"Are you Lisa Carver?" asked the policeman at my door, and I wasn't sure how to answer. He was young and probably Italian and was leaning against my porch post so that his hips and legs were at least six inches in front of his shoulders and head.
     "Why, what has she done?" I joked. I had that new, ultra-scientific double barrier protection roll-on antiperspirant/deodorant, so my underarms remained fresh and dry while the rest of me grew clammy.
     "My friends and I just wanted to see what she looks like," he said, gesturing to the cop car from which three other officers waved. "Are you her?"
     I stood there with lizard face, which apparently he took as assent.
     "We read your column on Nerve — The Lisa Diaries. We're fans."
     I felt awash in relief. So I hadn't committed a murder in my sleep — something I've always feared is bound to happen sooner or later. I tried to remember what the last week's diary entry was: Oh yeah, taking my husband to the prostitute. Oh my God, wait — prostitution is illegal! I'd incriminated myself and Dave and the entire establishment at The Swedish Massage in Maine! If I say I made it all up, would the policeman believe me?
     As if he could read my mind, he said, "We don't want to bust you on anything. We're just regular people. We wanted to see what you look like, is all."

     If you want to see what I, and other various characters who appeared in the pages of The Lisa Diaries, look like, please come to one of my "readings" in Boston or New York, June 20 through June 23, to celebrate the release of The Lisa Diaries in book form (on Black Books). Although no actual reading will be going on, heh heh. Just singing and dancing and, uh, acting. Fake beards will be distributed to all who need them. Details follow at the end of this excerpt. Or you can email me at lisaccarver@earthlink.net for info (or to mail-order a book). — Lisa Carver; New Hampshire, June 2003

New York!
16 February 1998

For the depressed or the just plain mean, I have two words: paraffin wax. That's where ladies with big hair stick your extremities in bubbling wax and then put mitts on your plastic hands and feet and caress them, gazing deeply into your eyes. Then they peel it all off, leaving you fifteen years old and sleek from the wrists and ankles down. For the five-hour drive from New Hampshire to New York, I kept looking at my hands on the steering wheel and wanting to lick them. Just as I made that turn on the highway lining the river — the one where you suddenly see Manhattan, the sun went down so the light got sucked out of the sky and was concentrated in a glow that seemed to rise up from the buildings. And at that very moment, Billy Idol (who had been singing "Hot in the City" on the radio) cried out: "NEW YORK!"

Lisa & Kate, 1998

     Then I got lost, then I figured out where I was, then I got lost again, then I gave up and parked in a six-dollar-an-hour lot and took a cab to Squeezebox, where I was to meet Kate. There, everyone looked like Billy Idol, except they had black hair and some of them were women. Girls were dancing on the bar in bras and black leather panties. That comic artist from Florida was there — Mike Diana — totally naked for no good reason. Boys with bangs in their eyes stuck their tongues down other boys' throats, and on-screen flashed a slide show of Katrina del Mar's photos — Lower East Side ladies with hard bodies in soft light. Then I saw Kate! She was moving through the crowd carrying on conversations with everyone to her right and left and holding her drink above her head. There's always a light coming out of her. She's like a light bulb swathed in angora. You could hear her barking laugh above all the other noise and it felt like getting into a warm bath. I sidled up to her all proud. "Kate," I murmured. "Baber!" she yelled, and put her arms around me. She gave me her drink (which I finished off in one swig) and led me around the room, pointing out her selection of boys for me. For the last six months, I'd been in a self-imposed celibacy. I had some vague notion that, since sex was such a huge part of my life, surely taking it away would make me find new and creative outlets. I'd probably grow deeper. Instead, my soul shriveled.

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I was snapping at store clerks and my hair got all split-ended. Kate decided she couldn't let me go on hurting myself and others, and so her Valentine's Day present to me was to line up a smorgasbord of learned and considerate boys and men in various states of disrobe for me to choose from. I knew right away which one I wanted. He was around twenty-seven, dark hair with yellow wings coming out of the sides, skinny, not a lot of clothes on. Currently, he was on stage, slowly fingering a guitar while his band mates did everything fast. I found out later that I was the seventh girl he'd slept with that month, and it was only the 14th! Kate introduced us when he got off stage — his name is Dick Rocket — and we started making out immediately, right there. Back at his place, we climbed up into his bunk bed, and dawn came in through the window, a third member of our party.
    That guy did like a paraffin wax job on my entire body. He has a tongue piercing, a huge Thing and rough ways. And sweet ways. He has every way! He called me baby, sweetheart, darling, Wonder Woman. Kate told me later that he did mean everything he said, that he's quiet and doesn't compliment easily.
    We showered and had coffee and watched his movie — a fake heavy metal documentary. It was great, but I hadn't slept for about thirty-six hours, and I knew if I stayed I'd just have sex with him again and not sleep at all, so I went to Kate's, where we watched Grease and ate take-out Thai food with friends. I fell asleep halfway through the very loud movie, with the six friends joking and laughing through my dreams.

