Brian Alexander, "America Unzipped" author and MSNBC.com columnist: Mr. Media Interview, Part 3 (Return to Part 2)
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BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: In your column and even in researching the book, why do you think so many people tell you so much about their private lives?

BRIAN ALEXANDER: People have asked me that. I don’t really know how to answer the question other than, when I was going around the country for America Unzipped, I would try to make some sort of contact with people I wanted to talk to before I went wherever it was I was going to go. And I think that they sensed that A) I had done a lot of advanced research so I was not just showing up out of the blue, I knew a little bit about what I was talking about, and B) I think even when I met people for the first time, if I hadn’t made contact before, like people in the adult store, for example, I think they sensed I was not going to judge them. I think they thought this guy has an open mind to what it is I want to say. I think this attitude is departing, but I think sometimes it’s still here. People are tired of being judged or had shame heaped upon them for having a particular interest.




For example, at a fetish convention in Tampa, I interviewed a “pony,” for example, a guy with a pony fetish, and he’s a biology professor at a university. And I didn’t laugh at him. I just talked with him. He’s a very smart guy with all of his own interests, and he sensed that I was listening to what he had to say. If something was funny, I laughed. I said, “That’s really funny,” and oftentimes, people would say, “Yeah, that is pretty funny.” I was not going to humiliate them or shame them, but I was going to enjoy what they enjoy. I was going to have fun when they were having fun, and with them, sometimes it was fun. Several times when I was talking with people who are into bondage or domination or polyamory or fetish, I’d say, “This just sounds like a lot of work to me.” And they would laugh, and they’d say, “Sometimes it is a lot of work, and sometimes I come home and I’ve worked hard all day, and I say, ‘Honey, can we just have regular sex?’” I just try to make people feel at ease. And once they realize that, “Hey, this guy’s not going to act like an 8th-grader, and he’s also not going humiliate me,” they’re happy to talk about it cause they would like a little more understanding out there about whatever it is they’re doing.

ANDELMAN: Okay. Polyamory – don’t know that one.

ALEXANDER: Polyamory is, well, as the Latinate, implies, is loving more than one person. For example, there’s a woman who is in the book, Janice, who lives with her boyfriend/lover but has a side lover who she meets for sex occasionally. Sometimes they all three might meet for sex, but sometimes she goes with him alone and meets for sex, and it’s all out in the open. And so that’s a polyamorous relationship.

ANDELMAN: I see. Poly, I get. I didn’t make the connection to multiple partners. I thought maybe it had something to do with artificial, maybe things that you make plumbing equipment out of or something. I’m so ashamed that I even asked now.

ALEXANDER: No, no, don’t.

ANDELMAN: Do you think people are more likely to open up these days about sex -- or money -- for example?

ALEXANDER: That’s a good question. If it’s a private conversation, I think they might actually be more open discussing sex than money.

ANDELMAN: Or how much they pay for sex.

ALEXANDER: The fact they pay for it at all. I’m just guessing because I didn’t ask too many questions about money, but I would say people would probably be more open about sex than money.

ANDELMAN: And did you find the conversations, when people did talk to you about their sex lives or what they’re interested in, was it more interesting to hear them talk about more traditional sex or the wilder types of things?

ALEXANDER: I was interested in all of it so I guess I found them equally interesting. We are groping, I think, with how to feel about sexuality and sexual desire, our fantasies, and so on, and so I’m interested in however anybody expresses that. So while part of the book deals with what some people might consider edgy sexuality, a lot of the book deals with very sort of normal, straight, what’s called vanilla sexuality and how people are trying to enhance that.




For example, I go to the Midwest, and I attempt to work as a Passion Party sales representative where it’s sort of like on the model of Tupperware parties, and women go into their houses, and they have a little party, and they show off sex toys and lotions and potions and so on. I don’t think too many of those women were into, seriously anyway, into bondage or into any sort of extreme fetishes, but they were open to exploring in ways that I had not anticipated. Most of them were very conservative, Republican, Southern Baptist women who may have had a threesome at some point and made a personal choice for themselves: “Do I like that, or do I not like that?” Some did, some didn’t. They felt like they were going to be the ultimate deciders of their own sexuality, and it was not going to be imposed by their churches or their politics or anything else, that this was a deeply personal option for them to choose how they wanted to go. And so I was interested in that as much as I was interested in the woman who hung weights from her labia.

