The Guinea Pig Diaries by A. J. Jacobs Read Free Book Online Page A

haven’t bought all his books yet. I was just trying to impress upon him that I was serious about his work. He writes back: “ Thanks for your honestyin attempting to guess what your manipulative and self-protective motive must have been .”
    Blanton lives in a house he built himself, perched on a hill in the town of Stanley, Virginia, population 1,331. We’re sitting on white chairs in a room with enormous windows and a crackling fireplace. He’s swirling a glass of Maker’s Mark bourbon and water and telling me why it’s important to live with no lies.
    “You’ll have really bad times, you’ll have really great times, but you’ll contribute to other people because you haven’t been dancing on eggshells your whole fucking life. It’s a better life.”
    “Do you think it’s ever okay to lie?” I ask.
    “I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie. . . . I lie to any government official.” (Blanton’s politics are just this side of Noam Chomsky’s.) “I lie to the IRS. I always take more deductions than are justified. I lie in golf. And in poker.”
    Blanton adjusts his crotch. I expected him to be a bully. Or maybe a New Age huckster with a bead necklace who sits cross-legged on the floor. He’s neither. He’s a former Texan with a big belly and a big laugh and a big voice. He’s got a bushy head of gray hair and a twang that makes his
bye
sound like
bah
. He calls himself “white trash with a Ph.D.” If you mixed DNA from Lyndon Johnson and Ken Kesey, and threw in the nonannoying parts of Dr. Phil, you might get Blanton.
    He ran for Congress twice, with the novel promise that he’d be an honest politician. In 2004, he got a surprising 25 percent of the vote in his Virginia district as an independent. In 2006, the Democrats considered endorsing him but got skittish about his weeklong workshops, which involve a day of total nudity. Theyalso weren’t crazy that he’s been married five times (currently to a Swedish flight attendant twenty-six years his junior). He ran again but withdrew when it became clear he was going to be crushed.
    My interview with Blanton is unlike any other I’ve had in fifteen years as a writer. Usually, there’s a fair amount of butt kissing and diplomacy. You approach the controversial stuff on tippy toes (the way Barbara Walters once asked Richard Gere about that
terrible, terrible
rumor). With Blanton, I can say anything that pops into my mind. In fact, it would be rude not to say it. I’d be insulting his life’s work. It’s my first taste of Radical Honesty, and it’s liberating and exhilarating.
    When Blanton rambles on about President Bush, I say, “You know, I stopped listening about a minute ago.”
    “Thanks for telling me,” he says.
    I tell him, “You look older than you do in the author photo for your book,” and when he veers too far into therapyspeak, I say, “That just sounds like gobbledygook.”
    “Thanks,” he replies. “That’s fine.”
    Blanton has a temper—he threatened to “beat the shit” out of a newspaper editor during the campaign—but it hasn’t flared tonight. The closest he comes to attacking me is when he says I am self-indulgent and
Esquire
is pretentious. Both true.
    Blanton pours himself another bourbon and water. He’s got a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek, and when he spits into the fireplace, the flames crackle louder.
    “My boss says you sound like a dick,” I say.
    “Tell your boss he’s a dick,” he says.
    “I’m glad you picked your nose just now,” I say. “Because it was funny and disgusting, and it’ll make a good detail for the piece.”
    “That’s fine. I’ll pick my ass in a minute.” Then he unleasheshis deep Texan laugh: heh, heh, heh. (He also burps and farts throughout our conversation; he believes the one-cheek sneak is “a little deceitful.”)
    No topic is off-limits. “I’ve slept with more than