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Today, Babble editor-in-chief Ada Calhoun
interviews former "Lisa Diaries" columnist and frequent essayist Lisa Carver.

How did you start working for Nerve?

Before it even went live, Rufus and Genevieve had read my book, Dancing Queen, which had a chapter on kissing. They said, "Could you write an essay about putting people into categories like you did with kissing, but about 'doing it?'" So I did, and that's how "Some of My Best Friends Are Sensualists" came to be.



You just started writing regularly after that?

When I became friends with them, I was talking on the phone with them a lot. I said to Genevieve, "So I'm thinking of getting some plasticbreasts." She said, "Oh, you should write about it for us." So I did. That was the second story that I wrote for them. I kept on going to New York or Ohio or Boston and having debaucherous weekends, and I would email Genevieve all about it the next day. I had like six boyfriends and a couple of girlfriends. One day, she said, you should have a live diary. This was 1998. I didn't know of any blogs or live diaries or anything, and I don't even think Sex and the City existed. But I thought, "Why not?" I tell everybody everything anyway. This way, I don't have to keep on telling different people, I can just write it once, and everyone's gonna know who I did it with that night. Of course, I got married right then, and my husband agreed,

too. So that's how "The Lisa Diaries" came about, and that ran until 2001.



What kind of feedback would you get from it?

I tend to have unrealistically high estimations of myself in my memory, but I seem to recall everybody loving it and saying, "I can't wait to see what happens next." They would weigh in on what I should do next, and whether I should go swinging again or stop swinging, and, "It shouldn't be this guy, because I kinda like this guy" — you're only supposed to do it with people you don't really like, so your husband doesn't get jealous. People were really having an influence on my "down-there" activity. It became interactive. I always wanted to have an orgy, and that was one of the few things I'd never done, besides going to Japan and hang-gliding. And it was because of Nerve that that dream was realized. In 1999, I was running a chatroom on Nerve, too, and there were all kinds of crazy characters on there. I had a contest; the winners would win me and my husband.



That was when we met. I interviewed you for the Austin Chronicle. I remember because the last thing you said before we hung up was, "You should enter, maybe you'll win my husband!"

[laughs] Did you?



No, I didn't [laughs].

The one who won me, Grant Stoddard, was an immigrant

Where They Are Now...

Lisa Carver lives in New Hampshire. She's written a memoir, Drugs Are Nice, and has contributed to many magazines, such as Glamour.

dishwasher. After our orgy, he went on to become Nerve's "I Did It for Science," and then he wrote a book. The girl that won my husband, she brought her husband as well. So then it was five people, and that made it an orgy — because four people is just wife-swapping — but five people is my dream come true. So thank you, Nerve. Now, I just have hang-gliding and Japan left.



Was it fulfilling? Was it everything you had hoped it'd be?

Not at all. Well, I didn't hope that it would be any particular way. So it would be hard to disappoint someone who doesn't care about the outcome, but it was not sexually satisfying. But it was fun. We also went bowling at the all-night strobe-light bowling alley.



Because what else can you do with a house full of orgygoers?

The one thing I learned is the wrap-up. It would really be nice if the bell chimed twelve and everyone just — poof! — disappeared. If not, then take them bowling. Perfect.



Were you ever in the office?

Yes, several times. I used to go to New York a bit. So I would go to parties, and I would go to the office, and I took part in that HBO pilot. HBO were running around filming us, and everyone was showing off. I went to go get waxed, because I had never been waxed in my tenderest of spots. I did it live for HBO. Normally I don't get waxed in front of roomfuls of men, but because HBO was there and because it was 1999 and the fever was high, it was just like that. Afterward, I went to a toy shop, bought some jewels and glue, and I made a cat-face with jewel eyes and a little button nose. It seemed like a good idea at the time.



What was the office dynamic like?

I was only there several times, and whenever I came, it was party time. It seemed like everyone was kind of playing at being serious minds of our generations, and at the same time, they were frivolous and having fun. What made it absurd was how intellectual the approach was to these really filthy ideas. You could feel the conflicts and the humor that came out of that, and that's why I loved working for them. They rarely turned down my dumb ideas, where usually I get turned down left and right, because I just don't fit, but Nerve was the not-fitting-place.