An odd thing has started to happen since I began this column. I have been getting a lot of fan mail from men. Men asking me out on actual dates! Sure, I realize it is because men are horny freaks and are sometimes titillated by the subject matter. But there is something bigger going on here. It is that I’m a writer. Writers are notorious for being sexy and fuckable.
Power is a turn-on. The pen is more powerful than a microphone or a baseball bat. We all know that politicians, sports figures, rock stars, get mad play. But think about Marilyn Monroe marrying Arthur Miller. How about Salman Rushdie’s acquisition of Padma Lakshmi?
Maybe it is because they make us feel they are in control and get figuratively naked in front of us. Or that they are capable of creating something out of nothing. An authoritative written voice gets me every time. A good writer can transform you. At this point, after so many years of reading, I have begun remembering stories not as stories but as actual memories that include me. Like there I was on the beach, such a strange day, the sand hot, the ocean antagonistic and then there he was, an Arab. I was watching from a distance, but I saw it all. I’ve been in medieval forests at dusk, lost and frantic. At the top of mountains, feeling courageous. In China, in India, in wine country. I’ve dated men, women, and had wine in Spain on the receiving end of “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”
As my friend SB says, “With sexy writers, I can’t decide if I should go the library or take a cold shower!”
We all know about my dalliance with Eric Schaeffer, filmmaker/actor-cum-author, where I was privileged to provide publicity services extending to anal toe insertion with my own literary hero.
My current WILF List:
My number one WILF is James Frey. After that they pale in comparison.
James Frey: I’d like to make your words speed even more so, like taxis. I want to curl my tongue around yours like the southern drawl does the tango with yours. I want to be your drug. Snort me, inhale me, shove me up your nose, up your ass, swallow me, digest me; you will not have to drive to Harlem to try to score. I want to search your face for scars and lick them when I find them. I want you to bite me with those altered teeth as hard as you can. I want you to guzzle some of my blood and wear the rest like a coat. Big Jim, will you be my dime bag? I’d go down dirty alleys and go down on you in them.
I think this perfectly illustrates my bad taste in men. I’ve always fallen hard for the liars, the charmers with a twinkle in the eye and more often than not, a carefully crafted persona. Back when I read A Million Little Pieces my heart was a-flutter. More so when I first met Frey at the signing. Then, again, after an initial waning, boy did it wax when I saw him the second time at the My Friend Leonard signing. I was a teenage girl again, ready to hang a poster of Frey above my bed and write I Heart JF on my figurative notebook.
He’s that guy, the one who will lie to get into your pants. A bad boy rich kid that cries for his mom when he gets detention.
Either way, the verbal spanking Oprah gave him was almost pornographic. I nearly touched myself during it. Let me punish him with a combo of piss and dildoes.
But true to form about being attracted to the wrong men, when Frey publishes another book, I just may be there ready to fall for him all over again.
Steve Martin: I do not find you physically attractive but after that book—Shopgirl—I would follow you stealthily through shopping malls and sit behind a newspaper at a restaurant just to get a glimpse of you. I’d walk up eventually and look in your eyes and you’d see it. You’d want to fold me like terrycloth.
Any man who could pen a book so funny and heartwarming about OCD, a disease I am afflicted with—The Pleasure of My Company—is a keeper. You’d think my neuroses charming, I’m sure.
Anne Heche: Okay, so they say you are crazy. I like your sense of humor about it, calling your book, Call Me Crazy. I think you are compelling and gorgeous. We both know you like girls so let’s get crazy together. If I could almost marry a man who was in a NYC cult on E. 35th Street called Congregation for the Light, surely I could get down with you being called Celestia. We’d make up our own language and comb each other’s hair. I’d borrow your dresses and fight with you for attention.
Julia Allison: How fucking hot would it be for two sex columnists to get it on! Talk about instant PR for us both! Nothing makes either of us cum faster than attention and press. We could share Pradas and get mani-pedis and maybe, just maybe, suck each other’s nipples—I bet yours taste like bubblegum—not-so-covertly at a party. Our love affair would be all for show; we’d tongue kiss and giggle as fizzy champagne went up our noses and men lined up to give us foot massages. If you were a really good girl you’d like me put a leash around your neck and walk you around at said party. Don’t worry, cutie, I’ll make sure it is a pink one.
