Moby is the Burt Reynolds of the aughts.Photo: Getty Images
Some time ago, we found ourselves marveling at “Page Six” item about Moby’s relationship with Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman and Moby? we wondered aloud, or you know, on the blog. And she wasn’t the only pretty lady that Moby had defiled with his small pale paws. Come to think of it, we knew of many other New York women whose hearts and beds he had crawled into. How was it possible, we wondered, that this short uncute electronica musician had become a storied playboy? Was his very nerdiness appealing? Happily, writer Lawrence Ferber ran into him recently and asked about it directly: Why do nerds such as himself, you know, get a lot of hot chicks?
Moby thought about it. “Maybe because they feel sorry for us?” he said. “It’s like really killing two birds with one stone. By hooking up with a nerd you get laid, and you’re also doing something altruistic.”
[Not really buying it] So, it’s almost philanthropy?
It is. Yes. Like altruistic philanthropy, so you can wake up in the morning and feel like you’ve done a good deed.
You’re bisexual. Does the nerd thing work on men?
This is something that makes me sad, for the most part men never hit on me. One of the few times a man has hit on me, it was the single strangest pickup line I ever heard. I was in Milwaukee, I had finished a concert and was walking to my tour bus and this nice man came up to me and invited me to come home with him. I told him I was very flattered but had to get on my bus, and his follow-up line was that he used to date Jeffrey Dahmer. As if that was supposed to convince me to not get on my bus and go home with him. To seal the deal he’s like, “I used to date a serial killer.”
Years ago, you said that Eddie Furlong was one of your boy crushes…
I haven’t seen a photo of Eddie in a long time so maybe now he’s morbidly obese and that would compromise my crush enthusiasm. Certainly back in the day he was gorgeous. Current boy crushes … the thing is all my boy crushes have always been really clichéd. The Orlando Bloom–Johnny Depp realm of things. I saw a picture of Hayden Christensen on the cover of Esquire and he’s looking pretty saucy.
But he’s Canadian.
I love Canadians.
And there, we had our answer. It’s not just that women are drawn to nerdiness. It’s that he’s opened up the playing field.
