Today, a happily married Kerner is relatively free from premature-ejaculation problems; in fact, he has taken the pressure off his penis completely. Armed with a doctorate in clinical sexology, Kerner has devoted his life to the study and practice of good sex. And awkward as it may sound, Kerner credits his success at home and at work to cunnilingus. Going down helped Ian Kerner get back on top.

But Kerner isn’t keeping his sex tips to himself. In an effort to educate men and women about female sexual response, Kerner has written “She Comes First: The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pleasuring a Woman.”

You know those big illustrated charts that hang on the wall of the gynecologist’s examination room, the ones with the detailed cross-section of women’s sexual anatomy? “She Comes First” is like the audio track to those charts, as narrated by an everymanish Tom Hanks type. This straightforward guide to cunnilingus explains everything from odor to orgasms with earnest, educated wit. And while the vulva-savvy woman may already know that “the female orgasm is a complicated affair … requiring persistent stimulation, concentration, and relaxation,” there are few men that wouldn’t benefit from the female-centric philosophy and techniques that Kerner advocates.

Kerner hopes that “She Comes First” will lead to the “next sexual revolution” and pave the way for a sexual world where cunnilingus is not considered foreplay, but recognized as “coreplay” that eventually culminates in orgasm. For all its earnestness, the book lacks the fire to ignite a true revolution, but it certainly provides a blueprint for a new model of female-centric sexual play.

Salon met with Kerner at a cozy teahouse in New York, where a flash rainstorm fortunately drowned out much of our conversation — at least to the ears of the curious patrons seated nearby.

How do you think readers will react to the fact that you’re male? Have you gotten a lot of “What do you know about the female orgasm?”

There is really a lack of understanding in female sexual response in this culture, and a greater understanding of male sexual response. My perspective is that female sexuality is just as understandable, and can be navigated just as consistently, as male sexuality — if we choose to.

How would you suggest that men “get to know” women — their bodies, their sexuality?

We can learn a lot simply from learning about and practicing techniques. I’m trying to educate men about the female sexual anatomy and how to attune themselves more effectively to female sexual response. It’s amazing to me that even with all the scientific biological knowledge about female sexual anatomy that we have today, we are still having the clitoral vs. vaginal orgasm debate. That really stems back to the legacy of Freud and his interest in vanquishing the clitoris in order to promote his own theories and ideas about sexuality, which really ran counter to a lot of the biological information we had at that time. That legacy is somewhat firmly ensconced in our culture even in light of the sexual revolution, even in light of feminist sexual understanding.

Sure, but no matter how much a man educates himself or learns techniques, he can never really understand what a female orgasm actually feels like. What kind of research is the book based on?

The book is based on three dimensions: the first is my own personal experience — my own personal battles with sexual dysfunction and my own desire to understand female sexual response. So that dimension is rather subjective, because in the end I’m just one person, one man. The second dimension is based on my clinical work with couples to help them resolve sexual issues in their relationship. The third level was the research that I did, which included a lot of primary surveys, interviewing people frankly and honestly about their sexual experiences, desires and attitudes. I talked to about a hundred people.

I read that you’re happily married. Did your wife play a role in the book?

My wife is a wonderful woman, and she has been a bastion of enthusiasm and support.

OK, but not everyone has a husband who is a sexologist, especially one who has written a book about oral sex. How did your wife feel about your research for the book?

I’m a private writer. I like to get everything down on the page before showing it to anybody, even my wife. So I think there probably was some initial shock on her part, as in “Oh boy! This is going to be an interesting ride!” Now that the book is finished, my wife likes to joke that she is going on the book tour with me.

What about the sexual routines at the end? Did your wife have any input? Did you test them on her?

Sure! All of the routines at the end have been put to the test, not just by me and my wife, but by patients, friends, some of the survey participants, and people who read advance copies of the book.

Speaking of those routines, were they your own? How did you come up with them?

The routines explained in the book are based on techniques that have been proven to help a woman consistently experience an orgasm, whether it’s a result of intercourse or different forms of stimulation. Of course, I also rely on my own experience. In addition, I spoke to a lot of women about what works and what doesn’t work for them. That helped me get into the mindset of a woman, which you were asking about earlier.

Did you speak with any lesbians about cunnilingus? Girl-girl sex doesn’t really come up in the book.

