coll, I’m reminded of this voice mail I received.
SUSAN BLACK ALLEN:
Hi, Laura. This is Susan Black Allen. I am a therapist and poet in San Diego, and I've been writing a lot about relationships. This poem is about my ex getting remarried. We were together for about 22 years, and I went through a divorce about five years ago. It's called The Lottery:
My ex is marrying his new wife, 28 years to the day after he and I met, 28 years to the day after his previous ex's 40th birthday. I'm no statistician, but what are the odds? She thinks she's winning the lottery when I know I got a get-out-of-jail card, free. Not sure about his previous ex but she's probably eating birthday cake, which is better any day than wedding cake, if it comes without him.
LAURA STASSI Hmm, I wonder if the ex-husband is aware of all the coincidences. Unfortunately, there’s a sad update, as Susan shares in this poem she wrote.
SUSAN BLACK ALLEN
Tragic Twist: My ex-husband is dying, and I am thriving. If you think this gives me satisfaction, it absolutely does not. We should have been thriving together. That was the plan. But he had his own plan, one that no longer involved me. Now his body has its own scheme, one that no longer involves him. My heart goes out to his new wife, who I'm sure had her own plot that did not involve an actual plot. Perhaps my heart should go out to him too, but it only knows how to grieve once.
LAURA STASSI
Thanks to Susan, who tells me she’s looking for a publisher for her poetry book, called “The Best Sex I Never Had.” Catchy title. Speaking of catchy, how about a book named in honor of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty? It’s by Stella Fosse, a former high school biology and English teacher. She also had a long career as a biotechnology writer.
After Stella retired, she took up another genre: elder erotica. If you don’t know the difference between romance and erotica, I really didn’t either. Stella unpacks it, after she explains why she uses a pen name.
STELLA FOSSE
When I started this project of doing erotic writing, I was concerned that my adult children might be highly embarrassed by this endeavor. So I decided to choose a pen name. And it turns out my children aren't particularly embarrassed. In fact, they look at this as a way of empowering older women, so I needn't have done it. But now that I have an established social media presence and books out under this name, I'm just keeping it.
LAURA STASSI
Sure. It's a great name too.
STELLA FOSSE
Well, thank you.
LAURA STASSI
It sounds like what you're doing now is kind of a beautiful combination of your talents. Because you're not only writing, but you have biotechnology themes in your stories. And also you're trying to empower other people to learn how to write.
STELLA FOSSE
That's true. I've been teaching how to write senior romance. I've taught courses on how to publish and market your book to folks over 65. So yes, I do quite a bit of teaching. And also, you're right, my books tend to have a biotech theme. My upcoming novel, Vampires of a Certain Age, will be about a medieval healer who becomes a vampire and eventually becomes president of a blood bank outside Chicago, where she provides ethically sourced blood to vampires of the Midwest.
LAURA STASSI
Oh my gosh, I love that. That makes me giggle. Ethically sourced blood, I think that’s great.
STELLA FOSSE
One of the themes of the book is the question, is 500 too old for romance?
And of course, the answer is not at all.
LAURA STASSI
Never. Never too old.
STELLA FOSSE
No, never too old.
LAURA STASSI
So you have something on your website. It said your erotic life bloomed in your 50s. And that's what sort of led you down this erotica writing path. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
STELLA FOSSE
Sure. I was at the tail end of my biotech career when I read an article in The New York Times Book Review section by a romance author in her 50s, who said to her peers, if you want to get published, you need to write characters in their 20s. And I thought, you know, this is just as bad as the Bronte sisters having to publish under male pen names. And right around that time, a friend of mine started a reading series at a local bookstore, it was called Dirty Old Women. And it was for women who were writing erotica and who were over 50 to come and read before an audience. And I thought, Well, why don't I try that? So I did. And it was totally fun. And what I was writing about was my dating life, or are at least lightly disguised as fiction, which, as you said, really blossomed in my late 50s after my second divorce. So, you know, why not write about it?
LAURA STASSI
Yeah, I agree. Tell me the difference between erotica and romance.
