Author, book doctor, raker of muck

David Henry Sterry

Category: Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rentboys

Largehearted Boy Playlist: Songs for Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys

Book Notes – David Henry Sterry (“Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys”)

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys collects stories, poems, and essays by sex workers. Compiled by David Henry Sterry and RJ Martin, Jr., the book organizes this collection of refreshingly genuine and brutally honest writings by category (love, life, money, etc.).

The New York Times wrote of the book:

“From the unappealing title, you might think this is a truly trashy paperback. Far from it: it’s an eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe. Their writing is, in most cases, unpolished, unpretentious and riveting — but don’t worry, their tales are also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.”

David Henry Sterry reads tonight in New York at the Museum of Sex at 7 with Xaviera Hollander.

In his own words, here is David Henry Sterry’s Book Notes music playlist for his book, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex:

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys took me six years to write. Which is odd when you consider I didn’t actually write it. It’s an anthology I put together with my partner in crime RJ Martin, Jr. They are 71 writers in this book, and the only thing they all have in common is that they made money in the sex business. They are from the creamy top and shitty bottom of the economic food chain, and everywhere in between. $2500 an hour escorts, $100 rent boys, and $10 crack hos are bedfellows in our book. Trust me, it’s just as strange as it sounds to wrangle 71 industrial sex technicians. A bit like herding cats in heat. With many of the same drawbacks and benefits. Ironically, this book full of hos was an act of pure love. After we paid everyone, we actually lost money. And it was such a stupidly difficult book to put together. We were inundated with submissions from industrial sex technicians all over the world. From Xavier Hollander, the happy hooker; to Dr. Annie Sprinkle, Post Modernists Porn Priestess; to Georgina Spelvin, legendary star of the greatest movie with sex in it ever made, the Devil in Miss Jones. And lots of work-a-day, meat and potatoes, working stiffs. Frankly, most of the writing was atrocious. Actually, that was the only other thing these people have to have in common. Their writing had to be good. But a big huge chunk of it came in handwritten scrawls. We had to transcribe and edit all that. Add the fact that it took us years of constant failure and rejection, from huge publishing houses, C-list agents, university presses, publishing houses that specialize in exactly this kind of book, even publishers so small that when you call them, someone picks up the phone and says, “Hello, this is Joe’s Publishing, I’m Joe, talk to me.” This book changed my life profoundly, from Hollywood calling, to prostitution abolitionists and decriminalizationists both calling for my head on a pike. But while I was making it, I often felt like Sisyphus, pushing that big huge rock up that big huge mountain for what seemed like eternity. Agony, ecstasy, exhilaration, exhaustipation, and finally a sense of intense satisfaction. And with me every step of the way was the thing that has always soothed my savage beast: music. These are songs I turned to a lot when I put this together. I also accumulated a long list of songs about industrial sex technicians, which I’m including.

1. “Just a Gigolo/I. Ain’t Got Nobody,” Louis Prima

People forget what a musical genius Louis Prima was. Yes, of course he had that big huge voice and personality, he was in some ways a buffoon, in the best sense, lovable and over the top. But it was he who put these two songs together. And in doing so he captured something of the essence of what it’s like to be in the sex business. It has a huge beat, it’s boisterous and it’s massive amounts of fun. There’s that wild call’n’response section at the end, where Louis seems to be having so much fun improvising that he actually runs out of breath. But underneath is a terrible melancholy. There will come a day, when youth will pass away, what will they say about me? When the end comes I know, they’ll say just a gigolo, life goes on without me. Cuz I ain’t got nobody. Having lived for so long with all the stories sex workers sent me, a theme seemed to run through the whole thing. Yes, you often have a crazy, fun loving posse, but there is a feeling of not fitting into the world. Of not having anyone. Or rather, there’s a good chance the people you do have may well be gone tomorrow, or are only there because of the money you can generate from them, or the sex they want from you. So many people have secret lives. But when you are an industrial sex technician, it is accentuated, the tension tightened, the stakes higher. I always felt like I was too straight for the freaks, and too freaky for the straights. This dichotomy of dark and light is brilliantly captured in this song. Plus it’s great to both sing along to, and dance to. Btw, I think the David Lee Roth version sucks. It has absolutely no soul, and none of the sweet melancholy I’m talking about.