No, it doesn’t come up. Frankly, a lot of sex books that are written from a bisexual or lesbian or alternative perspective face the danger that they may alienate the average heterosexual guy or the average heterosexual couple. I was really conscious of bringing my message to mainstream America. There are already books out there, written by women, that deal with cunnilingus: “The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus: How to Go Down on a Woman and Give Her Exquisite Pleasure,” by Violet Blue; “Box Lunch: The Layperson’s Guide to Cunnilingus,” by Diana Cage, coming out later this summer. I am a straight man and I deal clinically with straight couples. I think if this book were written from an alternative viewpoint, it might give men an excuse not to read it or not to take it seriously.

Where do you think men go to get useful information and instruction about sex today?

A lot of men like to read women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Jane for sex advice because they feel that many of the men’s magazines are too glib, too lad-oriented. With Maxim, for example, you often get five or 10 tips that are more funny than practical and truly useful.

Many men get their advice — unfortunately, in my opinion– from porn, which just reinforces a lot of false conceptions about female sexuality. And a lot of information comes from the locker room, which has more to do with myth making and tall tales than reality. From the research I’ve done in this area, women are much more likely to talk to other women about sexuality and sexual techniques — siblings and other family members — whereas men are not.

The Playboy Advisor does have a lot of great sex advice and is written by sex journalists and sexologists.

Sure, but not many people are reading Playboy — much less the Playboy Advisor — anymore.

True.

So what’s filling that “Advisor” role now?

Well, a couple of things. In the spirit of “Sex and the City,” there is in general a spirit of female sexual entitlement, and that is leading to a new generation of female-centric porn, magazines like Sweet Action, organizations like Cake that sponsor female-oriented pleasure parties, the Suicide Girls, so I think there is more of those sorts of things going on that are starting to fill the gap.

For women, sure. But for men?

I think there’s a real void in the market in terms of books. Men often get inhibited and even a little defensive when it comes to sexuality and sex instruction. I’ve had any number of male friends tell me, “I don’t need your book.” But what’s funny is that when I give it to the girlfriends or the wives, all the guys end up stealing it.

I’m in my late 20s, and I’ve got to be honest with you: Guys in my generation are not squeamish about oral sex. In fact, my girlfriends and I have noticed that many men use their willingness to perform cunnilingus almost as a badge of honor, as a virtue.

I think men are much more receptive to giving now than they ever have been. That might have a lot to do with that spirit of female entitlement, and the fact that there’s no shame today in being a feminized guy, a sensitive guy. In general, I think that men really do enjoy pleasuring women — they find it intensely gratifying. They crave feedback and instruction but are often reluctant to ask their partners for it. So I think what you get is a bunch of guys with a whole lot of enthusiasm and energy, which is genuine, but a lack of experience and, especially, a lack of technique. I think if this book were published five or six years ago, there would be even fewer men who would be receptive to it. Today, I’m sure there are a lot of guys who say, Of course she comes first, and of course I want to give and provide pleasure, and of course I’m looking to become a better and more proficient lover. But they don’t really know what they’re doing, and they’re not really comfortable talking about it.

There was one part in the book where you mentioned how people get a lot of false notions of sexuality from porn.

Often in porn movies, when you see a man going down on a woman, his tongue is flicking like a cobra. The characters are obsessed with changes and are constantly morphing into new positions. As a result, there are a lot of men, and couples, who get caught up in the theatricality of positions that are not very conducive to stimulating sexual response. To me, part of the beautiful thing about oral sex is that it is an intensely intimate act where a man can really focus on the process of giving — he can enhance his own arousal while allowing his partner to focus on the act of receiving. Many sexual positions that you see in porn miss the simple elegance of giving and receiving.

Men tend to think that when it comes to cunnilingus, they need to do all the work. I think they would really benefit from allowing women to take the lead, let the woman apply the resistance, the friction and pace that works for her — to adopt a real “less is more” strategy.

Why should the woman come first? Why should that be the primary objective of partner intimacy?

The No. 1 question that the editors of Cosmopolitan magazine receive, year after year, from their female readers is, “What can I do to have an orgasm during intercourse?” I would challenge you to find a man who would ask that same question. Clearly, our model of sexual contentment, which is based on intercourse and enshrines the simultaneous orgasm as the apogee of sexual pleasure, does not vouchsafe female pleasure. That has largely to do with the differences in male and female sexual response. Men heat up quickly and cool down quickly, and women tend to heat up more slowly and cool down more slowly. The average man does not maintain penetrative thrusting for more than two and a half to three minutes and is able to achieve an orgasm, whereas women often require 15 to 17 minutes of persistent clitoral stimulation in order to reach an orgasm. We’re looking at a gap, and that gap unfortunately often becomes a raging abyss.