STELLA FOSSE
Ah, okay. So this is something I talk about in my book, Aphrodite’s Pen, which is about writing erotica after 50. There's sort of a spectrum. There's romance, which focuses on the relationship between two people and has a happy ending. And often there's sex as part of that story. But that's on a spectrum. Some romances stop at the bedroom door, others are much more explicit. There's romance and a sub-genre of that is senior romance, which, unfortunately, has been classified as romance with anybody over 40. I think of that is lightly seasoned. You know, I mean, really seasoned romance, highly seasoned would be about people over 60, or over 70. So that’s romance and again, that's really relationship driven.
Erotica is more about the development of a person focusing on their sexuality as part of their development. So an erotic story about an older woman might, for example, be based on the idea that a woman could find herself more attractive, more sexual, more interesting, after a certain age. And I think those stories are very intriguing.
LAURA STASSI
I would also like to talk about this interesting connection we found out that we had, because you use the word erotica, which all of a sudden, I went back to when I was 25 years old. I was a full-time copy editor at the Camden Courier Post. I was married, but I was trying to get writing assignments. And I think a press release came over to the -- I don't think the section was called Style, but it was basically the Style section. And I was assigned this piece. And I sent it to you because the word erotica made me go to the newspaper archives and look it up. So tell me when you saw that article, what did what was the connection?
STELLA FOSSE That was fabulous that you sent me that article. That book is Ladies Own Erotica, which was written by the Kensington Ladies’ Erotic Society. And I lived right near Kensington for many years. I lived in Berkeley, which is the next town over. And when we started our writing group, which came out of we were talking earlier about the Dirty Old Women reading series, we developed a writing group called Elderotica, where we shared stories,
erotic stories, and got together and wrote, and that was inspired in part by the Kensington Ladies erotica circle. So what a great connection. Did you actually meet those ladies?
LAURA STASSI
No, I was living in New Jersey, I was 25 years old, like I said, and that was the days where I took furious notes because I don't think I even had one of those gadgets that you can like a tape recorder that you can plug into your phone. I can't remember what year those became very, you know, the cutting edge. But they must have had great press because like I said, you know, I took a little dig at California in my piece but other than that, I stand behind what I wrote. But they must have sent a press release, you know, blanketed, you know, to newspapers all across and that's so I must have talked with them on the phone.
STELLA FOSSE
Ah, that's great.
LAURA STASSI
I know. I get chill bumps because I feel like it's just amazing how lives kind of intersect or somehow touch on each other when you least expect it.
STELLA FOSSE
Yeah, yeah. And the book is wonderful. It's so, I don't know if you've had a chance to read it.
But it's so ironic and clever. And it’s just well put together and it talks about the women, there are sort of interviews with the women. And there are excerpts from their writing. And when I did my book, Aphrodite’s Pen, it was very much along those same lines only, you know, 30-35 years later, but a very similar sort of book with interviews and excerpts, and also suggestions for how to write erotica after 50. Lots of different prompts and things. So yeah, there really is a connection there. That's just so cool. I was I was stunned when I saw the article you sent me, that was so great.
LAURA STASSI
Well, I have to say, when I was 25, I'm proud of myself for not being dismissive of them. But I had no desire to read their book because I really didn't get it. I was married. I didn't have kids yet. But the thought of older women and sexuality, it wasn't in my thought process. Or, yeah, I couldn't connect with it. But I thought it was an interesting topic.
STELLA FOSSE Yes. And, and I think that's partly why they did that project. They could have just shared their stories with one another and enjoyed that. Because that really is a fun, fun thing to do. And I encourage everybody to start an elderotica writing group, because it is the most fun, you wouldn't believe it. And I think they did that project to start getting the word out that there is sex after 40.
LAURA STASSI
So they were all women. Sounds like your group is all women is writing erotica, writing and reading erotica. Is it only for heterosexual women?
