Will Doig has a great Q&A with Tom Perrotta today. They discuss Perrotta’s
latest novel, The Abstinence Teacher in
which an atheist sex-ed teacher clashes with the Christian fundamentalist
minority in her suburban community. Below is an excerpt from the interview.
Perrotta: Every now and then, I meet a couple who met in high school who
have been married twenty-five years, and clearly they're still in love. They've
experienced their entire sexual lives together.
Nerve: I feel about that the same way I feel about people who spend their whole
lives living in the tiny town they grew up in. It's sort of romantic and
fanciful, but horrifying at the same time.
Perrotta: I agree. One of the things that struck me about this whole abstinence
thing is the total fear of experience. Even something as simple as getting your
heart broken. I've had my heart broken two or three times, and it's taught me a
few things about relationships. It makes you smarter. It makes you kinder to
other people. There are all sorts of ways to talk about getting your heart broken
that aren't the end of the world. But if you go to an abstinence rally, the
metaphor they love is: "Your heart is this pure thing, and every time
somebody comes, they rip a chunk out of it! They take a chainsaw to it, and
then you have this jagged, awful thing that doesn't look like a sweet Valentine
heart anymore. Is that the way you want to go through life? With a damaged
heart?"
