Last month Lesley Arfin interrogated Chris Nieratko about his new book,
Skinema,
and other heady topics including the human genome, colony collapse disorder in American honeybees, and the Drexler Act. Now, in honor of the release of Dear Diary, Lesley’s dazzling debut collection of her long-running Vice column, we’ve flipped the flippy chairs and asked Nieratko to kick the debate up a notch—you know, really delve into today’s most pressing societal issues. Let’s see how that went.
Chris Nieratko: I hear you think shaved pussies are gross.
Lesley Arfin: I mean 100 percent shaved. A completely shaved pussy is a little girl’s pussy and that is troubling. When you go through puberty you grow hair. Men need to deal with it and not be pedophiles. I prefer a Brazilian with the triangle still attached, but everything else gone, you know what I mean?
Is that what you’re running, the triangle?
Yeah. So the lips are clean, the asshole is clean, but when you look at the pussy there’s a little triangle of pubes.
Like an arrow indicating to continue downward.
Yes, clever. I also think 70s bush can be hot. But I’m not going down on girls so I don’t really care.
Have you ever gone down on a girl?
No, but my friend Marissa went down on me—I took a bath with her in high school and we made out. It was fun but also weird. And she’s dead now. So it’s really weird.
You never told me that you have a toxic vagina!
Yeah, my vagina poisoned her and she died. Haha. No, she died of a heroin overdose years later.
When you think back upon those two memories of her 1) eating you out and 2) now being dead, do you ever progress into thinking about her being dead and you rubbing your vagina on her dead face?
NO!
Not even for a split second?
Not even a little. Gross, Chris!
Didn’t you once try internet dating?
Oh my God, who told you that?
I read it on a bathroom wall…
Yeah, when I first got sober I gained like 20 pounds so I wasn’t that good-looking and I wasn’t meeting dudes when I was going out. I was really, really horny because I wasn’t doing drugs or drinking and MySpace didn’t exist yet, so I met a few guys on Nerve.com and I had some experiences that weren’t good. This one guy—oh my God—he looked cute in his picture, but then I went to meet him and he was the same exact height as me, which is five-two. He was a fucking midget! So I was like, “Whatever, let’s go back to my house.” My whole ploy to get people back to my house was, and still is, “My computer’s fucked-up, are you good with computers?”
Haha. Sounds like a typical porn scenario.
Totally, and they’re all like, “Yeah, I can tinker around with it, see what the problem is.” So this guy comes over and for some reason he was really into that fucking gay song by Spoon, “That’s the Way We Get By.” It’s the corniest song, but he’s like, “You have to hear this, it’s the best song ever.” So he put it on and proceeded to strip down to his tighty-whities, jump on my bed, and play air guitar.
With his schlong as the guitar?
Nope, just playing air guitar in his underwear like he was 12. I was standing there gaping like, “I cannot believe this is happening right now.” I guess he was trying to seduce me—he thought I’d think he was being cute or whatever. I was just like, “You have to go.” Maybe I hooked up with him after that, I don’t even remember.
Was this the same guy you talk about in your book who shaved his private parts and used baby powder?
No, that was another guy. Ugh, I’ll never forget the way that tasted. This guy lived with his parents in Queens and was trying to be a firefighter and was really cute. He came over and I went to give him a BJ and he was totally shaved, 100 percent. Which is fine—it makes your dick look bigger or whatever.
That’s why I do it.
Yeah. Anyway, I guess he had shaved his balls that day and didn’t want to get razor burn so he put baby powder all over his nut sack. It was so gross I gagged. I just couldn’t do it. It was all dry and my mouth was all dry and it was just… I don’t know. I think he still lives with his parents.
So Chloë Sevigny wrote the intro to your book, huh?
Yeah?
Do you ever call her… Cabernet Sauvignon?
No, but I will from now on!
Lesley Arfin’s book, Dear Diary, is being published by Vice Books this month. Get it from Americanapparel.net or wherever awesomeness is sold.