ANDELMAN: Was that Rosie? No, I’m sorry. No, she hangs upside down. I’m sorry. I have trouble keeping it all straight. There was one, I think it was a couple, correct me if I’m wrong and maybe at the Passion Party, where they had been married like 15 or 20 years and to keep things interesting, they were taking and this is the way you had it in the book “baby steps with anal sex”. Now, I don’t know. Maybe I’m off my rocker, but it seems like anal sex, you’re either doing it, or you’re not.

ALEXANDER: Well, there is a learning curve.

ANDELMAN: Oh, okay. Alright.

ALEXANDER: Without getting into too much detail, the more gradually you do that, usually the better the result in the end.

ANDELMAN: But I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re at the point where you’re having this conversation with someone and you’re telling them that you’re doing that, I’m thinking that you’re basically doing it, that there’s no baby steps.

ALEXANDER: Yes. I got the impression from her that they are doing it, and they’re still figuring out all the nuances.

ANDELMAN: You talk about some of the more unusual sexual practices, some of them which are more legend than reality, I think. The Dirty Sanchez, queefing… Is there anything that was too over the top for you either to write about, or, when you’re standing with someone and they start telling you this, are you enough of a high-quality poker player that you can keep a straight face, or did you laugh or the edges of your smile start giving way, and you know you’re going to crack up at any moment?

ALEXANDER: If I was shocked or appalled or amused or whatever, I would let people know that, and then I’d say, “Wait, you gotta back up now, explain this to me.”

ANDELMAN: Right.

ALEXANDER: And, generally, they’d be happy to because they felt I really wanted to know about it, and they’re used to sort of having people think wait, what’s that all about? There was nothing there that I thought was…I don’t know if I’ve become slightly jaded or not, but there was nothing that just blew me away so much that I just couldn’t deal with it. I do spend some time at a porn production house called kink.com, and I watch a pretty extreme bondage scenario being taken out including electricity torture and so on, but knowing the people involved, I had met the main woman involved the day before and had actually met her some months before in another context, and we had talked and chatted. I knew about her, who she was, what she was, how she was, and that she had reasons for doing what she was doing. So while I did not necessarily find it to my taste, it didn’t blow me away. It didn’t like, so shock me that I couldn’t deal with it.

People have a huge array of reasons for whatever it is that they happen to be interested in, which is why I think the idea of demonizing sex that may seem unusual to the rest of us is counterproductive because the way I might like to do it or the way you might like to do it, somebody might find that strange or unusual. People do what they want to do, and the idea that somehow you’re going to condemn them or think that it’s a bad thing, it doesn’t serve any purpose. So I was always happy to hear about whatever it is people were into even if I personally didn’t have any interest in it as a personal practice.

ANDELMAN: Now, this was your first book, I believe.

ALEXANDER: No, this is my third book.

ANDELMAN: It’s your third book?

ALEXANDER: Yeah.

ANDELMAN: Oh, what were the other two? I’m sorry.




ALEXANDER: I did a book called Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion. And some years before that, I did another small book about rainforests around the world called Green Cathedrals.

ANDELMAN: Oh, I apologize. I didn’t realize that. I was going to say that most everyone I have ever interviewed who has written a book -- and I’ve written nine of them so I know how this works -- usually has another one in the works by the time the current one comes out. So my question is: are you working on something else?

ALEXANDER: I’m thinking about something else that has sort of not gotten beyond that. I have my regular jobs that I do to pay the mortgage and my column. I’m a contributing editor at Glamour magazine, and I’m a frequent contributor to Outside magazine as well as a few newspapers. I have my regular magazine work to do, and then this book has now come out, and that’s been a little bit of a whirlwind. But I’m thinking about a couple different things, and we’ll just have to see what happens. I don’t know what direction it’s going to go in, but my goal is to really write about the culture in which we’re living cause I think American culture is endlessly fascinating to me.

ANDELMAN: I have one last question for you, Brian, and that is: what would your boyhood pastor, Father Schultz, think of your work?

ALEXANDER: No doubt he would not approve of my work, although I think if he were to really read the book and sort of try to absorb what it is that I’m saying, I think he might understand it and think that maybe we’re not quite as far apart as it might seem at first. You never know. You never know. I don’t know how it would be taken.

© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: America Unzipped, Brian Alexander, Catholic guilt, Focus on the Family, James Dobson, love swings, MSNBC.com, PHE, Phil Harvey Enterprises, sex, sexploration, Sinclair Institute, Tim LeHaye

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