Interview With a Libertine

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

I'm your host, Charlie-Rose-Type-Character.

Tonight we have a special treat prepared for you. In a moment we will be joined by our guest, the indefatigable and impenetrable Chris Zane. You know him as the young lion of letters, a cock-of-the walk in literary circles... But what is unknown about him is his unprobed inner recesses, the inviolate and undeflowered sanctuary of his supressed psyche.

We want you to come on a journey with us, past your preconceptions, beyond your stereotypes, upwind of your bigotries... Tonight we journey into...

The Heart of A Liberal.

Forget his strange twisted conceptions of politics, tonight we want to go further. What are his fundamental conceptions of Love? What are his aspirations in that realm?

To that end we have devised a scientific program of inquisition. We shall ask him a few seemingly innocuous questions; questions that are in fact psychologically fine-tuned to vivisect his deepest desires, to lay bare the secret garden of his ego.

Ladies and gentlemen... we give you, Chris Zane!

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1. What are your deepest desires? And tell us about the secret garden of
your ego? In lieu of answering that question you may answer this one: How
old were you when you first kissed with tongue? Where were you?

Ah yes, the first kiss with tongue. Unfortunately, I have to admit that my first, actual kiss with tongue was in a game of "Spin The Bottle," with Andrea _______ (last name I can't remember). This was at her birthday party; she invited me, and I suspected strongly that she had a crush on me (she was very jealous of my previous girlfriend, Marie, who I did not kiss with tongue). I wasn't very interested in her, mainly because she reminded me of Miss Piggy--not because she looked like a pig, but because she had a boyfriend whose name was Kermit the Frog. Just kidding, she really did look like a pig. Anyway, after it happened, I strongly suspected that she started the whole game just to get in my pants, er, mouth. It was uncomfortable for me, but part of me derived pleasure from it because a) I knew she wanted to do it b) I finally got to kiss a girl.


2. How old were you when you first had sex? Who was she? What were your initial impressions? How long did it take until it fully sank in that you had actually had sex, that you were no longer a boy, but were a boy who had gotten some? Do you recall any change in behavior or character?

This is actually a better story than my first kiss, albeit probably more shameful. When I was a freshman in high school, I started dating this girl who we'll call Tracey Gold. Our relationship wasn't anything atypical of other freshman relationships--it was short-lived, and consisted mainly of me walking her to class and talking to her on the phone at night. As these things go, we broke up after only a couple of months. We both dated various people in the next three years of high school, and I doubt we gave each other more than a passing thought until we were further romantically involved some years after our initial breakup.

Rewind to age twelve. I'm walking down the street with my friend Joey, and we're talking about sex:

"I bet I'll lose my virginity by the time I'm fourteen," I said.

"Oh, I bet I'll lose mine way before you," said he.

"Bullshit--I bet I have sex with like five girls by the time you even have sex with one."

I had three real opportunities to have sex before I actually did. Only one of those times was I actually willing to do it--the other ones I really just wasn't interested in the girl that much and figured I should save it for one I really liked. On the one occasion that I wanted to but didn't, our only available form of protection was this miniscule banana-flavored condom that wouldn't fit on my sixteen-year-old penis. I ripped it in an attempt to put it on, thus ending that little episode.

Some of these details may seem a bit unnecessary to reveal, but I feel I must set the scene for the events that took place the time I first did the dirty deed (dirt cheap). My senior year of high school, I left the private school I attended and began at the local public high school, where my friends told me the girls were hotter, sluttier, and liked do get drunk more often.

I didn't find any of these things true, but I did manage to start dating a girl who was actually in college, and was incredibly hot (although in the end revealed herself to be quite insane). After awhile of dating her, celibacy no longer seemed to be important, and I mentally prepared myself for having sex. She dangled it in front of me like a carrot on a rope, and I jumped through hoop after hoop with the hope of finally being able to get somewhere with her. Her excuse for putting it off was that she "wanted it to mean something to me." At that point, I wasn't worried about it meaning something--my brain said let's do it, and I wanted to do it. She didn't give in, and I gave up, although we continued to see each other casually.