Getting the Chosen Ones to Choose Me
10 March 1998

I'm back in New York. Kate, Queen Itchie and I took a cab up to West 131st St (Harlem) to meet Adam — someone with a Cabbala-based rock outfit whom I read about in a magazine. Adam told me that at this party people would be "be-ing." We climbed a long, narrow staircase, the three of us trailing feathers, falling-off rhinestones, and loud voices, only to be greeted at the top by total silence. About 22 22-year-olds, some with partial facial hair, stared at our arrival and didn't get up and didn't offer us anything. I didn't know you had to be rude to "be!" Finally Adam arrived, looking middle-class, shortish, warmly dressed. The lower classes never wear enough clothes, as our idea of sex appeal doesn't get much beyond actual flesh sticking out, and our idea of looking good is looking sexual. I took Adam's hand and pulled him into an even more upstairs room, where I'd heard there was a piano, to play him a "beautiful sonata." He was reluctant. I was clomping, excited, loud. I banged on the keys. Itchie said (within Adam's hearing), "She just wants to impress her new Jew friends."

He'd wait for me to come back from my other date, then give me orgasms for an hour. Now that's a gentleman.

    It's true — I have been chasing the Jews. Not very successfully. I decided on Judaism during my six months of emptiness, as it's the religion that has the most room for questions, and after I complete my conversion, I want to have a Jewish household. I think the reason my scheme to marry into the race is not going so well is that all the Jews I pick have mothers — one of whom actually wrested the phone out of my potential husband's hands while he and I were trying to converse about the difference between the words "academics" and "academe." Another of my fiancés is in L.A. Apparently he is fat and spits when he talks — that's what I heard (I've never met him). He also whips girls. I didn't hear that through the grapevine, but from his own mouth (over a phone line). "I like to whip girls." Makes a body feel like a coke bottle on an assembly line that Laverne and Shirley put caps on all day. He wears black and is not practicing, which pretty much defeats the purpose of establishing a Jewish household. But that whipping thing . . .
    Despite their other differences, all the Jews I've chased speak dead languages, and they all talk about time and space. The Jews: eternal strangers, forever aware of slavery and sadness. I wish they'd make an exodus out of L.A., Butte, and Connecticut and migrate to me. Aw, I shouldn't tease racially. I hope they don't get all up in arms. C'mere, Jew, it's your WASP calling you.

The Bach of Sex
11 March 1998

After the dreadful be-in, I went to Dick Rocket's house. We pretty much said nothing. I felt shy. Then he said, "Do you want to hang out?" I did. So we took off our clothes and got in that beautiful bed. Well, I guess it's not actually a beautiful bed, but for me it's a flying ship of pleasure. Oh, Diary. Oh, God. The man is a genius. He's the Bach of sex, the Edison. That guy should not have to work — the government should just give him a grant, like they give any great

Drunk as three skunks: Jenny Mae, Kate, Lisa, May 1998

artist or scientist, to have sex with people. I mean it. You know how most people have like nine techniques each for cunnilingus, fingering and fucking, and the really good ones have 19? Well, he has about ninety-eight! He doesn't have to be always doing new stuff — I would be totally satisfied if he just did the old stuff to me again and again for the rest of my life. But there is new stuff. Female ejaculation is not a myth! I thought I was peeing. I said, "Stop, stop!" He was using the "c'mere" finger inside me. He said, "No, it's okay." I didn't believe him, so he did it to me again. I said, "Is this normal? Do other women do it?" He said some can. He watched a video on it! He is very dedicated. Then he took the condom out. We hadn't even gotten to coitus yet. I laid back and sighed. I was so happy. Every millimeter of my body was happy, and I couldn't believe I was going to be allowed more happiness. I guess he thought I was sighing with irritation at how long it goes with him, because he said, "If you want to go to sleep now, I don't mind. I'm good just like this." All he'd done all night was wait for me to come back from my other date and then give me orgasms for an hour, and that was a good night for him! Now that's a gentleman. Kate insists we are in love, though neither of us believes her. I want to do all these things before I turn thirty: be in a real orgy; have full lesbian love; sleep with three different guys on the same night (not together — so that makes it different than an orgy). I still want to be married and have a baby, but my six months of abstaining turned me into a maniac. I want to see Adam again, too. He's so jittery, pent-up — completely bent out of shape. I just know I could smooth out his life. He needs some fi-i-ine luvin'. It's not fair that all the fine luvers are luvin' each other. It ought to be spread around.