After I had my knee replacement I got addicted to opioids in about ten minutes. This is how I kicked my addiction. I wrote this as a cautionary tale for anyone with pain. Or anybody prone to addiction.
I Kicked My Opioid Addiction with Marijuana on Daily Beast
60. Today I am 60. Six months ago I was freaking the frick out about turning 60. My grandfather had been dead of black lung disease for decades before he could turn 60. Tupac was dead 35 years before he could reach the big Six Oh. It seemed like most of my life was behind me, that I should be planning my funeral and writing my obituary instead of my next book, shopping for adult diapers and boner medicine instead of buying a new pair of skinny jeans.
I’m a softball addict. The first step is admitting you have a problem. In January a bunch of my softball nutjob friends rent out the soccer dome and start practicing for the upcoming season. We play Friday morning 9 AM. Of course at that hour it’s mostly old retired softball codgers, coots and coffin-dodgers. I took my turn hitting, and as is my wont, I whacked the ball around pretty good. When I finished, a bunch of ancient softball zombies stampeded toward me. Well, more tottered than stampeded – you could hear the metallic hips and knees clicking, clanking and clunking as they got closer. They all wanted to know if there was any chance I was turning 60 this year. I confessed that I was. One after the other the softball geezers tried to make a compelling case for why I should play on their team. They warned me that all the other captains of all the other teams were a bunch of one-foot-in-the-grave asswipe dirtbags. Suddenly I realized. I was the hot spring chicken studmuffin being feverishly recruited for Over-60 softball. Instantly my world changed. Instead of thinking about my funeral I was contemplating how I was going to dominate these old bastards, put my foot on their turkey wattle necks, smash their pacemakers and crush the life out of them. When you’re a softball addict, it gets no better than that.
It dawned on me that apart from wonky knee, my body is in great working order. I weigh the same as I did when I entered college a hundred years ago. I achieve wood without taking a pill. I’m no longer a slave to my penis. It’s now who’s a slave to me. Or rather, we work together with mutual respect and affection. I have a brilliant, lovely, talented, sexy wife, who for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, loves and adores me. I have a brilliant, lovely, talented, hysterically funny, slime-loving, fidget-spinning nine-year-old daughter for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, loves and adores me. But more than that, I feel a calmness, a peace, an enjoyment of life that I’ve never had. I don’t feel like I have to rush around everywhere. I can say No to people who invite me to stupid stuff I don’t want to go to. I have work that feeds my mind and soul. There’s always great food to eat. I have a house with a mancave hooked up to a giant TV where I can watch every movie or TV show ever made.
For reasons still unknown to me, when I was a teenager, I decided I’d like to live to be 120. Suddenly that seemed possible. In which case, I’m only halfway through. Imagine what I could do with my newfound peace and alleged wisdom in the next 60 years. One of my life goals is to be the fastest 100-year-old on the planet. Suddenly that too seemed possible. Yes, in our youth-obsessed culture, sometimes I do feel invisible. But I don’t care anymore. For most of my life I constantly compared myself to others. Naturally, being a rabid PTSD survivor, I always ended up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop. There was always someone smarter, more handsome, more sexy, more accomplished, more successful, just plain better. At 60 I find myself comparing myself to me. Am I the best person I can be? Am I making the world a better place? Am I helping out people less fortunate than myself? Am I being a great dad? A great husband? A great American? A great citizen of the world? But perhaps most importantly, a great softball player.
And that’s why I love turning 60.
David Henry Sterry
Sally and I are hired to act in a Michelob beer commercial. The theme of the spot is evolution. I am cast as a Neanderthal Man. Typecasting.
Four hours I sit while a crew of highly skilled make-up artists glue thin layers of skin-colored latex over my face, transforming me from end of Second-Millennium American Homo Sapien into a caveman: gigantic forehead with a scary hairy monobrow, wee sunken eyes, a flaring nose cauliflowering across my cheeks, thick rubber caveman lips, and huge wooly mammoth-eating fake teeth. I look for a long time in the mirror but I can’t find myself in there anywhere. I feel the strong desire to grunt and snarl and hump someone from behind.
Finally, I am ready for my introduction to Sally. Her handler comes up to me, very serious. “Don’t make eye contact at first. Let her come to you. Get down on her level and don’t make any quick movements. Be very calm and very still. They sense fear. She can jump six feet straight up in the air, and she’s ten times stronger than a human being. Sally’s jaw is so strong she could snap your arm in two like a twig. It’s really important she doesn’t feel any fear coming off you.”
All I can see is my bloody hand dangling out of her mouth.
Sally comes out of her trailer, hand-in-hand with another trainer. I squat down to her level. Avert my eyes. I can feel Sally’s stare as she inches slowly towards me. I’m so scared I have no spit. There’s a small crowd gathering, all quiet tension, waiting to see what Sally will do to David the Neanderthal. Finally she’s right in my face. Since I’m not making eye contact for fear of having my Adam’s apple ripped out, I smell her before I see her. She smells clean, wild, untamed, of the earth. I feel myself calm when I smell her. Slowly, ever slowly, I turn towards her, raising my head like a simian Southern belle, bringing my eyes up to meet hers.
Wise, curious, clever, keen, deep, sharp, smart, mysterious animal passion beams from Sally into me, jolting my soul and rattling my bones. Her face is a picture of puzzlement, brows knitted, head tilted to one side. As she stares into my half-man, half-monkey face, I find I can read her thoughts: “What are you? You’re not one of them, but there’s no way you’re one of me…Really, what are you?”
Sally sniffs me suspiciously, moving her mouth to my jaw. Her hot breath on my lips, I’m trying desperately not to visualize her biting my nose off. Sally brings her lips to my cheek, puckers, and covers my face and lips with tiny sweet little kisses.
I’m overcome, undone, head-over-heels in love with Sally. She puts her arms around my neck and hops into my arms. The crowd oohs and ahs, witness to the start of a great love story.
For the rest of the shoot, whenever Sally sees me, she runs up to me excited as a bride, jumps up in my arms, and covers me with kisses. We cakewalk around the set, handholding, swooning and spooning. I’ve never known a female who was so openly, unabashedly, good-naturedly affectionate. Work laws for actors like Sally are very strict, due to decades of abuse. So we can only show our affection in 12-hour shifts.
In the commercial I, Neanderthal, will be sitting next to Sally, while an actress, playing a waitress, flirts with me. We block the scene without Sally. The actress walks up to me stiffly, just lobbing her line in my general vicinity, like a lazy newsboy tossing an errant morning paper:
“Hey, Good Looking, come here often?”
It’s bad. Bad, bad, bad. The director stops everything, walks over to her all cocksure and says, “I need you to hot it up, honey, make with the goo-goo eyes, like you did in the callback, babe.” She promises she will, and shoots him an obligatory sex-baby look, which evaporates into disdain as soon as the director walks away.
Lights are tweaked. Camera focused. Hair, make-up and wardrobe are fluffed, patted, and tucked. Finally hundreds of highly paid technicians and advertising geeks are ready to make commercial magic.
Sally is brought in, hops up on her stool next to me at the bar, and kisses me on the cheek as I whisper sweet nothings into her ear.
“Scene 4, take 1. Roll camera!”
“Camera rolling. Speed.”
“Sound?”
“Speed!”
“And… Action!”
The actress walks towards us like a nervous hamster at a cat show. Even I can smell her fear. She starts to make very tentative flirty eyes in my direction.
Sally goes bananas, jumps up on the bar, bares her teeth, and hisses, looking like she’s going to rip this poor spooked woman’s heart out, show it to her, then eat it. The actress’ scream curdles blood as she runs wailing and weeping through the set, and out the door.
I thought the advertising geeks should have used that in the commercial, because it said more about evolution than any of the lame shit they came up with. But no, they decide to write the waitress out of the commercial.
Then it’s 6:30 p.m., and we’re way behind schedule. So they send some junior flunky over to Sally’s trainer and he asks if they can get Sally to work overtime, because if they don’t get all her shots, they’re going to have to bring everybody back for another day and go way over budget.
The trainer looks at the mad man like he’s a lunatic and says he seriously doubts Sally will want to work overtime, but he’ll see what he can do.
6:45 PM. The ad geeks huddle, whispering toxically. A much-better dressed executive walks up to the trainer. They’ll pay whatever he wants. Name the price.
The trainer smiles and slowly reminds the executive that Sally’s not particularly financially motivated.
“Well then we’ll give her all the damn bananas she wants,” says the better-dressed executive.
“Well,” explains the trainer patiently, as if he’s talking to a dumb animal, “Sally already gets all the bananas she wants, but I’ll see what I can do.”
6:58 p.m. The best-dressed executive hustles over to the trainer.
“Listen, I don’t care what she wants, we need to get three more shots before she leaves, is that clear?”
You can see the trainer’s about to lose it, wishing to God that he only had to deal with reasonable animals.
But before he could say anything, it’s 7 o’clock, exactly 12 hours after Sally started working. Sally steps up on the bar, and slowly, dramatically, like the consummate performer she is, raises her left arm over her head, and slaps her wrist three times where a watch would be. She jumps down, grabs my hand, and pulls me toward the door. Sally and I proceed through the set and straight out the door, hand-in-hand, a bride and Neanderthal groom heading for our abba dabba honeymoon.
They’re forced to bring everybody back the next day, and Sally is hailed as a hero. When I ask the trainer, he tells me that Sally has an extremely acute sense of time. Because she works so often, she knows exactly when 12 hours are up, and has figured out that by making the sign for time, not only will her day be over, she’ll also make everyone love her and get the Big Laugh. All day, whenever it’s time for a meal, or a break, everyone from actors to Teamsters raise their left hand up over their head, and slap their wrist three times where a watch would be, in silent homage to Sally. Much to the amusement of everyone except the ad geeks, who seem basically jaded and disgusted by pretty much everything except what swanky restaurant they’re going to eat at that night.
As for me, by the end of the shoot I’m madly in love with Sally. But alas, we were from different worlds. As her trailer pulls away a great wave of terrible sadness washes over me and I’m not embarrassed when big silent tears roll down my Neanderthal cheeks. Ours was a love that could never be.
David Henry Sterry is the author of 16 books, a performer, muckraker, educator, activist, and co-founder of The Book Doctors. His first memoir, Chicken Self:-Portrait of a Man for Rent, 10-Year Anniversary Edition, has been translated into 12 languages, and is being made into a movie by the showrunner of Dexter. His book Hos Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys appeared on the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. He has featured on NPR, the London Times, Washington Post, and the Wall St. Journal. He writes for the Huffington Post, Salon, and Rumpus. He can be found at www.davidhenrysterry.com.
Today’s pitch tip: I need to know how the characters change in the course of the story. What happens in your story and how do your characters develop?
That’s not to say we want to know everything. Time and again, we see amateur authors pitch by trying to tell the plot of their entire novel or memoir in excruciating detail. Here’s the kind of thing we’ve heard about a squazillion times: “My main character, Frodo Potter, gets up one morning and decides to have breakfast. So he invites his pet rat Bobo to eat an egg with him. But the egg is slightly runny, so they decide to cook it a little bit more….” This pitch, which we heard a few months ago, might still be going on if we hadn’t emphatically put an end to it. Broad strokes combined with specific imagery should display how exciting your characters and story are. Universal appeal should be implied via the mention of themes rather than an endless recitation of events. And, again, the pitch should be the amuse bouche that gives your audience a tiny, delightful taste of the delicacy that is your writing.
Once you’ve figured out the words, then you’ve got to practice your delivery. Rehearse on your own, then start pitching everybody, everywhere. The more often you pitch, the sooner you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Get feedback. Join The Book Doctors for Pitchapalooza and we’ll critique your pitch. At the end of each Pitchapalooza, we pick a winner who receives an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for their work.
Pitch Tip: Villains We Love to Hate
Pitch Tip: Convince Me They’re Charming and Sexy
Find more pitch tips at thebookdoctors.com and in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published. Watch this short cartoon to find out how NOT to pitch your book.
Telling us that someone’s charming and sexy doesn’t convince me they’re charming and sexy. You have to paint vivid word pictures, just like you do for your villains.
Need examples on how to do that? Read flap copy and, particularly, the backs of paperbacks, where the whole kit and caboodle is limited to a paragraph or two, tops. You’ll see how concise those copywriters had to be, and how they managed to describe a book — and sell it — in only a few sentences. Online bookstores are great resources as well, and they have an added benefit: Because nearly every book is accompanied by flap or back cover copy, you can cut-and-paste phrases you like into a document and then use these phrases to craft your own pitch. Just be sure to study copy that represents the writing style of your book. (And don’t copy copy. There’s a word for that: plagiarism!)
Remember, once you’ve figured out the words, then you’ve got to practice your delivery. Rehearse on your own, then start pitching everybody, everywhere. The more often you pitch, the sooner you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Get feedback. Join The Book Doctors for Pitchapalooza and we’ll critique your pitch. At the end of each Pitchapalooza, we pick a winner who receives an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for their work.
Pitch Tip: Villains We Love to Hate
Pitch Tip: Show How the Characters Change
Find more pitch tips at thebookdoctors.com and in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published. Watch this short cartoon to find out how NOT to pitch your book.
Give us a villain we love to hate. Show us someone unique and dastardly whom we can’t wait to hiss at. It would be great to give tiny little physical descriptors to your main characters. Show us that you’re capable of painting beautiful and realistic tableaux as you make your story world come to life.
Remember, once you’ve figured out the words, then you’ve got to practice your delivery. Rehearse on your own, then start pitching everybody, everywhere. The more often you pitch, the sooner you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. Get feedback. Join The Book Doctors for Pitchapalooza and we’ll critique your pitch. At the end of each Pitchapalooza, we pick a winner who receives an introduction to an agent or publisher appropriate for their work.
Yes, we did use Lord Voldemort as an illustration, but your pitch must be selective about comparable titles and characters. Do not overpromise. Have you called your opus the next Eat, Pray, Love? An even better version of Harry Potter? Early Philip Roth with a dash of Jane Austen? If so, you’ve got trouble. Better to underpromise and overdeliver. As Daniel Greenberg of the The Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency says, “Anytime anyone compares himself to a big bestseller, it’s a big turnoff. While it’s not impossible that there’s a real comparison to be made, it raises my suspicion that the person is overhyping himself.”
Instead, construct a pitch that specifically explains how your book will speak to the audience of those über-authors: “What happens when the repressed male sexuality of Alexander Portnoy meets the strong-minded, spunky joie de vivre of Elizabeth Bennett? Watch the sparks fly in The Shiksa of Herefordshire, a new twist on the old battle of the sexes.”
Pitch Tip: Convince Me They’re Charming and Sexy
Pitch Tip: Show How the Characters Change
Find more pitch tips at thebookdoctors.com and in The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published. Watch this short cartoon to find out how NOT to pitch your book.