Elizabeth Wurtzel: Yes, another woman. What an interesting orgy my list of WILFs would make if I could somehow get them in the same room sans pens. Lizzie, I find you so very endearing in all your damage. You are my little moth-eaten sweater I refuse to not wear. You are a stiletto with a crooked heel. Your hair looks trashy and almost dirty. You somehow make me feel you are just like me...a good girl that does bad things. A good writer that writes bad things. A good lay that has bad sex. Where have you been? Why no more books since More, Now, Again? I’m waiting honey, to be filled with you again
Coerte Felske: If you ever feel like having some random reckless episode, have one with me. I’m a whore though because I’d say this to the other writers too. I’d use my same sorry line on all of you. Somehow I think not only would you understand, but love me for it. Again, you are a lover that leaves. It has been nearly ten years since the Millennium Girl. Just like a man—go out for cigarettes and never return.
Detective Lucas Miller: A police blogger! You, I’ve actually met. As I set across from your while you interrogated me on official police business for some nastiness I’ve written in my blog, I longed to leap over the desk and straddle you. I’d want you do cuff me under the desk and bend me over prisoner style. I’d want to plead for mercy and throw myself on the court your dick. Your Slate column is sexy; your love of the first amendment is sexier.
Philip Roth: The original bad boy. You filthy motherfucker. I know even well into your sixties you sit there with a huge hard on stroking. Licking your hand, the smell of saliva hitting the air, immediately becoming rancid. You picture young girls bouncing on it while loving Mia for her mind. You leer at young school girls in spring, in your mind squeezing their new and firm breasts and want to lick their pussy juice like the nectar off a summer peach. Let me sit on your dick and write, baby, write.
Thomas Beller: While I’m not all that impressed with your writing, I have seen your picture. You are every guy in this big city. I would fuck you in your hallway or stairwell. I’d pull out the crisp blue shirt from your faded jeans. I’d slide your brown belt off and open your pants. I could almost picture your Gap plaid boxers and baseball cap. You’d tell your guys friends the next day in Central Park about how writing helps you get laid. Sure, you’d feel guilty after that silly NYT article about how you got engaged
Nicholson Baker: Sex with you would include dozens of footnotes. It’d all be foreplay; we’d never get down to the hard core slam-n-pump. The simple act of opening the condom package would take pages and pages. Frankly I think it would all take too long. When I want it, I want it now. Although that bathtub scene in the Fermata is what fantasies of made of.
David Foster Wallace: Fucking you would also take too long, but for different reasons. You wouldn’t even be able to call it fucking as the word is too short. You’d have to say you’d like to have intercourse of the sexual variety. Based on your writing you are the guy that pounds and pounds and pounds content to hear himself pound, leaving the recipient with a raw and dry, verging on bloody cunt.
Power is a turn-on. The pen is more powerful than a microphone or a baseball bat. We all know that politicians, sports figures, rock stars, get mad play. But think about Marilyn Monroe marrying Arthur Miller. How about Salman Rushdie’s acquisition of Padma Lakshmi?
Maybe it is because they make us feel they are in control and get figuratively naked in front of us. Or that they are capable of creating something out of nothing. An authoritative written voice gets me every time. A good writer can transform you. At this point, after so many years of reading, I have begun remembering stories not as stories but as actual memories that include me. Like there I was on the beach, such a strange day, the sand hot, the ocean antagonistic and then there he was, an Arab. I was watching from a distance, but I saw it all. I’ve been in medieval forests at dusk, lost and frantic. At the top of mountains, feeling courageous. In China, in India, in wine country. I’ve dated men, women, and had wine in Spain on the receiving end of “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”
As my friend SB says, “With sexy writers, I can’t decide if I should go the library or take a cold shower!”
We all know about my dalliance with Eric Schaeffer, filmmaker/actor-cum-author, where I was privileged to provide publicity services extending to anal toe insertion with my own literary hero.
My current WILF List:
My number one WILF is James Frey. After that they pale in comparison.
James Frey: I’d like to make your words speed even more so, like taxis. I want to curl my tongue around yours like the southern drawl does the tango with yours. I want to be your drug. Snort me, inhale me, shove me up your nose, up your ass, swallow me, digest me; you will not have to drive to Harlem to try to score. I want to search your face for scars and lick them when I find them. I want you to bite me with those altered teeth as hard as you can. I want you to guzzle some of my blood and wear the rest like a coat. Big Jim, will you be my dime bag? I’d go down dirty alleys and go down on you in them.
I think this perfectly illustrates my bad taste in men. I’ve always fallen hard for the liars, the charmers with a twinkle in the eye and more often than not, a carefully crafted persona. Back when I read A Million Little Pieces my heart was a-flutter. More so when I first met Frey at the signing. Then, again, after an initial waning, boy did it wax when I saw him the second time at the My Friend Leonard signing. I was a teenage girl again, ready to hang a poster of Frey above my bed and write I Heart JF on my figurative notebook.
