One of my favorite Nerve interviews is this
one, with Mary Gaitskill from November, 2005, when her novel Veronica was published. Gaitskill discusses
intimacy, AIDS in the 1980s and 2000s, pity, feminism and, of course, Veronica.
“A confidently sexual person doesn't have to announce it all that much.
But if it's who you are — if you love to get dressed up in the big heels and
the tiny skirt and the wig and the whatever, why not? But I don't feel like
that should be idealized any more than the modest, demure person. The same
woman can feel both ways on different occasions.”