The world outside college

Colin Winnette interviews Lydia Millet for the Believer. Here she describes time spent in her twenties as a copy editor at Larry Flynt Publications:

My favorite was the reader mail. There, technically, I guess we’re talking full-out psychosis more than anything—inmates were our biggest correspondents. Once, Richard Ramirez called my editor up on the phone. Our readers sent us rude ephemera, potatoes shaped like penises—that kind of deal. The neurotics were mostly coworkers, people who did bondage sessions right in their offices, friendly cross-dressers, aging queens in bad wigs. I liked many of them very much.