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The pornography of pharmacology

The Phoenix sat down with the author on a sunny morning at Rosie’s in Porter Square. She’s had a busy winter and spring: she finished Confessions, which was eight years in the making, as well as a non-fiction work, The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair and a Medical Revolution, about the first female-to-male sex change operation. Kennedy could easily pass for 30: she has a relaxed, girlish face and untended-to hair, wore shorts and a T-shirt, and left her bicycle locked outside the bakery. It was apparent right away that she’s curious, delighted by ideas. And it was a surprise to hear her speak of growing frustrated with her own memory gaps; it seems incongruous for someone who seems so young. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.     

If Mem existed, would you take it?
Boston’s kind of like that drug to me. I used to live in Allston, and thought, “this is the best place ever. I’m never, never moving to Somerville.” All the places that were my haunts -- I never go there anymore -- seeing all those places preserved, you tunnel back into them. When you live in a city long enough, it’s got layers of your different selves.

What about an actual pill?
I would take it, but with great care. We all edit our memories like crazy. Like the way you get nostalgic for times that you know intellectually were really crappy. If you could go back and target the best parts? It’d be hard to keep moving forward. One thing that strikes me as so strange is that we’re so disconnected from our past selves. Like what would the eight year-old you think of you now? That’s something that’s unsettling to me. I’d love to go back to be able to talk to the eight year-old.

When you were working on the book, did you do a lot of research on memory and drugs, or did you rely primarily on your imagination?
I did a huge amount of research on memory drugs. Scientists are discovering switches that trigger long term memory. But I really wanted the kind of memory drug they’d never invent. With all the switches and the new drugs, they never talk about the emotional side. They see the brain as a computer and you just shove in a chip. But how would your personality change? Would the stronger the memories change the way you feel about the present? I needed to invent a cartoon-y, recreational drug to examine issues that we’re going to be examining ten years down the line.