2. “Louise,” by Paul Siebel

This is a haunting song about a sex working woman who gets killed. It’s terribly sad and poignant. Louise rode home on the mail train, somewhere to the south I heard them say. Too bad it ended so ugly. Too bad she had to go that way. But the wind is blowing cold tonight. So goodnight, Louise, goodnight. There’s so much violence in the world of sex 4 $. In our anthology is a beautiful piece by Dr. Annie Sprinkles about a vigil she started to honor those killed by the Green River Killer, who said he murdered so many prostitutes because he knew he could get away with it, that no one would care. When I myself was in that world I fell madly in love with a woman/child named Jade. I was insanely in love with her. She was either 15 or 40, depending upon when you looked at her. She was a very very high end teenage call girl. We had the same employment counselor/pimp: Sunny. I myself was slightly untethered from reality at this point in my life, and I used to have these crazy fantasies of us getting out of Hollywood and moving to the Galapagos Islands or somewhere and making beautiful little biracial babies together. One day I got a call from Sunny. Jade was dead. Killed at the hands of the trick. There two versions of this song that I love. They’re very different. One is by Bonnie Raitt. Early Bonnie Raitt, so it’s very stripped down and not slickly produced. The other is by Leo Kottke, that 12 string madman virtuoso, with that heavy heavy baritone. And an exquisite slide guitar solo that just hugs at the strings of my heart, which is usually at that point on my sleeve.

3. “Sex Machine,” by the hardest working man in show business, James Brown.

Plowing through all those stories, I frequently fatigued. This song always makes my drawing click save go to sleep glands squirt. This track drips testosterone. The guitar hook, the beat, the funk, it’s all so good. Plus, when I used to be in the Life myself, I thought of myself when I was on the Job as a machine. A sex machine.

4. “Cocaine,” by Rev. Gary Davis

The recording I have was done when the good Rev. was about 150 years old, so he has this amazing old bluesman rasp, and his incredible finger picking style is very percussive but also has a lilting melodious quality to it. There’s so many drugs in this book. I was a cocaine addict. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds. I haven’t had any cocaine about 10 years. Not that I wouldn’t, if you were sitting here and you offered it to me. I just don’t go out of my way to look for it anymore. But this song, and the raw quality of the recording, always helped me get back in touch with the dragon that must be fed, the monkey clinging to the back, the 600 pound gorilla in the room of every addict.

5. “Lady Marmalade,” written by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan

I happen to enjoy both versions, the original Patti LaBelle (produced by New Orleans legends Allen Toussaint), and Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mya & Pink, from the Moulin Rouge Boz Lerman soundtrack. Depending if I’m feeling modern or old school. “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?” For those of you who don’t speak French, the loose translation is: Do you want to f*ck me tonight? What could be more appropriate for a whole book about the intersection of f**king and money. Sexy, fierce, majestic, and throbbing with pussy power, this song just puts a smile on my face, my body starts dancing, and it shakes my brain free.

6. “Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed

That double bass lines which dominate this song feel so slinky and sexual and subversive, no matter how many times I hear it. And that hardcore yet effortless singsongy thing that Lou Reed does feels so much like the underground world of sex 4 $. And of course that absolutely prescient, transcendent line: But she never lost her head, even when she was giving head. Words to live by for anyone, but especially for industrial sex technicians.

7. “YMCA,” written by Jacques Morali, Victor Willis, Henri Belolo, and made famous of course by the one, the only Village People.

There are lots of rent boys and male hustlers in this book, and this song and its campiness, plus it’s cockeyed optimism and sense of funfunfun made it a constant companion throughout the writing of this book. And it’s actually mentioned in one of my favorite stories in the book by fantastic writer, Perry Brass.

Here are the songs about sex workers I’ve accumulated over the years.

TOP 25

“Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody,” Louis Prima
“Love for Sale,” Noel Coward & Billie Holiday
“Louise,” Bonnie Raitt/Leo Kottke
“Christmas Card from a Hooker,” Tom Waits
“Walk On the Wild Side,” Lou Reed
“Lola,” The Kinks
“Ten Cents a Dance,” Ruth Etting
“Gotta Get a Gimmick” from Gypsy
“Lady Marmalade,” Patti Labelle
“I’m a Mighty Tight Woman,” Sippie Wallace
“Tecumseh Valley,” Patty Griffin
“Dance Hall Girls,” Candye Kane
“Cracked Actor,” David Bowie
“Private Dancer,” Tina Turner
“Call Me,” Blondie
“She Works Hard for the Money,” Donna Summer
“St. Teresa,” Joan Osborne
“Money Talk,” Pretenders
“Darling Nikki,” Prince
“Streetwalking Blues,” Memphis Minnie
“House of the Rising Sun,” Animals
“She Want to Sell my Monkey,” Tampa Red
“Hustlin Blues,” Ma Rainey
“Red House,” Jimi Hendrix
“Roxanne,” Police