I think it makes a lot of sense for men to focus on pleasuring the woman first. Also, all women have the innate capacity to experience multiple orgasms, so just because she’s had her first orgasm, potentially via cunnilingus, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a chance for them both to experience the intimacy of intercourse. She comes first, but she can also come again and again.

So basically what you’re saying is that if the man comes first, the likelihood of pleasing the woman is diminished?

I think there are very few men, who, upon having reached their orgasm, will continue to pleasure their woman to her orgasm. And you also have a lot of women who will fake their own orgasms in order to a) not continue with an activity that is not necessarily enjoyable, b) avoid bruising the male ego, and c) understand that criticism can often be destructive to a relationship if not approached and framed properly.

What about women who are able (and prefer) to come through standard intercourse?

I may have written the Cunnilingus Manifesto, but that doesn’t mean I’m proposing a Stalinist purge of the penis! I love my penis as much as the next guy. I’m not anti-intercourse. I’m pro-outercourse. I’m in favor of embracing a model of sexuality that might be less male-centric and more female-centric. I am perfectly comfortable advising men to use their tongues, their hands, sex toys, whatever, to bring women closer to the point of orgasmic inevitability and then potentially transitioning into intercourse. What I am simply against is an uneven playing field in which men are consistently pleasured and women are not.

How did you get to be so vocally female-centric? Have you always felt this way?

Oh, where do I begin… Like a lot of adolescent boys, I wanted to get through all the heavy petting and make the mad rush to experience intercourse, adult sex, “real” sex. Well, I eventually got there, and after a while, I realized that I had a sexual problem and I wasn’t satisfying women. My struggles with premature ejaculation really bruised me and damaged me and led me to feel like a sexual cripple. That led me to want to pleasure women and open myself up to other models of sexual contentment beyond just intercourse. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy going down on women, but I think I thought of it as something that’s optional — not necessarily a must-have, must-do. Through analyzing my own experience, and also through reading and studying human sexuality, I was able to come up with an approach that led me down the path to sexual health and contentment. My own personal shortcomings (pun intended) really led me to become sensitive to female pleasure.

I want men to understand, respect and appreciate female sexuality, which I find awesome and inspiring. The female clitoris has twice as many nerve endings as the male penis, the innate capacity to produce multiple orgasms with no known purpose other than to provide pleasure — you can’t say that about the penis. But I don’t think most men approach female sexuality with that level of understanding or appreciation.

There’s a lot of hype around female ejaculation, but in the book you appear to be pretty annoyed with that discussion. What’s your gripe?

For a lot of people, from a cultural or feminist perspective, what female ejaculation says is that a woman can come like a man. To some extent, we all come from the same embryonic tissue — there are lots of similarities in our sexual anatomy and in the way men and women deal with sexual response. But female ejaculation has never been conclusively linked to physiological pleasure. Research has shown that most women don’t even know whether they’re ejaculating or not. There are female ejaculation sites that enthuse about women spouting a bucket of water across the room. Often, that is just simply a result of bearing down on the pelvis and — well, peeing. Now I want to be clear here: technically, female ejaculation is not urine. It is more similar to a male prostatic fluid. However research has shown that if a woman is consciously trying to ejaculate, that ejaculate is more likely to contain elements of urine than when it’s just happening spontaneously and involuntarily.

In my opinion, one of the beautiful aspects of sexual response is that it allows us to just sort of let go and slip into an involuntary state. When you tell women to focus intensely on ejaculation at the point of orgasm, you’re really introducing a voluntary element to an involuntary process. It can end up diminishing pleasure rather than enhancing it. That’s why I prefer not to dwell on female ejaculation and I urge my readers not to get too hung up on it, either.

Why did you decide to take such a neutral, clinical tone and not spice things or use sexier language that might increase the book’s appeal to men?

The No. 2 reason for divorce in this country is sexual dissatisfaction, and I take that intensely seriously. The philosophy I put forth in the book has true value to me. I’m not trying to turn it into entertainment. The voice in the book is my voice. I use terms like “cunnilingus,” “vulva,” “sexual response.” I had a lot of women say to me, “Why didn’t you just use the word ‘pussy’? It’s a cool, hip, female-centric term.” My response to that is, to you. But I guarantee that to someone else, it’s not.

