Susie Bright lives up to her name:

We [at the Good Vibrations store in the early '80s, which made a collection of erotic fiction] had a great, insightful group of authors, and it became this massive hit. That got me into all kinds of things: I started a sex magazine called On Our Backs, I got asked to do Best American Erotica, then one day I got a phone call from Penthouse Forum, and they said, "Would you like to be our new erotic-movie reviewer?" And I said, "You mean your porn critic?" And they said, "Yeah." And I said, "Do you have any idea what I do? Like, what my opinions are? I’m not going to be writing stories about, Debbie’s Double D is just the hottest thing ever. I’m going to be real. Are you ready for the Pauline Kael of pornography? Because that’s what I want to do." And this editor was very open-minded. He wanted something new. He just said, "Yeah. Go for it."

In the meantime, I wasn’t a complete nerd! I mean, I did have lovers! I learned a lot from personal experience, and I’m glad I had entrée into a counterculture where you could experiment, and you could really dispel the romantic headlock in your own personal life. And by romantic—that word can have so many meanings. I am romantic when it comes to flowers and chocolates and valentines and kittens and being sentimental and crying easily. But when it comes to "You’re going to wear a white dress and get married and then everything’s going to be perfect"—ooh. I still want to smash that with a hammer.