The Self-revealers
Carlson, Tucker
Casual The Self-revealers A couple of years ago, I watched an entire infomercial about toupees. It was late, and I was stranded alone in a motel room, but it wasn’t boredom that kept me tuned...
...All you can do is listen...
...I’m being transferred to the IRS field office here next week...
...It made for compelling television...
...Tucker Carlson...
...It sounds great...
...It was late, and I was stranded alone in a motel room, but it wasn’t boredom that kept me tuned in...
...Then, without warning, he began to compulsively reveal...
...It was the testimonials...
...Please, don’t say it...
...I mean, I cheat on my taxes, but those guys . . . ” It went on like this for half an hour, virtually every sentence revealing something new and embarrassing about the driver’s personal life—how he’d once worked as a hash dealer in India...
...No doubt he felt better afterwards...
...It didn’t make sense...
...He gave me his card, too...
...The worst, he confided, are the politicians...
...Who needs Deep Throat when the guy next to you in line at CVS can’t wait to tell you about every appalling thing he’s ever seen or done...
...The Washington Post broke news of the erectile miracle in a front-page story one Sunday in April...
...And over the years I have: To the woman next to me on the plane who talked for an hour and a half about her husband’s testicular cancer and subsequent nervous breakdown...
...Here’s my card,” he said cheerfully, leaning over the seat...
...They’re just the lowest,” he said...
...I’ll look you up then...
...To the car-service driver who explained how he was committing adultery with his next-door neighbor...
...He said, ‘Why don’t you try her...
...We hadn’t gone a mile before the driver launched into a monologue about all the unsavory people who have ridden in his car over the years: actors, drunken foreign businessmen, people who don’t tip...
...Why go to the trouble and expense of pretending you’re not bald, only to go on television and talk about your fake hair...
...I was doing a story on a topic he knew something about, and before we got down to the point of the call, we chatted for a while...
...He mentioned his wife and children, whom I remembered well...
...A lot of Americans are, I’ve learned...
...how his son, the one with the drug problem, had finally found happiness doing body piercing in Hawaii...
...Last fall, by weird coincidence, I wound up on the phone with a man who had been my soccer coach in the third grade...
...Because, like the infomercial wigwearers, the Parisers can’t help themselves...
...She’s a hooker.’ And I said, ‘Okay, that sounds great.’ So I went to her condominium one night and . . . ” My mouth hung open...
...I was stuck in a dead-end job...
...The girls at the health club used to laugh at me,” one satisfied wig buyer explained to the camera...
...Self-revealers ought to be a reporter’s dream...
...A couple of years ago this banker friend of mine told me about this beautiful girl, absolutely gorgeous...
...Pariser may be exaggerating a bit—Viagra or not, he’s 58 years old—but that’s hardly remarkable given the subject...
...Graphically...
...Don’t say it, I pleaded wordlessly...
...To the hitchhiker I picked up outside Baltimore who informed me that although he’d had some “problems” with schizophrenia in the past, his time in prison seemed to have eased the symptoms...
...But he did...
...Talking to me was a lot easier than going to confession...
...Here’s an interesting story,” he said...
...I can’t stand it...
...And of course to countless tales of addiction, self-help, and recovery...
...It’s hard to know what to say when you’re in the company of a compulsive self-revealer...
...Wait till they see this infomercial, I thought...
...Thanks to Viagra, Alfred told the paper, he and Cheryl are now mating “sometimes two or three times an evening...
...how he himself still smoked pot from time to time, though increasingly he was turning to concentrated ginseng oil for a more natural high...
...By the time we got to the hotel I was exhausted...
...A couple of weeks ago I caught a cab in Los Angeles...
...In each case, a new hairpiece had been the answer...
...Instead I just took his card and thanked him for the insights...
...I was afraid to go shopping...
...Not any more...
...As if to prove it, the Post ran a photo of Pariser cuddling with his wife, Cheryl...
...Give me a call when you come back to town...
...At least for him...
...Just the other day, a cabby spent the entire trip from Capitol Hill to Georgetown reading me selections from his unpublished poetry...
...A half dozen other guys in bad rugs followed with their hard-luck tales of life before hair: “I couldn’t get a date...
...Sure thing, chief...
...In the picture, the Parisers look happy but worn out, and no wonder...
...But it also made me wonder: What was the point...
...Until Viagra...
...It really, really works,” enthused Alfred Pariser, a retired movie executive from Rancho Mirage, Calif...
...What is remarkable is that he and his wife were willing to tell the world about their sex life...
...She’s terrific...
...That’s what I should have said...
...Why did they do it...
...They’re compulsive self-revealers...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 39
