TELL ME ABOUT YOUR MOTHER
Molly Jong-Fast

“I am sexually repressed. Or at least that’s true according to every shrink I’ve had, which at the ripe old age of twenty-six is ten. According to them, as the daughter of the woman who coined the term “zipless fuck,” I had no other choice. Let’s face it: I am every therapist’s wet dream. My mother wrote a book called Fear of Flying, and I in fact have a fear of flying. You don’t need to be Freud to have a field day with my psyche.

Where to start when it comes to my relationship with the practitioners of the talking cure? I guess I should give you a little family history. We are Jews. We suffer from the two great inheritances of the Jewish people: irritable bowel syndrome and guilt. Irritable bowel syndrome can be solved by frequent trips to the gastroenterologist. But guilt — well, that’s a little more complicated.

Every single one of my grandparents was born into backbreaking poverty, and every single one of them was a first generation American. My family went from poor and crazy, like Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov, to rich and crazy, like Howard Hughes. And with money comes certain inalienable rights—the ability to employ many lawyers and accountants, knowledge of the geography of the first floor of Bergdorf’s, and most importantly, a permanent position on the shrink’s couch…”

Molly Jong-Fast is the twenty-six-year-old author of the weirdly popular cult novel Normal Girl. She has written for The New York Times, The Times of London, Cosmo, Mademoiselle, Marie Claire, British Elle, and many other newspapers and magazines. She has an MFA from Bennington College. She recently chronicled her wedding for Modern Bride Magazine. She lives in New York City with her husband; her child; their cocker spaniel, Godzuki; and Pete, the world’s fattest cat. Her mother wrote Fear of Flying, her grandpa wrote Spartacus, and her great-great grandfather was a herring merchant.