I first saw her in the pages of MaximumRocknRoll, in an ad for a Suckdog video. She was squatting over a catbox. Compared with all the record ads with photos of shaved-headed dudes screaming into mics or photos of starving Ethiopian children, it actually seemed different and cool. It was 1990, and my first thought was, Well fuck yeah. She recently published a memoir, Drugs Are Nice.

One of the best qualities of Drugs Are Nice is that you're able to relate nearly your entire life story without once looking back at anything with a jaundiced, jaded eye. If you had to pick, which year of your life has been your favorite so far, and why?

My favorite year is when I was 19, because of all the things I did for the first time: got married, lived in Europe, became a prostitute, and continued to write and perform weird, dirty operas and bizarre record reviews. It was not a happy year at all though. I recall being suicidal for much of it. I had a lot, a lot, of energy. That's not good for the soul. It's good for looking back at decades later.

Artistically, do you consider Suckdog to be more in the realm of art or music? (Is such a classification possible?) Did you have any inkling, at age 17 in the VFW when you and your friend spontaneously "formed" the band, that it would evolve to become something real, something notorious?

I guess I think of art more as painting. I think of Suckdog as a cultural experiment more than music or art. A cultural experiment and a bunch of fucked up people turning their issues into rhyming, choreographed performances, further mutated by whatever interaction we were able to elicit from different audiences (who became part of the show). Yes I completely had an inkling at 17 that what we did that night at the VFW would become something real and notorious. It felt inevitable. I was a pretty complete failure at real life, and poured all my energy into the one we were creating. It was bound to be good! Or very bad. Anyway, yes--notorious.

Onto becoming a "grownup" of sorts: What has becoming a mother done to change your philosophies, your artistic drive? Would you encourage your daughter to move to France at age 18?

Becoming a mother really calmed me down, because it satisfied this big injustice hole I had in me, a twisted up anger or something. I was able to treat my kids respectfully and keep them relatively safe. It made me feel better about the universe, and I didn't need to re-enact my own childhood in onstage psychodramas and personal relationships full of abuse and suffocation and just plain meanness. If my daughter moved to France at 19 with an old, crazy Frenchman instead of going to college, I would not think that was bad. She can decide the course of her life in whichever directions she likes. I only hope she doesn't NOT decide, and let "the way things are done" decide for her. She is very willful and I can't imagine that -- apathy -- ever happening with her.

I also can't imagine her making the same choices I made. She's not haunted like I was. I was even haunted as a little girl. She's happy and healthy and kind and imaginative. Her brother is disabled and I think that helped to give her extra empathy. Perhaps she'll be a therapist.

The portion of DAN devoted to your relationship with Boyd Rice is fascinating and disturbing (and as I was reading it I actually found myself turning the pages and thinking "Oh God, is she going to make it out okay?," which, duh, of course you ultimately did). Do you think you're still drawn to "bad" men?

I'm not drawn to bad men at all. I never was. I hated that Boyd littered and every instance of him being unfair or unkind. What drew me to him is still, unfortunately, what draws me to men: how damaged he was, and intelligent, and the circuitous ways he got around all the big, pulsing deficits inside him. Because I understand people like that, and I don't understand the straight-ahead, healthy, logical, easy people. I don't want to give the impression that I think healthy people are not complicated or interesting enough. They are! I just don't understand them and am intimidated by them and imagine they wouldn't like me.

You've written for Nerve about your own sex life, so I hope I'm not being too presumptuous by asking this, but: Are there really any attractive swingers in the state of New Hampshire?

Hahahahaha! Yes, there really are attractive swingers in the state of New Hampshire!

Speaking of sex, and sexual politics...do you think there's anything shocking anymore? What was the last thing you saw that shocked you?

Was anything ever shocking? I just heard that anal sex is "so two years ago." What is in right now, I wonder? Do you know? I never found any sex practices shocking -- only intriguing or repulsive. Or both. The last time I was shocked was when I got fisted for the first time by surprise a couple months ago. That was disturbing! The time before that was several years ago when I was made to "squirt." I think shock is overrated in the bedroom!

As the creator of Rollerderby, one of the best-known zines, what's your take on new media, especially blogs? Do you think they have the same DIY ethic?

