The Interview: ASA AKIRA
The Anal Queen on being a horny teenager, answering Craigslist ads, and being a mom.
As part of my ongoing series, “High School Days,” I’ll be interviewing people I find interesting about their high school experiences.
To kick off 2025, I spoke with the darling and brilliant ASA AKIRA. We met up for lunch at Sartiano’s. I had fled the Pasadena smoke for the fresh air in New York City. Asa drove up from Philly. Honestly, I’ve never watched any of her porn; I just intuitively knew I would like her. Hence…
ASA AKIRA: You know what book made me so horny? Flowers in the Attic. You ever read that?
OTTESSA MOSHFEGH: I haven't.
AA: It's about these twins with an evil grandmother, and she locks them in the attic and they spend their entire puberty in there and fall in love. It's by V.C. Andrews. I think Lifetime made a movie of it with Heather Graham or something…I'm an only child.
OM: My next book is called Only Children. It's fiction — I'm not an only child, I'm a middle; or I was until my younger brother passed away. So I'm not writing from experience, but I’m interested in that quandary in which, as an only child, you didn't have to compete for your parents’ attention
AA: I used to think it was lonelier to be an only child as an adult, because now I think about my parents dying all the time, and my number one wish in the world is that they will die on the same day. I never felt lonely growing up. Only now, through the lens of raising siblings, I'm like, damn, I was lonely. I have a five-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl and wow, what a special relationship …
OM: What was your own childhood like?