Friday 23 April 2010

Shagazine

Sorry for the absence, but I’ve a great excuse. Shortly after my email, I had a phonecall. British Grazia had already gone to print, they said, but Polish Grazia would be thrilled to have an interview. So I flew to Warsaw on April 11 with just a credit card and a box of rubbers. I was to be famous!

I wouldn’t recommend Poland – everyone there looked really miserable for some reason, probably something to do with all flowers piled up in the streets. I didn’t think it was anything to be upset about – they clear up easily enough! I even put some in a bin myself, but that just seemed to make them sadder.

“Well how do you propose to get it done?”, I asked them. “No-one ever solved endemic litter problems just sitting round and reading about plane crashes”. Anyway I was quickly deported, but it turned out they wanted to do the interview by phone the whole time anyhow.

So - if you’re in Poland, my short interview is on p.43 of this month’s issue, right after the 8-page feature on Bishops’ Wives.

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GRAZIA: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

SAO: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

GRAZIA: This is a telephone interview.

SAO: Yeah, but I sat down especially.

GRAZIA: What first inspired you to take up blogging?

SAO: Well, I’ve always been a fan of blogs – blogs with cats looking funny, blogs with cats wearing things, and blogs dedicated to divisive crypto-fascist polemic (also cats). So when I saw that there was a word that combined “blogs” and “sex” – the word “sexblog” – I realised that the world needed my contribution like a hole in a donut head.

GRAZIA: So you’ve been a blog fan for a long time?

SAO: Yes – I’d say they were the major inspiration in my decision to learn English. On discovering them I bought 100 issues of "Readers’ Digest", from which I learned from scratch.

At the end of the day, I thought, build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. If you build it, they will come, and time is money, and money talks. So I guess what I’m saying is, don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. A stitch in time saves striking while the iron’s hot.

GRAZIA: That sure is a lot of clichés. But why make it about sex?

SAO: Well firstly, ever since I was about 13 I’ve always felt this strong urge to procreate. But I never used to understand the power girls like me have until recently.

Let me tell you a story. I once knew a guy who could barely look at me, and found five-minute conversations with me a chore. One night we had sex five times. Sure, we broke up the next day, our one-month anniversary, but the sex certainly improved things. So I suppose you can say it’s about sex, because I found out that sex makes me popular. “If you want to get ahead, you have to give-a head”, as my Italian grandfather used to say!

GRAZIA: There’s around 40,000 sex blogs already, and 3000 involve students. What makes yours better?

SAO: I go to Oxford. Sex here is very different to sex anywhere else; I've lost count of the number of times I've been on top, and accidentally blurted out a view as to the potential horizontal effect of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights since the Lisbon Treaty. Of course, this probably happens to girls at all universities, but their arguments are rarely as well-referenced.

GRAZIA: You seem to have a few followers now. Would you recommend sex-blogging to others in your position?

SAO: From a free-market economic perspective, certainly. I mean, if you accept the assumption that all rational beings will want to maximise their economic potential, then to have sex gratuitously, without at least opening up the opportunity of a lucrative media deal is patently inefficient – wasteful, if you will.

We wouldn’t accept it in business. We wouldn’t accept it in government. Why should I accept it in my vagina?

GRAZIA: What are your future plans? Are you currently working on other projects?

SAO: I'm working on my first novel, about an everyday Oxford-educated sex blogger who gets recruited by the CIA for some sexy reason. It'll be called either "Licensed to Shag" or "Shag to Kill", I haven't decided yet. Maybe "Licensed to Shag: Shag to Kill".

It's still very much in the planning stages, but it'll definitely be a Choose Your Own Adventure, because no-one's written a good one of them in ages. I'm a firm believer that there's no book that can't be improved with a Choose Your Own Adventure format. Even with my favourite books - The Complete Works of Shakespeare, A Child Called It - I just feel, I need more choice!

GRAZIA: Do you have anything else to add?

SAO: Erm... if you're ever in the area, do go see Amsterdam, as the doubledicking there is something really quite sumptuous. Oh, and to my parents: I owe you everything.

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Well, that's it! I think I came out quite well, though they did edit out the bit in the middle where I listed every man I'd ever slept with with names, addresses, dates of birth, penis size and a rating on a twenty-point scale. I'll post that up here later.

5 comments:

  1. As an oxford student you should know what national mourning is. Pretty classy, bitch :)

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  2. Not sure Anon there quite grasped the concept of this blog...

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  3. Anon - I'm afraid I don't! I'm more of an R'n'B fan.

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  4. Nice interview and a wonderful sense of humor. 2 thumbs up!

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  5. hey..graduated? left the scene? Sex in Oxford never happens now?
    O

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