THE REST

“Hustlin Woman Blues,” Memphis Minnie
“The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore,” PJ Harvey
“Prettiest Whore,” East River Pipe
“Skin Deep,” The Stranglers
“She Sells Sanctuary,” The Cult
“Sell Your Love,” Iggy Pop
“Down on the Street & Little Doll,” the Stooges
“Take it off The E-String,” Put It on The G-String
“Acapulco Goldie,” Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
“Make That Money,” Robi Rob’s Club World
“Angel is a Centerfold,” J.Geils Band
“Women got my Money,” Rusted Root
“Fancy,” by Bobbie Gentry
“No Diggity,” Black Street
“Take It Off,” The Andrew Sisters
“Chelsea Girls,” Velvet Underground
“La Grange,” ZZ Top
“Ladies,” Jethro Tull
“Back Street Girl,” Led Zeppelin
“You Got to Give Me Some of it,” Buddy Moss.
“That Stuff you Sell Aint No Good,” Walter Davis.
“Eight Hour Woman,” Edith Johnson
“Tricks Ain’t Walkin’ No More,” Lucille Bogan
“Down in the Alley,” Memphis Minnie
“Good Girl Blues,” Memphis Minnie
“You Can’t Give it Away,” Memphis Minnie
“Girls, Girls, Girls,” by Motley Crue
“Teenage Prostitute,” Frank Zappa
“I’m Your Late Night Evening Prostitute,” Tom Waits
“Femme Fatale,” Velvet Underground
“S&M Airlines,” NOFX
“Sweet Painted Lady,” Elton John & Bernie Taupin
“Ballad of Chasey Lane,” The Bloodhound Gang
“Bad Girls,” Donna Summer
“High School Hooker,” Forgotten Rebels
“He’s a Whore,” Cheap Trick
“Teenage Whore,” Hole
“53rd and 3rd,” the Ramones
“Hustler,” Boss Hog
“Jennifer Jason Leigh,” J Church
“Pasties and a G-string,” Tom Waits
“Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves,” Cher
“Jennie Lee,” Jan and Dean
“When the Sun Goes Down,” Arctic Monkeys
“What Do You Do For Money Honey?,” AC/DC
“Pro Girl,” Janis Ian
“Mexican Blackbird,” ZZ Top
“Lady Of The Night,” Isaac Hayes
“P.I.M.P. The S.I.M.P,” Rick James
“Cosmic Slop,” Funkadelic
“Flores Nocturnas,” Silvio Rodríguez
“Trash A-Go-Go,” Funkadelic,
“Perfect Gentleman,” Wyclef Jean
“Best Little Whore House,” Dolly Parton
“Barcelona,” Sinceros
“Whores,” Jane’s Addiction
“Prostitute Flange,” Lil Wayne
“Jezebel,” Sade
“Hooker,” Pink
“The Love I Fake,” Chris Robley
“He’s a Whore,” Cheap Trick
“Midnight Caller,” Badfinger
“Wild Thing,” Tone Loc
“XXX,” Helium
“Concrete Angels,” Martina McBride
“You’Z a Ho,” Ludacris
“Strutter,” KISS
“Fancy,” Bobbi Gentry
“Taylor,” Jack Johnson

David Henry Sterry and Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex links:

the author’s website
the author’s Wikipedia entry
the book’s website

Bust review
California Literary Review review
New York Times review
New York Press review
Publishers Weekly
The Rumpus review
Scribes Sounding Off review
Tiger Beatdown review
Whore Madonna review

Express Night Out interview with the author
Lee Bob Black interview with contributor Melissa Petro
San Francisco Chronicle interview with the author
Tonic interview with contributor Candye Kane

also at Largehearted Boy:

How Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys Ended Up in Bed with TV’s Friends Co-Creator

This story starts when I was 17, alone in Hollywood with $27 in the pocket of my nuthugging elephantbells.  I had just arrived to begin my collegiate career at Immaculate Heart College, where I planned to study existential under a bunch of radical nuns.  That night, while admiring Marilyn Monroe’s handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, I was approached by a very charming man wearing a shirt emblazoned with the word: SEXY.  He invited me back to his place for steak.  Turned out to be the most expensive steak of my life.  The steak was drugged .  SEXY raped me.  I escaped with my life.  But the happy-go-lucky lad who breezed into that apartment died in that room.  SEXY killed him.  I sprinted out of there broken and bleeding.  Within the week I was in the sex business.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I was suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.  The part of my brain responsible for emotion was engorged, and the part responsible for communication shriveled.  I was a living breathing fully-loaded semi-automatic weapon just looking for an excuse to go off.  So given my economic situation, (making minimum-wage frying chicken), my alienation from my parents, and my newly acquired mental illness, it seemed absolutely like my best option.  I was in the sex business for nine months.  One human gestation period.  But it changed me forever, and in ways I wasn’t even aware of for years to come.  Certainly I had great times in that world, and made gigantic money for a person my age and with my work experience.  But I also downloaded the sexual trauma I encountered in that world, and it infected me like a virus.