Beautiful funny poignant empowering story of when I was a 17 year old manchild idiot sex worker given as a birthday present to an 82 year old. From Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent, my Memoir.
David Henry Sterry with the skinny on the Opera that was World Cup 2014, the greatest World Cup we shall ever see.
It’s the greatest time in history to be a writer. There are more ways to get published than ever before. While it’s great to have so many options, it’s also confusing. But when you break these many different ways down, they sort themselves out into just three primary paths: 1) The Big 5: HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette and Macmillan, 2) Independent presses that ranges in size from the hefty W.W. Norton to the many university presses to the numerous one-person shops. 3) Self-publishing. In our over 35 years experience in the publishing business as agents, writers and book doctors, we have walked down all three paths–and we have the corns, calluses and blisters to prove it. To help you avoid such injuries, we have mapped out the pluses and minuses of these three paths in order to help you get successfully published in today’s crazy Wild West world of books.
1) The Big Five: Since publishing has gone from being a gentleman’s business to being owned, run and operated by corporations, you have a much better chance of getting your book published if you are Snooki from Jersey Shore hawking your new diet manifesto than if you’re an unknown (or even established but not famous) writer who’s written a brilliant work of literary fiction. And since the corporatized publishing world continues to shrink at an alarming rate, there are fewer and fewer slots available, even though the competition is every bit as fierce for those ever-dwindling spots. Add to this the fact that, unless you are related to and/or sleeping with Mister Harper or Mister Collins, you will need to find an agent. Most of the best agents only take on new clients who are at the very top of the cream of the crop. Even new agents who are trying to establish themselves only take on a very small percentage of what they are pitched.
Writers who haven’t been published by The Big 5 assume that once they get a deal with one of these big fish, they’ll be able to sit in their living rooms and wait for their publishers to set up their interviews with Ellen and Colbert. They assume they’ll have a multiple city tour set up for them where thousands of adoring readers will buy their books, ask for their autographs, and shower them with the love and adoration they so richly deserve. We can tell them from hard-won experience that this is absolutely, positively, 100% not the case. Our first book together was with one of the Big 5. We won’t mention their name, and when we’re done with the story you will see why. When we went into our meeting with our publicity team, we were full of grand and fantastic ideas about how to promote and market our book, and were wildly enthusiastic about having a giant corporation that specializes in successfully publishing books behind us. Turns out our “marketing team” consisted of one guy who looked like he was 15 years old, and had 10 books coming out that week, and 10 books coming out the next week, and 10 books coming out the week after that. When we told him our grand and fabulous ideas he said in a cracking voice, “Well, good luck with that.” He did what he does with every book that comes out of this giant publishing corporation (unless of course your name is Stephen King, Bill Clinton or Snooki from Jersey Shore). He sent out a bunch of press releases along with a few copies of our book to all the usual suspects. Our book died on the line.
2) Independent Publishers. These publishers almost always specialize in a certain kind of book. They usually appeal to a niche audience. As opposed to the Big 5, who are generalists, and in theory at least, publish books for everyone. Again, these independent publishers are not owned by big celebrity-obsessed bottom line-driven corporations. That’s not to say they can’t be big companies. Workman, who published our book The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, is one of the most successful publishers in the world. They’ve published everything from What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Bad Cats to the awesome Sandra Boynton oeuvre. But many independent publishers tend to be small, and run and/or driven by individuals who are passionate about the subject which they are publishing. A good number of these publishers are very well respected, and their books can be reviewed in the largest and most prestigious publications in the world. There are many stories of small publishers having gigantic successes. Health Communications, Inc., which published Chicken Soup for the Soul. Naval Institute Press, which published Tom Clancy’s first novel. Bellevue Literary Press, a publisher affiliated with New York University’s school of medicine, which published Tinkers, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Greywolf, Tin House, and McSweeney’s are all small independent publishers who regularly produce beautiful high-end fiction that wins awards and garners great press.
Chances are, you’re going to be the big spring book from your independent publisher. We speak from experience that it is so much better to be the big spring book from a well-respected independent publisher than it is to be book number 2,478 from Penguin Random. Because they’ve got Stephen King, Bill Clinton and Snooki from Jersey Shore to promote.
And the great news is, you don’t have to have an agent when querying most independent publishers. Almost all indies expect writers to submit directly to them. If you go onto their websites, they almost always give you very explicit instructions on how to submit. Do yourself a favor, give it to them exactly how they want it. Even better, try to research the editor at the press who would be best for your book and send your query directly to him/her.
Yes, there are limitations to many independent presses. Most independent publishers have limited resources. Most of them won’t send you on a tour because they don’t have the money, so you will be called upon to do your own book tour and events. That being said, our publisher Workman, sent us on a 25 city tour, which they paid for in its entirety–hotels, airfare, escorts (don’t get the wrong idea, these are book escorts, not industrial pleasure technician escorts). But there’s a good chance you’ll get to work with at least a decent and maybe even a great editor, who will help you shape your book. They will proofread your book. They will copyedit your book. They will design and execute a cover for you. And often times they’re much more flexible about author input than the Big 5.
The other issue with fewer resources is that if, for some reason, you should happen to catch literary lightning in a bottle and your book blows up, an independent press may not be able to capitalize on your book’s success. They may not have the bookers for Ellen and Colbert on their speed-dial. And often they have to do very small print runs, so there’s a good chance your book will sell out of its printing very quickly and there will be no books available. Whereas if you’re with one of the Big 5, and your book blows up, they’ll do a giant print run, and they’ll be making calls to all the big guns.
3) Self-publishing. William Blake. James Joyce. Virginia Woolf. Rudyard Kipling. Edgar Allan Poe. Ezra Pound. Mark Twain. Gertrude Stein. Walt Whitman. Carl Sandburg. Beatrix Potter. What do these authors have in common? All self-published. What a cool group to belong to. The fact is, self-publishing can be a ball. It can launch you into superstardom and turn you into a millionaire (okay, rarely, but just ask EL James, author of the fastest selling book in the history of the universe, Fifty Shades of Grey).
Self-publishing has recently been dubbed independent publishing, not to be confused with independent presses. This is in part because self-publishing has for decades been the ugly duckling/redheaded stepchild of the book business. Janis Jaquith, an NPR commentator and self-published author of <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Birdseed-Cookies-A-Fractured-Memoir/dp/0738849111″ target=”_hplink”>Birdseed Cookies: A Fractured Memoir</a>, says, “When I announced to my writer friends that I was planning to self-publish, you’d have thought I’d just announced that I had syphilis or something. Such shame! Such scandal! I’m glad I didn’t listen to the naysayers, because I’ve had a ball.” The bottom line? This is not your daddy’s self-publishing. The onus of the ugly duckling redheaded stepchild is gone.
“Nowadays, because there is no barrier to publishing, we’re seeing people give up faster on the traditional route. These are people who are writing good books and turning to self-publishing. This means the quality of self-published books has gone up,” says Arsen Kashkashian, head buyer at Boulder Books. More writers are, indeed, seizing on the new technologies and low costs of publishing on their own because try as they may, they cannot break through the gate of the castle that holds agents, editors and publishers.
More than ever, we are talking to writers who are not even going after agents or publishers, because they don’t want to spend years being rejected. People are publishing books on their own because they choose to–because they see opportunities in the market and want a bigger share of the pie than publishers offer; because they want full control of their book; for some, because they just want a relic of their work to share with friends and family. And many writers choose self-publishing because they don’t want to have to wait for the sloooooow publishing machine. If you start looking for an agent or publisher right now, it can take years to find one. Maybe you’ll never find one. Then after you get a book deal, it’s typically going to take between 18 months and two years for your book to come out.
Here are some good reasons to self publish:
1) You have direct access to your audience
2) You want a bigger chunk of the retail dollar of your book
3) You have a time-sensitive book and want to publish fast
4) You want full control of your book inside and out, from your hands to your readers’
5) No matter how much you rewrite and how hard you market yourself, you can’t find anyone to agent or publish your book
6) You’ve written a book that falls outside the bounds of typical publishing–either because of its niche audience, regionality, experimentation of language, category, theme, etc.
7) You really want to publish a book, but you just don’t have the personality to market it to an agent/publisher.
8) You’ve written up your family history or the lifetime of a loved one that will be of great interest to Aunt Coco, Cousin Momo and a handful of other blood relations but no one else
The good news about self-publishing is that you get to do everything you want with your book. The bad news is that you have to do everything. Which means that unless you are a professional proofreader, graphic designer, and layout expert for printed books and e-books, you’re going to have to get someone else to help you. And writers can only edit their books themselves so many times before they lose all objectivity. We highly advise, if you’re going to self-publish, get a trained professional to edit your book.
As with any entrepreneurial project, you can spend between $0.00 to $100,000.00. David bartered with a top-drawer cover designer, proofreader, editor, and specialist who formats printed and e-books. It cost him exactly $0.00 to produce his <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Maniac-David-Henry-Sterry/dp/0985114908″ target=”_hplink”>self-published book</a>. So he started making a profit immediately. As someone who is an instant gratification junkie, it was absolutely fabulous how quickly it all came together. And when that box full of his books showed up at the door, he felt a special kind of life-affirming, rapturous ecstasy.
The good news is that anyone can get published. The bad news is that anyone can get published. So whatever you choose, you have to be the engine that drives the train of your book. And the same principles underlying a successfully published book are remarkably similar.
1) Research. Before you give up any rights or money or agree to work with anyone, make sure you research them thoroughly.
2) Network. Reach out to readers and writers, movers and shakers.
3) Write. Yes, it really helps if you write a great book.
4) Persevere. One of David’s most successful books was rejected over 100 times, by everyone from the top dogs of the Big 5, to some of the greatest literary agents in America, to countless University and independent presses. 100 top publishing professionals told him his book had no value. But tweaking and polishing and making it better, he finally landed a deal. That book ended up on the front cover of the <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Hookers-Call-Girls-Rent-Boys/dp/1593762410″ target=”_hplink”>Sunday New York Times Book Review</a>.
To find out more about how to get your book successfully published today, ask questions about your book and your various options, and perhaps get a chance to pitch your book to The Book Doctors, sign up for their <a href=”http://bit.ly/1mzSGY7″ target=”_hplink”>webinar</a>, which will be on July 16.
Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry are co-founders of The Book Doctors, a company that has helped countless authors get their books published. They are also co-authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How To Write It, Sell It, and Market It… Successfully (Workman, 2010).
Raped, survived, self-medicated, hyponotherapized, wrote, redeemed
I was alone in Hollywood & a very charismatic man wearing a shirt that said SEXY asked me to his place for a steak dinner. Most expensive meal of my life. Steak was drugged, he raped me, & destroyed who I was. I became a drug & sex addict, then went into hypnotherapy, and eventually wrote a memoir called Chicken about the whole thing. Now I have a beautiful family & I write books & such.
To find out more click here.
I’m surgically repaired. Rotator cuff untorn. I plan 2 b up & running in 10 days. Although surgeon says 6 months.
To see on Huffington Post click here.
10 years ago I wrote a book called Chicken about when I was a 17-year-old prostitute/rent boy/escort/industrial sex technician. I was lucky enough to get a big splashy deal with a big splashy publisher who sent me on a big splashy tour. I was under the mistaken impression that people would ask me about my book, about what it was like sexually servicing middle-aged women for money, about the writing I worked so hard on. To my surprise, most readers, writers, bloggers and journalists wanted to know if I was gay or straight. And exactly how gay or how straight. After careful consideration, I concluded I was 10% gay, 20% lesbian, and 70% heterosexual. But I always emphasize that those numbers are fluid. When I walk into a throbbing gay bar, I immediately find myself flirting and being flirted, feeling about 70% gay. When I go to a lesbian activist gathering (my mom was gay for about 2/3 of my life) I find myself listening and sharing and sharing and listening, feeling about 70% lesbian. When I’m playing with my chock-full of breeders softball team, I feel about 110% heterosexual.
So it was with great fascination that I watched iO Tillet Wright’s TED talk: 50 Shades of Gay. Her story about the fluidity of her sexuality spoke to me in a very personal way. As I said earlier, my mom was gay. In her late thirties she transformed herself from an immigrant homemaker mother of four into a bra-burning consciousness-raising sandal-wearing Gertrude-Stein-haired lesbian. People are always asking me how my mother “turned” gay. Like she’d taken a pill, or eaten too many tofu, or read too many Simone de Beauvoir books. I can’t seem to get people to understand that she fell in love with a woman. That’s all it took to “turn” her gay. The woman she fell in love with was a much better listener, communicator, friend, partner, and lover than my father ever was. I was 16 at the time my mother came out, and she seemed so much happier than when she was married to my cold, withholding, unfaithful father. So I was happy for her. She raised me to have an open mind about these things, and not judge people by the color of their skin, or who they loved, or what they worshiped. She raised me to judge them by their words and their actions. And her new partner was kind and smart and wise and compassionate in her words and actions.
As I listened to iO Tillet Wright’s talk, and watched all those beautiful pictures of Americans on the LGTB spectrum: black, white, brown, tall, short, stout, skinny, shy and wild, I thought about my mom. She and her partner moved to a small rural town in Oregon, where she had a neighbor who absolutely hated them. Not because they were too loud, too messy, too nosy, or in any way bad neighbors. He loathed them with biblical fury because they loved each other. And they were women. He threatened, taunted, intimidated, bullied and made their life a living hell. My mom tried to give this bigot love, tried to reason with him, tried to show him what a great neighbor she was. All to no avail. He just kept hating and hating and hating. I was ready to go over with a baseball bat and beat the hate out of this ugly pustule. My mom, the lesbian, talked me out of it. Eventually my mom and her partner had to leave their bucolic paradise and move to lesbian-friendly Portland.
Watching iO Tillet Wright’s TED talk I was struck by the statistic that a citizen of the United States can be legally discriminated against because of who they love in 29 states. That’s downright un-American.
I am a man of action. So that made me start thinking about what is to be done. And made me admire how iO Tillet Wright is a tomboy of action. I just love how she took this idea of egregious gender inequality and did something about it. Just a small local action. With a camera. And I love how it spread into a grassroots movement. It gives me faith in human beings. Faith in America.
So, as a 10% gay, 20% lesbian, 70% heterosexual man, I rejoiced in seeing all the beautifully diverse LGBTish Americans, and hearing iO Tillet Wright’s message about making this country a place where equality reigns everywhere for everyone. It made me think about why America was formed in the first place. Wasn’t it so everybody could worship their own God? Pursue life, liberty and happiness to their heart’s content, so long as they didn’t hurt anybody? So why can’t we make America a place where citizens are allowed to love who they want to love? Isn’t that beautiful idea of what America can be?
