INTERVIEW: ERICA JONG

'“I suppose I had better get some clothes on,” says Erica Jong, flitting barefoot across the floors of her   Upper East Side apartment, whose living room has been temporarily taken over by the Times photographer and his assistant. Jong has spent the last 40 minutes having her hair and make-up done and is wearing in what appears to be a black negligee. “I could do the interview naked but one reaches a certain age,” she says. “I come from a very bohemian family. It bothers me not to all to walk around here naked... I honestly thing getting older is such a trip. I think we all go through a period of, ‘Oh my god, I have to pee all the time,’ or ‘Oh my god, my beloved is going phew, because he's taking medication,’ and the pharmaceutical companies are not our friend. If you get past that, and we all do get past it, we discover that beyond that rage, there is the best time of life.” This is slightly surprising, certainly delivered with more enthusiasm than her book, I tell her. It seems so full of rage against the dying of the light — ‘age rage,’ to use her own term.  “Look, I sit in California with my adorable nephew Zane who's a young actor. I look at him and I think, if I were 40 years younger I would jump on his bones. Wouldn't it be awful? It would be incest. He's my brother's son's kid. I'm not going to at on it. I'm not a lunatic, but I feel the pleasure of looking at a beautiful young man who is 15 years old. Why not? You feel. All your life you feel. I'm not interested in incest, by the way. It's not my thing. I'm not interested in B&B. Not my thing. I thought 50 Shades of Grey was appalling. An appalling piece of shit. Appalling. It wasn't even copy edited. Anastasia, she has an orgasm, she goes, ‘Holy cow!". I have never met a woman anywhere in the world who said, ‘Holy Cow’ when she had an orgasm. Or said, ‘Holy shit.’ Have you ever met a woman who said, ‘Holy shit? when she comes? I'd kick her out of bed.” And there, in that long, winding digression — candid, verging on scandalous, but packing a terrific comic sting — you pretty much have Erica Jong, feminism’s embarrassing aunt: the one who shows up to your 15th birthday and over shares about her sex-life. At 73, she is a formidable presence, a legendary voluptuary as adept at conquering with words as she is with her flesh, her  ballsy-broad manners brooking little interruption as she scoots from one train of thought to another,  her blue eyes blazing as she lest off one f-bomb after another. She’s like a cross between Gloria Swanson and Eddie Murphy. ' — from my interview for The Times Magazine