I became a sex addict and a cocaine addict.  Which is not nearly as much fun as it sounds.  In my mid 30s I realized that if I didn’t change I was going to die, or my penis was going to fall off.  I’m not sure which scared me more.  I knew I had to find a panic mechanic.  Fast.  Since I was living back in Los Angeles, naturally I found a hypnotherapist.  She gave me some tools to stop my sick twisted behavior, and helped me unraveled the huge gnarly knots inside myself.  I was a professional screenwriter at the time, so she suggested I write about my experiences.  Thus was born my memoir Chicken.  Writing down the most miserable things that ever happened to me helped me understand why I became a man child rent boy.  It helped me embrace my inner ho.  See myself as the survivor not the victim.  Accept responsibility and not blame everyone else.  Appreciate the good and not obsess about the bad.  Do things that made me happy and healthy instead of miserable than sick.

When that book came out it changed my life and I was so grateful I was overwhelmed by a fierce desire to help somebody.  Be of service.  So I decided to start a writing program for people who’d been arrested for prostitution.  For two years every Tuesday me and my ex-literary agent/current wife would go down into a basement of a nonprofit organization and run a writing group.  The hos, hookers, call girls and rent boys we worked with wrote shocking, funny, smart, mind-blowing, jaw-dropping stories.  And they always left the workshop in a better mood than they arrived.  As did we.  Part of my mission became to put a human face on these people who are glorified and stigmatized, worshiped and reviled, spat upon and paid outrageous sums of money.  Thus was born the anthology, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Boys.

One of the great things about sex workers is that they are amazing networkers.  They pretty much have to be.  So I put out the word that I was looking for writing by people in the sex business.  Me and my partner Richard Martin were flooded with submissions.  I was already the author of a bunch of books by then so I started shopping the anthology.  I showed it to my agents.  Not interested.  I showed it to other agents.  Even less interested.  I showed it to publishers I knew at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Random House, and lots of the big boys of publishing.  They laughed at me.  Or ignored me.  On to the small publishers.  Nothing.  University presses seemed like the next logical choice, since this is really a piece of American oral history.  No pun intended..  I actually got the head guy at Duke University on the phone.  He told me in a disdainful, dismissive, condescending, adenoidal and freezing cold tone that this was certainly not the kind of book published by Duke University.  He told me they preferred material that was much less vulgar, rude, crude and illiterate.  Finally I approached places like Joe’s Publishing Co., where you call the number listed on the website and a guy answers, “Hi I’m Joe, can I publish your book?”  Even Joe turned me down.

After a year my partner Richard was ready to give up.  I was furious.  I knew I had something valuable.  Even though “experts” from the top to the bottom of the food chain told me that I was a deluded, moronic ex-ho.  Objectively, in the face of universal rejection, I should’ve quit.  I did not.  Me and Richard worked our asses off to make the proposal better, refining, buffing and polishing.  Then I came up with the title.  I did it with this game that we use to come up with titles.  You get a bunch of your intelligent friends, if you have any, you get a bunch of drugs and alcohol, and you write down every single word you can think of related to your subject.  Then you just start mixing and matching.  That’s how I came up with Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Boys.  And I kept asking every single person I knew, wherever I went.  Finally I got connected to a guy named Richard Nash, who ran Soft Skull Press. A week later we had a book deal.  They gave us such a tiny advance that by the time we ended up paying all the writers, me and Richard lost money on the deal.  But we were ecstatic.

We were even more ecstatic when our Little Ho Book That Could, the redheaded step-child nobody wanted, ended up on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. I happened to be in Hollywood doing my Sex Worker Literati show to promote the book, when I got a call from my agent.  Marta Kauffman, co-creator of Friends, wanted to talk to me about the anthology.  I was excited yet slightly confused.  Why was someone in the center of American culture interested in our book, which was so rooted in America’s dark, dank, filthy underbelly? I tried to imagine a show about a group of perky, attractive, funny, fresh-faced BFF-sex workers trying to deal with life, love and turning tricks.  Sure, I thought, why not?  As I drove up to our meeting, I was expecting much Hollywood slickness.  But Marta was just like people I worked with in the theater for 20 years.  After we had our getting-to-know-you chat she told me how taken she was by Hos, Hookers.  How she had a vision of the characters and stories being brought to life as a modern dance piece, realized by some breathtaking choreographers.  Would I be interested in something like?