STELLA FOSSE
Oh, no, not at all. No. I'm sure that -- I don't feel qualified to talk about a men's erotic writing group, but I'm sure that those exist. And that that would be really rewarding for those men. I'm bisexua, myself and others in our writing group had a whole rainbow of kinds of sexuality. So no, it's certainly not just for straight women. You’re probably familiar with the Geena Davis Institute…
LAURA STASSI
Yeah.
STELLA FOSSE
…where they do studies on portrayals of various groups in the media, and they have a whole study out, called Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten, which is about portrayals of older women, in particular in the media and in movies and how stereotyped those depictions are. So we're not getting the whole story from the culture, which is one reason I encourage older women to write and publish erotica and romance.
LAURA STASSI
Yeah, true. The only reason I bring up heterosexual men is because in my podcast, I have come to realize that there is really a -- just a yearning from many, many older men to be seen. And even though we tend as a society to think of older men as distinguished and, you know, different words that we use for older women, that there are still a lot of men who don't fit the stereotypical image.
STELLA FOSSE
That’s a really important point. Even though there's that trope of the silver fox, not every older man is a silver fox. So yes, there does need to be more visibility for the average older guy.
LAURA STASSI
You mentioned your partner so Graham is your partner in romance and business?
STELLA FOSSE
That's right. He is my publisher. He's my publicist. He is my IT guy. I would not be on this call with you if he hadn't figured out how to do it. He's basically amazing. He's just amazing.
LAURA STASSI
And can I ask how long you've all been together?
STELLA FOSSE
We've been together -- it's going to be eight years in September.
LAURA STASSI
Wonderful. How did you meet met?
STELLA FOSSE We met in our early 60s. We met online.
LAURA STASSI
Oh, I like that.
STELLA FOSSE
And you know, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, is my advice about that. Which I believe is your advice, too, from your book and from hearing you talk about your book.
LAURA STASSI
It's not that I want to kiss a lot of frogs. But it's just turned out there are a whole lot of frogs out there, huh?
STELLA FOSSE
It’s amazing. Is this in your book? Or did I hear this somewhere else that dating online in your 60s is like the second day of a yard sale?
LAURA STASSI
Oh, god. No, that's not me. I don't like that. This is what I want to think: The second day of the yard sale, somebody goes in the house and they go oh my god, look what I forgot to put out.
STELLA FOSSE
There you go. There you go.
LAURA STASSI
So you heard Susan Coll in the first half of this episode, and now Stella Fosse, both say they met their partners through online dating. Well, guess what? So did poet Susan Allen Black. And we’re going to end this show with a poem she whipped up in honor of her new partner. The title? One of my favorite words to say. Lust.
SUSAN BLACK ALLEN
Lust -- parentheses, Love: You on me, the finest place to be. Together we’re set free. Work, kids, chores, pets, life, skin against skin. Goodbye, strife.
END CREDITS
LAURA STASSI
Hi, I’m Laura Stassi. I’ve been a podcaster for about four years now. I’ve been a writer for many years longer than that. Nonfiction is my specialty. I’m so accustomed to a precise presentation of factual information … that I sometimes forget, there can be so much beauty in writing. Even when we’re telling it like it is … and especially when it comes to romantic entanglements.
“Love, in So Many Words.” That’s this episode of “Dating While Gray: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships.”
Write what you know. Perhaps you’re aware of this advice. But those who have succeeded in the craft understand that the familiar is merely a jumping off point.
Take Susan Coll. She’s the author of seven novels, including one that’s set in a bookstore. Susan herself handles events at the indie Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.
In Susan’s latest book, the main character is a woman with an empty nest and a crumbling marriage. Susan has experienced both.
Now, Susan’s career was already launched when she went through a gray divorce. I asked her if this made the split feel less discombobulating.
SUSAN COLL
No, I was very discombobulated. There's no way to be in a relationship for that long and not have it be a very jarring thing, even with adult children. It was very discombobulating.
LAURA STASSI
How long were you married?
SUSAN COLL
That's a good question ... 30, 32 years, I think. Or we'd been together 32 years. Yeah, we'd been together since college, so probably married 28 years at that point.
