 A black gay poet discovers sex through one of the whitest writers in American history. Want the story? My name is Jericho Brown, and I am the author of The Tradition. My bookmark is The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike, which I think is really hilarious. But when I was a kid, this movie came out and it had Cher and Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson. And it was called The Witches of Eastwick. And when we went to the movie theater, my mom and dad wouldn't let me and my sister go see it. We had to go to a different theater and see a different movie. And I was confounded for two reasons. One, it had Cher. And two, it was about witches. Certainly it was for me. So when I was a kid, I was the kind of nerd that spent a lot of time in libraries. And I came across this book on the shelf and it said The Witches of Eastwick. And being a kid, I thought, oh wow, somebody turned this movie into a book. And I opened the book anywhere and I saw the word genitals. And I was a smart kid so I knew that if I didn't know a word, I had to go look it up. So I went to the very big dictionary that was in the center of the library. And I started turning pages until I got to the word genitals. And this is how I learned the word genitals. So I ran back to where the book was and when I tell you, I mean I must have been eight or nine, I read it from cover to cover. So everything I knew about sex, I was learning from this book. So later, like much later, maybe 20 years later, I met John Updike. And the wonderful thing about that meeting was that I could go up to him and say, you know, my dad never had that talk with me, but everything I needed to know about sex education I got from you. And he looked at me and he said, you know, I think this is the best story I've ever heard about any one of my books. Thank you so much. Jericho Brown won the National Book Award for his first book of poems called Please. His Boy's Guide to Sex was The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike. Bookmarks are brought to you by to the best of our knowledge. And you'll find more bookmarks plus an interview with Jericho Brown at ttbook.org slash bookmarks.