My eyes popped while jaw dropped.  I would’ve never imagined this scenario in million years.  But I liked it.  Sex is, after all, the ultimate primal dance.  And when sex is exchanged for money, a window opens into the human soul.  What a great way to let people to take a peek.

Yes, I said.  Yes.

Writing down the worst thing that ever happened to me was the final piece of my odyssey from out-of-control self-destruction, working at Chippendales, acting on Fresh Prince of Bel Air, writing screenplay for Disney, living in a fancy house in the hills; to getting my head cracked open, almost dying from a massive coke overdose, having my house stolen, and going bankrupt; to making Ross, Rachel, Joey and Chandler end up in the same sentence as Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Boys.

David Henry Sterry is the author, with Richard Martin, of the anthology Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys.  He runs the monthly reading series Sex Worker Literati, giving voice to sex workers telling their stories about the exchange of sex for money, at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC. The next show is November 28, 2010. https://davidhenrysterry.pairsite.com/ http://www.facebook.com/sexworkerliterati

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rentboys Gets Rave in Sunday NY Times Book Review

hos cover JPEGNew York Times review has hit the streets for Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money & Sex, I am ecstatic about this truly min boggling turn of events and want to thank the amazing contributors and everyone who helped w/ special shout out to my boy RJ Martin who partnered w/ me on this labor of life which has given birth to such a flourishing child. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/books/review/Bentley-t.html?em

“An eye-opening, astonishing, honest and funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe… Unpretentious and riveting, their tales are also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.” Toni Brantley, NY Times

Lots of Amazing Reviews for Ho’s Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money & Sex

HO’S, HOOKERS, CALL GIRLS & RENT BOYS:
PROFESSIONALS WRITING ON LIFE, LOVE, MONEY & SEX
AVAILABLE ONLINE & AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE

The miracle is manifest.  The anthology has hit the streets.  Half a decade in the making, this love’s labor, the product of so much blood, sweat, tears and other assorted body fluids, has finally traveled down the birth canal, and has been delivered by an able-bodied team of midwives, editors, dulas, copy editors, birth coaches, art directors and sweaty worried nerve-wracked family and relatives.  Below please find information about the website and events.  Many thanks to all involved.  We are very proud of this book.

HosHookersSmash Review on cover of Sunday New York Time Book Review.

“An eye-opening, astonishing, honest and funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe… Unpretentious and riveting, their tales are also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.” Toni Brantley, NY Times

REVIEW FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“The sprawling project, grouped loosely by topic (Life, Love, Money, Sex, etc.), offers insight into seemingly all aspects of the sex trade: high-profile celebrities like Xaviera “Happy Hooker” Hollander and Nina Hartley make notable contributors, but it’s the unknown writers who will stick. The selections from the book’s closing section alone, written by members of Sterry’s San Francisco writer’s workshop for sex workers, range from triumphant to harrowing… Aside from exposing the complex web of relationships among phone sex operators, dancers, massage parlor workers, prostitutes and their customers, the book is heavy with raw emotions ranging from celebratory to shameful, giving sociologists plenty to ponder. It’s not all dark and heavy: Sterry’s own account of his experience as a birthday present for an 82-year-old grandmother is touching and sentimental; veteran performer Annie Sprinkle is characteristically blunt, funny and honest… This volume houses some real gems.”

Hos, Hookers, Callgirls, and Rentboys is a collection of short memoirs, whore war stories, confessions, nightmares, journalism and poetry.  It contains new writing from sex worker literati: art-porn priestess Dr. Annie Sprinkle; the infamous Happy Hooker, Xaviera Hollander; author and LGBT activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore; star of The Devil in Miss Jones, Georgina Spelvin; best-selling memoirist David Henry Sterry and sex educator/movie star Nina Hartley. But it also includes crack hos, male hustlers, pimps and the teenagers they exploit.  Funny, terrifying, tragic and inspiring, this collection of oral history, short memoirs, war stories, confessions, nightmares, social criticism and poetry is unprecedented because it includes people from all walks of the sex for money world.

From back-alley Tenderloin massage parlors, to glittering Beverly Hills hotels, to Times Square porn palaces, to the meanest streets in Harlem, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys is a collage of sex and money, shining light on this hidden underbelly of America, from sea to shining sea.