LAURA STASSI
The classic gray divorce – I mean, classic meaning a longtime first marriage ending.
SUSAN COLL
Yes, but I think it definitely helped that I had a career. I was in the middle of a book that was under contract, so I did have that already established. I think it would have been much harder if I was starting from scratch at that point. I mean, who knows, maybe that gave me the ability to sort of do what needed to be done, because I felt good about myself and my life at that point. So it did make it a little easier to go the next step, but still very discombobulated.
LAURA STASSI
Yeah. And the book that you were in the middle of, was that The Stager?
SUSAN COLL
That was The Stager.
LAURA STASSI
The Stager. And I wanted to ask you about that because you mentioned your latest book, Real Life and Other Fictions, and we know from the early pages that the protagonist is in a difficult marriage and is trying to figure out next steps. And with The Stager, it also sounds liketroubled marriages or families in transition, that shows up in that book as well. And I’m wondering if it was difficult to sort of tap into your creativity after your divorce, even though this book was already started. Or did it turn out kind of as a muse for that and your later works?
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, I think I -- I mean, I have always been interested in writing about dysfunction and I sort of absorb wherever I'm living or wherever I'm working. I had a first novel that was mercifully never published, but at the time I was living in India. So I wound up setting a novel in India. I wish you know I could write historical fiction, but I am more of a contemporary novelist and I write about wherever I happen to be, even when I'm trying not to do that. My second novel, the one that was finally published and became my first novel, at that time I was living in London and it was in part set in London. I just tend to absorb where I am.
But I wasn't setting out in either of those two books to write about my own life and I don't think that I did. I try very carefully to not be writing about my own life for people. I know I sort of go out of my way to fictionalize events and characters, so I'm just more interested in where I began saying-- the sort of dysfunction of life and suburbia and what's really going on. In The Stager, it was what is really going on inside this glamorous-looking McMansion and this glamorous-looking family. In fact, things are not as they seem.
You know, what I did take from that -- that was inspired in part by putting our house on the market and having a stager come in and this woman kept saying to me, you look familiar, and I didn't recognize her. But after about a week of her being in my house, going through my closets, rearranging everything, which is a very personal experience, she then said I know where I know you from. And in fact, it was a slightly uncomfortable interaction. So that inspired that book. Just the idea that somebody can come in and kind of meddle in your life. But again, it's completely fictionalized.
LAURA STASSI
Right.
SUSAN COLL
Yeah.
LAURA STASSI
Oh gosh, I'm curious. OK, so it doesn't sound like you were writing thinly veiled fiction. These were sort of familiar situations, I guess. Is that a fair assessment?
SUSAN COLL
Yes, and in Real Life and Other Fictions, the most recent novel, I had never set out to write about divorce. I had set out to write about this story to do with the legend of the Mothman and a tragic bridge collapse in West Virginia in the 1960s, which was a real event. But I needed, you know, with my writing instructor hat on and people reading it telling me I needed a propelling incident, an inciting incident. I needed a reason for this woman, my protagonist, to get in her car and leave home. And what better reason than having her marriage falling apart. So I was almost surprised by the reviews to see that that was one of the takeaways from one of the reviews, that this is a novel about a woman in midlife crisis fleeing when to me, it was a novel about a bridge collapse and the Mothman. So you know, maybe, even when I'm not thinking about it, that's what I'm writing. What can I say, my subconscious.
LAURA STASSI
The thing I really appreciated about that book is some of the details that you have in there are just kind of like throwaway details. But they're just like ouch at the same time. Like, some other woman's retainer. It's like, oh my gosh, that is so gross and so specific. It's outrageous and yet what about breaking up is not outrageous sometimes, you know.
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, I came up with that idea on a morning dog walk. I've now remarried and my husband is a writer also and a lot of my plot points are developed on our morning dog walks. And I was thinking out loud. You know, I don't want the cliche of she's left her earring in the room or, you know, negligee …
LAURA STASSI
Underwear …
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, underwear. And then I thought what is just the most hideous thing to find -- someone's retainer, Because it's not just that it's a gross item, but the implication of her feeling so at home that she can just leave her personal items lying around felt even more invasive in a way.