David Henry Sterry is the author of 16 books, a performer, muckraker, educator, activist, and book doctor. His first memoir Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Man for Rent, 10 Year Anniversary Edition, has been translated into 10 languages. His book Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money and Sex appeared on the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. He is a finalist for the Henry Miller Award. He has appeared on, acted with, written for, been employed as, worked and/or presented at: Will Smith, a marriage counselor, Disney screenwriter, Stanford University, National Public Radio, Milton Berle, Huffington Post, a sodajerk, the Taco Bell chihuahua, Penthouse, the London Times, Michael Caine, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a human guinea pig and Zippy the Chimp. He can be found at www.davidhenrysterry.com. https://davidhenrysterry.com/
From my new book Chicken Self:-Portrait of a Man for Rent, 10 Year Anniversary Edition 
I was 17, studying existentialism at Immaculate Heart College, when I got sucked into the sex business in Hollywood. I didn’t mean to. It’s not like I thought, “I have no money, I have no family, I have no resources, I think I’d like to have sex for money.” I was just in the right place at the right time. That’s how it is with lots of the sex workers I know.
Sporting my nut hugging elephant bells, I arrived in Laurel Canyon, an enchanted eucalyptus oasis in the middle of this Hollywood smogfarm metropolis. As I entered the log cabin house set behind a wildflower jasmine jungle, a solid block of patchouli incense musk nearly knocked me over. With driftwood tie-dye batik beanbags windchimes macrame´ hanging plants and Mexican day-of-the-dead skeleton art everywhere, it looked like Woodstock exploded in Rainbow’s house, as this boomed out:
“Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones, you better watch your speed”
Rainbow had long straight grey hair, feather earrings and a floor length tie-dye dress with a dopey hippie happy face on it. No make-up. No shoes.
“Namaste. Enter. Would you like some ginseng tea?” wafted out of Rainbow.
The customer’s always right. When in Rome, drink ginseng tea. While she fetched me tea I survey lots of pots of pot plants. Rainbow returned with my tea in a psychedelic homemade mug with a drawing of some dopey hippie happy face on it. The tea smelled too earthy and dank for drinking, but I brought the Mother Earth medicine scent up to my lips and siped.
It was good. And good for me.
“Do you dig the dead?”
Rainbow looked at me like she expected something. I was confused. Was this some weird necrophilia deal Mr. Hartley, my employment counselor/father confessor/fairy godmother/pimp, forgot to tell me about? I made a mental note: Find out what’s the going rate for having sex with dead people. But perhaps more importantly, do I feel comfortable shopping a dead person?
“I believe Jerry Garcia is the physical embodiment of the Godhead, don’t you?”
Jerry Garcia! The Grateful Dead. That’s who belonged to that dopey hippie happy face. Jerry Garcia! I saw me digging a grave and putting a gratefully dead Jerry Garcia in it.
“Oh yeah, Jerry Garcia is a total Godhead. Yeah, I definitely dig the Dead…”
I trotted out my best hippieboy smile. Actually, I couldn’t’ve cared less about the Dead. Or the dead. Rule #5: the customer is always right. I was there to get paid. I looked around for my envelope. No envelope. I didn’t like that. I was looking for a low-maintenance score, get in, get out, badda bing badda boom. Relax, cowboy, you’re gonna get paid, go with the flow, flowing, in the flow. Hey, someone wants to pay me to say Jerry Garcia is the physical embodiment of the Godhead, that’s Easy Money.
“Give me your hand,” Rainbow said.
I gave her the hand. She took it.
“You have big hands,” she said.
In my line of work that was a compliment.
“Thank you,” I said.
She looked at me funny, like it wasn’t a compliment at all, just a statement of fact. But she didn’t really seem to care, she looked into my palm like it held the key to the sweet mysteries of life.
GET THE MONEY UP FRONT
GET THE MONEY UP FRONT
GET THE MONEY UP FRONT
Only the newest greenhorn in Greenhornville doesn’t get the money up front. This is what separates the rank amateur from the hard working professional. You’re not here to have a good time, Charley, you’re here to get paid.
But Rainbow had produced nothing, and I could tell she’d be just the sort who’d get all bent if a guy mentioned something as crass as cash.
So I sat and stewed as Rainbow gazed into the crystal ball of my palm.
After she stared at my palm for what seemed like a month, Rainbow was starting to seem demented. I was convinced she was a Charlie Manson groupie with a garotte she was going to use to sacrifice me and the goat I was sure was in the backyard.
I was starting to have serious doubts about Rainbow. About this whole line of work. I had enough money. I could excuse myself like I’m going to the bathroom and walk out and just drive. But again the question: Where would I go? Who would I go to? I had nowhere. I had no one.
“You’re a very old soul…” Rainbow concluded.
You said a mouthful there, sister.
“…and you‘ve lived many lives…you were an explorer and sailed all over the world… and you were a sultan with many women. You were a mighty warrior in battle, and you were a slave on a plantation…”
Rainbow looked into me like she had periscopes that went through my eyes.
That was when I noticed her for the first time. In all the confusion I hadn’t really seen her. She had deep eyes, steel-colored with flecks of cobalt. A big Scandihoovian Bergman madly-suffering but eternally hopeful face. I half expected Death to walk out of her bedroom and challenge me to a game of chess for my soul.
“You’re here to learn a lesson, and I’m here to teach you…” Said Rainbow.
Okay, it’s a hot-for-hippy-teacher thing. I breathed easy.
“Do you know what tantric sex is?” Rainbow asked.
I could dish some semicoherent gobbledygook about ancient mystic Asian sex, but she wanted me to be the blissfully ignorant manmoonchild, so naturally I turned myself into whatever she wanted me to be. That was my job.
“No, I don’t…”
Rainbow handed me a smile, and led me through a translucent tie-dye cloth door into a bed with a room around it. It was the biggest bed I’d ever seen. Overhead, high in the tall pointed ceiling was a skylight, where incense curled up thick from fat Buddha bellies; candles tossed soft little drops of light everywhere; elephantheaded Indian gods with massive genitalia copulated with lionheaded goddesses; statue women stared with dozens of breasts; a halfman halfbull was inside a godhead with a doghead; Japanese paintings of Jade-looking beautybabies intercoursed in every position imaginable, one leg up over an ear, the other wrapped around a head; Old French postcards of cherubinesque honeys were Frenched and doggied; a guy went down (or would that be up?) on himself; and a shrine of rosebudvaginas and phalluspeni smiled. Pillows and cushions plump velvety; blankets, fur, and fat cloth made me feel like a cat, and I wanted to roll around getting my belly stroked while nubile handmaidens fed me catnip.
A sculpture of a vagina started talking to me: “Hi, David, welcome to the party, come on in.”
And in the center of it all a big picture of a dark man with long black curly hair and brown magnets for eyes that kept staring at me no matter where I went in the room, it was freaky. He was hard and soft at the same time. I’d never seen the guy, but he looked familiar, like he was the kind of guy who could set you straight if you were floundering around. And I was so very full of flounder at the moment. I made a mental note to find a wise, kind, benevolent guru teacher as soon as I left Rainbow’s. I’m still looking.
“That’s Baba Ram Wammmalammadingdong,” said Rainbow.
I was sure she didn’t really say that, but that’s what it sounded like to my 17 year-old man child idiot ears, all Dr. Seussy.
“He’s the master of sensual enlightenment.”
That’s what I wanna be when I grow up: master of sensual enlightenment.
“Sexual transcendance can only happen when you are connected to the life force that flows through all living things,” breathed Rainbow. “You have to open, I mean really open, all of your… shock absorbers.”
Years later I would realize it was my chakras and not my shock absorbers that needed opening, but at the time I couldn’t care less. I’d open my shock absorbers, my athletic supporters, my cookie jar, whatever she wanted. I just needed to get paid, and I needed to get paid IMMEDIATELY. I was seeking enlightenment through cold hard cash.
“Why don’t we start by meditating?”
Rainbow settled into a big comfy-womfy cushy cushion crosslegged, and motioned for me to do the same.
I balked. I’m naturally curious by nature, I was very interested in the whole third-eye transcendent sex thing, and picking up some exotic kinky eastern sex tips would’ve been grand, but I had to get my money UP FRONT.
I sighed quiet. I knew for a fact it will not help us achieve harmony with the life force that flows through all living things if I told Rainbow she needed to pay me IMMEDIATELY.
I was dreadfully dithered.
But just when things were looking their most dodgy, the gods smiled upon me, and Rainbow, God love her, new what I needed and could not ask for.
“Oh, shit, you need some bread, don’t you?” she said.
I could’ve cried. I saw this as a clearcut sign that I was being taken care of by something bigger than myself.
Rainbow got out of crosslegged, rummaged through an old macrame´ bag, and returned with four skanky twenties, a nasty ten, a funky five, four filthy ones and a bunch of loose change, then handed me the whole kitandkaboodle.
I was starting to dig this crazy chick. I could see her scrimping and saving to give herself a treat. Me. I was the treat for my trick. I vowed then and there to be a pot of gold for this Rainbow.
“Opening the gate that leads to the garden of earthly delights can only be achieved through a woman’s pleasure.”
Rainbow paused to make sure I got it.
“Opening the gate that leads to the garden of earthly delights can only be achieved through a woman’s pleasure.”
She looked at me intensely, so I understood how important this was.
So I thought about it hard. It was comforting to have someone telling me what to think about. I didn’t have to make any decisions, and that moment, decisions were just disasters waiting to happen.
Garden of earthly delights. A woman’s pleasure. A woman’s orgasm. Tumblers click in my head, a lock snapped open, and I saw the light. A woman’s pleasure was the key to sexual ecstasy. Now that I had my money, I was keenly interested in this whole thing.
“A man can have multiple orgasms… most people don’t know that, but it’s true. And I can show you how to do it.” Rainbow said with absolute conviction.
Multiple orgasms? Hell, I had one and it nearly kills me. But I was crazy curious to see if I could incorporate some clitoris into my penis.
“There’s a line where your orgasm is, it’s kinda like a waterfall. See, it’s like you’re in a beautiful warm river, and the current is pulling you along, and you’re headed towards the waterfall, you’re getting closer and closer… until you’re hanging right there on the edge of the waterfall, but you’re not letting yourself go over. You just get inside your own orgasm, and you can stay there as long as you want, as long as you don’t release. Do you know what release means?”
Yeah, I think I got the idea.
“No, what do you mean?” I asked.
“Your release is your ejaculation. So you can orgasm without ejaculating,” Rainbow said carefully.
And the weird thing was, I knew exactly what she meant. River, waterfalls, release, the whole shebang.
“I know it sounds totally… far out… but if you can wrap your cosmic mind around this, you’ll always have lots of groovy lovemaking in your life. You probably won’t get it tonight, but it’s something you can always practice. By yourself, with a partner, doesn’t matter. In the words of Baba Ram Wammalammadingdong, ‘Practice makes perfect.’”
I was starting to really like this Wammalammadingdong guy.
“Wow, that sounds… far out.” I’d never said far out before or since, but Rainbow ate it up like wavy gravy with a tie-dye spoon.
She took off her robe. She was the only industrial sex customer I ever had who took off her clothes while I still had mine on. And for an old broad (again with the proviso that anyone over the age of twenty-five years was Old) she had a riproaring body. Supple muscles firm lithe and graceful, breasts slung low, with big brown chocolate kiss nipples in the middle. Mental note to self: as far as books go, don’t judge them by their covers.
Rainbow seemed to be one of those rare people who was actually comfortable with her own naked body.
“You have a beautiful body…” I would’ve said it whether it was true or not, but in this case it was true, which did makes it easier.
She liked it. She wasn’t desperate like lots of my other clients, but she liked it.
“Do whatever makes you happy,” said Rainbow.
“Do you want me to take my clothes off?” Just trying to keep the customer satisfied.
Wow. Whatever made me happy. Reminded me of my mom. No one said that to me in real life, never mind when I was chickening.
Seemed like if you were gonna learn to orgasm without ejaculating, you should be naked. So I took off my clothes. Rainbow set opposite me crosslegged on that continent of a bed. I tried, but I just couldn’t get the crosslegged thing going. My pedophile grandfather’s coalminer soccerplaying legs were just too unyielding. I was tugging and pulling, cuz I was trying to suck it up and play through the pain, but damn, that shit hurt.
“Don’t do it if it hurts. Don’t do anything that hurts…” Rainbow flows. You gotta hand it to the hippies, when it comes to peace and love and all that business, they really know their shit.
Rainbow showed me how to deepbreathe, and we deepbreathe until we felt the life force flowing through us. I didn’t actually feel the life force flowing through me as such, but she did, and that was good enough for me. The crumpled bills in my pocket were filling me with the life force.
Rainbow and I Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmed for about a fortnight. Eventually I did feel a little lightheaded, like when I first smoked a cigarette. But hey, if she wanted to pay me to breathe and say om, that was rolling off a log for a chicken.
Finally when Rainbow was om’d out, she took my hand, placed it on her breast, looked me in the eyes, and with a hypnotic smile showed me how to roll that mammoth mammarian poolcue tip between my thumb and forefinger, and it got bigger and tighter, until it felt like it was ready to pop, while she made airsuck sounds of pleasure.
I could smell her now, Rainbowing as she made my hand the axis between her legs around which she gyrated, nestling my head into her neck and whispering, “Kiss me soft…”
I ate her neck like a fruitcake while she revved in growly moans, everything moved in rhythm like a well-oiled sex machine, the fur blanket softly soft as she guided me like an air traffic controller. Then Rainbow replaced my hand with my mouth and she huffed and she puffed like she was gonna blow the house down, jimjamming and earthquakeshaking.
I smiled inside. I was getting a crash course in the fine art of a woman’s orgasm, and I was getting paid for it. America–what a country!
“Now I’m right there,” she pants, “…if I let myself, I’d go right over the waterfall… but… I’m… not… I’m gonna stay… right here and let the… waves roll through me… there’s one… slow down… Stop!” Rainbow squeezed, fists clenching and unclenching like a baby breastfeeding, “…now slow… there’s another one… ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… God…”
Rainbow let rip with a top-of-the-lungs scream. A gigantic little death. When she collapsed at the tip of my tongue, I understood for the first time what they were talking about, as time warped, Einstein smiling somewhere, eternity in a second, infinity in a grain of sand.
I thought of busting my ass in the grease of Hollywood Fried Chicken. I thought of my father slaving away at the explosives plant. I thought about my grandfather shovelling coal down the mine. I sure as hell wouldn’t be getting black lung disease from this.
A rainbow slowly descended from Orgasm Mountain, while I stood next to her, nakedly rolling my big huge rock up my big huge hill.