NY Press – 8/11/09

“The prose in this volume is fresh and the tales are both heart-rending and hilarious, sometimes simultaneously… What’s most striking about the volume is how relevant these intimate and detailed chronicles are for any reader, whether they’ve sold their bodies or just their souls. It’s not just about sex.”

Tiger Beatdown 8/26/09

“Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys is an extremely valuable and necessary book, not because it tells you what your perspective ought to be, but because it provides more perspectives than pretty much any other book on the topic… hilarious… Sexy and sunny pieces (the sunniest, actually, often come from Sterry himself) coexist with downright harrowing narratives; sex workers who choose the work freely and love doing it are represented, as are sex workers who were forced to do the work and suffered immensely. The book is free of any agenda but a commitment to giving voice to sex workers.”

The Rumpus 8/26/09

“In addition to being porn stars and prostitutes, many of these people are talented writers with strong voices and precise observations. They’re natural born storytellers who manage to encapsulate an aspect of their experiences in wonderfully succinct (Sebastian Horsley: “Brothels make possible encounters of extreme intimacy without the intervention of personality.”) and stark, unsentimental ways (Brenda: “I have been arrested eight times for prostitution. It messed up my life.”)

Daily Beast – 9/12/09

“The book never feels like a naïve glamorization of the industry. ‘Ultimately, the stories in Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys are all about money, says Sterry. ‘In our culture, happiness means money, a big house, and an expensive car. So when I, as a 17 year old, could make $100 by pleasing an 82-year old woman, that to me was a great American success.’

Style – 9/15/09 

“Taboo, clever, wrenching and compulsively readable, you’ll be stripped of your stereotypes between the covers of this book.”

Antalffy Tibor honlapja 9/27/09

“Rögtön a hívás után a fejemben megjelent egy szörnyű kép: egy ráncos, löttyedt, aszott nagymama átlátszó hálóingben közvetlenül előttem áll, és az én szegény, picurka péniszem egy élettelen, használhatatlan, húsdarab ott lógott a lábaim között, és a pénzt vissza kellett adnom, miközben szégyenemben el akartam bújni a szőnyeg alá, mert a nemi szervem brutális cserbenhagyása megszégyenítő volt. És ez a kép egészen addig nem múlt el, amíg az előkelő Swank Swish szálloda megadott ajtaján be nem kopogtam.”

Revista Fuscia

“Hace poco me encontré un libro realmente sorprendente, que trata de historias de profesionales del sexo. Se llama Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, en español sería Putas, prostitutas y muchachos para arrendar. Se podría argumentar que para qué pierde uno el tiempo leyendo libros basura, pero la verdad es que desde el punto de vista de las relaciones humanas, es un texto muy interesante, a veces brutalmente honesto, pero también con sentido de humor.”

Acik Radyo

“Kitabın adı  Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, And Rent Boys, Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex. Yani Kevaşeler, Orospular, Telekızlar ve Kiralık Oğlanlar, Profesyoneller Hayat, Aşk, Para ve Seks Üzerine Yazıyor. Yepyeni bir kitap bu, temmuz ayında Amerika’da Soft Skull Press tarafından yayımlanmış. Kitabın elimize geçiş hikâyesi ayrı ilginç. Mahallenin Fahriye Ablası’nın bir kıyağı bize diyelim teferruata girmeden ve hemen kitaba dönelim.”

Bust 10/06/09

“The first hand accounts, interviews, and poems featured in this book are so well written and organized, that the fact that they all center around the exchanging of sex for money falls into the background, and what’s left is an intimate offering of on-the-job gossip and late night horror stories that have you wanting to spend more time with the writer than the three or four pages a pop you’re given with each one.”

SF Weekly – 7/25/09 “This kaleidoscopic portrait of sex work in America is all the more striking for its breadth.”

Book Marks 11/30/09

“Sassy, sexy and certainly informed essays by sex workers. the oral histories by hos and hookers that conclude this collection – funny and tragic, matter-of fact and terrifying – give the book its authentic heft.”

NoPornNorthampton 11/17/09

“This fascinating anthology of personal essays by current and former sex workers gives readers a glimpse into the complex emotions of those who make a living selling intimacy… Fascinating, moving and darkly funny… humor, tenderness, pain, and aggression… unexpectedly sweet… it’s a great read.”

The Skinny 11/23/09

“From the big screen to the street, phone sex to stripping, and incalls to escorting… they’ve experienced sex work as an empowered choice, as a living hell, as a drug-fuelled necessity. They cover migration, burnout, criminalisation, violence, keeping secrets, coming out to family, and interactions with clients and colleagues.  It delves deep and illustrate the complexities of the writers’ experiences. Alternately eye-opening, funny, moving, and devastating, this book should be required reading for those who still think any kind of sex worker is ‘representative’.”