LAURA STASSI
Right, and it also might say something about her age.
SUSAN COLL
Right. We're beyond worrying about things like negligees.
LAURA STASSI
I love that. OK So you mention you are remarried, and I did want to ask you, tell me about your decision to start dating again.
SUSAN COLL
I think I missed the routines of family life. I was, without getting into any details, I was at some level very happily married and I enjoyed all of the boring routines of married life. I'd hoped to find some way to replicate that, I suppose, was my impetus. It never occurred to me not to begin to date again and I think it's because I knew that I really missed that, just the kind of dailiness of marriage, of having someone to walk dogs with, of Sunday dinners with the children. And I know I was fortunate that I found somebody who was very compatible in that regard and was very much looking to meet somebody who shared the same family values and putting children first and dogs.
LAURA STASSI
And how did you meet him?
SUSAN COLL
We met online just at about the time I had decided to stop trying to date because I'd had a lot of bad experiences and just decided— I was pretty happy at that point. I had a novel, The Stager was about to come out. But I was working full time at the bookstore. I'd established a pretty good routine. I'd gotten used to, you know, 18 months or so later, I'd gotten pretty used to my life and no longer felt that need the way I had at first. But he contacted me online, which he then said was a mistake, because he accidentally hit some button, which I believe because he's not very techie, but it worked out well.
LAURA STASSI
He didn't mean to contact you?
SUSAN COLL
Yeah, he didn't really know what he was doing online. So you, know, he sent me some, whatever the jargon was, and it turned out we lived very close to each other. We lived walking distance, and he was a writer and it just seemed too interesting to not at least follow up. So we met for a drink, and once I felt comfortable enough to tell him where I worked, he told me that he had just been turned down for an event there, and I asked him what the book was and he told me and I remembered the book. So that's how we began. He had a sense of humor and we'd only turned it down because of the timing. We're booking brand-new books within the first few weeks of pub date is our standard. And this had come out a little while before and there was no indication that the author was local, so it just kind of slipped into the slush pile.
LAURA STASSI
He was a writer, but you had not heard of his name. I know D.C. is a big city with different genres, but it was nobody you were familiar with, is that?
SUSAN COLL
No, but it turns out we know a lot of people in common because it's a small town. It's a big city, but it's also a small town at the same time. So we definitely had a lot of mutual friends and overlap with kids and schools.
LAURA STASSI
There was something I read about. He wanted to show you a book of his.
SUSAN COLL
Yes, yeah, that was just one of those strange stories. He kept telling me about this book called the Good Soldier Svejk, which I hope I'm not mangling the name, but it was somewhere in the house. But we couldn't find it for a year or two. And he finally found it in his daughter’s room and showed it to me. And I opened it, and he’d clearly taken it on a flight overseas some, maybe even 20 years ago. I can't remember the date offhand, but when I opened it, it was clear that it was from a flight because it had the menu in German, a lunch menu. But it also had a piece of the International Herald Tribune in there, a clip. And half my name was on the page because I used to write for them. He'd ripped it out to see the book review or to save the book review of an early Richard Powers novel. But my name was on the other half of the piece of paper. We were both just completely amazed by that. And then it was only, you know, maybe a day later, so that I looked at it again and the date of the paper was the date that we married.
LAURA STASSI
Okay, I'm getting chill bumps. I love stories like that. You had written something else. You didn't write the review of.
SUSAN COLL
No. I used to write a lot of 800-word feature stories on whatever they would ask me for, and I think It was on how the recession in Europe was affecting the restaurant business, so it's just had gone out and called a bunch of restaurants and knocked on doors. It was not an article I even remembered writing or had been attached to.
LAURA STASSI
And the date!
SUSAN COLL
Well, it's bashert, as we say.
LAURA STASSI
And what does that mean?
SUSAN COLL
That's a Yiddish word for just meant to be. Like, meaningful, yeah.
LAURA STASSI
Bashert. I love bashert stories, or stories that are bashert?
