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• From the Archives: Your Mother Was A Fish

  A word of warning: this Sunday, May 11, is Mother’s Day. Buy a Hallmark Card, dammit! Or, if you and your mother have a special sort of relationship, I guess you could share these stories with her… Read More... Posted May 09 2008, 01:14 PM by Nicole Ankowski with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, personal essay, fiction, dating, from the archives, sex, The Modern Materialist, carissa neff, mother's day, A.m. homes, mermaids

• New on Nerve, 3.28.08: Leave the Spitzers Alone!

  The inimitable Lisa Carver discusses the Eliot Spitzer scandal, and what happened in her life that made examining other people’s dirty laundry a lot more personal: Me, I would leave him because he embezzled, not because he left his shin-high black socks on with a professional. I used to follow scandals for details like that, for the same reason I watch Divorce Court: I'm curious about people. I don't care if it's the president or my balding neighbor. I want to know what the socks mean. Did he take his pants down to the ankles for a blowjob, then kick the pants off and dive in without remembering to remove socks? Do you do that when you're spending $30,000 in one night? Or does he think he has ugly feet, and left them on purposely? Normally I would raise these questions to various people, turning the "salacious details" into a springboard for discussion, for investigation into the human psyche. But after certain experiences in my personal life, I have come to see these details as heartaches. Read her entire essay (“NPR made fun of her. NPR! They don't make fun of anyone!) here. Posted Mar 28 2008, 06:00 PM by Nicole Ankowski with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, prostitution, eliot spitzer, ashley alexandra dupre, blowjobs, spitzer scandal, silda spitzer

• From the Archives: I Was a Teenage Prostitute

  Excerpted from Lisa Carver’s memoir, Drugs Are Nice, this tale of teenage prostitution that went up on the site back in 2005 deviates from the usual hard-luck or sexual-empowerment tales by occupying a space in between, where selling your body is both a means of connection and an unavoidable path to losing yourself. Carver wandered into prostitution as a means to take advantage of her 19-year-old beauty. In her new role, she found a part of herself that was incredibly adept at perceiving and playing to the fantasies of others. She eventually struggled with leaving this job that she essentially enjoyed in order to salvage the final bits of her true self. — Steph Auteri Posted Jan 15 2008, 10:15 AM by Nicole Ankowski with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, archives, Steph Auteri

• From the Archives: Lisa Carver watches Traci Lords

  In this page from the Lisa Diaries Lisa gives a great description of why she likes porn. “The sexiest thing about porn, I think, is that they really are doing it. When actors portray love or fear, they're not really in love with the other actor, they're not really afraid. They're calling up a memory and letting it wash over their face. But in Ladies in Lace you get actual, enormous, excited erections going all the way into real pussies.” Why was Lisa watching Ladies in Lace, how did she get there, and did she have sex that night? You’ll have to read the whole entry to find out. Posted Dec 12 2007, 01:00 PM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, the lisa diaries, porn, party, Traci Lords

• Readers Respond: Checking in with the Feedbackers

  There have been a lot of comments about James Stegall’s essay “Personal Inventory.” “I never would have thought that I would read a good article about Land's End catalogs. It was like a combination between Updike and Bukowski. Beautifully insightful with subtle dark humor. Nicely done.” --HW Readers are also responding to Lisa Carver’s essay about dating a rich man, “Strange Currencies.” “That was funny and engaging, but most importantly it descirbed my experiences with love in such vivid detail and simplicity that I can't believe no one has said it to me before: all of a sudden it ends and you find yourself neither what you were before or during the relationship. Well put. “ --hlj “I really like how it's not solid--like, there's no definitive moral, yet it just makes you ponder.” --ZZ Posted Nov 30 2007, 04:00 PM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, personal essay, feedback, james stegall

• From the Archives: Lisa Carver on her mother and father

  Inspired by today’s Lisa essay I dug up some older Lisa pieces. February, 2006: All About My Mother. She told me everything — the two times she'd tried to masturbate (with a hot dog and a cucumber), the one time she'd tried to give a blowjob (to my father, and she threw up after). All her thoughts and dreams and philosophies. So many times we'd remain sitting in the car listening to the engine click and sigh, still talking as the sky grew dark, reluctant to open our creaky doors and break the spell. "It's you and me against the world," she'd say. From her strained smile, her hand squeezing my thigh, the love-look in her eye, I knew that must be something good, something loving — and I must be so defective, that I wanted to run screaming from her, this person so grateful for my companionship, for my very existence. April, 2003: Lying with My Father. I never knew when or how he'd be near me. He didn't observe normal patterns of behavior. When I hurt myself and cried, he'd just sit there and laugh. He liked to walk in the bathroom when I was taking a shower. I became perpetually aware of the nakedness just under my clothes and the mental helplessness just under my preternaturally large vocabulary. My senses sharpened. I looked for clues in everything. I was unsure all day long, and all night. Posted Nov 13 2007, 01:00 PM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, personal essay, father, mother

• New on Nerve, 11.13.2007: Lisa Carver Dates a Rich Man

  Today we have a Lisa Carver personal essay. If you’ve never read Lisa Carver this is a great place to start but beware: after reading it you may want to read everything else she’s written for us and boy, is that a lot! More Lisa links this afternoon.  "He recounted crouching in wait at dawn for a deer, shooting it, stringing it up between two trees, gutting it. I felt like Mata Hari. Here was a hunter, a polluter, the last of the pure heterosexuals. He would be the first, in revolution, to be overthrown. He was as eager a student of me as I was of him. I introduced him to dadaism, hypnosis, black-and-white movies, humane farming, and the fact — yes, fact! — that, when you really, really think about it, you do not ever have to do what you're supposed to. Ever. I took him out on a rowboat, to the beach after dark, to a five-dollar palm reader. I taught him everything that's useless for societal advancement or financial security, or security of any kind. He taught me about status, the significance of seating order, the debtor mentality, messages in watches. He owns eight." Posted Nov 13 2007, 10:45 AM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, personal essay, dating a rich man, rich people

• From the Archives: Lisa Carver asks which is better, married sex or single sex?

  From The Lisa Files, March 11, 2002 Having been married my entire adult life, in two more or less open marriages, I'm not too qualified to know the difference between casual and serious sex activities. I mean it with everybody! I once read something Napoleon said about Josephine, to explain why he didn't want to divorce her even though that might mean losing his empire (since she was too old to bear heirs): "But I'm used to her." I believe in marriage. I also believe in chance encounters. Napoleon, most of the respondents below and me: a bunch of greedy people who can't choose, doomed to regret.    Click here for more responses.   Posted Nov 06 2007, 01:00 PM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: lisa carver, single sex, marries sex, poll

• New Today

  The Nerve Date, Installment 2 "When we finally met Madison, on a hot summer afternoon, we learned that her interests include wine, art, politics, and being photographed by Samantha Wolov increasingly naked in her apartment."     An Interview with Lisa Carver, author of The Lisa Diaries.   "I had like six boyfriends and a couple of girlfriends. One day, Genevieve said, you should have a live diary."     An interview with John Tuturro, actor and director of Romance & Cigarettes. "I was trying to connect the Charles Bukowski quality to the James Brown, Bruce Springsteen quality. Regular people have imaginations, they have sexuality, they have stupidity, they have rage, they have love."     Posted Sep 07 2007, 11:47 AM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: photography, lisa carver, the lisa diaries, nerve date, oral history, film, john tuturro, film lounge, interview