Womanist Musings 11/24/09

“The book unflinchingly represents the voices of survivors of pimping, rape, abuse, thrust upon those who are forced into the sex industry.  Editor David Henry Sterry has successfully etched out a safe space for these survivors’ sharp, sensitive prose… In a reading that brought down the house at Busboys and Poets, Sterry’s rendition of “I Was a Birthday Present for an Eighty-Two-Year-Old Grandmother” was both incredibly funny and a fascinating anti-ageist commentary on the things we’re all afraid to ask for.  I sat in the audience, enraptured by Sterry’s uncanny vocal impressions and gesticulating… Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys is a must-read for anyone who wants to experience first-hand the voices of contemporary sex workers.”

Meet, Pay, Love

hos hookers cover-500

By TONI BENTLEY

Published: August 20, 2009

Money and sex. Sex and money. Sounds dirty already. Is it the money that makes the sex dirty? Or the sex that makes the money dirty? Or, rather, the puritan strain that says they’re both dirty? How sexy! I mean, how inappropriate! And yet here we are again and again . . . and again. It’s former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York spending $80,000 on escorts, the parents (the parents!) of Senator John Ensign of Nevada distributing $96,000 to their son’s mistress and her family, Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina using taxpayer dollars to visit his South American “soul mate” and the $4 million rock on Kobe Bryant’s wife’s finger after his adulterous mishap. Money to get the sex, and money to make it go away.

If you are thinking this dynamic pairing is only for public figures, just contemplate your own divorce, past, present or future. And yet, still, it is taboo to regard sex and money as inextricably interwoven, to openly speak of them together. Why is sex supposed to be free? It never is. Ask anyone. Like Sebastian Horsley, England’s low-rent Oscar Wilde. “The difference between sex for money and sex for free,” he writes, “is that sex for money always costs a lot less.” Money is the elephant in every bedroom, making your parents’ constant presence look positively bourgeois.

But the connection is seeping into the mainstream. Witness Steven Soderbergh’s recent film, “The Girlfriend Experience,” which is about an expensive call girl and stars the real-life porn star Sasha Grey, and the new HBO series “Hung,” about a nice middle-aged dad who becomes a gigolo. The show, however, plays it safe, making him a financially strapped, reluctant gigolo and not, God forbid, a lusty one. Here, ironically, sex for money is more decent than sex for pleasure.

But if you want to know the real price of pleasure, ask the strippers, streetwalkers, Craigslist prostitutes, phone-sex operators, madams, pimps, drug addicts, porn stars and “performance artists” who offer themselves up in “Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys,” a collection of essays, vignettes, rants and poems, edited by David Henry Sterry (who wrote the very good 2002 memoir “Chicken,” about his life as a young hustler) and R. J. Martin Jr., the director of development for the SAGE Project (Standing Against Global Exploitation) in San Francisco, which offers support of all kinds for sex workers. While good girls require dinner, trips, “commitment” or even an engagement ring for sex, here is a book by those who simply get the cash upfront.

From the unappealing title, you might think this is a truly trashy paperback. Far from it: it’s an eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe. Their writing is, in most cases, unpolished, unpretentious and riveting — but don’t worry, their tales are also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.

There are some well-known names here. Xaviera Hollander informs us that “it’s much harder to be a writer than a hooker,” and the ever-sprightly Annie Sprinkle gives “40 reasons why whores are my ­heroes” and then asks, “Do you have what it takes to be a whore?” Probably not. (Easier to be a writer, I think.) But the joyous glibness displayed by Hollander and Sprinkle is nowhere to be found in the best of the entries.

“Lele,” a piece by Jodi Sh. Doff, who “grew up in the suburbs as someone else entirely,” recalls Henry Miller’s in-your-face exposition. She tells of a night at Diamond Lil’s on Canal Street, where “Viva’s sitting onstage, legs spread wide.” While her customer is buried and busy, she holds a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, and chitchats with a girlfriend about another girlfriend. “Every two minutes or so Viva taps him on the head and he hands her a 20 from a stack of bills he’s holding, never looking up.” We see in this wonderful set piece the whole money/sex connection enacted with raw charm and an immediacy that reaches far beyond this strip club, as the man’s stack of 20s, one by one, becomes hers. Multitasking Viva holds them “folded lengthwise in her cigarette hand.”