After a brief intermission, Act II began. She pulled me into the river, took me right to the edge of the waterfalls, and then stopped. The most important thing, she said, was to turn off your mind, and move into your body. You can’t think and swim at the same time.
Once a man plunges over the waterfalls in his barrel, of course, it’s all over for him. For a while at least. So you have to be very careful and really pay attention. I practiced getting right on the edge and just sticking there. And it was good. When she did something particularly compelling, I felt the spray in my face and the pull of the fall, and by God, quivers did quiver me, then I quickly pulled myself back.
Rainbow was my Seeingeye sexdog.
“Wow, that was groovy…” I said, when it was clear we were done.
Groovy? I couldn’t believe that came out of my mouth, but as usual I’d ceased to exist in my need to please.
I didn’t know what to do next. Should I hang out? Were we friends? I thought for a minute. I still didn’t feel that creeping mudslide of depression I usually got after I worked as a chicken. I was just a little confused, that’s all. But looking around I could see myself moving right in here and being the sextoy for all of Rainbow’s old greatbodied freakyhippie chicks. Sounded like fun, I think, as I grabbed at another salvation flotation device.
“I have something for you…” Rainbow was sweet as you please, slipping into an old soft tie-dye robe. I followed at her heels like a naked chickenpuppy. She reached in a drawer and I was expecting a nice fat juicy tip. Twenty, maybe fifty. Instead Rainbow pulled the out a feather.
A feather.
“It’s an earring,” said Rainbow.
I had to work hard not to show how totally disgusted I was as I took out the rhinestone in my ear and replaced it with the feather. I looked in the mirror. To my amazement, I actually liked the way it looked. Kind of tribal. Even though I silently scoffed when she presented it to me, that feather became a war souvenir, and I wore it on and off for many years.
And whenever I did, I thought of Rainbow.
She kissed me on both cheeks. She thanked me. I thanked her. She didn’t say we should get together again soon, or that we should stay in touch. I loved that. I did what I came to do, we both got what we wanted, and that, as they say, was that.
Rainbow was the only trick I ever had who gave me more than I gave her.
Motorcycling away from Rainbow, floating on my feather earring in the sweetness of the cool Laurel Canyon night, I was high on Rainbow’s free love.
That she paid for.
If having sex for money were always this good, I’d still be an industrial sex technician.
David Henry Sterry is the author of 16 books, a performer, muckraker, educator, activist, and book doctor. His new book Chicken Self:-Portrait of a Man for Rent, 10 Year Anniversary Edition has been translated into 10 languages. He’s also written Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money and Sex, which appeared on the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. He is a finalist for the Henry Miller Award. He has appeared on, acted with, written for, been employed as, worked and/or presented at: Will Smith, a marriage counselor, Disney screenwriter, Stanford University, National Public Radio, Milton Berle, Huffington Post, a sodajerk, Michael Caine, the Taco Bell chihuahua, Penthouse, the London Times, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a human guinea pig and Zippy the Chimp. He can be found at www.davidhenrysterry.com. https://davidhenrysterry.com/
Rumors of the death of male stripping in America are greatly exaggerated. I know, because recently on a dark dank Saturday night, I took the Queen of LA Stripper Intelligensia, 5’10” Private Dancer/Nordic goddess Nica Jensen, to the seedy sweet scrotum of Hollywood, Arena Nightclub, Santa Monica & Highland, where The Hollywood Men were reportedly going to be shakin and bakin their moneymakers, while frenzied females shriek & wave seas of money for dick-filled lap dances. Needless to say, me and Nica are highly skeptical. We’re early.
The club seats 500 people. So far there are only 7 lovely Latinas at one table, decked out in the height of East LA fashion. One wears a white wedding veil. One is in a wheelchair. They are already drinking heavily. Looks like we’re in for a long night. We’re greeted by Dan Remington, the emcee/part owner of The Hollywood Men. He’s a 16 pound bowling ball of a guy with slick hair and matching handshake, surrounded by a surprisingly nice smile. He is, and will remain, fully clothed, and is the only performer who will be able to say that. He tells us that December sucks, it’s the worst time of year, which is true in so very so many ways, in my opinion. You can see he’s a little worried that no screaming ladies are going to show up, and without them, it’s a very different show. But during the bachelorette season, Dan tells us, there are 500 women here 3 times a week, in fact they had to move here because they outgrew the last place. Guys come from all over the world to audition, if you’re interested just call, make an appointment, come down, one guy was just in last week from Europe, came all the way here to be a Hollywood Man. A kind of pilgrimage, I guess. Nica wants to know how many of the guys are gay. “NONE,” Dan Remington blurts a little too loud, then says softer, “None of the guys are gay. They’re not gay.” During the next 12 minutes he will tell us like nineteen more times how not gay all the guys are. Later Nica will say, “Me thinks the lady doth protest too much,” and I will laugh. Hard. Nica wants to know if any of the guys are married. We are told they are not. “They all have girlfriends,” Dan says, then leans in with a smile, “but almost all of them fool around.” Later Nica will tell me she has no trouble believing that, and I will laugh again, though not as hard this time. Nica wants to know where men sit if they want to watch. Dan tell us that no men ever come here to watch. In all these years, only one gay male couple came, and when they saw what the show was, they left. So none of the dancers or hosts or waiters are gay, and none of the audience is gay men. But what would happen, Nica wants to know, looking down at Dan, if a guy wanted to come and watch? “Well, we would sit him wherever he wanted to sit.” This satisfies Nica, which is a good thing, cuz you don’t wanna piss off Nica. Next we’re ushered into the dressing room to meet the brains and buns behind The Hollywood Men, the Sultan of Shwing, the King of the G-String, the dean of American male stripping, 1998 Playgirl Man of the Year, Scott Layne. If you called Central Casting and asked them to send over a male stripper, Scott Layne would show up. Even in sweats and a tank top, Scott exudes an utter American maleness, gunboats bulging, buff with mantan, hardbody with soft smile, chiselly cheeks with charmy eyes. I’ve known Scott since New York Chippendale’s, where we worked together, and he first became a star under the late great Nick de Noia, the Grand Daddy dandy of modern American male stripping. I’m happy to see him. And he me, apparently, as evidenced by the big bear hug he lays on me. Hug-wise I give as good as I get. Not in a gay way. I want to emphasize that. It’s a deeply heterosexual hug, the hug of men who’ve fought together in the trenches of the battle of the sexes, comrades in codpieces, me armed with roller skates, tux and microphone, Scott with the smallest G-string the law would allow. The show’s gonna start in half an hour, and I ask him if he’s nervous. “Why would you be nervous?” Scott and Nica answer at the same time. The mark of a true professional. Nica wants to know what the chances are of a woman buying a ticket, attending the show, and taking home a Hollywood Man. “Depends on how good looking she is,” Scott smiles. Sounds about right. Nica wants to know what Scott thinks turns a woman on. “For me, it’s all about sharp moves, quick moves, that are sensual and sexy without being graphic. I hate it when guys get graphic, that’s not what most women want to see. And I hate when dancers don’t pay attention to older women, to women who aren’t traditionally hot. Look, women are all about the chase. Men want to cut to the chase. Women love the tease in strip tease. Men are like, ‘Bend over and show it to me.’” Nica nods. Sounds about right. We’re ushered back out into the club, and glorioski, there are like a hundred women buzz-cocking around, power-drinking, primping, whispering, giggling, babbling in gaggles, a dozen white wedding veils waving like snow covered clouds drifting towards the land of Marriage. As the ladies chill, mill, and spill female hormones, half-nude spandexed cuffed and collared hunk Hosts hustle drinks and smear muscle-bulging flirtatious bodacious charm all over the women. All of a sudden this seems like it could be fun. The women seem like they’re already having a blast. With each other. Every little grouplet has the same kind of hair, the same kind of outfit, like different tribes, all with their own unique plumage. I don’t see one single woman here by herself. They are pack animals. Female strip clubs are loaded with lone wolves. Nica starts drinking. This is a good sign. She leans over and tells me that in a female strip club, if you say the girls are into having sex with each other, this is considered a very good thing. I tell her I think it’s the specter of a homophobic Puritanical low-touch erotophobic machocentric culture. Nica agrees. She chortles: “And for God’s sake, how do they know they’re not gay, what do they do, give them all some kind of gay test?” I laugh at that, too, as I imagine having to take a gay test: fashion sense, artistic ability, fellatio skills. More women are streaming in, and by Jiminy, there must be close to 200 women here. Me and Nica are impressed. Our waiter is cut, ripped, lean yet pec-heavy, hard-haired and ab-happy. It looks like it would hurt your fist if you punched his stomach. He doesn’t seem gay. He doesn’t really seem straight either. He seems kind of asexual to me. Like he’s a Ken doll, and if you took down his black Spandex, a smooth bump would be there. He seems like an accountant. Nica asks him if he dreamed of being a topless waiter when he was a kid. He laughs and says that he did not, that’s it’s a great part time gig. Nica asks him what he does apart from this. Turns out he is an accountant. Seriously. When he’s gone I ask Nica if she thinks he’s sexy. She looks at me like I’m stupid. “Not my type,” says Nica. “If there was some nerd here with glasses and a slide rule in his pocket, that would be more my speed.” Then all of a sudden, BOOM! lights go down, sound goes up, and Scott’s voice booms through the room: It’s Showtime. There’s smoke, there’s a big video screen, there’s crazy swirling lights, and when the first Hollywood Man busts onto the stage, a scream comes up from the ladies, a primal lioness roar that rattles my teeth, rolls through my bones, and lights up my balls like Chinese New Year, as I’m hot-wired right into all that grrrrl power. Nica looks over at me. She’s into it. The women are into it. She leans over and whispers: “There’s a lot of really beautiful women here, aren’t there?” I nod in agreement. There are. 5 Men pop out onto stage and do a hiphoppy Fosse meets Backstreet Boys choreography, and the women are up on their feet, like at a Southern Baptist church when the spirit lifts the congregation. Nothing like this in a female strip club. Big video presentation, clips of movies and local news segments featuring the Hollywood Men show, in front of all that tight seemless choreography. The men do take their shirts and pants off in the opening number, but not until they take off their jackets and shirts, unbuttoning and removing little by little. When they get down to their skivvies, the estrogen laden roar bounces off the walls. Now we’re into the numbers. Each is almost a Jungian American archetype: Top Gun, An Officer and a Gentleman, the Cowboy, the Fireman, the Vampire. They all start off with lots of costume, surrounded many times by other dancers. Slowly they take it off while lip synching, until they take down their underpants to reveal their teeny G-strings. When they get to this point, they all make the same move: they turn around and bend over, their asses shining like a big happy heartmoon. The women seem to love that. They writhe, they undulate, they simulate intercourse, poundpoundpounding into the floor. They pour oil on themselves. The men touch themselves on their covered penis areas quite a bit. The women seem to love that, too. But honestly, after a while, the perfect smooth hairless chestpecs and the perfect smooth hairless 6 pacs, and the perfect smooth hairless asses all blend one into the other. Mind you the women are great. They are so much fun to watch. I love how they enjoy the show through each other. Understand this: in terms of sexual orientation, I am 70%, 20% lesbian, and 10% gay, so this show is not, as has been pointed out repeatedly, intended for me. But I did 2 years at Chippendale’s when it was the hottest show in New York City, so I know my way around men taking their clothes off. Plus, that’s why I brought the lovely and talented Nica, because she likes men and finds them sexual. Plus she’s taken her clothes off in front of them for money, and she’s not ashamed to say so. Plus she’s watched a lot of men watching women take their clothes off. So after every act, I turn to Nica and I ask, “Was that hot? Did that guy turn you on? What that sexy?” Every time she shakes her head and says, “No.” It’s not that she’s having a bad time. She’s actually enjoying the show. It’s just that none of these beekcakey bodies is beaming out any real sexuality. That’s what it seems like to me, and Nica confirms this. Then Scott Layne comes out, and she sees why he’s a star. He’s Danny Zuko from Grease, ducktail, tight leather pants and jacket. Behind him on the screen is John Travolta playing Danny Zuko from Grease. The effect is cooly postmodern in a Warholian way. The movie icon duplicated by the live male stripper icon. And Scott pulls it off, the same cocky shy nice intense calm vibe beaming out of both of them, stripper as movie star. Only Scott actually sings. He’s got a mike, and he’s singing. At first I don’t believe it, because his rockabilly Elvis thing very good. But then there’s a little slip, and it clearly is him singing. Nica turns to me and she nods and says, “Wow, he’s really good.” And you can see it really isn’t the meat, and it’s really is the motion. It’s the power and the skill that comes from having perfected a craft, being able to channel the Sex muse effortlessly with talent. Scott blows the roof off the joint, as the women go gaga. Afterwards I ask Nica if she thought he was sexy. She hesitates. Thinking. “He’s really good. I really enjoyed him, he’s a total pro, the guy is really talented.” Next up comes a guy in a bad female wig and skirt, with balloons shoved down his feminine sweater. It’s as if Jerry Lewis has decided to become a male stripper. Nica is intrigued. To a hip hop Spike Jones-ish soundtrack, this guy does an old school burlesque silent comedy number. And he’s fucking funny. With amazing control of his body. Slowly the wig, sweater and skirt come off, and he’s sporting a goofy Clark Kent meets Devo wig, with a Superman shirt. He shifts the balloons from his chest to his crotch, magically transforming them from huge breasts into gigantic balls. And the guy is an astonishing mindbending breakdancing fool. Isolating his body and moving the parts independently of each other in freakishly funny bendability, in the great tradition of vaudeville eccentric dancers like Donald O’Connor, with the good looks and athletic muscular grace of Gene Kelly, all filtered through new millenium streetwise edgy urban modernism. It is a breathtaking performance. I ask Nica if he was sexy. Her eyes have gone a bit dreamy in the middle of her creamy round face, and she nods her head: Yes. Nica’s got a crush on the guy. I ask her why. She tells me it’s because he diffused the manufactured, corporate asexual vibe with HUMOR. That ironically, a nice dose of humanity is still what entices more than a shapely butt and a bulging G-string.
Now one lucky gal who wins a lottery gets to sit on a chair in the middle of the stage. 5 guys disrobe down to their wee G-strings and towels. Then they gather in a tight circlejerk formation around her, facing her, and appear to remove their wee G-strings while opening their towels and exposing their johnsons and willies to her. The audience goes nuts and bananas. I thought if I was surrounded by 5 beautiful women and they all exposed their nakedness at me, I would like to see that. That is probably a sight that I could work into a fantasy that I could masturbate to. In fact now that I’ve thought about it, maybe I will. Okay, I’m back.
