Sex is her subject: And she wants other young women to know all about it, too

Oct. 3--So Amber Madison is at the front of the room reading from her new book, sharing the story of her decision to have sex for the first time. The set-up involves out-of-town parents, a condom, tequila shots and slow-dancing to Aaron Neville. The boy tosses her over his shoulder and takes her to the bedroom.

Things are progressing as planned until, well, they're not. (Let's just say that it happens to every boy sometime.)

Then after she is finished reading from "Hooking Up: A Girl's All-Out Guide to Sex & Sexuality," Amber takes questions from the 20 or so people assembled on a recent afternoon in the student union at UNC-Chapel Hill. The candor of her book, which mixes sexual memoir, medical information and relationship advice, leads one young woman to raise her hand and offer this:

"What do your parents think?"

Amber, who is 23, smiles.

"Do you guys want to take that one?"

And with that, heads turn toward the most parent-ish duo in the room, Roger Madison and Jane Leserman, who are sitting about halfway back near the aisle.

Dad, sounding like the research scientist he is, talks about the amount of misinformation floating around about sex, and about how his daughter's book helps to change that by giving young women access to the facts.

Mom takes a more motherly approach.

"We're very proud of her," she says.

Open about it all

Most of us had parents who stammered through the where-babies-come-from spiel. In the Madison household, just outside Chapel Hill, things worked a bit differently.

In the introduction to her book, Amber writes that "my mother never censored or obscured our sex conversations; I always got the X-rated version, whether or not I wanted it." That includes the story of how her mother lost her virginity.

Her parents told sex jokes around the dinner table and wrote explicit rap songs for friends' birthdays. She grew up in Lockridge, an intentional community off Turkey Farm Road in Orange County, where community members own their own homes and share ownership of common land. It's a liberal, extended-family kind of community, the sort where Mom and Dad shielded Amber from violence as a youngster. Talking about sex with their only child was another matter.

"Nothing was off-limits in terms of a question," says dad Roger, who works in neurobiology and nerve-regeneration research at the VA Hospital in Durham and is an associate professor of surgery at Duke University.

Jane, a women's-health researcher and professor in the psychiatry department at UNC-Chapel Hill, says they raised their daughter with the idea that the communication lines were always open. Dad remembers Amber asking questions about sex, as well as posing queries for her friends. They always answered.

"My parents are very open about it in a way that I think is very healthy," says Amber, during an interview in her parents' home.

And it helped put her on a career path.

A graduate of Orange County High School, she received a bachelor's degree in 2005 from Tufts University near Boston, where she majored in community health and American studies. Working with her adviser, she tailored a course load heavy on sexuality.

"It was the one thing I thought I could stay interested in for years," Amber says.

While in college, she wrote a popular sex column for the school newspaper. It touched on relationships, sex and health issues, and garnered a lot of questions from women on campus. It made Amber realize there's a lot that young women don't know -- or are misinformed about -- when it comes to sex, and they don't have many places to turn for answers.

"A lot of girls don't feel comfortable talking about sex with anyone."

To help, she decided to write a book.

How people talk

"Hooking Up," as you can probably guess, is not a medical textbook. But the first chapter, "Vaginas: What the Hell?" focuses on anatomy.

Using examples from her own life, as well as interviews with other young women, Amber writes about everything from contraception to sexually transmitted diseases to virginity to pregnancy and sexual assault. Depending on the situation, she sometimes uses slang terms for body parts and sexual practices. She wants the book to reflect "how people really talk. Not how doctors talk."

That's not to say, though, that the book skimps on medical information. The first chapter includes an illustration, and subsequent ones include symptoms and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases and facts about different kinds of contraception. High-school and college-age women are the book's primary audience.

The book's wit should help it connect with that group, says Dr. Georgine Lamvu, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the UNC School of Medicine.

"The book is so informative and so full of medically accurate information," says Lamvu, who wrote a blurb for the back of the book. "And it's funny."

Young people tend not to listen to grown-ups, she says. In the book, "it's like a bunch of teenagers talking."

Amber, who lives near Boston, came to the Triangle recently for a publicity swing that included stops at bookstores and an interview on WUNC radio's "The State of Things." She recently lost her job at the bar where she was working, and she has been living on her savings while she works with a speakers' bureau to line up gigs.

At future speaking engagements, she'll be on her own when it comes to answering questions about her parents and what they think of her career.

Their stories will have to do.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

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