SUSAN COLL
Yeah.
LAURA STASSI
How long have you been remarried now?
SUSAN COLL
It's been six years..
LAURA STASSI
Six years, okay. So I'm wondering if just as disintegrating relationships have played a role. If you think, or is there, anything interesting about a happy relationship to read about?
SUSAN COLL
Well, that's a good question I can explore. It's not as funny, is the problem. I write dark comedy. So that's actually a pretty relevant question because even in Bookish People. I began the book with events in Charlottesville. All of my books have kind of a darkness to them, including this latest one that's about a bridge collapse. So I do begin with trouble or darkness and try to see the humor in the situation. Not to say that there's anything humorous about the bridge collapse, there's not, but the circumstances in which my narrator finds herself as she goes out to explore. So that's a good question, and I don't really know the answer to that yet.
LAURA STASSI
That’s novelist Susan Coll – C-O-L-L, author most recently, of “Real Life and Other Fictions.” You heard Susan mention bashert. Coming up next, we’ll hear from a writer who’s created poetry from coincidence. Plus, a former biotechnology writer turns to erotica. That’s all after the break.
BREAK
LAURA STASSI
I’m Laura Stassi, and we’re back with Dating While Gray: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships. After hearing about bashert from novelist Susan Coll, I’m reminded of this voice mail I received.
SUSAN BLACK ALLEN:
Hi, Laura. This is Susan Black Allen. I am a therapist and poet in San Diego, and I've been writing a lot about relationships. This poem is about my ex getting remarried. We were together for about 22 years, and I went through a divorce about five years ago. It's called The Lottery:
My ex is marrying his new wife, 28 years to the day after he and I met, 28 years to the day after his previous ex's 40th birthday. I'm no statistician, but what are the odds? She thinks she's winning the lottery when I know I got a get-out-of-jail card, free. Not sure about his previous ex but she's probably eating birthday cake, which is better any day than wedding cake, if it comes without him.
LAURA STASSI Hmm, I wonder if the ex-husband is aware of all the coincidences. Unfortunately, there’s a sad update, as Susan shares in this poem she wrote.
SUSAN BLACK ALLEN
Tragic Twist: My ex-husband is dying, and I am thriving. If you think this gives me satisfaction, it absolutely does not. We should have been thriving together. That was the plan. But he had his own plan, one that no longer involved me. Now his body has its own scheme, one that no longer involves him. My heart goes out to his new wife, who I'm sure had her own plot that did not involve an actual plot. Perhaps my heart should go out to him too, but it only knows how to grieve once.
LAURA STASSI
Thanks to Susan, who tells me she’s looking for a publisher for her poetry book, called “The Best Sex I Never Had.” Catchy title. Speaking of catchy, how about a book named in honor of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexual love and beauty? It’s by Stella Fosse, a former high school biology and English teacher. She also had a long career as a biotechnology writer.
After Stella retired, she took up another genre: elder erotica. If you don’t know the difference between romance and erotica, I really didn’t either. Stella unpacks it, after she explains why she uses a pen name.
STELLA FOSSE
When I started this project of doing erotic writing, I was concerned that my adult children might be highly embarrassed by this endeavor. So I decided to choose a pen name. And it turns out my children aren't particularly embarrassed. In fact, they look at this as a way of empowering older women, so I needn't have done it. But now that I have an established social media presence and books out under this name, I'm just keeping it.
LAURA STASSI
Sure. It's a great name too.
STELLA FOSSE
Well, thank you.
LAURA STASSI
It sounds like what you're doing now is kind of a beautiful combination of your talents. Because you're not only writing, but you have biotechnology themes in your stories. And also you're trying to empower other people to learn how to write.
STELLA FOSSE
That's true. I've been teaching how to write senior romance. I've taught courses on how to publish and market your book to folks over 65. So yes, I do quite a bit of teaching. And also, you're right, my books tend to have a biotech theme. My upcoming novel, Vampires of a Certain Age, will be about a medieval healer who becomes a vampire and eventually becomes president of a blood bank outside Chicago, where she provides ethically sourced blood to vampires of the Midwest.
