ANON
Just for the record, I have never even seen a photograph of Frita Black. I do not represent her. I do not know her. We never slept together. Weren't in law school together. Nothing like that. But I understand her problem. What could she do once the District Attorney said that the Scottsboro Boys did it? What could she say?
BLIEDEN
You keep, now just to refresh people the Scottsboro Boys is a quaint term from your history that someone will look up.
ANON
The Scottsboro boys were I believe 7 young back 70 years ago approximately who had been falsely accused of rape.
BLIEDEN
So you're using that to refer to the Durham boys.
ANON
Yeah it went on forever and people in the local political subdivision naturally believed they were guilty because the established forces of law and order said they were and what do the poor citizens know?
BLIEDEN
So okay, so I interrupted you. So you've never met, never even seen Frita Black.
ANON
I've never even seen a photograph of Frita Black and I've not been in any contact with her even psychically. But what could she do once the charges were made? This is during the American political election campaign. What could she say? No they're innocent? Imagine the effect that would have on women, black women black males who have daughters to say that the white Scottsboro Boys were not guilty. She couldn't say that. She was trapped.
BLIEDEN
What did she say. Do you know?
ANON
I don't know. But she certainly was not getting a lot of press attention coming forward to say "Mike Nifong is the biggest blankety blank blank thing short of the Klu Klux Klan. And he's lying." I have no idea about the...
BLIEDEN
You're her advisor now. What do you say to her in private.
ANON
Keep your mouth shut. This guy will be disbarred for life and he'll be put under the jail because the District Attorneys. The other District Attorneys, not just in North Carolina, because I heard about this. I'm not psychic. I heard about this from a South Carolinian within days of it being a public matter. I was told what probably happened because that person wasn't psychic either. I'll tell you this. This is what we do know. When every other District Attorney in your state comes forward and says "So and so has to go," there is something wrong. I don't....
BLIEDEN
Did they say that about Nifong?
ANON
Yes. In effect. There are ways of doing this. They did not form a lynch mob. They did not go to his home and wake him up in the middle of the night and say, "Mike, see this rope?" They didn't do it that way. They did it. They acted under the law. That's what he wasn't doing. They acted through the law. Let me tell you.
BLIEDEN
So let me just go back, because I want to keep running this simulation. That's all you'd say. Nifong is holding a press conference and you say to Frita Black "Don't do anything. Lose this campaign for District Attorney."
ANON
No I don't say that because then she'd fire me if I said "lose this campaign." But what I would say is this. "You cannot go at a time of this kind of fever and say that the charges made by this young black woman may not be true. They'll hang you. So you have to keep your mouth shut and ride this out. Watch while your opponent is hanging himself. When your opponent is in the process of cutting his own throat, don't kibitz." That's what I'd say because I am not an idealistic young person who thinks that the truth will definitely out. I'm just someone who thinks the truth might out under the right set of circumstances.
BLIEDEN
Let's get back to Norman Mailer. We've left off there.
ANON
Mhmm. I was a kid, but I was also...I was thinking about politics. I was a kid like I'd love to believe that you guys are now because I remember how great it was to be a kid. I remember when my number one mission in life was getting laid.
BLIEDEN
One of the first and most memorable conversations I had with you was...you and I were sitting around the table with another friend of ours. And somehow we got on the subject of...ah....[the sound of writing is heard] of sexual partners. You know we were playing that, oh not the number?
ANON
Yeah, um...
BLIEDEN
Well let me just say....I'm not gonna say the number.
ANON
The truth is that no one who has been in politics, let's take someone who you've heard of...
BLIEDEN
Wait wait. Before you do this, let me just say what I'm going to say.
ANON
Right.
BLIEDEN
You had a high number.
ANON
Right.
BLIEDEN
I have a low number. Mine was 10. Hold on, hold on hold on. Your number was remarkably high and...so high that I went back and I did the math and found that numerically it was totally possible if, let's assume, and it was the sixties and seventies...
ANON
Right.
BLIEDEN
Let's assume you had sex with someone once a month, you could achieve your number over the course of an adult lifetime. Very easily. And let's say you had a great month and you had two or three sexual encounters you'd be way ahead. You know that...if you just had two partners a month that would put you over your number. And let's make it clear, you weren't claiming Wilt Chamberlain numbers.
ANON
No no no no.
BLIEDEN
No where in that realm.
ANON
No no no. It's just that the truth is, I don't know the number. That's the real truth. And I never kept score but I know that given there were 365 days a year and that we're talking about approximately four decades that the number could have been much, much higher. And I have no...not I have no illegitimate children so far as I know. I have no illegitimate children period. Full stop. I don't.
BLIEDEN
Never married.
ANON
I've never been married. So the only thing that I would have to be shy about is that if I were to be so silly as to think that I would run for high office. That's never going to happen. Thank god for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, what may or may not be mild and remitting multiple sclerosis, and what were two slight strokes. Every day I think about them I say "Thanks Fellas." Because of that, I don't have to be part of the nonsense of the public culture any more.
BLIEDEN
But yet you still have you're...you still have...certain issues that you're very protective about. That you're very private about.
ANON
I...no, I mean not compared to a normal person. Not compared to a normal person. No no.
BLIEDEN
In your life, we all have places where our privacy comes from. My lack of privacy comes from, as someone once said, "oh yeah you get off on being honest about yourself." And it was a fair dig and I think they're right. I do get off on being honest about myself. And so my lack of privacy comes from that place. In your life, with the privacy that you do have, where does that come from.
ANON
Well, I had not thought about it very seriously but I'll tell you what I think off the top of my head. In doing that I should give political advice to the audience. You can do everything that you do now in your life. You can smoke a little dope. You can borrow money from rich friends. You can lend money to poor friends. You can get laid. You can do everything that everybody else does except never think out loud again.
BLIEDEN
As your political career developed and you were one of those political advisors who would work for, not...I don't want to say whomever was hiring you but you'd work for both sides.
ANON
No Nazis no Communists.
BLIEDEN
Okay. No Nazis no Communists. But you once used an image to describe your political leanings. I said okay maybe you'll work for both sides but what are your actual political beliefs.
ANON
I've been left and I've been right, and believe me both are hollow. If you go to the Getty you will see a false Chiros. It was faked it was made in our lifetimes. It's supposed to be approximately an 8th Century B.C. If I'm wrong by a few hundred years that's probably normal. The point is not the sculpture. The point is that they were on the tops of the cliffs and the Vandals gave them a shove.
BLIEDEN
When the Vandals invaded Greece?
ANON
Yeah. As they generally moved down. Invaded is probably too strong a word. As they generally moved South they gave these statuary a shove. That's why we have them today. It is as a result of Vandalism that we have them because they rolled down the hills, and they landed in the silt. And it's that roll down the hill that is anyone's political life. Your ears get lopped off. Your balls get lopped off. Your fingers get lopped off. Your toes get lopped off. Anything that sticks out, like your ideology gets rubbed off in that roll down the hill. So I am a chiros. I am an image of a man, but all of the rough edges have been rubbed off by those constant rolls down the hill. It would be as if the Vandals had gone and collected me from the silt, dragged me back up the hill, and rolled me down again and again and again and again.