The blog, the book and the single life

Zoe Margolis became an online phenomenon as Abby Lee with her blunt, raunchy blog but, behind all the sex, she is a hopeless romantic, writes Grace Garvey.

There's a line in a new novel by Anne Enright - called The Gathering, and due out in May - where the Granny says: "Sex gets you nowhere in this world." I'm tempted to share it with Abby Lee - winner of the best British or Irish blog at this year's Bloggies, the annual weblog awards - but I don't think she'd get it because, well, she's English and when it comes to sex, their baggage is strictly carry-on.

While the idea that sex might not be the best starting point in the search for love has been drilled into most people of Irish descent, it's clear from scanning Lee's Girl With a One-Track Mind blog that there's no background chorus urging her to choose a man who's kind.

Because, although Lee gets a lot of sex, she always ends up alone.

Inspired by Belle de Jour - the online diary of an up-market London prostitute - Lee, whose real name is Zoe Margolis, began to blog anonymously on New Year's Day 2004. Perpetually up-for-it, she was frustrated at having no one to talk to about her obsession, as her thirtysomething friends scrambled to settle down. "I wish I could talk openly with them, but how can I tell them I want to try group sex when all they care about is finding one special man to have sex with?" Lee lamented.

Instead, she poured her thoughts into the virtual ether. "I love sex and think about it all the time," she said, "which is why I set up this blog. I figured by writing some of my thoughts down it might free up my mind a little." And free it up she did, with lively posts detailing everything from hook-ups in a pub loo to a threesome, sadomasochism and everything in between.

The Girl, as she calls herself, was enjoying her newfound freedom of expression and soon began to get feedback in the comments box on her blog.

"After a few months, it became clear it wasn't just about me. So many people connected to it. Women felt empowered by it," she said. It was a defining moment for Lee.

Her adventures slotted in around her day job, as a freelance assistant in the film industry, working on films such as Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix. The long hours on her feet played havoc with her sex life but when she didn't have time for a romp, she had her Rampant Rabbit to keep the wolf from the door.

In February 2006, just after the blog's two-year anniversary, Lee was nominated for a Bloggie Award that she subsequently won (this year's win was a repeat.) The blog was praised for its psychological insight into male and female sexuality, as well as for Lee's earthy humour.

Shortly afterwards, an agent approached, proposing to publish it as a memoir of the same name, and in August 2006 it was published by Ebury Press and entered the British best-seller lists. News reports claimed it attracted a "six figure" advance.

Margolis, a Londoner, says it was an exciting time, marred only by the secrecy involved. "I couldn't tell my family or friends and I became paranoid that my identity would be revealed; it was horrible in a way." Her fears were not unfounded and, soon afterwards, a Sunday newspaper "outed" her as the author of the book. Photographers from the newspaper out-tabloided the tabloids, setting up shop in her front garden and Margolis, traumatised by the invasion of privacy, went into hiding.

Sitting in a Soho hotel, Margolis (34) appears to have weathered the storm pretty well. She's off to New York to promote her book the following day and hints that "there's something big in the pipeline", which I take to mean a movie.

Her career in the film business went south, as she became a "laughing stock" and could no longer get work, but she says she's never been busier and continues to write the blog. These days it's a watered-down, arms-length version of the original but she claims it attracts 10,000 readers a day. So all's well that ends well for Abby Lee.

Margolis worried at first that, knowing how experienced she was, she would intimidate men and would be "forever shagless" but says this has not been the case. She is constantly turning down men who proposition her via the blog, partly because having read about her exploits, "they think they know me but they don't". And it's true; her online persona seems somewhat at odds with the real-life one.

Abby Lee is anti-consumerist, messy, spontaneous and vulnerable, whereas Margolis comes across as a bit controlling and arch. Despite being permanently attached to her internet connection - she vets all comments on her blog before they appear - she never responds to an e-mail until at least five days have elapsed. It's as if she has watched Swingers once too often and is taking the three-day rule to extremes.

While she preaches about the tyranny of women being evaluated on how they look, Margolis is perfectly groomed, war paint expertly applied, and carries artificial sweetener in her bag. She wears her feminist credentials on her sleeve and mentions Germaine Greer as someone she admires, but later takes it back. She denounces women's magazines as evil but is not above gracing the pages of Marie Claire in a low-cut dress. An inquiry about the duration of her longest relationship meets with a tetchy "that's private".

Margolis is twitchy and guarded - and I feel more constrained than if I were talking to Tom Cruise. Most of this I put down to her baptism of fire at the hands of the press but I can't help wondering if her love of sex is driven by the desire to just let go.

Margolis's writing has a feminist subtext throughout and she is no doubt sincere in her attempts to provoke a more open dialogue about sex and challenge the perception of women's sexuality as passive.

However, one fan, Jennifer Brennan (34) from Drumcondra, Dublin, says that while she enjoyed dipping into the blog "before the outing", the spin-off book left her cold. "I read it and thought, so what? It seemed like a meandering overdose of meaningless sex." Could Margolis be in danger of falling into the "rise of raunch" trap?

New York magazine author Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture paints a picture of a culture which is misogynist, callow, simplistic and ubiquitous. The Female Chauvinist Pig pursues casual sex as if it were a sport, and embraces raunch culture. She thinks she's being brave, she thinks she's being funny, but, Levy asks, is the joke really on her? This insidious culture, Levy says, breeds women-hating women who angle for power with men and propagate more raunch under the guise of feminist empowerment. Her book is a call to arms for women who have fallen into the trap of phoney feminism.

All the same, Margolis seems acutely aware of social conditioning and savvy enough to avoid such traps. While she doesn't appear to be overly reflective, nor does she come across as a sheep. She says she's a hopeless romantic really, on the lookout for love. It has been a whirlwind year and as she prepares to don the Bloggie crown for a second term, she says she has no regrets. "If just one couple have better sex as a result of reading my blog, then I think that's an achievement."

www.girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com