LAURA STASSI
Oh my gosh, I love that. That makes me giggle. Ethically sourced blood, I think that’s great.
STELLA FOSSE
One of the themes of the book is the question, is 500 too old for romance?
And of course, the answer is not at all.
LAURA STASSI
Never. Never too old.
STELLA FOSSE
No, never too old.
LAURA STASSI
So you have something on your website. It said your erotic life bloomed in your 50s. And that's what sort of led you down this erotica writing path. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
STELLA FOSSE
Sure. I was at the tail end of my biotech career when I read an article in The New York Times Book Review section by a romance author in her 50s, who said to her peers, if you want to get published, you need to write characters in their 20s. And I thought, you know, this is just as bad as the Bronte sisters having to publish under male pen names. And right around that time, a friend of mine started a reading series at a local bookstore, it was called Dirty Old Women. And it was for women who were writing erotica and who were over 50 to come and read before an audience. And I thought, Well, why don't I try that? So I did. And it was totally fun. And what I was writing about was my dating life, or are at least lightly disguised as fiction, which, as you said, really blossomed in my late 50s after my second divorce. So, you know, why not write about it?
LAURA STASSI
Yeah, I agree. Tell me the difference between erotica and romance.
STELLA FOSSE
Ah, okay. So this is something I talk about in my book, Aphrodite’s Pen, which is about writing erotica after 50. There's sort of a spectrum. There's romance, which focuses on the relationship between two people and has a happy ending. And often there's sex as part of that story. But that's on a spectrum. Some romances stop at the bedroom door, others are much more explicit. There's romance and a sub-genre of that is senior romance, which, unfortunately, has been classified as romance with anybody over 40. I think of that is lightly seasoned. You know, I mean, really seasoned romance, highly seasoned would be about people over 60, or over 70. So that’s romance and again, that's really relationship driven.
Erotica is more about the development of a person focusing on their sexuality as part of their development. So an erotic story about an older woman might, for example, be based on the idea that a woman could find herself more attractive, more sexual, more interesting, after a certain age. And I think those stories are very intriguing.
LAURA STASSI
I would also like to talk about this interesting connection we found out that we had, because you use the word erotica, which all of a sudden, I went back to when I was 25 years old. I was a full-time copy editor at the Camden Courier Post. I was married, but I was trying to get writing assignments. And I think a press release came over to the -- I don't think the section was called Style, but it was basically the Style section. And I was assigned this piece. And I sent it to you because the word erotica made me go to the newspaper archives and look it up. So tell me when you saw that article, what did what was the connection?
STELLA FOSSE That was fabulous that you sent me that article. That book is Ladies Own Erotica, which was written by the Kensington Ladies’ Erotic Society. And I lived right near Kensington for many years. I lived in Berkeley, which is the next town over. And when we started our writing group, which came out of we were talking earlier about the Dirty Old Women reading series, we developed a writing group called Elderotica, where we shared stories,
erotic stories, and got together and wrote, and that was inspired in part by the Kensington Ladies erotica circle. So what a great connection. Did you actually meet those ladies?
LAURA STASSI
No, I was living in New Jersey, I was 25 years old, like I said, and that was the days where I took furious notes because I don't think I even had one of those gadgets that you can like a tape recorder that you can plug into your phone. I can't remember what year those became very, you know, the cutting edge. But they must have had great press because like I said, you know, I took a little dig at California in my piece but other than that, I stand behind what I wrote. But they must have sent a press release, you know, blanketed, you know, to newspapers all across and that's so I must have talked with them on the phone.
STELLA FOSSE
Ah, that's great.
LAURA STASSI
I know. I get chill bumps because I feel like it's just amazing how lives kind of intersect or somehow touch on each other when you least expect it.
STELLA FOSSE
Yeah, yeah. And the book is wonderful. It's so, I don't know if you've had a chance to read it.