It was around that time that I went to a party with some of my friends that I worked with. It was a party thrown by kids at my old school, and I was looking forward to seeing some of my friends there. To make this part of the story shorter, what happened was that I ended up bumping into Tracey, she had been drinking, and we ended up making out on the dance floor. Before we could figure out what was happening, a fight broke out on the other side of the yard, and someone yelled out that the police were coming.

"Can I spend the night at your house?" she asked.

As luck would have it, my friend Pete had an apartment nearby (he was an older guy, and in retrospect he was kind of a shady character, although I thought he was cool then--remember I'm still in high school), and he gave me his blessing to bring her home with us. I drove her back to his place, and we started playing drinking games in the dining room (AKA the hallway). After only a few minutes of this, she suggested we go to sleep. Pete suggested we use his roommate's room, as he was out for the night. We complied, and began fooling around, only to have him come home a minute later and kick us out of the room. He was pissed, but I was horny, so I begged Pete to let me use his room. At this point, I had no intention of getting laid--I just thought I was gonna get a BJ. Once in Pete's room, we started fooling around, and she asked me if I had a condom. Cha-ching! I borrowed one, which worked better than my previous attempts. I clearly remember thinking to myself, "Hey, this is fun. Why didn't I do this before? It's no big deal." I didn't, however, have an orgasm (and neither did she, although we both faked one). We ended up getting tired, and we layed in bed talking until we got to sleep. Pete later came in and pulled me out of the room, asking me if I thought he could have a turn at her, which I was disgusted at and told him no. Egh, that guy.

The next morning, she woke up at like 5 AM and started trying to talk to me about what happened the night before, and would I be her homecoming date? "Hoe"ly shit. It was just like TV--you sleep with a girl and all of a sudden she thinks I'm her boyfriend. I was able to avoid the question and sleep for another hour or so before I walked her out to her car and sent her on her way. I didn't see her for about two months after that, I was too scared off by her post-coital talk to call her. The next time I did see her was at my old school's homecoming, which I attended with another girl. When I saw her at the dance, it wasn't difficult to tell that she wanted to get at my scrotum with a rusty bear trap.

In the meantime, I was still dating Stephanie, the college girl, and eventually convinced her to do me, which was visually a great pleasure, but as far as penile sensation was concerned, a major failure. In order to yet again make a long story shorter, I apologized to Tracey and started dating her, while I was still seeing Stephanie. In the end, Stephanie went crazy, I started dating Tracey more seriously, and found that sex with her would be the sex that I would measure sex with every other girl against--and it didn't just have to do with the fact that she was the first. She was an absolute maniac: She was multi-orgasmic; she was totally proactive--she would make up new places to go so we could do it; she would always make up ever-kinkier things to do in bed; she couldn't get enough of the C. Love and Special Sauce. She now works as a model/actress/Coors Light girl (the girls that dress up in short-shorts and give away beer at bars).



3. How old were you when you first fell in love? We mean the kind of love that still sometimes haunts you to this day. And by "haunts you to this day" we don't mean venarial disease. Unless you have that. Then we want to know.

This is an easy one. Having read "Romance and Realism, Part 1," you know about Julie--who was without a doubt, my first love at the age of fourteen. After our breakup, the mention of her name would sink my stomach and make me break out in a cold sweat. I never saw or communicated with Julie throughout our entire high school career, and assumed I'd never see her again until she found me through the magic of Friendster in my last semester at UT. She was about to graduate from B_____ University with a journalism degree, had a serious boyfriend, and was eager to talk about our past. I was funny, wistful, and appropriately nonchalant about the things that went down eight years before. She suggested we get together sometime in Houston, and I agreed. It was interesting to see and talk to her, although we were clearly very different people than we were eight years before. Long story short: I banged her.


4. Why love¹?

I'm going to interpret this question to mean "why do you think you were in love with her?"

