To be technical about it, I didn’t actually eat lunch with Lydia Lunch. But we met at lunchtime, just the two of us, ladies who don’t lunch on the rooftop of her friend’s five-story walk-up in Chelsea. She’d just finished a photo shoot with Richard Kern, who years back directed her in erotic films like The Right Side of My Brain and Fingered.

We sat basking in the October sun, while Lunch ranted. “I’m loud, like you,” she confessed. Definitely. We’re both pretty feisty, close in age and physically we’re like negative doppelgangers—her tresses are black, mine platinum. I sipped a cup of coffee and she chain-smoked. Her nails were perfectly manicured, blood red.

A week or two ago, I saw her play a “reunion show” with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The band then played in L.A. and where she also read from her new book, Will Work For Drugs.

But that was last week, so what’s our favorite vulgarian, creative antagonist and all around shit-stirrer up to now? Her album Big Sexy Noise is coming out next month. “It’s just good, nasty, raunchy, balls-out rock,” Lunch growls. She’s also finished an album with aerialist Philippe Petit called Twist of Fate, from a multi-media word-based show. When they tour, he plays computers and turntables, and she does the video backdrops. “It’s always been easy for me to collaborate. People say, ‘She must be impossible to work with.’ Just the fucking opposite!” I’m no expert on Lunch’s creative output, but I got a powerful vibe from her. She exudes utter confidence and focus. Has she ever doubted herself? “I’m schizophrenic.There’s a lot of voices that need to come out,” she said.

Lunch was stopping back in New York en route to her home in Barcelona, where she’s been residing for the past five years. “They don’t want me in this country. That’s why I don’t live here,” she told me. I gave her a hug good-bye. She felt soft and warm.