He’s that guy, the one who will lie to get into your pants. A bad boy rich kid that cries for his mom when he gets detention.
Either way, the verbal spanking Oprah gave him was almost pornographic. I nearly touched myself during it. Let me punish him with a combo of piss and dildoes.
But true to form about being attracted to the wrong men, when Frey publishes another book, I just may be there ready to fall for him all over again.
Steve Martin: I do not find you physically attractive but after that book—Shopgirl—I would follow you stealthily through shopping malls and sit behind a newspaper at a restaurant just to get a glimpse of you. I’d walk up eventually and look in your eyes and you’d see it. You’d want to fold me like terrycloth.
Any man who could pen a book so funny and heartwarming about OCD, a disease I am afflicted with—The Pleasure of My Company—is a keeper. You’d think my neuroses charming, I’m sure.
Anne Heche: Okay, so they say you are crazy. I like your sense of humor about it, calling your book, Call Me Crazy. I think you are compelling and gorgeous. We both know you like girls so let’s get crazy together. If I could almost marry a man who was in a NYC cult on E. 35th Street called Congregation for the Light, surely I could get down with you being called Celestia. We’d make up our own language and comb each other’s hair. I’d borrow your dresses and fight with you for attention.
Julia Allison: How fucking hot would it be for two sex columnists to get it on! Talk about instant PR for us both! Nothing makes either of us cum faster than attention and press. We could share Pradas and get mani-pedis and maybe, just maybe, suck each other’s nipples—I bet yours taste like bubblegum—not-so-covertly at a party. Our love affair would be all for show; we’d tongue kiss and giggle as fizzy champagne went up our noses and men lined up to give us foot massages. If you were a really good girl you’d like me put a leash around your neck and walk you around at said party. Don’t worry, cutie, I’ll make sure it is a pink one.
Elizabeth Wurtzel: Yes, another woman. What an interesting orgy my list of WILFs would make if I could somehow get them in the same room sans pens. Lizzie, I find you so very endearing in all your damage. You are my little moth-eaten sweater I refuse to not wear. You are a stiletto with a crooked heel. Your hair looks trashy and almost dirty. You somehow make me feel you are just like me...a good girl that does bad things. A good writer that writes bad things. A good lay that has bad sex. Where have you been? Why no more books since More, Now, Again? I’m waiting honey, to be filled with you again
Coerte Felske: If you ever feel like having some random reckless episode, have one with me. I’m a whore though because I’d say this to the other writers too. I’d use my same sorry line on all of you. Somehow I think not only would you understand, but love me for it. Again, you are a lover that leaves. It has been nearly ten years since the Millennium Girl. Just like a man—go out for cigarettes and never return.
Detective Lucas Miller: A police blogger! You, I’ve actually met. As I set across from your while you interrogated me on official police business for some nastiness I’ve written in my blog, I longed to leap over the desk and straddle you. I’d want you do cuff me under the desk and bend me over prisoner style. I’d want to plead for mercy and throw myself on the court your dick. Your Slate column is sexy; your love of the first amendment is sexier.
Philip Roth: The original bad boy. You filthy motherfucker. I know even well into your sixties you sit there with a huge hard on stroking. Licking your hand, the smell of saliva hitting the air, immediately becoming rancid. You picture young girls bouncing on it while loving Mia for her mind. You leer at young school girls in spring, in your mind squeezing their new and firm breasts and want to lick their pussy juice like the nectar off a summer peach. Let me sit on your dick and write, baby, write.
Thomas Beller: While I’m not all that impressed with your writing, I have seen your picture. You are every guy in this big city. I would fuck you in your hallway or stairwell. I’d pull out the crisp blue shirt from your faded jeans. I’d slide your brown belt off and open your pants. I could almost picture your Gap plaid boxers and baseball cap. You’d tell your guys friends the next day in Central Park about how writing helps you get laid. Sure, you’d feel guilty after that silly NYT article about how you got engaged
Nicholson Baker: Sex with you would include dozens of footnotes. It’d all be foreplay; we’d never get down to the hard core slam-n-pump. The simple act of opening the condom package would take pages and pages. Frankly I think it would all take too long. When I want it, I want it now. Although that bathtub scene in the Fermata is what fantasies of made of.
David Foster Wallace: Fucking you would also take too long, but for different reasons. You wouldn’t even be able to call it fucking as the word is too short. You’d have to say you’d like to have intercourse of the sexual variety. Based on your writing you are the guy that pounds and pounds and pounds content to hear himself pound, leaving the recipient with a raw and dry, verging on bloody cunt.
