Lauren Jordan: It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect Heavy Flo

Improviser Lauren Jordan, author name LAUX, sits down with podcast hosts Puss and Kooch to talk about her new book, To All the Places I’ve Had Sex Before, traveling book clubs, and why we should all be in therapy.















Lauren Jordan on Heavy Flo with Puss and Kooch







Lauren Jordan is a black woman. She’s a native Detroiter. She’s sex-positive. And she’s the first-time author of To All the Places I’ve Had Sex Before, on presale right now. 







Lauren took the DC improv comedy scene by storm last year. We interviewed her FIST team (now an indie group) I Don’t Know Her on one of our first FIST 2019 recap episodes. She was previously on WIT Harold team Hudson.







Her energy is so original, and it makes her one of the most exciting people in the DC improv community. We’re so thrilled to have her here today to kick off season two of Heavy Flo.







The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear everything Lauren has to say, listen to her podcast episode.







The origin story of To All The Places I’ve Had Sex Before







I’m a part of a traveling book club called It’s Lit, which is made up of me and three of my really good friends. One of those friends is Precious Jenkins, who’s also on I Don’t Know Her. Two of us live in DC, and two live in New York, so we would go back and forth to see each other. One time we decided to go to Philly, and while we were in Philly, we went to a bookstore and decided to start a book club. It’s been a joy ever since. 







We’re kind of on hiatus right now because of quarantine, but we’ve been to California, Louisiana, and a few other places that are escaping me right now. It’s fun to be able to do two of the things that I really enjoy, traveling and reading, together with a really good group of friends.







At one point we’d read Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and the tagline of that book is “a memoir of my body.” So we all decided to write memoirs of our own bodies, kind of like a homework assignment. Mine ended up being about sex. 







I wrote 500 words for the assignment and then I realized I had a lot more to say about it. So I just kept on writing, and I kept on writing, and I kept on writing. Eventually, it became a really big project. And now it’s a book—somehow, some way. I’m finishing up the editing right now, and my beta readers will be reading it soon.







Turning a homework assignment into a book







What really helped me to formalize my piece was participating in a program called Creator Institute. It helps first-time writers get from a place of, “I don’t know, maybe I want to write a book,” to, “Oh my God, I have a book!” 







The man who created the program is a business professor at Georgetown, so most people are writing about social entrepreneurship or more technical topics. But I was like, “You know what? I’ve been writing this thing about sex, and I think it would be a really good book.” So I decided to join.







What was one of the biggest aha moments from developing your project from what you’d into an actual book?







I think a lot of the things I’ve learned have ...