These aren’t the terms I use in the bedroom, trust me. Then again, the terms I use in the bedroom are probably different from the terms used by your boyfriend or your husband. Everyone experiences sex differently, everyone talks about it differently and everyone gets turned on by different things. Turning people on wasn’t my focus.

I wasn’t setting out to write the great American novel. In the end I was writing a guide that was part philosophical and part practical. I want to change behavior. I want to improve people’s sex lives.

Did your own sex life change with the book or afterward?

I don’t think it did, but my wife says it has. Sometimes she’s like, “Is that in your book? That’s different!” Or, “You’ve got this down better!”

In the book you suggest that men should be willing to go down on their partner as long as it takes to bring her to orgasm, which can be anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. And that’s even before getting to intercourse.

If you’re enjoying yourself and you’re stimulated, I think you should postpone that enjoyment as long as possible. If a guy says it’s too long or it’s boring, either he’s not doing something right or he’s with the wrong person.

We tend to talk a lot about sex ruts and what happens when people are together for too long and the sex becomes boring. But what we don’t focus on is that familiarity also leads to knowing and understanding each other’s sexuality. Clinical studies have shown that women who are married are often able to achieve orgasms much more easily than women who are single or dating. The more committed you are to knowing someone sexually, the more familiar you are and the less time it potentially takes.

I think a lot of people are going to approach the book as the definitive guide to oral sex or the definitive guide to cunnilingus. While I do believe that the tongue is mightier than the sword, it’s not a means unto itself. It’s a means unto an end. A study of female sexuality shows us that women require persistent clitoral stimulation in order to reach orgasm and very often don’t get that stimulation. That’s why so many women are able to achieve orgasm via masturbation and tell themselves, “Well, when I’m with my guy, it’s not about the orgasm. Orgasms are for me and my vibrator.” I’m trying to get people to move outside of the intercourse discourse and embrace a new model of female sexuality that does not exclude male gratification but ensures mutual gratification. That’s why the book is called “She Comes First” and not “Tongue Tips.”

She didn’t always feel this way. Shanker begins “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life” with some of the most significant moments of her “fifteen-year odyssey of self-loathing and self-doubt.” She recounts her dieting debacles (including a fluke armed robbery at a Weight Watchers meeting), embarrassing setbacks (like getting caught devouring the last piece of her college roommate’s birthday cake), and her efforts to figure out the psychological factors that influence her relationship with food. She’s incredibly candid and doesn’t shy away from sex or between-the-sheets body-image worries: “I’d live in fear that the guy lurking down below would suddenly lift his head and scream, ‘Ewww! You’re fat and disgusting! What the hell did I just touch? Is that even a body part that other people have?’”

In early 2002, Shanker hit rock bottom and checked herself into the Duke Diet and Fitness Center, a renowned research center and weight loss treatment clinic in Durham, N.C. For one long, frustrating month, she ate like a monk, exercised like a Olympian, spent almost $10,000 on programs, therapy and travel — yet still only lost two pounds. It was this experience that shaped her current attitude toward fat — and her vow never to diet again. “If we can’t take it off, ” she writes, “then we might as well just take it on.”

Salon met with Shanker at a local bakery (yes, the cappuccinos were full fat) to discuss America’s obsession with obesity and her quest to empower Fat Girls.

Titling the book “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life” is a pretty bold move. Did you have any fear of people being put off by the title?

From the first minute I thought about writing this book, I knew I was going to call it “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life.” I was shocked that title wasn’t already taken by somebody! Part of what I’m trying to do is demystify “fat,” to make it a word about size and not a word about personality. My publisher and I talked about softening it up, putting a subtitle, something like “Your Body’s Great!: The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life,” but we could never decide on the right phrase, and I didn’t really want to go there anyway.

One of the questions I keep getting is: “I’d really like to buy this book for a friend of mine, but I’m afraid I’m going to offend them.” But if that’s the case, then tell them that this is the story of a fat girl named Wendy Shanker, and then they can pretend that they’re reading about me and secretly they can be thinking about themselves.

You open the book by saying, “This book is for you, whether you feel fat or look fat or act fat or none of the above.” Do you think those “none of the above” people will really pick up the book and read it?

OK, 68 percent of the adult female population is wearing a size 12 or larger, so even if I just spoke to women whose doctors would say, “You’re fat and you need to lose weight,” that would be two-thirds of the population. That’d be great, but part of what I think is crazy about body-image dynamics right now is that there are so many skinny girls and average girls who think they’re fat and are looking for answers to some of their fat problems. If you think that you’re physically fat, you’re gonna read this book and say, All right, fine, so I’m fat, big deal. That’s me and I’m happy. And if you’re not, then I hope that you can plug in to it.