Now all that remains is the up-close-and-personal, interactive, hands-on segment of the show, where the Hollywood Men actually come out into the audience, and the women wave the money, or plant in their cleavage, or in their panties peaking out from under their tight jeans. And I’m telling you, when they climb down from that stage like so many Collosuses of Rome, it is an absolute free-4-all. Unlike in a female strip joint, there are no beefy security guys to stop the clients from mauling the dancers. And the fur is definitely flying. There are at least 6 dancers, naked but for small black underpants, working the room. And I mean working. You hear little random screams and squeals and shrieks as little knots of females gather around dancers like menstrual blood clotting. Every veil-clad bride-to-be in attendance gets at least one lap dance, and most of them get many. The dancer generally comes over to the woman with the dollar bill flag flying (either held by herself, or more usually, her friends) and the dancer takes the bill, then undulates around and into the woman. Many breasts and necks are nuzzled. Male faces are buried into crotch areas. Female hands stroke and fondle and feel up smooth hairless powerful male chests and bellies, and grab a package or two. Sometimes a dancer literally disappears into a forest of females, so you couldn’t even see him anymore. The 7 Latinas who were the first ones in the place are whooping and halloring and dancing. I have to admit it’s great to see a woman dancing in a wheelchair. Then she gets a lap dance, and the guy is really great with her, sexy and nice and respectful. She’s digging it. Then the bride-tobe gets her own lap dance, and she digs it even more. I gotta say, the room is really hyper-charged with sexenergy. Next to me, a truly stunning woman has stuffed a bill in her thong panties peeking out from under her tight jeans. As she slides down onto the booth/chair, the bill disappears. She tried unsuccessfully to fish it out. He tries grabbing it with his teeth. With as little success. She unbuckles her belt, unsnaps her jeans and parts the zipper like it’s a pare of beautiful vaginal lips, revealing her stunningly sexy lower belly. The dancer hesitated, then goes down. He nibbles around the bill, then slowly and seductively pulls it out of the string of her thong thing. I have to admit I was jealous. I wanted to be that dancer. This moment illustrates the best of the audience participation section, what at Chippendale’s used to be called the Kiss & Tip. I did see a couple of the guys pull women’s hair, yanking heads into crotches with what I thought was too much force. Some women seemed to like that. Other seemed put off when the dancer moved away. Regardless, MUCH MUCH money exchanged hands, and MANY MANY hands roved over ACRES & ACRES of naked flesh. I wanted to give Nica the opportunity to have a lap dance if she was into it. I was curious what her reaction would be to getting one, having given so many herself. I asked her if she wanted one. She nodded enthusiastically. This is just one of the things we love about Nica. Guess who she wants a lap dance from? Funny wildly talented smiling sweet guy. Naturally. I have to admit I felt a little odd asking this guy wearing nothing but tiny black underpants if he would give my friend a lap dance, but only because all that gay talk before the show made me afraid I would disrupt the delicate balance of the show. Me, I don’t give a shit, I just want Nica to have her lap dance. So I find the guy and tell him what I want, and he’s the very model of accommodation. Nica gives him the money. The guy’s got curly brown soft hair, as opposed to the hard sculpted look of so many of the other guys. He looks her in the eyes as he pulsates and undulates rhythmically before her. She sinks down into her chair as he moves in closer and closer to her until his smooth supple rippling skin is inches from her lips. Nica seems to be really enjoying her lap dance. She puts her hands on his chest. He is gentle with her, but still seems capable of rocking her world. He is professional, but slightly removed, an amazing mover with a supple lithe physicality and a serious soulfulness, although he doesn’t seem emotionally engaged like he did on stage. He spends a good 5 minutes with Nica before he kisses her on the cheek and takes off. Nica’s cheeks are flushing and her eyes are alive. I ask her if she enjoyed her lap dance. She says she did.
Then it’s on to the big slam bang finale, and Scott’s bringing the show home. Everybody gets their bows and applause, and then the lights are coming up. I go over to the 7 Latinas who were the first ones in the place. Turns out the lady in the wheelchair is the mother of the woman in the white bridal veil. They’re laughing and carrying on and having a grand old time. Turns out the veiled bride-to-be is getting married next Saturday. Her boyfriend knows she’s here. He told her to go out and have a good time. That’s why she’s marrying him. She points out the dancer Nica has a crush on and says, “Tell him, ‘Oh my God!” Just tell him that for me. ‘Oh my God!’” Her mother in the wheelchair points to a picture of Scott. “Tell him that I’d like to take him home.” Everyone hoots and hollars. You can tell they’ll be telling this story for a very long time.
Me and Nica head backstage to the dressing room. Many men are in various stages of sweaty robing and disrobing. Nica sneaks peaks. Scott bounds over. I tell him how much I enjoyed his show, and how Nick his mentor would have been proud. Scott seems genuinely touched. Nica thanks him for a great show. Tells him what a great entertainer he is. It’s nice to watch, one pro to another, acknowledgment always meaning more coming from a peer. “I’ve been doing it long enough, I better be good at it,” Scott smiles with wry self-deprecation. “How long have you been dancing?” Nica wants to know. “Over twenty years,” Scott says. “Not bad for being 42 years old, huh?” Nica cannot believe Scott is 42. I can. Nica wants to know if we can interview her favorite dancer. Scott hooks us up. Chris Watters is his name. 2 T’s. With his clothes on he seems smaller. He’s well dressed casually, groomed, moving with an easy animal grace. He seems shy and earnest. He’s traveled all over the world dancing for women. He got his start Jane Mansfield style, only instead of at Schwabs, Chris was minding his own business dancing in a nightclub in Boise, Idaho, when a guy spotted him and recruited him into the male exotic dancing business. He’s currently running his own music production company, CMW Productions (cmwproductions.net) while going to school studying business administration. His parents are into him being a dancer. They’ve seen the show and they dig it. Nica wants to know what he’s learned about women taking his clothes off for them. He smiles and thinks. He’s a thoughtful guy who chooses his words carefully. “I see women from a totally different point of view. I see women at their worst, when they’re drunk and rude.” Pause. Thinking. “I put up a lot of walls.” Pause. Thinking. “Some dancing… table dancing, makes you feel creeped out… it’s too much… people cross boundaries. I like it a lot better when I can just get out on stage and do my thing. Women dancers are a lot more protected. It’s weird feeling like an object…” Pause. Thinking. “it makes you feel creepy… people can be so… I come home with scratches, and bruises, and bite marks, and I have no idea where they came from… it’s scary… sometimes rich women make you feel like shit, they think they can say anything they want, and they say cruel things, sometimes, they’re drunk, they look down their nose at me… it can get really ugly.” Pause. Thinking. “Like I said, I see women at their worst.” Nica wants to know if Chris is married. He confesses that he is. Me and Nica shoot each other knowing glances. The wife’s a gogo dancer. Not a stripper, he says a little too quickly. Like we’d care. But that’s part of this world, those fine lines that distinguish what you will do and what you won’t. Take off your clothes. Leave on your G-string. Sell a kiss. Let a customer touch you in your most tender netherparts. Selling your sexuality is a tricky thing, and the shading between trick and performer, john and gigolo, hustler and dancer is crucial for mental stability. You set your boundaries, and that is how you define yourself. A lot of male strippers at I worked with at Chippendale’s sold sex, but they would never call themselves a whore. Whereas, when I’ve worked with women from the next class of sex worker down the foodchain, the street ho, many embrace their ho-ness, “Yeah that’s right, I’m a ho, so you wanna fuck with me, I have got to get PAID!” Nica wants to know if he’s planning on having kids. God love Nica, she’s keeping us on track. Chris smiles that crazy sweet sexy shy smile: “Yeah.” I ask what he’d say if his son turned to him and said: “Daddy, when I grow up I want to be a male stripper!” “No way!” he laughs very loud. He’s got a nice easy laugh, which he’s laughed a couple of times, but this laugh is loaded with jaded cynical world-weariness. Nica wants to know why not. “Dancers get lazy. It’s too easy, the money. There’s no work ethic in this world.” He starts to say something, then hesitates, as if his internal censor stopped him. I ask him to elaborate, but he shies away. It makes him more interesting, that there is something withheld. Nica wants to know what he thinks women want. “Confidence with a smile. Even if you can’t dance, if you really have a good time out there, women like that. “ Pause. Thinking. Smile. “I try to use the golden rule. I do to others what I would want done to me.” Hard to argue with that. Nica shakes his hand. I shake his hand. Solid handshake. Single pump. Firm without having anything to prove.
As we leave Nica says what a sweet fragile soul he seemed, and confesses how she wants to rap him up in her arms and give him a big long hug, because he seems like he’s been so wounded. She’s surprised. She never thought guys would feel so much like she does about taking their clothes off for money. She reflects how heterosexual male stripping is more akin to the neo-burlesque movement that is sweeping the country, as opposed to the more anatomical direction female stripping has evolved into, where girls make a series of poses which illustrate what they would look like having sex. “If you can’t show them what you’d look like fucking, forget it, you’re not gonna make any money,” says Nica, and I can’t argue with that.
Then me and Nica walk out into the Hollywood night, where it’s not raining men, it’s just plain raining. And I can say without hesitation that male stripping is very much alive and kicking, kissing and tipping, every Friday and Saturday night in the City of Fallen Angels.
Weaving and gunning, he whipped it down Fell, timing it just right, so he hit the synchronized lights just as they changed, right on the edge of out-of-control. Divisidaro, Fillmore, Steiner flashed by: boom, boom, boom, George cruising Lili through each light as it turned green, one after another, like magic.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it coming, some big American junker-mobile running the light. That bastard’s gonna hit me, George thought, he’s gonna run that light, and he’s gonna hit me.
Imagine the smallest split of a second you can. Now split that an infinite number of times. That’s how long it took for George to think all that.
George’s eyes were wide as CD’s, utterly concentrated, totally focused. If he had not been, he would have died. If he’d had to, at this moment, he could have lifted a refrigerator off a loved one.
The driver of the American junker was drunk. His name was Ozwaldo Grzylwrsklnzwzykoski, aka Oz Grizzly. He had been drinking beer, then vodka, then beer, then vodka. He had somehow driven from Las Vegas, where he had been drinking with a relative who offered him a job breaking a man’s knees in Lodi, California. Oz was going to check into the Royal Viking Hotel, where he planned to dry out and have sex with several transgender sex workers. He actually should have been making a right turn, in which case this incident would have never happened. But he was so stoopid drunk, he ran the red, right at George, so blurred he couldn’t even focus on the steering wheel right in front of his eyes.
George lifted Lili’s front tire off the pavement. That, combined with the heavy screeching back-tire breaking, caused her to skid away from the Oz mobile.
Oz churned oblivious through the light, completely unaware he was perilously close to manslaughtering U vehicularly.
Lili seemed to be defying gravity itself as she flew sideways on Fell towards Market St.
And just as it looked inevitable that Lili was going to slam head first into the back panel of the passenger side of the Oz mobile, God seemed to intervene. Or maybe it was just George being all he could be.
Either way, George managed to get Lili to just clip the back of the Oz mobile’s passenger side bumper.
This stopped Lili’s forward momentum just enough so that with George flying forward at the same speed he had been, he flew over the handlebars down Fell St, head first.
Joseph Plantune, aka Joey, a homeless man who believed that aliens were coming for him imminently, looked up from the trash can he was mining, and saw a George flying through the air. He didn’t notice Lili or the Oz mobile. All he saw was the flying George. Head first. This caused Joey to sprint down Geary away from Fell, screaming, “You’ll never take me aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive!”
Holy shit, George thought, I’m flying through the air. With the greatest of ease. Hey, I’m even making a joke as I fly through the air. He seemed to fly forever, flying, floating parallel to the ground, headfirst. If only I had a cape, I could be Superman.
Then George realized he was gong to come down and hit the pavement. He did something smart now. Instead of thinking, he let his body take over. George was lucky that way. His body just naturally took over when it had to. When all around him were losing their heads he was inhabiting his body.
And his body, like most all bodies, knew exactly what to do.
And his body did it.
As it came down, George’s body naturally tucked, his shoulder rolling down towards the road, his helmeted head shielded by his right arm coming up, and as gravity took over, plummeting him towards blacktop, he landed on the flat of his forearm, rolling forward in a moving ball of humanity like a tumbler in thick black leather.
George’s body was all loosey-goosey, easy-jointed as it made contact.
And somehow he managed keep his roll going, as if he had been coached from an early age by a brilliant but cruel Rumanian gymnastic coach.
And when the roll was over, he popped up on his feet and stood there facing away from Geary St.
Stood on his two feet in his two boots.
Unscratched.
Unscathed.
Untouched.
Wait a minute, he thought, how did that happen? Did that happen? Did I just fly through the air, and do some crazy stunt man shit? How the hell did I do that? It wasn’t you, stoopid. That was God. God just saved me. Sent you a message. Do your job. Look after the boy. Thank you God, and I will not ever forget that you saved my life here. From now on, I do the right thing. Sex is highly over-rated. George made a note to himself: have that tattooed on your penis, young man.
Then he had a thought that moved him to action.
Lili.
Oh no.
Please God, just one more thing, I swear this is the last thing I’ll ever ask for: let Lili be okay.
George turned and ran back towards Geary.
There she was.
Lili.
Lying on her side.
Battered and bruised.
That beautiful old lady, scraped and scuffed.
He reached her, got down on his knees.
Put his hand on her, feeling for a pulse.
Oh please, be okay.
She’s dead.
What a night.
This is the worse night of my life.
I did this.
This is my fault.
If I had just minded my business and not been chasing my tail, he wouldn’t have gone skag hunting and Lili would be sitting under her cover where she belongs, having sweet Indian dreams.
Damn me.
Too late.
Somebody beat me to it.
George stroked her violated tank, gouged deep in the belly.
George ran his hands over her twisted front fender.
George let his fingers linger on her twisted handlebars.
George couldn’t bring himself to touch her scratched to hell forks, shock absorbed in shock.
Sadly he got himself to his feet.
With forlorn care, he lifted her to her wheels.
He slipped down her kick-stand and gingerly leaned her that way.
Lili groaned as her bent gnarled mass her rested on her stand.
She’s upright anyway, George thought.
He straddled her, without resting any way on her seat.
Looking at her handlebars was like seeing an injury victim with a badly broken leg, where the shinbone is pointing one way, and the foot is pointing the other.
Carefully, lovingly, George put his hands on her handlebars, and with the touch of an expert chiropractor, he pulled them back towards their natural resting place, like twisted a neck to bring it into alignment.
To George’s surprise, the handlebars moves easily back into place. In fact, they slid too far, so they were out of kilter the other way. Very easy he slid them back so they were centered.
Okay, George smiled, maybe it’s not so dire. Maybe she’s okay. Maybe we can coax her back to life. Maybe she’s just got a sprained hip and some minor contusions. Maybe there’s just a lot of blood from some superficial wounds.
