James Deen, up for grabs, lady journos! (E!)

Come on, ladies! Fess up ... we would have totally loved to step forward to claim that we were the lucky, anonymous interviewer whom James Deen told Kelly Bourdet from Vice.com on Friday he had sexual relations with. But you know, journalism and ethics and stuff. So we can't lie, we never touched the golden god of pornography's Dirk Diggler. But that doesn't mean you can't!

In an article last week, we posited (after 20 minutes of labor-intensive research) that the most likely candidate was 100 Questions' Gaby Dunn, who wrote up her meeting with Mr. Deen like it was a spin-off of 50 Shades of Grey. But Ms. Dunn responded on Twitter to our post:

Our second suspect was the Vice reporter herself, but she also claimed innocence:

Of course, that still leaves our last candidate, Emily Heist Moss from GoodMenProject.com. Or, jeez, could it possibly be someone from a video interview? Brooke Anderson??! That opens up so many new possibilities! We are looking at you, Inside Edition's Brooke Anderson and Nightline's Cecilia Vega!
http://youtu.be/auYVMxDzIqQ
http://youtu.be/7bxzjEKJJ60

Update: A source just pointed to Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory, who wrote an essay titled "Bringing home a porn star: Sleeping with my favorite male performer gave me new appreciation for the difference between fantasy and reality." It definitely appears that she slept with Mr. Deen: they both live on the West Coast; the description--"smoldering eyes, strong nose and athletic body...He’s a rare male performer who is charismatic, young and handsome — everything the infamous Ron Jeremy is not"--fits; and she wrote about the encounter in March, right around the time the world was getting turned on to his hotness.

But query...does a personal essay qualify as an "interview"? Because that's what Mr. Deen admitted to...sleeping with someone who had interviewed him.

Mr. Deen and not the reporter he slept with.

No, unfortunately it wasn't us. But The Canyon star and pornography icon James Deen has slept with at least one of his interviewers, according to a new Vice.com article.

In "Future Sex: An Interview with James Deen, America's Porn Sweetheart," Daniel Stuckey Kelly Bourdet asked the dreamy Mr. Deen:

Okay, I have one more question for you. Have you ever had sex with someone who interviewed you?

Deen: Yeah, actually I have.

Now comes the fun part where we try to find out who that person is!

Our money is on Gaby Dunn of 100Interviews.com, who definitely had a close encounter with Deen ... at his house:

Later, he reads the Hebrew tattoo I have between my shoulder blades by running his fingers across it through my apparently see-through yellow shirt without warning me. I want to sing the chorus of ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ by the Police.

“Oh my god,” I reply, bringing my notebook up over my face. “Stop. I am trying to just get through this interview.”

and:

He smirks and it’s totally killer. “I looked at your pictures first,” he whispers. I don’t hear him right away and then when I do, I gasp and get tongue-tied. He’s got me again. He laughs, “I am that sleazy. I totally am.”

and:

James shakes his head, “Just for that, now you’re getting finger-blasted,” he threatens, pretending to be tough. “Oh, sure,” I say, because now that we’re joking about it, it’s somehow less likely?

Other possibilities: Amanda Hess for Good Magazine, who also interviewed Mr. Deen at his home (and who quoted Gaby Dunn); Emily Heist Moss from GoodMenProject.com who wrote after meeting him wrote; "I feel strange, like in the last two hours my best hopes and worst fears about pornography have been confirmed"; or Ms. Bourdet herself.

Unlike the short-lived “Last Month on the Internet” column, a sort of collage of found Internet gems, “They’re Famous!” takes Internet personae for its subject matter but otherwise sticks to the conventions of traditional journalism.

As far as Internet correspondents go, Ms. Dunn is practically embedded.

In October, an American Express business blog published an article called “How Gaby Dunn Self-Promoted Her Way to Internet Fame.”

Short answer? By writing a quality blog and having a funny Twitter.

Post-journalism school, flitting between the media gulags and stints on her brother’s couch, Ms. Dunn started a Tumblr called 100 Interviews. It had the self-imposed rules that she must interview 100 different kinds of people in person over the course of one year. Her subjects included a child prodigy, a present or former Guinness Book of World Records record holder, someone who was left at the alter and Stephen Colbert. Number 100, appropriately, was an Internet celebrity.

Some people noticed the blog, including The Village Voice, which named it the Tumblr of 2010, and Times Magazine culture editor Adam Sternbergh.

He wrote to say he was a reader, and Ms. Dunn remembered thinking, “What? Why? You’re a real person, though. You’re a real guy. What are you doing? You have much better things to do.”

Evidently not.

“And he asked if I wanted to get a drink, and we talked, and he said, ‘I want you to write stuff for us’ and I was like, ‘O.K., wow, yes.’”

“They're Famous!” will be edited by front-of-book editor Jon Kelly, she said.

In the first installment, Ms. Dunn profiled Mike O’Brien, host of a web talk show called “7 Minutes in Heaven.” His interviews with celebrities like Patricia Clarkson, Andy Samberg, Hoda Kotb and Elijah Wood take place in a closet and end with a kiss.

Ms. Dunn said that the biggest challenge so far is explaining the magnitude of her subject’s fame to people for whom YouTube hits do not unequivocally confer household name status.

“It’s an alternate universe,” Ms. Dunn said of the Internet. “There are people that are legitimately super famous.”

Like two of her favorite YouTubers: Charlie McDonell, a red-headed Brit who incites “Bieber-level” insanity, and Kingsley Russell, a skinny black college student who critiques pop culture while wearing a fur-lined hunter’s cap.

“His word is gold online,” Ms. Dunn said, “I don’t understand why he doesn’t have a TV show.”

It’s probably only a matter of time.