Going into the book, did you know exactly what you wanted to do? Did you have a finished product in mind?

I’ve been a columnist for Grace, I’ve written for Mode and other magazines, so I thought I’d string together a bunch of essays and laugh my way to the bank — or not. What I found while I was writing was that I had a lot more to say than I thought I did. It’s really about covering the evolution I’ve made in terms of thinking about my body, particularly over the past couple of years. After I went to the Duke Diet and Fitness Center (which I talk about in the book), I sort of had this epiphany. It felt like that material I’d written before and the way I thought about body image before that just seemed irrelevant. I’ve come to terms with, “OK, here’s my body. It’s fat.” I don’t have to be in love with it, but I certainly have to appreciate it and stop fighting what it wants to be and what it wants to look like.

I checked out the fat-acceptance Web site Big Fat Blog that you mention in your book. Responses to “The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life” were mixed: Some from the Big Fat Bloggers felt that you were ambivalent about “true fat acceptance,” that you sounded “deeply conflicted in [your] own journey to self acceptance,” and that you gave “seemingly contradictory recommendations.”

I think that the fat-acceptance crowd is going to be a lot more critical of this book than the mainstream reading audience. To the regular girl who’s reading Glamour or Marie Claire, the idea that your body can look however it wants to look is a pretty radical notion. To the Big Fat Blog audience, it’s offensive that you would think any other way. This book might be a little too gentle for a group that already feels empowered and already feels politicized about size issues. So I’m not surprised that they’re going to be tough on me. I anticipated it and am very interested in hearing it.

As you were writing the book, did you ever reach a point when you were like, who is my target audience here? Am I talking to the kind of woman who is willing to wear the control-top pantyhose and the girdle, or am I talking to the ones, like those at BFB, who want to just let it all hang out?

At first I was really torn, I wanted to be everything to everybody. I remember sitting in my living room with little index cards that said things like “Fat and Happy,” “Fat and Concerned,” “Fat and Fit,” “Fat and Wondering,” and thinking, Who am I writing for? At some point I realized that this really does have to come from my experience. People will either agree or disagree. The trickiest part of writing this book was to talk about that ambivalence and to talk about that complexity. I really did not want to write, “I’m fat and happy and I love my body!” because the truth is, I don’t. Some days I do, and other days I’m like ugh! I’m like anybody. That’s really what I’m trying to get at here.

Having worked in TV and magazines, do you feel conflicted that the same system that perpetuates unrealistic images of women (or children, or men, or homes, or lifestyles, for that matter) is the same system from which you derive professional fulfillment? The same system that helps you pay the rent?

Yes, definitely. But my goal has always been, well what can I do from inside the system to get that alternative voice out there. How can I be subtly subversive? One of the delightful things about working at TRL on MTV was that my underlying ambition was to get girls on TV that didn’t all look stick figures. If we’re going to show girls dancing at the MTV Beach House, let’s also show girls who aren’t wearing bikinis, who are wearing T-shirts and shorts. Let’s show girls in the audience of different ethnicities; let’s show girls speaking in a humorous voice instead of just “Ohhh, I love Justin!”

Entertainment is so intense. It’s really hard to knock on the outside and say, “Put a fat girl in a movie!” It’s a lot easier to do that from the inside.

How do you feel about America’s newly declared “war on obesity”?

I think it’s terrible. The U.S. Surgeon General recently said that the threat of obesity in the United States is worse than the threat of terrorism. I guess that makes me Osama bin Larden. That’s ridiculous! What I put in my mouth will not destroy lives in America. I was supposed to be on CNN last week, and they bumped me because hostages were taken in Iraq. I was like, Well, CNN doesn’t think that my fat ass is more important than terrorism, so why does the U.S. Surgeon General think so?

What would be the ultimate reward for writing this book?

Let’s see … I guess one of the greatest outcomes would be Brad Pitt hooking up with a fat girl in a movie in the steamiest sex scene ever and everybody saying, “Wow, that was hottest thing I’ve ever seen!” That would be symptomatic of this book having an effect.

The other best thing has already happened. I got a letter from a woman who said, “I’ve felt weird and freakish my whole life. I just read your book, and I want to thank you for being you, and for being a Fat Girl.” I thought: OK, I’m done. I’m going to cancel on Salon, I’m going to cancel on CNN, I’m going to stop selling the book, because this one woman in Brooklyn said this, and that just totally does it for me.