The tendency to complain in blogs is unfortunate. Blogs are not cultural as zines were. There does not seem to be the reaching out ...only the reaching in, and not so far in. Bloggers know they're mainly writing for a few friends, to be known, to get things off their chest, to be agreed with. They aren't scouting for lost and lonely souls across the country in the same way zines were. But my view of them is probably bitter, as they killed something precious to me.

Are there any that you read regularly?

I regularly read blogs of all the gals who flirt with my boyfriend on MySpace!

What about music? What are you listening to lately?

I listen to The Soundtrack of our Lives and Otis Redding and Hank Williams and Bob Dylan and Cat Power. Really anything sad.

So, as a memoirist, how are you feeling about the "outing," as it were, of JT LeRoy and James Frey and Nasdijj as big' ol fakers? Is it even possible to write an entirely nonfiction memoir?

To answer this question, I will reprint some blog fighting between my first boyfriend, Andrew Smith (ages 16 -- 18) and me (My screen name is Drugs Are Nice):

Posted by andrew on Monday, January 30, 2006 at 11:34 AM
The Frey thing is hilarious, at least Lisa admitted she's a liar well before publishing a couple books of stupid lies:

"PCP: How did you get into writing?
Lisa: I started writing when I was five. I had a diary and I just kept on going.
PCP: And it turned into a magazine. Why did you start doing that?
Lisa: You know, I've been asked this question and I've given several answers and they've all been lies. I really don't know.
PCP: Go ahead and lie about it!
Lisa: I've already told all of the lies I could tell!"

And in case anyone missed it the first time around, she says so again in the most recent book:
"We wanted to change the world! Using real names, real details, was my little contribution to the revolution ... So far only the male style has been considered legitimate--all that fact-checked, logical and chronological, uninterrupted procession of thought..."

So there it is; "real" info, free of fact-checking, logic, chronology or even thought, straight from a self-appointed scene spokeshole. What's to stop Holocaust revisionists or anyone else from doing the same?

Posted by Drugs Are Nice on Monday, January 30, 2006 at 12:32 PM
If you're in love with the truth, you're going to be always suspicious of yourself, of everything you believe and remember. At least I am. How could I think I know how and why I started writing? I keep discovering new motivations, some of which discount what I previously believed. What's to make me think what I KNOW now I KNOW?

My point, which you destroyed with your ellipses, was that the historically male style is CONSIDERED legitimate and true because certain facts agreed upon as being the important ones are checked. But the classic novel exploits the lives of the people close to the novelist without giving them credit. I don't believe a memoir could NOT exploit the lives of the people close to the memoirist too, but I believe the intentions are generally more to paint them correctly rather than use them and their experiences as plot devices. The stuff Frey got in trouble for is saying he'd been in prison for a long time when he was not, and what he was in there for. I don't have any difficulty keeping those kind of things straight and would never lie for effect in that manner. It's what different things and people have meant to me, why I was drawn to them, how they influenced me and others -- that's what mutates as my perspective changes. I really wouldn't like someone whose perspective did not change, though I could certainly count on them to be exactly the same at 40 as they were at 18, ANDREW!

[Ed note: Hehehe.]

Finally, I'll ask you the same question I asked Mykel Board. GG Allin: Genius or overrated asshole? Was he nicer than one would suspect? Was his whole persona bullshit? Was his behavior a mask for his social anxiety, or was he simply the freest man alive?

I don't know that GG was either a genius or an overrated asshole. I think he was a very uncomfortable, very driven man. I think he occupies an important stairwell in people's psyche. Perhaps he was a martyr. His persona was not bullshit, but I don't believe GG was free, either. He was addicted to various things, and was the most obvious case of post-traumatic stress I've ever seen in my life, and there are many indications he was a (mostly) in the closet homosexual. He didn't seem very in control of himself. I think he was all around pretty tortured and trapped, and he thrashed against it. I feel bad for him, for his life. But he did crank out some killer tunes. He was an interesting painter/drawer as well. He always cranked out a lot of product, his entire fucked-up life. I relate to him in a lot of ways. But I don't think he was a nice man, no. He could be nice on occasion, definitely. Who couldn't?

Keep up with Lisa on her MySpace page. Maybe she's even coming to your town!