A Q&A with Peter Sagal, author of The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things and How to Do Them.

By Gary M. Kramer

Peter Sagal, yes, the host of NPR’s Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me, has written a book about sex. It’s also about food, gambling and conspicuous consumption. The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things and How to Do Them is coming out next month. While you’re waiting to read it, read this interview with Sagal about swingers, strippers, pornography and, of course, sex.

Can you explain why we—you in particular and me/readers in general—are fascinated by sex?

[Laughs] I think I speak for the two of us, and what I think the book did get into, without biological or scientific detail, is that we have no choice. We’re all looking [for sex]. What is out of the confines of the book is the extent that humans have acted on, pressed on, controlled, denied and given into it.

What qualified you to be an “outsider looking in” at vice?

I don’t do these things. This [book] is my experience. These are my memoirs of excessive behavior. Let’s pick on Mötley Crüe. I had to read their memoir for my show. It’s hilarious—an incredible depiction of insane drug-fueled sex. You get the sense that these people are bragging. They are not going to tell you of the nights they are miserable or struck out. It’s part of their image. There’s a sense of separating themselves from you. We’ve got to live this way, and you don’t.

I thought it would be of more interest for readers to have someone without pretense or access to [live this life]. I represent the average reader. Most people don’t get to live the Mötley Crüe lifestyle. It’s the appropriate perspective. I didn’t know any of this stuff, so I’m going to go find out. It’s more accessible and interesting.

Do you think we need an “excessive misbehavior guide”? Why was this billed as a kind of “how-to” book?

That’s an artifact of the initial impulse of the book. A lot was driven by curiosity. How does this work? I admit as a how-to guide it isn’t going to do anyone any good.

What is sexy to you?

Gosh, it’s funny. Like everyone else, I’m a careful about revealing myself. There are certain things I talk about in the book that gets at my own truth. The performance at the burlesque club in Las Vegas, Forty Deuce, was amazingly exciting and great and fun and it was fun because it was [real]. Sexy and exciting have to be devoid of the con, the overt seduction. When some woman is shaking her breasts at you … I’m suspicious. A dancer who is doing it for her own pleasure and joy is tremendously exciting to me. There’s a whole subgenre of porn—reality, amateur porn. “We’re not doing this for the camera, it’s that the camera happens to be there.” The makers understand the art of the [conceit]. It’s all a construct to seduce you.

What about people who just enjoy sex?

I had someone in the industry say to me that anyone in porn is a deviant. But clearly, there are people who—excuse the expression—get off on doing this. There are people who find this to be a turn-on. It’s puzzling to me. I’m not one of those people. Nina Hartley is living out loud, embracing her sexuality with her loft, relationships and marriage. She’s very happy. You can’t deny she’s happy. What can be better than knowing what you want and arranging it so you have it? If you compare that to her fans who are generic porn fans expressing their sexuality through furtive payments to her [site] to have their fantasies—which of these two people is living a more fulfilled sex life? You can argue she is more happy than most of her customers. But, far be it for me to condemn anyone.

What insight did you expect to get from the porn stars you interviewed?

I want[ed] to humanize them. They are enacting the most intimate part of their humanity—literally being naked. They are performing. Their lives are inevitably disasters. I wanted to meet people who were not disasters. That’s how they come across—Stormy was an unloved, poor, unhappy kid, who saw porn as a way of solving problems; she [became] attractive, desirable, rich. But she still has stories of heartbreak, disappointments, etc. Shane is trying to live it down now and reconcile who she wants to be. This whole industry, the veneer of glamour is about men masturbating to orgasm. That’s what it is. One of the things I wanted to talk to porn stars about [is], “What do you think about what these guys are doing?” They all said they are totally fine about that, in all sincerity.