George now dismounted and went to the front of Lili. He could now see that her front fender was bent badly, but if he was very tender with her, he could twist it back enough to be able to drive her, then take her to the shop and get her all shiny and new, like a virgin Indian touched for the very first time.
George took her into his hands and softly manipulated Lili, bending the metal so that it moved away from the tire. It did. It worked. It was an ugly raw wound, but at least it looked more normal now, and would not interfere with her smooth rolling.
George went back around and straddled Lili once more.
Barely breathing, he touched the key still hanging in its hole. He turned it into the Off position. He stopped and heaved a deep sigh.
I mean it Lord, if you give me this one thing, make this one thing okay, and I will never let you down again. Let her come one. Let their be light.
George switched the key back into the On position.
Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, she turned on, the front headlight shooting out a beam of white into the black night.
Okay, said George, that’s it, you win. From now on, no shit, it’s the straight and narrow for me, no bullshit.
George then calmly, moved the lever out for better access, and my his foot primed her a couple of times, while giving her a little taste of gas with the hand accelerator.
He snorted three quick blasts of breath, and kicked down on the lever.
Lili sputtered and spurted, like a heavy smoker trying to wake up in the morning.
But George nursed her into consciousness by opening the choke on the left of the engine, pulling out the knobby pin so the engine gasped air and gas and the pistons sprung to life, pumping like porn stars as Lili finally righted herself and purred.
Oh Lord, thank you, now I know everything’s gonna be alright, George thought.
And he really believed it.
“Prohibition will work great injury… for it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
If you don’t know who said that, I promise I’ll tell you later.
Selling sex for money is a multi-billion-dollar business. Apparently tens of millions of people want sex so bad they pay through the nose for it. And in that shadowy, shady, underworld, there are many different kinds of economic transactions. At one extreme are coercion, victimization, and exploitation. At the other are consent, empowerment and economic independence. I personally know many people from either extreme of this Bell curve. But both these exchanges are called prostitution. To say these exchanges are the same things is like saying that working at Bloomingdale’s and being forced against your will to work 20 hours a day in a sweatshop are the same thing.
Many people claim that if you make sex for money legal, it will be easier for predators who exploit adults and children alike. Of course, just the opposite is true. We know what happens during Prohibition. Gangsters control the means of production. Al Capone, quintessential American criminal/pop icon, was created by Prohibition. Just as the American Pimp has become the new superstar gangsta, and slithered his way into our culture. Pimp my Ride. Pimp my Crib. Pimp my Wife. It is much easier for predators to hide in an illegal industry. And when you make criminals out of industrial sex technicians, which is what I call people who work of their own free will in the sex business, they have no recourse when things go bad. And things go bad alot in this business. So people all over the Bell curve get raped, robbed, and beaten. Not only by clients. By law enforcement. When one of the recent whores serial killers was caught, he said he killed whores because it was easy, and he knew no one would miss them.
If you take all the money spent on the war on whores, on true industrial sex technicians, and focused it on actually tracking down traffickers and predators, you could take the bastards down. You can find these people if you want to. But there are great economic forces at work in America, and throughout the world, that want desperately to keep things the way they are. Because there’s so much money involved.
But the bottom line, economically, is that there is a big beautiful sexy cash cow to be milked here. With a reasonable rate of taxation, people who choose to work in the business could make a very good living wage, get health insurance, and even have a retirement plan, if that’s what they choose. It’s all about choice. Everyone should have the choice to do what they like as long as they pay their bills and don’t hurt anyone. Isn’t that the whole idea behind America? And with some of that money, we could help people who want to leave the sex business get the skills necessary to transition. Apply the rest of this cash flow to paying teachers a decent wage, making sure no one goes hungry or homeless. Arts and sports in the schools. Music classes for every kid in America! What a revolutionary idea.
As for heroin, since you’re a basketball player, I’ll put it in your vernacular. It’s a slam dunk. In <em>USA Today</em> recently, right on the front page, in very small words, it said that the Taliban is making its money from buying and selling heroin. If you make it legal, like tobacco and alcohol, and package it nicely, you take away the Taliban’s cash flow. And again, you get to control this huge beautiful dopey goose that keeps laying big golden eggs. And why stop at heroin? Consider the hundreds of millions generated by the wacky weed industry. The trade in opium has been brisk for centuries. Hashish. Ecstasy. Speed. ‘Shrooms. Cocaine. Acid. Imagine the fun Madison Avenue would have. Orange Sunshine, the LSD with Vitamin C. Willy Weed, the only dope Willie Nelson smokes. Harry Potter’s Magic Mushrooms.
It’s not drugs that are the problem. Humans have used hallucinogens, intoxicants and in inebriates for as long as anyone cares to remember. Even when they’ve imbibed so much they can’t actually remember. It’s people’s behavior that’s the problem. Every time I’ve been in a room with people shooting up, they just lay there with silly grins on their faces, and their heads nod up and down like bobble head dolls. It’s when they run out of the drugs that the problems begin. If heroin was legal, like cigarettes and alcohol, addicts wouldn’t need to rob and pillage. Cigarettes and alcohol kill a lot more people than marijuana and heroin. But we say, go ahead, smoke and drink all you want, booze it up until you’re dead, if that’s your pleasure. We make money from taxing these products. We control the means of production and distribution. Again, isn’t that what America is all about? That we can do what we want as long as we mind your own p’s and q’s?
Take the money we spend on the war on drugs, and actually go after the Taliban, as well as gangsters in South America and Asia (many of whom are financed by the drug trade) after their money source has been cut off. Instead of declaring war under false pretense and trying to set up our own militia government so we can make millions for military contractors and their cronies, while ensuring that we are more hated every day.
There it is. Economic turbo-boost, predators and traffickers hunted down, Taliban and international gangsters crippled. All with the blessing of Abraham Lincoln. That’s who gave that great shout out about prohibition.
(An excerpt from the Soft Skull anthology Johns, Marks, Tricks & Chickenhawks, follow-up to Hos Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys)
Ho’s cover
This is how I go from being someone who sold sex, to someone who buys it. I’m cruising in my beat-to-hell car through the seedy groin of the Tenderloin. She’s all obsidian and copper, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. All the other hos sashaying down the stroll are like kabuki cartoon caricatures of hookers: glittery miniminiminiskirts, mammoth jackedup décolletage spilling tit flesh out of halter tops, machete heels and painted razor nails. That’s why I notice her. She looks like somebody I might hang out with. Not like a lady of the night. I have ho-dar and I know she’s working. I’m 23. I’ve been retired from the sex business for six years. There was no gold watch, severance package, or golden parachute.
It hits me suddenly. I could just pay this girl to have sex with me. It seems odd that I’ve never considered buying sex, when I sold so much of it. But this was before you could see a world full of women selling sex just by trolling on a websites. Plus, everywhere else I lived, you had to know where the hookers were and go find them. Not in San Francisco. Here, they’re strolling right down Geary like they own the place. Also, for the past six years I’ve been sleeping-on-people’s-couches, living-in-damp-basements, crashing-in-the-student-center poor. That’s how I lived rather than go back to selling sex. It saved my life at a time when I didn’t have any money or people, but it left me bent, spindled and mutilated. Plus, when I was a provider, all the clients I had sex with for money was at least old enough to be friends with my parents. So it just didn’t seem like the kind of sex I wanted for myself. Fun sex. As opposed to sex for profit.
So for the first time since I left the sex business, I have cash in my pocket and I am face-to-face with a woman I’m attracted to who will give me sex for money. As I cruise in my beat-to-hell car I realize I don’t want a professional. I was a professional. I know what it means to be a professional. No matter how much you look like you’re into it, there’s almost always a part of you that isn’t quite there. A part of you who watches yourself performing acts of sex. And most of times you’re lying to the customer. Pretending that their stories are fascinating, that they’re charming, beautiful, and intelligent, that you’re really turned on and happy. There were very few times when I was selling sex that I completely lost myself in a moment of true sexuality. No matter how good it felt physically, I always had that very conscious awareness that it was my job to turn myself into whatever would keep the customer satisfied. Customer satisfaction. Customer gratification. Customer elation. Customer orgasm.
But now I’m 23. I have money in my pocket. It hits me like a velvet glove that I could pay this excellent looking young woman to have sexual intercourse with me. I never for one second wonder whether it’s moral, whether it’s right or wrong. I didn’t think that when I sold it either. It always seemed like a fair exchange of cash for services. I only felt ashamed when I thought of people shaming me. But right now, I just want to be a great, great customer. I had a couple of clients who taught me so much about life and love and sex and they were so sweet and fun nice to me. As opposed to the customers who demeaned, polluted and punished me.
I stop my beat-to-shit car. She’s walking slow and casual, like she has nowhere to go in her jeans and T-shirt. She looks like she could be on her way home from her job at Barnes & Noble, or on her way to see an independent rock band play at some cool club. I have shockingly vivid visions of what she’ll look like naked underneath me. I’m sex drunk.
I roll down the window. She leans down so her head is in the frame of the car window. It’s like she’s on my TV.
“Hey, how you doing?” Obsidian Copper has the darkest shiniest eyes. And hair. A tiny smile flirts on her lips. A tiny twinkle flashes in her fired-glass black eyes. Like she thinks the whole thing is rather amusing. I like that. That’s how I tried to be when I was an industrial sex technician.
“I’m better now that I’m looking at you.” Writing it down now it seems like a cheesy line, but I really did mean it. I actually made me feel better looking at her.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Obsidian Copper chuckles in the most endearing way. “Are you with cops?”
Talk of law enforcement kick starts my central nervous system, a jolt of adrenaline squirts out of my glands, my fight-flight alarm rings, buzzes and beeps. It’s like I’m the star of a really cool movie.
“Do I look like a cop?” I raise my eyebrows in a droll ho-stroll smirk.
“That’s what a cop would say,” she shoots back with a sly copper deadpan.
“No,” I say, “I’m not now, nor ever have I been, with the police.”
Obsidian Copper gets in my beat-to-shit car. Smells of grit, used booze, bus exhaust and the Tenderloin waft in with her. But underneath is a fresh smell of somebody who’s cleaned themselves recently with a nice soap, and hasn’t covered the whole thing up with toxic, eye-stinging perfume. When I smell her I want to have sex with her even more.
“Where to?” I ask.
“Just start driving,” she says, like we’re in some 30s noir movie, where she’s the dangerous dame and I’m the lovelorn palooka.
I start driving.
“So,” I say, “I used to work in the business.” I want her to know that I’m in the people-who’ve-sold-sex club.
“Really?” Obsidian Copper doesn’t seem surprised. I suspect it would take a lot to surprise her.
“Yeah, when I was younger. In Hollywood.” I never told anyone before, and it feels good. I’m realizing that’s one of the cool things about paying an industrial sex technician. I can tell her anything. I don’t have to worry about making some kind of future with her. All I have to be a good customer, and she’ll basically whatever I want. Of course I understand all that intellectually, and I saw it over and over again with my clients. Coma Girl. The 82-year-old who wanted cunnilingus just once before she dies. The judge in diapers. But I never thought about it from a consumer’s perspective. It’s very liberating. A couple of years after I got out of the sex business I became a marriage counselor. People wanted me to listen to their problems. They wanted to be understood. When I was an industrial sex technician about half of the women who hired me didn’t really even want sex. They wanted me to listen. They wanted to be understood. Often while I was naked. And they had all their clothes on. Many of them wanted me to touch myself. It made me smile when I realized that often the only difference between being a top-of-the-food-chain industrial sex technician and being a marriage counselor was that I had all my clothes on, I wasn’t fondling myself and I was being paid much less money.
“So, what kind of the donation are you looking to make?” I love how that word has become part of the hooker/ho/industrial sex technician jargon. Donation. Like I’m helping to help endow the Prostitute Scholarship Fund. They do this of course because if I was a cop, they couldn’t say they were trying to get paid for services. It was just a donation to the Ho’s Retirement Home.
The meter’s running. Time’s money. Money makes the world go round. It can’t buy you love, but it sure can rent you some. It’s clear this is going to be different than sex I have with my girlfriends. Some of them gave me love with the sex. Often they’d want to have sex for a long time. As a client, I am going to have to pay for every second of sex. And there will be no love. It doesn’t seem quite so sexy anymore.
“I have $100. I’m not sure what the going rate is. That’s what I was making.”
I’m driving. Away from the Tenderloin up the hill into the overpriced air of Nob Hill. I glance over at Obsidian Copper. Her face is wide, her cheekbones flat, her skin smooth and beautiful. If you tarted her up, she could probably be a model. Driving around negotiating with Copper Obsidian I have a pumping rush of sexcitement, my mind floods with images of her floating on top of me, lowering myself down on her, taking her from behind, letting the monster loose. This is so much better than feeling vacant, hollow, brittle, bitter, agitated, jangly, unsettled, unhappy dissatisfied. Which I so often do.
Obsidian Copper looks at me with those deep hard raven eyes, sizing me up, weighing risk and reward, her face a still lake on a warm day when nothing is moving. She is a closed book. Finally she says:
“Okay, take a right up here.” Her voice is as flat as her face.
“Where we going?” I’m quite excited that I don’t know where I’m going with Obsidian Copper. But I’m also acutely aware that this could be some elaborate set up to kill me and slice me into little bloody pieces and dump me into the bay. Which makes my heart jackhammer, pulse spike, and nerve synapses jangle. This is such a high. Like rock climbing. Or white water rafting. Or bungee jumping.
“I’m sorry I only have 100, next time I’ll have more.”
“Sure.” This time she’s got a small but obvious sneer smeared on her lips. Like she’s heard that line 1,000,000,000 times before. I wondered if maybe something bad happened to her. Me, I got raped just before I got into the sex business. And now I’m wondering if something bad happened to her. Maybe not. Maybe she’s putting herself through grad school.
I have a surging urge to help her. Yes, I am a Sir Save-A-Ho. I do in some way see myself as a white knight in shining armor who can rescue the damaged beautiful ho with the heart of gold and rehabilitate her, in the process earning her eternal gratitude and a lifetime of free sex.
“What your heritage?”
“I’m half Mexican and half Cherokee.”
When she says this she really looks Cherokee. I can see her people in teepees, hunting the buffalo, living harmoniously with Mother Nature, not treating Her like it’s our toxic playground wasteland. From gathering berries and growing corn and making pots to strolling through the tenderloin selling your sex for money. My grandfather was a coal miner in Newcastle, England. He’d go down underground while it was still dark, suck down cancerous coal dust for twelve hours, and come back out when it was dark again. I wonder what our grandfathers would think of us, selling sex, and buying it. Like I said, I didn’t ever think it was wrong to sell sex for money. But I often felt depleted and wigged out, like my hard drive swallowed a virus when I was exposed to the sexual horrors I encountered as my clients played out their insane monstrous fantasies. Looking at her now, all that obsidian and all that copper, I wonder what skeletons lurk in her ancestral closet. I want to ask. But I don’t want to be the stupid white man. And it’s really not stuff you chat about around the water cooler. Which is really what we’re doing here. But want to be her friend. To dive beneath that copper lake and see what’s in the hole in the bottom of her obsidian sea. I want to help. I want to save the ho.