Audacia Ray, who now teaches human sexuality at Rutgers University, certainly earned her degree out in the field, having at one point paired up with a woman named Lily as a massage team offering happy endings. “Money got us hot and bothered,” she writes, and one evening, after Lily cashed a disability check from the federal government for $10,000 (she had no bank account, of course), she poured the money — “mostly $20 bills” — onto the bed. They shut off their phones, bathed together, got “very, very high” and then rolled around “naked in the cash. . . . Even now, when I think of the hottest sex we had, I think about currency stuck to her flesh.” Now there’s an image to promote the beneficence of Uncle Sam.

One online dominatrix, Sadie Lune, pooh-poohs all the knowing talk of the “natural power” of a domme making a “proud man” stoop — you know, the lawyer, doctor or judge who wants to clean toilets on a leash. “What we talk about, often off the Internet and out of leather, is the power of money. . . . More often than not the money tops the scene. . . . Money demands slow heavy bondage when all we feel like is smacking a grateful subject around. . . . The biggest trick is really coming to terms with the fact that money is the boss’s boss.” So which is more powerful, money or sex? I forgot.

There’s plenty of useful information in this book for those of you planning a little adultery or prostitution, or even just some old-fashioned phone sex. Lilycat describes the protocol of “Feed Me the Line”: “We couldn’t use any sexually explicit words or phrases till the caller used them first. . . . And strangely enough, getting a very horny man to talk dirty to you isn’t as easy as it seems.” The women were permitted to use medical names for body parts, but “Baby, I would like to do something pleasurable with your penis” was not — surprise, surprise — what the client wanted to hear (though it’s all you’ll get in this review). If the caller refused to talk dirty first, moaning was the fallback, and Lilycat reports the little-known fact that “if you moan for long enough you can become lightheaded and almost pass out” — “so baby, use your dirty, dirty words” and help the lady out.

The most devastating section of the book — its broken heart, its guts on the page — is found in a few horrifying stories that came out of a writing workshop Sterry gave for severely abused young women. For example, Jessica Bertucci writes about her “weekend visit with my dad”: “I begged my mom not to take me but she did anyways. Oh, by the way, my dad raped me when I was 2 years old.” After being blindfolded in a room with her father’s drinking, crack-smoking buddy, she heard her dad “whispering in my ear, ‘Don’t be scared, you’re helping Daddy pay the rent.’ Oh, by the way, I was 9 years old.”

Sterry, as editor, inserts himself considerably more than necessary, introducing many of the writers in such relentlessly lengthy and glowing terms as to patronize them. On the other hand, the actual bios for the contributors make for provocative reading and can leave one feeling like an unadventurous slacker. Berta Avila, “a Chicana from El Segundo Barrio of El Paso,” is now a translator but has been an “exotic dancer, escort service worker, brothel worker, waitress, medical-legal assistant and instructional assistant for elementary-school children.” Zoe Hansen “achieved stability through methadone maintenance and felt it was time to open her own brothel, Sterling Ladies, which was on Park Avenue and 21st Street. It was the first of five brothels she opened during the next three years.” (I’m starting to get a brothel-opening feeling myself.) Carol Queen “got a Ph.D. in sexology so she could impart more realistic detail to her smut.” (Dr. Queen writes about her “oral clairsentience,” but I can’t explain here.) While many, perhaps most, of these writers use pseudonyms, they are everything but anonymous.

Kirk Read tells the magnificent story of Ray, a rich, hairy, middle-aged Texan, who hired Read to be his witness as he methodically enclosed his entire body in numerous “stretchable layers, one upon another.” With the final touches of “gold gloves that reached up past his biceps” and a black spandex hood, “he turned and faced me, holding his hands up into the air like a victorious Mexican wrestler. Humble. Brave.” Very brave, very moving. The scene, in its inherent perversity, has the feel of a crucible, a kind of spandex crucifixion bestowing grace on one who has the courage to go “to the underworld” and find “erotic freedom by any means necessary.” The two men shook hands, the only time they touched, and parted ways, an encounter with more tenderness and dignity than many a marital one.

This collection is a wonderful reminder that good writing is not about knowing words, grammar or Faulkner, but having that rare ability to tell the truth, an ability that education and sophistication often serve to conceal. While we are all, I suppose, in the business of surviving, some really are surviving more notably than others. The collective cry for identity found in this unsentimental compilation will resonate deeply — even, I suspect, with those among us who pretend not to pay for sex.

Toni Bentley danced with New York City Ballet for 10 years and is the author of five books, including “Winter Season: A Dancer’s Journal” and “Sisters of Salome.” She is working on a book about Balanchine’s ballet “Serenade.”

 

 

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