Nowadays I look back at that relationship and realize how flawed it was, how different from the kind of love I would want for anyone now. However, I still think about the feelings I had for her then, and they truly are those feelings that I associate with what I know to be love today. At the time, I took every hackneyed pop culture reference and asked myself if it was true about me and Julie. For example, on an episode of "Charles In Charge," the mom asked Scott Baio if he was willing to think of his girlfriend first in every situation--if her happiness meant more to him than his own. Charles said no, and it was then that he realized that he shouldn't run off with his GF and elope. We could see that Charles had some growing up to do. When I asked myself the question, I answered yes on all accounts and considered myself ready to marry her. I thought about her at every moment I wasn't with her, I cried over her, I cursed the English language for lack of words to describe how much I cared for her.


5. Have you ever seen Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed? It's pretty good when you're on PCP, or perhaps crystal meth, wouldn't you say? Hm?

I foolishly gave that movie only one thumb up until I watched it with alligator clamps attached to my nipples, with the other end on the delorean from Back to the Future (1.21 jigowatts). Then it was a full seven thumbs up.


6. Have you ever been cheated on? Have you ever cheated? What do you think of people who cheat? Sluts, no? Sluts who ruin your life, and take everything you have, only to leave you standing alone in the rain, screaming out their name to the hateful and capricious gods of love? And what lessons did you learn from being cheated on and/or cheating?

As I said in the "first time" story, all I could think about in my youth was sex. As far as being cheated on... Tracey Gold actually cheated on me, but it was after I cheated on her multiple times--and all she did was make out with the guy, which nowadays counts as bonus points in couples therapy. In fact, before my last serious girlfriend, and with the exception of Denise (a semi-serious girlfriend in high school), I cheated on every single girl I dated, which is really only equivalent to like three girls or something, but fit in line with sex being my only real goal at the time. Since being in a more committed relationship, I take cheating more seriously, and don't approve of it if you're in a relationship with someone you actually care about. Oh--Stephanie cheated on me too, with her ex-boyfriend, but she tried to lie her way out of it. Other than that, I recently seem to have gotten myself in the enviable situation of "seeing" multiple girls outside of a committed relationship, and therefore when I pull the ol' "hat trick" (three girls on all three days of the weekend) it's not considered cheating, it's considered "playing the field." I told a friend awhile back that I don't think I'm capable of falling in love at the moment. Until that statement isn't true anymore, I feel like I'm probably going to stay in the zone--although once I'm out of it, and especially married--I will stop fucking around and honor the woman I'm with. I really do understand how hurtful it can be to be cheated on, and how painful it feels to hurt someone you truly care about by being unfaithful.


7. What do you think of that scene in Blade Runner where the android says, "I've seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion"? We think it's really cool and kinda sad too, for some reason we can't figure out.

I think it's really cool and kinda sad, although I can't really figure out why.


8. Why does being lonely cause us to so intensely desire the trappings of our childhood? Why does nostalgia hound us so mercilessly? Does that mean we're some kinda pussy? Or does it just mean that we really like Blade Runner?

I doubt it means we're some kind of pussy, especially because I ain't no pussy, dude, and nostalgia does hound me mercilessly. I suppose we get nostalgic when we're lonely because we're seeking to make ourselves happy by remembering times when we were. Blade Runner rules.


9. If you could ask yourself one of these questions, what would that question be?

How big a sacrifice would you make for a girl, if you like, really, really liked her?


10. Now, answer your own question.

It really depends on the history of the relationship. If it's just some broad that you have an infatuation with who wouldn't do the same for you, then the sacrifice in question would probably be a bad decision. I've always disapproved of guys doing things like moving across the country for a girl, or getting their hair cut just because the girl likes it a certain way. However, If it's a more serious relationship, and the girl in question actually would make the same kind of sacrifice for you, then it may be worth considering. If you are moving across the country, however, it's probably a good idea to come up with another reason to give to people just so you don't have to say "I'm doing it for Suzy," because they will make fun of you, and rightfully so.

A guy I know abandoned his dreams of being an actor so that he could marry his twenty-year-old girlfriend and move to Indiana to live in her parents' basement. As a wedding gift, I gift-wrapped his nutsack and handed it to him, much like that Itchy and Scratchy episode where Itchy serves Scratchy his own stomach for dinner as a rare steak, and Scratchy eats it before his head explodes after seeing the hundred-dollar check.

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¹Actually, we meant, "What is the point? I mean, it's all so difficult, and painful, and it can really complicate your life, tax-code-wise."