“Go down to the end of the block, turn the car around.” And now we are back in business mode. Time to get this show on the road.
As soon as the car’s in Park I give her $100. I always wanted to get paid right away. Depositing the money into my pocket immediately made everything all good. The mantra of my employment counselor/pimp was:
Get the money up front.
So I make sure Copper Obsidian gets her money up front. I want to know her name. But I figure if I ask she’ll just give me a fake name. A nom de ho. And
I don’t want to be the cliché who asks her what her real name is. So I just avoid the whole name issue. Even though I really want to know her name.
She takes one leg of her pants off faster-than-the-human-eye-can-see fast. She’s reclining the seat as far back as it will go. She’s looking up at the ceiling. Not at me.
It’s so abrupt. And so not sexy. Even though looking at her with one leg and her vagina naked in my fully reclined passenger seat is crazy sexy, wildly exciting and completely distracts me from the fact that my personal house is on fire.
But I’m not ready for intercourse, and I’m not sure exactly what to say. I unzip my pants and take my not-hard cock out. It’s very different from sex with civilian chicks. They usually want to kiss, and touch, and some like to have saucy and naughty talk.
Obsidian Copper lies there like a cadaver. So I try to get enough blood into my sad flaccid penis so I can insert the thing into her prostitute vagina. The bloom seems utterly off the rose.
Obsidian Copper turns and looks at my unthrobbing manhood languishing in my hand like a comatose white worm. “Oh,” she says, “do you want some head?”
I’m impressed with her business skills. That’s exactly what I want. She’s being everything a good industrial sex technician should be. This is what I used to strive for when I worked. To give the customer exactly what was wanted. And get it done as quickly as possible.
“Yes please,” I say with appreciation and enthusiasm.
She leans into my crotch, while opening a condom and putting the closed end into her mouth. She unrolls the condom with her lips around my suddenly awakening tool, and works her hands and mouth like a combination suction machine/tourniquet, drawing the blood up and making sure it stays there. I don’t know how long exactly she weaves her fellatio magic. But it does feel so good that I forget it’s a business transaction for a minute. Or two minutes. Or ten minutes. When time stops having any meaning, it’s almost always a good sign. I discover another one of the other real upsides of hiring a talented industrial sex technician. It just feels so darn good. And again, it completely makes me forget about all that raging roiling boiling festering sickness that’s growling like a filthy hungry monster chained in my basement.
I feel like I’ve already gotten my $100 worth.
Then she’s leaning back into my reclined passenger seat, while guiding my rigid sheathed member to the tip of her. She licks her fingers and touches herself. Twice. She has such a great copper face. She’s concentrating very intently on getting me inside her so that thrusting can begin and blastoff can be achieved. She does not look sexy in any way. She does not look like an actress in any of the pornographic movies I compulsively obsessively watch.
She does not make kissy lips. Or roll her eyes ecstatically. Or stick out her tongue orgasmically. She looks like a carpenter trying to nail a hammer into a hard wall. I wonder if that’s what I looked like when I was trying to service my clients. I always tried to smile. I probably smiled too much. Like some hideous Joker rent boy.
I want her to look at me. I want to kiss her. But I never kissed anybody when I worked. Nobody I knew kissed anybody when they were on the job. It’s too intimate. So I don’t try to kiss her. But I want to kiss her.
Suddenly she has me inside her. Swoosh. She looks at me and gives me a smile. It’s very small. And very far away. Like she’s a hologram smiling from another galaxy. Like she doesn’t want to be there. That makes it sad. I know that feeling. But at the same time, she has her hand now on my ass and it’s thrusting me forward at the same time as she’s thrusting herself forward, and then pulling back, with lots of incredible swivel/gripping/suction/torque action. Highly skilled. Efficient and effective. Like a finely tuned sex machine
My soul and my body are in conflict. Her placid detachment is disturbing and I want to help her feel better. Whereas the piston-thumping shaft-drive pyrotechnic thrusting is driving my body wild. I can hear my orgasm calling me. It’s coming, and unless I stop it, it will be here soon. I want to stop it. I want to keep doing this all night, every night, for the rest of my life. But when I look at her face, I can tell she doesn’t wants to be having sex with me. I’m pretty sure I’ve only been having intercourse with her for maybe six or seven minutes. But I feel she’s done her duty, I should just let my orgasm come, so she can be on her way. Seems only fair. She’s been so nice.
So I shut my eyes. I let her push me in, squeeze me superhuman tight, and suck me back the other way, all of my pleasure centers firing up, turning on, shooting and spraying.
My orgasm is upon me, it envelops, overwhelms and overcomes me, it’s shiveringly, otherworldly, transcendentally ecstatic.
Then it’s over. And we’re done.
She has me out of her area so fast it makes the head of my penis spin. She’s back in her pants before I’m even back in my passenger seat.
“Can you take me back you picked me up?” she says like she’s a plumber who just finished snaking my drain.
Go from ecstasy to detachment so fast is like coming up from the depths too quick without enough oxygen, and I get the sex bends.
I want desperately to talk to her. To see where she lives. To buy her dinner. To go see some independent band at some cool club with her. I want to know her name. I want to know her.
“Sure,” I say. “Are you okay?”
She turns her head a tiny little bit and looks at me and nods a tiny little nod, with a tiny little grin, like she’s happy I asked. Then she says:
“Sure.”
I feel drained. Literally and figuratively. I want to go to sleep. And that vacant, hollow, brittle, bitter, agitated, jangly, unsettled, unhappy dissatisfaction is already creeping back.
“Hey,” I say, “I really had a good time. And you’re very skillful. I wish I had some more money to give you. I just wanted to say thank you for being… such a nice person.”
“Sure,” she says. But this conversation is clearly over. She looks 1,000,000 miles away out the window.
I feel desperate for some kind of contact with her. To get inside of her heart and brain now that I’ve been inside of her vagina.
“Hey,” I say as I park my beat-to-shit back in the seedy groin of the Tenderloin, “can I get your number? I’d like to see you again.”
“I don’t have a number.”
Soon as the car stops moving she’s out the door, slamming it shut.
I watch her walk away from me, until all that obsidian and copper disappears.
That’s how I go from the supply to the demand side of the sex business. For the next 15 years I have sex with more prostitutes/hos/industrial sex technicians than I can count. Or maybe I can count them, but I choose not to. I spend tens of thousands of dollars having sex with the best of hos and the worst of hos.
Finally I realize that having sex with someone who loves me is so much better than having sex with someone who loves my money, and I retire permanently from the buying and the selling of sex.
As I thought about my life as a consumer and provider of sex for money, I realized how all those relationships changed me. And I wanted to tell the stories. As well as help other hos, hookers, call girls, rent boys and their customers tell their stories. So, with the help of my partner-in-crime RJ Martin, Jr., we put together Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks, a book of real people from the sex industry telling their real stories. Because in the exchange of sex for money, a window opens into the soul. Come take a peek. Thanks for listening. If you have a story to tell, let me know. I’d love to hear it.
David Henry Sterry is the author of 15 books, a performer, muckraker, educator, and activist. His first memoir, Chicken, was an international bestseller, and has been translated into 10 languages. His anthology, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys was featured on the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. The follow-up, Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chickenhawks, just came out. He has appeared on, acted with, written for, worked and/or presented at: Will Smith, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Stanford University, National Public Radio, Penthouse, Michael Caine, the London Times, Playboy and Zippy the Chimp. His new illustrated novel is Mort Morte, a coming-of-age black comedy that’s kind of like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, as told by Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver.
Goldman Sachs is proud to announce a consumer-enriching expansion from the hallowed halls of Wall Street to the glittering neon of Las Vegas. In addition to continuing our world-class wealth-friendly Private Wealth Management and Personal Banking services; our internationally-recognized client-focused Global Investment Research services; our award-winning, growth-facilitating Debt Financing teams, we are excited to unveil plans for the globally diversified, entertainment-enhanced Goldman Sachs Lounge & Casino, perfect for both the high roller, and the high-net-worth individual, financial institution, corporation and/or government. Located just off Flamingo Ave. between Treasure Island and Circus Circus, GSL&C will continue our tradition of offering the finest in connectivity-based consumer value. From Texas Hold ‘em Hedge Fund tables, to Equity Capital Craps games, to Subprime Mortgage Default Roulette wheels, to Junk Bond Bingo, Goldman Sachs plans to bring the visionary, innovative and family-friendly fun it made famous on Wall Street, and transplant it right into the heart of Las Vegas. We’re also delighted to provide both original and recapitalized entertainment-rich packages, including but not limited to, a Ronald Reagan impersonator, who, backed by the dancing Reaganettes, will star in a multimedia review developed by Sirs Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber, with Wayne Newton, called DEREGULATION! World renowned Cirque du Soleil have developed a special show just for us, entitled, Money CAN Buy You Love, which will feature profitability-saturated costumes that are just that side of revealing, just this side of risqué, and made of real FDIC-backed gold bullion. And for all you Baby Boomers we’ll have a Pink Floyd tribute band that plays an extended jam version of their mega-hit song, Money, with an infrastructure-rocking, liquidity-inducing light show that’ll have you tripping the light fantastic! For the AARP crowd, we got a Henny Youngman look-alike with a comedy-maximizing catchphrase that’s sure to gain valuable traction all over America, “Take my money, PLEASE!” Don’t think we forgot the kids! While you’re having as much fun as an adult can legally have in the state of Nevada, drop them off at the Elephants, Bulls and Bears room. Boys can play Matador, goring and killing our very own papier-mâché headed mascot Bully. Girls can have a teddy bear’s picnic, while they learn how to bag an Elephant, (a large institutional investor), thereby attaining a strategic advantage in manipulating security prices. We’ll also be featuring a Research Room, “manned” by a bevy of bodacious, brainy beauties, who are fully “equipped” to give you insider tips about which games best suit your skills, value and long-term fiduciary goals. And don’t worry if you’re a little cash flow-shy, we’ve got our own credit rating agency, headed by Harvard Business School alumnus and former Miss Las Vegas, Penelope “Penny Stock” Bernstein. Plus we’ll offer a super, synthetic collateralized debt obligation system that lets you get cash fast fast fast. So be sure when you’re packing your little black dress, to throw in your pink slips to all your vehicles, the deed(s) to your house(s), as well as your bathing suit, so you can take a break from all the madcap fun, and swim in our blood diamond encrusted, $-shaped Olympic size pool And don’t forget to visit the Bailout Lottery Lounge, where you can buy a ticket that gives you a better than average* chance of winning a nice hunk of that Obama bailout money you’ve been hearing so much about. You’ll even find a Big Short Blackjack table, where customers can actually bet against themselves, and the dealer. Because at Goldman Sachs Lounge & Casino, everyone’s a winner!*
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“There is a great looking chicken new to me on the swim team … he looks to be 14. Tall but built pretty well in his chest, and blonde and great smile. I fantasized about his asking me to help him get used to the jacuzzi naked.”
This is from the diary of 61-year-old Judge, Ronald C. Kline.
Do you find this shocking and unbelievable?
I do not. At the age of 17, I became an under-age prostitute: a chicken. One of my clients was a judge. The Judge paid me $500 (and this was 1974 money) to verbally and physically abuse him. As soon as I laid eyes on him I felt mean, hateful, loathing. I imagined him up on the bench looking down at me righteously. At the same time I felt sorry for him, and I wondered: Who pumped their poison into this guy? At that moment I vowed I’d never work again. Afterwards I went and bought a day-old birthday cake and ate until I passed out.
Judge Kline has been charged with six counts of possessing child pornography, (including over 100 images of child pornography and a commercial videotape in his home) and child molestation.
Internet pedophilia is rampant. Children are bought and sold, imported and exported like slaves all over the world.
From the cover of Newsweek, to the front pages of the New York Times, to 48 Hours TV news magazine, there have been countless stories detailing how priests have been abusing children for decades all over America.
I am not shocked. I am not in disbelief. Sadly I’ve seen it too many times. And not in the bad part of town. In the nice neighborhoods where I grew up. We must accept the fact that child sexual exploitation is not something that just happens in the ghetto, or in Mexico, or Bangkok. It’s happening on your block. In your nice neighborhood. On your block.
America has turned a blind eye to the problem of adults in positions of power and privilege sexually victimizing children for too long.
So what is to be done?
Stop treating prostituted kids as criminals. When a youth is arrested for prostitution, the question inevitably asked is, “Did the child agree to the act?” This is the equivalent of asking an assaulted child if they agreed to being beaten. Almost all of these kids have been subjected to terrible trauma, and must be given the psychological, emotional, and physical help they need, as well as the skills required to move on.
Stop passing kids from agency to agency to hospital to foster home, and allow kids to have a say in what happens to them when they’re rescued from sexual exploitation. And make sure they have a safe place to go.
Make more safe houses available for kids that are actually SAFE, where survivors can get medical, psychological to help them re-integrate into society.
Prosecute pimps and johns who abuse kids with vigorous laws and enforcement, and multiple charging (statutory rape, child endangerment, and RICO statute) abusers. 4) Create a Child Protection Czar, who would coordinate and facilitate organizations on a local and national level.
Spread public information for kids, parents and educators on how to talk about this subject: not as sex education, but as violence prevention.
Establish an 800 number that kids can call day or night that will refer them to a local agency where they can get the help they need.
Form a group of survivors who can help set policy, and talk all over the country in schools and churches and community centers.
The laws have to be stiffer, and their enforcement much more vigorous.
Parents must calmly and rationally tell their children that there are a few adults who are sick on the inside, and not on the outside. And this grown-up might not be a stranger. It might be someone you know. And the sickness makes them want to hurt boys and girls. No matter what any adult says, boys and girls don’t have to do anything they’re not comfortable with, and if anyone tries to make them, they need to tell their mom and their dad and their teacher.
We want our heroes and villains in clean discreet categories. We want our heroes to be pillars of society. We want our sexual villains to be fringe freaks, grotesque and easily recognizable. But the fact is that predators are hungry for our children in all walks of life. Sexual predators aren’t all pockmarked men in stained raincoats. Sometimes they’re gardeners, priests, uncles, and yes, even judges.
I hid the fact that I had been a prostitute for many years, and holding all those secrets and all that trauma nearly killed me. I went from the penthouse to the outhouse on a slow painful ride down the razor’s edge. Part of the reason I couldn’t tell anyone was that I grew up in a British household where one’s upper lip was always stiff, and I could not ask for the help I needed. But part of it is a terrible prejudice that exists in our culture against kids who’ve been prostituted. I felt my identity had been spoiled, that I was worthless and undeserving of love and help. I wrote a book about my life as a young chicken, and when my book came out, I “came out” as an ex-prostitute. I immediately felt the effects of having my identity spoiled. Many of my immediate family no longer speak to me. I am no longer invited to family gatherings. One of my best friends told me point blank it was my fault that I was raped. Hate the crime, not the victim.
If I could talk to Ronald C. Kline, this is what I’d like to say: “I was hired as a 17 year old to abuse a judge, and it left deep scars in me which took years and years to heal. Please, I beg you to get some help. Find someone who can assist you to express your desires appropriately. Innocence is the most precious thing in the world. Once it’s gone, you can never get it back.”
David Henry Sterry is the author of Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent 10 Year Anniversary published by Soft Skull
911 said the sign as we edged into the central Oregon town of Sisters. We weren’t sure if that was the population, or a cry for help. It was Saturday afternoon, and we were booked into Paulina Springs Book Company as part of our Putting Your Passion Into Print Tour. In fact we had put together this event to sell our books Satchel Sez: the World, Wit and Wisdom of Satchel Paige, and Pride & Promiscuity: the Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen, because our publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Random House, had told us it would be very difficult to do a successful event in a bookstore revolving around Satchel Paige or Jane Austen, both of whom are dead, and most likely will remain so. But Kate Cerino at Paulina Springs seemed to think differently, and had insisted on doing an event about Satchel Paige, instead of Passion Into Print. So there we were.
We walked into the store at 4:40 for our 5:00 event, and apart from Kate, none of the 911 Sisterites were there. Our expectations, which had been extremely low to begin with, plummeted as we spied the 30 empty seats sadly facing one lone chair, which was staring off into space self-consciously.
As we strolled around Sisters, we noticed that all the shops were closed, and no one was around. It was like a Twilight Zone episode. We began to wonder if there really were 911 people in Sisters, or if we were going to be abducted by author-starved aliens who would make us write books day and night for the rest of eternity.
Well, imagine our surprise at 5:00 when we returned to find Paulina Springs Bookstore packed with 35 of its 911 occupants. 3% of the population. If this was LA there would’ve been 300,000 people there. Our jaws hit the floor. Those melancholy chairs were now full and happy, brimming with Sisters bottoms, all waiting for us to say something intelligent, insightful and witty about Satchel Paige.
I scanned the crowd, and it suddenly hit me: there were only two people under the age of sixty in the audience. Talk about your target audience. Afterwards, the crowd asked great questions, and many of them shared their own Satchel Paige stories. It was America at its best, oral history flying all around us, right there in Paulina Springs Book Company, Sisters, Oregon, population 911. Turns out almost everyone there had seen Satchel pitch, which is not as strange as it might seem, since he barnstormed North America from Moosejaw to Miami. One woman told a story about when she was a little girl and her father took her to Comiskey Park in 1948 so she could see Satchel pitch against the Cleveland Indians. As she told us, her eyes glowed like gold as she lit up the room.
Towards the end of the event the Oldest-Man-in-the-Room raised his hand. In a voice weathered with age but still going gangbusters, he said, “I was the batboy on Satchel Paige’s team. My uncle was his manager. I used to ride in his car with him. He was fast. He would have made a great race car driver, Ol’ Satch.” He stole the whole show in about twenty seconds.
After the event, the Oldest-Man-In-the-Room approached me. He had several hundred thousand miles on him, but his smile was wide, his mind was tack-sharp, and he had incredible posture. Made me stop slouching just looking at him. He thanked me for writing the book. Then he told me that he had one of Satchel’s old gloves. I said I would love to buy it from him. He said, “No, sir, I want you to have it. Give me your address and I’ll mail it to you.” I insisted on paying for it, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He gave me his pen, and I wrote down my address for him. He carefully folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Then he stuck out his hand and I took it in mine. It was old and thin, but the grip was strong, with a little pump at the end. I hope I’m shaking hands as well as that when I’m 80. After we said our heartfelt farewells, I was distracted by someone asking me to sign a book, and this led to another signature, then another. As I signed the books, I was so happy when the buyers asked me to make the inscriptions out to their grand-sons and grand-daughters. Then it hit me: this is why I wanted to write the book in the first place, so the next generation would know about Satchel and his 6 Rules for Staying Young. As I signed, I felt a tug on my sleeve. It was the Oldest-Main-in-the-Room. I smiled to myself. I figured he probably forgot something. “Sonny, you got my pen.” I cracked up, handed him the pen, and smiled as I watched him walk away slow but steady, overjoyed at 44 to be called Sonny.
We thanked Kate, she thanked us, then we all patted each other on the back for quite some time. We promised her we’d be back when my memoir Chicken comes out in February, and she said she was looking forward to it.
Everyone in the store bought a book. It was the most successful event on our whole 13-stores-in-15-day tour.
As we packed up to leave Sisters, population 911, Arielle turned to David and said, “You never know.”
D & A: Why did you buck conventional wisdom and bring an event revolving around Satchel Sez: The Wit, Wisdom, and World of Satchel Paige into Paulina Springs Bookstore, when most publishers say in-store events about baseball players don’t work when the ballplayer is dead?
K: Someone in the store heard David being interviewed by Scott Simon on National Public Radio, and thought it would make a good event.
D & A: Why did you think an event about a Negro Leagues legend would work in your store when there are so few African-Americans in your town?
K: I don’t really think about it like that. We try to only bring in great events, so when people come to see an event here, they know it’s going to be interesting. Like all independent bookstores that have managed to survive, we have very loyal customers, and they support us.
D & A: So, you don’t make automatic assumptions of which books will draw crowds, and which won’t?
K: No, not really. We just try to bring in high-quality authors we think will put on really good events.
D & A: Your store has such a nice feel in it, it seems very intimate.
K: I think that’s important. A lot of people are intimidated by writers. A woman came to an event here and she said she’d always wanted to go to one of these events, but she felt intimidated. We have a very casual feeling here, and I think that makes a big difference.
D & A: And you had books I’d never seen before.
K: We’re able to hand-select the books we sell. I think almost every book in this store has been read by someone on the staff, or was recommended to us by a customer. One of our customers lives most of the time in Berkeley, and she comes into our store to buy books. I asked her why and she said, “You guys always have seem to have great books I can’t find anywhere else.” And she’s from Berkeley, where there are so many bookstores!
D & A: Your event was the most successful on David and Arielle’s 13 stores-in15-days Northwest Tour. Why do think the event such a success, in a town with 911 people?
K: Well, that’s a little deceiving. There are actually about 10,000 people who live in and around Sisters. But I think Paulina Springs Book Company is in many ways an intellectual center here in Sisters, and, in fact, for the larger Central Oregon community. The store’s owners, Dianne Campbell and Dick Sandvik, have worked very hard over the past nine years to develop strong audiences for our in-store events. People really pay attention to who we bring in. Like a lot of small towns all over America, many well-educated, interesting people live here. People have chosen to move here because it’s such a great place to live. We really work hard to get the word out on our events, and we benefit a lot from word of mouth in the community.
D & A: Do you think that publishers sometimes underestimate small-town bookstores’ ability to sell books and stage successful events?
K: Most definitely! We have a very hard time getting publishers to send their authors here. We’ve been very persistent, especially at making direct contact with writers. Authors like Sandra Dallas, Barry Lopez, Ivan Doig, and Craig Lesley came to Paulina Springs despite reservations of their publicists – and had great receptions and wonderful experiences. We think it’s time publicists and publishers took note that their authors might make a bigger splash here, rather than being part of the background noise in the big city. I was cleaning the files the other day and I found a note from Pete Fromm addressing this very point. “…the entire way to Boise, where the Barnes & noble experience was pretty much a bust. Meeting you guys, the dinner and the reading at your store turned out to be one of the high points of the entire trip. Thanks for pestering the publisher to get me there.”
D & A: That was our experience, too, Kate. Thank you so much for talking to me, and thanks for making us feel so welcome.
K: Thank you.
My first piece on Salon. Thanks to Arielle Eckstut. To read on Salon click here: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/14/i_wrote_my_way_to_true_love/
“You should stop writing these stupid movie scripts and write about your life, it’s so much more interesting.” Janine, my hypnotherapist, was not being unkind. She just had no filter. And she was right. That was the most infuriating thing about Janine my hypnotherapist. She was always right.
I had just gotten a three-picture deal with Disney. Well, it wasn’t really a three-picture deal. They hired me to write a script for one of their moronic ideas (Sinbad in the Army with dogs), and in the contract they locked me up for another two movies for slightly more money each time. But at the bottom of every page was writ in small letters: “We can terminate this contract for any reason at any time for perpetuity and eternity in this and every other conceivable universe and pay you NOTHING.” I asked my agent and she said I could tell everybody I had a three-picture deal with Disney. Even though I didn’t really. And that, in a nutshell, is Hollywood, baby.
But the thought of telling the truth about myself made me hot and clammy, sticky and jittery, teeth tearing into cuticles till they bled. I was much more comfortable working on my buddy script about two 12-year-olds who go to Vegas and beat the mob. Or my mobster-becomes-a-vampire script. Or my “Some Like It Hot” cross-dressing baseball script.
But I’d always wanted to write a book. So that night I started writing one. It was liberating. Gave my obsessive mind something to focus on besides my own sex-addicted self-loathing.
Turns out I wasn’t quite ready to tell that story yet. I hadn’t hit bottom. I was still living in my beautiful Craftsman home in the hills of Echo Park with my beautiful red sports car and my beautiful sex-denying fiancée. I hadn’t yet been fired by Disney, my Sinbad/Army/dog script unmade, my fictitious three-picture deal evaporated in a puff of smoke. I hadn’t yet been dumped by an entirely different beautiful damaged narcissistic sex-denying fiancée whom I DIDN’T EVEN LIKE. I hadn’t yet been whacked over the head with a metal pipe at 4 a.m. in Harlem by an angry disenfranchised crackhead while pursuing a transsexual thief masquerading as a female sex worker. That was when I hit bottom. The bottom of the bottom.
David Henry Sterry is the author of 14 books, including his memoir, “Chicken,” an international bestseller that has been translated into 10 languages. His anthology, “Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys,” was featured on the front cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review. His new illustrated novel is “Mort Morte,” a coming-of-age black comedy about gun violence and children, and a boy who really loves his mother.
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.com/ http://www.facebook.com/sexworkerliterati
Thanks once again to the Huffington Post for giving me some love. Nice to see World Cup fever is spreading.
I’m 10. An American boy. When I walk into my first English sweet shop in Coxlodge, the tiny ex-mining village of my ancestors, it’s like entering a strange, exotic parallel universe. There’s candy, but it’s all different: Smarties, Crunchy Bars, Gob Stoppers. There’s newspapers, but they have pictures of naked women in them. This totally blows my little 10-year-old mind. Pretty women with naked knockers right there in the newspaper! What a world! And there, on the counter, is a box full of unopened soccer cards.
My little heart soars as my pulse spikes. Some of my earliest and most exhilarating memories involve my mom rewarding me for good behavior by buying me baseball cards. They’re one of my earliest attachments to a culture that was bigger than me and my family. An identity in the world. A way of defining myself by belonging to American institutions like Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle and the Yankees. These iconic ballplayers are the heroes of my very early Wonder Years. Larger then life figures with extraterrestrial skills and talents you can count on in your hour of most dire need. Men who, even when limping, bloodied and bowed, triumph against seemingly insurmountable odds, and bring glory to you, your team, your tribe, and your country. These cardboard images of the best of the best were talismanic objects that stood for an ideal of American Manhood.
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Be prepared, brave, noble, kind, help your fellow man and be good to your school, your girl and your mom. So in that little sweetie shop outside Newcastle, I’m practically trembling with excitement as I plunk down my 10p (even the money’s different! big huge gigantic pennies!) and grab a pack. A whole new set of heroes unfolds before me. Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, Bobby Charlton. I read about their superhuman exploits. The bone-crunching tackles, the rocket laser goals, the humanly impossible feline-like saves.
That’s when I first fall in love with soccer. Later that afternoon my budding romance is consummated with a bunch of local lads playing soccer in the little hardscrabble patch of scabby grass behind a block of industrial flats. Again I’m entranced by this parallel universe I’ve fallen into. These kids are just like the kids I play with back in America, only instead of pretending to be Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays, we pretend to be Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks, and Bobby Charlton.
Now I’m 52. An American man. When I walk into my local soccer store in New Jersey, my heart still does a little hop skip pitterpat jig of joy when I see a box full of unopened soccer cards on the counter. $2.50. That’s what they cost now. As I start to open the first pack I have a mad flashback of that Coxlodge sweet shop of my ancestors when this is all it took to make me madly in love with life. To my mom rewarding me for being a good boy by buying me packs of baseball cards. To those Men who were the Olympian Gods of my childhood. At 52 I don’t rip open the pack anymore. Now I savor it. Take my time. As I uncover the first card I’m flabbergasted and gobsmacked. It’s Landon Manchild Donovan, arguably the greatest goalscoring threat America has ever produced. He’s the very first card in the very first pack. It is clearly a sign from the soccer gods. Obviously they’re telling me that Landyman is going to have a huge World Cup. I immediately make him my pre-World Cup favorite to win the Golden Boot for most goals scored in the tournament. If I was a betting man I’d lay a wager on that right now. When I look at the next card I’m both awe and dumb struck, can hardly believe the information my eyes is feeding my brain. It is… Tim T-Ho Howard, arguably the greatest goalkeeper in the world today. Mouth agape, eyes googly I’m like: These are the first two cards of the first pack I buy of 2010 South Africa World Cup soccer cards, are you kidding me? I’ve stated publicly that I think America’s going to win this World Cup. People scoff. Mock. Ridicule. Deride. But I don’t care anymore. I’ve never been able my entire life to muster any kind of religious belief. And I have tried. God, how I’ve tried. I envy those people who can believe in a religion that gives them spiritual ease and peace. A benevolent God, a Heaven full of angels and puppies and unicorns and all the people you’ve ever loved, who come running up to you in slow motion with open arms and hearts when you die. I don’t know why, but from since I was a little kind I believed that we create our own heaven and hell right here on Earth. I’ve never seen any evidence of what an afterlife might be. I believe in science. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. So whatever I am will turn into something else. I’ve just never seen any proof of what that something else might be.
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But in New Jersey last week when I opened that pack and I was blown sideways by the first two cards being the two hotshot superstars of American soccer, it struck me with a transcendent ecstatic flash that this ridiculous irrational belief I have that the United States is going to win this World Cup gives me great comfort. