Q 13

PLAYBOY: Describe your idea of the perfect person to marry.

Fran Lebowitz: A very rich dead man. I don't have any wifely skills. I'm not the helpmate type. I'm not interested in being a wife. I'm interested in being an empress.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: Do people get crushes on you?

Fran Lebowitz: Not enough. Some people have them, but usually they're so young I'm not interested. You know, it's really the great trick of life. When people are at their most physically attractive, they're actually at their least sexy. All the pleasures of sex with an adolescent are tactile, but that is not what sex is about to me. Sex is something in your head. It's an attitude. The great pleasures--they're attitudes. Sex itself is a fairly limited act. It's not the thing that really excites people. That's the thing that excites young boys. Other things excite adults.

Knowingness is sexy. The opposite of sexy to me is naïveté. I have no instructive desires. I'm not the kind of person who likes to do her own home repairs. You know, I don't like to assemble things. I like them to come already made.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: We understand you're a hypochondriac. How many doctors do you have?

Fran Lebowitz: Well, fewer than lawyers. I imagine whatever disease is around, I have. Even if I read about a disease and it says, "This disease is present only in 70-year-old Asian men," I feel, Oh! I could be the first white woman to have this disease. Then I go to doctors trying to find one who will tell me, "Yes! You're dying!" It has to be a terminal disease. I'm interested only in terminal illness. I don't fool around.

There are certain ways I think I won't die. Like, I don't think I'm really the type to die in some big accident, like an avalanche. I'm too egomaniacal to die in a mass death. And I won't die in a skiing accident or a camping accident or a plane crash. I'm not that lucky. When I fly, I'm never afraid the plane is going to crash. But there have often been times when I was afraid it wouldn't crash. I was just afraid it was going to circle O'Hare for the rest of my life.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: If the best thing you do is write, what is the second-best thing?

Fran Lebowitz: I'm an excellent talker. I've often said that I'd like to have my own talk show--with no guests. I am also an excellent driver. I am a genius at making banana splits. This comes from a combination of natural ability and the fact that I worked at Carvel through high school.

I was also a belt peddler. I was excellent at that. I was a cabdriver. I was a bartender. And I was a cleaning lady with a small specialty of Venetian blinds.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: In which situations in life are you most helpless?

Fran Lebowitz: Physical encounters. I consider myself to be very weak physically. There's no one in the world I wouldn't think could beat me up. I feel for some odd reason that if some gigantic guy were attacking me, I wouldn't be able to repel him with a sarcastic remark.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: What qualities do you find insurmountably repulsive in humans?

Fran Lebowitz: I'm really against longing. Sometimes, people are just born out of luck. I admire people's trying to get something that's possible for them to have. I don't admire their wanting things that are impossible or inappropriate for them to have. And I feel I should be in charge of deciding what is appropriate and what is inappropriate.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: Describe sex in its lowest form.

Fran Lebowitz: Sex with a model.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: When are you at a loss for words?

Fran Lebowitz: When I'm writing.