But it's so ironic and clever. And it’s just well put together and it talks about the women, there are sort of interviews with the women. And there are excerpts from their writing. And when I did my book, Aphrodite’s Pen, it was very much along those same lines only, you know, 30-35 years later, but a very similar sort of book with interviews and excerpts, and also suggestions for how to write erotica after 50. Lots of different prompts and things. So yeah, there really is a connection there. That's just so cool. I was I was stunned when I saw the article you sent me, that was so great.
LAURA STASSI
Well, I have to say, when I was 25, I'm proud of myself for not being dismissive of them. But I had no desire to read their book because I really didn't get it. I was married. I didn't have kids yet. But the thought of older women and sexuality, it wasn't in my thought process. Or, yeah, I couldn't connect with it. But I thought it was an interesting topic.
STELLA FOSSE Yes. And, and I think that's partly why they did that project. They could have just shared their stories with one another and enjoyed that. Because that really is a fun, fun thing to do. And I encourage everybody to start an elderotica writing group, because it is the most fun, you wouldn't believe it. And I think they did that project to start getting the word out that there is sex after 40.
LAURA STASSI
So they were all women. Sounds like your group is all women is writing erotica, writing and reading erotica. Is it only for heterosexual women?
STELLA FOSSE
Oh, no, not at all. No. I'm sure that -- I don't feel qualified to talk about a men's erotic writing group, but I'm sure that those exist. And that that would be really rewarding for those men. I'm bisexua, myself and others in our writing group had a whole rainbow of kinds of sexuality. So no, it's certainly not just for straight women. You’re probably familiar with the Geena Davis Institute…
LAURA STASSI
Yeah.
STELLA FOSSE
…where they do studies on portrayals of various groups in the media, and they have a whole study out, called Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten, which is about portrayals of older women, in particular in the media and in movies and how stereotyped those depictions are. So we're not getting the whole story from the culture, which is one reason I encourage older women to write and publish erotica and romance.
LAURA STASSI
Yeah, true. The only reason I bring up heterosexual men is because in my podcast, I have come to realize that there is really a -- just a yearning from many, many older men to be seen. And even though we tend as a society to think of older men as distinguished and, you know, different words that we use for older women, that there are still a lot of men who don't fit the stereotypical image.
STELLA FOSSE
That’s a really important point. Even though there's that trope of the silver fox, not every older man is a silver fox. So yes, there does need to be more visibility for the average older guy.
LAURA STASSI
You mentioned your partner so Graham is your partner in romance and business?
STELLA FOSSE
That's right. He is my publisher. He's my publicist. He is my IT guy. I would not be on this call with you if he hadn't figured out how to do it. He's basically amazing. He's just amazing.
LAURA STASSI
And can I ask how long you've all been together?
STELLA FOSSE
We've been together -- it's going to be eight years in September.
LAURA STASSI
Wonderful. How did you meet met?
STELLA FOSSE We met in our early 60s. We met online.
LAURA STASSI
Oh, I like that.
STELLA FOSSE
And you know, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, is my advice about that. Which I believe is your advice, too, from your book and from hearing you talk about your book.
LAURA STASSI
It's not that I want to kiss a lot of frogs. But it's just turned out there are a whole lot of frogs out there, huh?
STELLA FOSSE
It’s amazing. Is this in your book? Or did I hear this somewhere else that dating online in your 60s is like the second day of a yard sale?
LAURA STASSI
Oh, god. No, that's not me. I don't like that. This is what I want to think: The second day of the yard sale, somebody goes in the house and they go oh my god, look what I forgot to put out.
STELLA FOSSE
There you go. There you go.
LAURA STASSI
So you heard Susan Coll in the first half of this episode, and now Stella Fosse, both say they met their partners through online dating. Well, guess what? So did poet Susan Allen Black. And we’re going to end this show with a poem she whipped up in honor of her new partner. The title? One of my favorite words to say. Lust.
SUSAN BLACK ALLEN
Lust -- parentheses, Love: You on me, the finest place to be. Together we’re set free. Work, kids, chores, pets, life, skin against skin. Goodbye, strife.
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