So we focused on the most prominent casualties and, for them, a prescription: Five black cups of coffee, a pack of Marlboro Reds and a new team of stylists to keep this from ever happening again.

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Cut to Monday night’s episode of “The Restaurant”: Abruzzese was caught arguing with Chef Tony, giving away free margaritas while working (underage, illegally) behind the bar, and generally annoying everyone around him. Even Rocco’s good-natured mama cautioned Abruzzese to stay out of her son’s way. Finally, after Rocco overheard Abruzzese refer to him as “Captain Douchebag” on the phone, Drew the Intern was sent packing.

Salon caught up with the University of Delaware junior on his cellphone this weekend as he drove through his hometown of New Hope, Pa. He had just returned from doing a little shopping in preparation for an appearance on “Access Hollywood” later this week.

How exactly do you know Jeffrey Chodorow?

Jeffrey is a neighbor of ours. His main house in Pennsylvania is about a mile away from my parents. Jeffrey is a regular at my dad’s restaurant, the Pineville Tavern [in Pineville, Pa.]. They became friends, although not incredibly close.

How did you manage to turn that into such a high-profile internship?

NBC needed another person to be on the show who didn’t mind the cameras. All the people who work for Jeffrey are corporate chefs, corporate consultants; they were there to do a job and were not concerned with entertainment. Jeffrey came into the restaurant for dinner one night with his family. He said, if I can ever do anything for you, if you want to get involved with the TV show, just let me know, because producers are breathing down my neck to bring someone in who doesn’t mind the camera situation. He asked me right then and there [to be on the show]. I dismissed it initially: I’m in school. I’m busy. But when I went home and told my dad, he said, “You call Jeffrey right away and say, ‘Absolutely!’” Once my father gave me the OK to pursue it, I was pretty proactive. My school felt comfortable calling it an internship because it was very connected to my major, hotel-restaurant institutional management.

You’re only 20 years old. Can you explain what you meant when you said, “I’ve worked in the business for 15 years”?

A lot of people take that out of context. Does that mean that in those 15 years I’ve gained as much experience as someone like Georges Perrier [of Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia]? No. When I say I’ve been in the business for 15 years, I don’t mean I’ve been sweating over a hot stove, but I really have spent the last 15 years of my life trying to get as much restaurant experience as I can. I’ve worked at my parents’ restaurants [the Pineville Tavern and the Moonlight Restaurant in New Hope, Pa.], doing whatever I could to help out, since I was 5 years old, as well as at a lot of charity events and catering.

What made you decide to be so aggressive?

I was there to sit around and learn, and to give feedback at the same time. If I saw somebody doing something wrong, I wondered, should I say something? Should I do something? I was very unclear on what I was supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, I tried to get more involved than everyone wanted me to be.

Did you have any idea of how you would be portrayed on the show?

From what I understand, they make me look really, really bad. Whatever. I’m really not that bad. I might seem a little cocky at times, but under no circumstances am I a monster.

Were you ever told how to behave?

There was no coaching involved, no scripting. I’m not an actor. I was doing this because it was a chance for me to get my name out there and to hang with the top people in the business. You can’t regret an experience, positive or negative, when you’ve learned something from it.

And what did you learn from this experience?

Don’t insult the boss. Don’t call the boss names. I shouldn’t have ever said what I said. I would apologize to Rocco if I could.

Yeah, what were you thinking when you called Rocco “Captain Douchebag”?

What was I thinking? I was thinking he was a douchebag!

I had a lot of problems with Rocco. I could tell when I first shook his hand that he didn’t like me. He insulted me and called me names over the phone, so instead of making a scene in the restaurant, I just simply called him a name. Maybe it wasn’t the right time, the right place, the right person or the right name, but it turned the entire show around.

Is it a little weird to become a TV reality show character, to go from being Drew Abruzzese to being “Drew, the intern from hell”?

Oh god. The first day I was reading all that stuff, I was freaking out. I was like, what are they doing? They’re making me out to be a jerk-off! But now my name is in every major newspaper in the U.S. I’m like, I’ll be as bad as you want me to be. If I knew all I had to do was be a dick, I would’ve done that five years ago, because now I’m getting all this publicity.

Jeffrey called me yesterday and was a little upset. He feels bad about how they were making me look. I was like, who cares? Let’s just have fun. A year from now, who’s really going to remember this anyway?