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Nerve.com
What other stories do you remember?
Em: Remember that story with the amazing photographs of that underground strip club in the Bronx?
Lo: We did a chat with the promoter and one of the dancers. It was like two different worlds coming together: these computer-nerd chat organizers and these guys who live in this completely crazy world of male stripping. African-American/Latino male stripping, which is completely different from the more sanitized white-boy gay guys who are pretending to give this, you know, fantasy. So we did the chat, and they invited us to be their special VIP guests at that week's Friday night show up in the Bronx.
Lo: We all got dolled up.
Em: Ridiculously dolled up.
Lo: And we go up there, we get out of the car, and there's this huge line. There's not a single white person in it, and it's all women. And they are hungry for some male stripping. It starts to rain. Because we were special guests we went straight to the head of the line and cut all these people.
Lo: There was a catwalk in the middle of the room, and fold-out chairs all around. We're sitting there waiting for the doors to open, and all the women come in, and everyone makes a mad dash for the front row. So the place fills up, and the manager we did the chat with comes by, he's the emcee for the night, and he said, "We've got some special guests in the house from Nerve magazine," and he points to us and holds up the issue. You could hear crickets in the room. [Laughs]
We just felt terrible. They were hardcore fans, and who are we? We're not paying, we're getting special treatment. It was just bad. So the show starts. We're drinking heavily just to cope. The stuff that we saw that night — I didn't know it was possible for women to act in such a sexually aggressive way. These women were hungry.
Em: It wasn't legal, what we were watching. Full-on sex acts. They put fruit inside this one woman. Didn't he eat the fruit out of her? And it wasn't like a bachelorette party, where there's a fun atmosphere and everyone's laughing. It was totally serious.
Lo: Yeah. And at one point, they start pulling up our Nerve colleague, Jessica, whose judgment was not that great that night, because she was wearing a
"I remember we stopped outside Katz's Deli. I was standing there in my shoes and underwear and no bra."
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long skirt with no underwear. She had one foot up on the riser and one foot on the floor and he was pulling with both arms, and she was shaking her head, "No, no!" The emcee finally had to get right in front of him and say, "No, Chocolate, no!"
And he let go, but then two different guys went after Em's sister Hannah and pulled her up on stage. At one point, one of the guys took his dick out and put it in her drink, like a stirrer. The whole entire audience — all of them — were like, "Drink it! Drink it! Drink it!"
Em: Hannah looked at me in utter panic. I looked around at the crowd and said, "I think the alcohol clears everything, you better just drink it!" The first time she went up, people were kind of cheering her on, like, "Go white girl! Go white girl!" The second time, they were definitely not happy that this white girl got pulled up twice. That just wasn't fair.
Lo: It was considered dick hogging.
Em: Later in the evening, Hannah went to the bathroom. She was talking to these girls in the bathroom. They turned to her and said, "Having a good time out there?" Hannah said, "Yeah!" And one of them said, "Dick hogger!" and punched her in the face. I went up there, and I got booed off the stage because I wasn't doing anything interesting.
Lo: That was one of the craziest Nerve experiences for me. Another one was the 60 Minutes shoot. We were doing a funny promotional thing for them to film. We rented a van and got a disco ball and a light. NerveCenter was launching, and we were going to hand out promotional postcards on a populated New York City street corner. Open the van, play the music, hit the light on the disco ball, and run out of the van in our underwear, handing out flyers for NerveCenter.
Em: We hired models to do it. I think we were passing around a flask of whiskey. About halfway through the ride, Rufus decided that he wanted to get in on the action.
Lo: No, I went first.
Em: No, Rufus got naked first.
Lo: I think I went first. I was definitely the first girl on staff.
Em: I thought it was Genevieve.
I definitely remember sitting on this bench seat in the van, thinking, "That's Rufus' butt cheek I can feel against my side!" It was definitely a weird night out with the office.
Lo: Fortunately, I came prepared. I wore boxers and a long scarf so I could hide my boobies.
Em: I remember we stopped outside Katz's Deli. I was standing there in my shoes and underwear and no bra. All those guys who work at Katz's were banging on the window, shouting, "Turn around! Turn around!" I don't think I've been to Katz's since.
Did you have any interesting reactions from your families about working at Nerve?
Em: I didn't really, totally fill my parents in on exactly what Nerve did. I think I told them, "It's kind of like Cosmopolitan, but for men and women." That's as far as I went until The Big Bang came out. Once The Big Bang got a rave review in Time magazine, it was a little easier for them to accept it: "Well, if Time is writing about it, it can't be that bad."
Lo: My parents were always very supportive. I didn't hide anything from them. But I didn't give them all the details.
What did you take away from your time at Nerve?
Lo: The love of my life [her husband, former Nerve creative director Joey Cavella]. And my best friend and business partner.
Em: And I met my husband through Nerve, too, on Nerve Personals, which seems really fair after the many, many, many horrible blind dates I went on with Nerve Personals, to prove I wasn't just the creator, I was also a user. I probably went on fifty horrible, horrible blind dates before I met him.
Lo: And Emma was going to give up on them. She wasn't going to tell anyone publicly because that would be bad for the company, but you were about to give up on them. You'd just write all of our advice to the contrary.
Em: There's no way we would be doing what we're doing now, if it weren't for Nerve. It would never have occurred to me to write about sex; we never would have been able to build an audience. I think it just taught both of us to expect a little more out of your professional life, and that it's possible to make a living with something you totally love.
Anything else?
Em: Oh yeah, one more story. One of the signs for me that Nerve was growing and becoming more mature, like a proper company, was that we used to have a spanking thing. If it was somebody's birthday, everybody in the office had to stand facing in one direction with their legs spread, and the person whose birthday it was had to crawl through their legs and get spanked. Everyone hated it and loved it at the same time, but it was really funny. I remember one female intern, it was her birthday, and I remember her confiding in us, like, "I really don't feel comfortable going through with the spanking thing," and we all thought, "Uh, yeah, I guess we should probably stop doing this thing now."
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Gwynne Watkins is a consulting editor of Nerve and editor of the urban parenting website Babble. She's also a playwright and lyricist. Her most recently produced plays were about Wonderwoman and space pirates, respectively. |
©2007 Gwynne Watkins and Nerve.com |
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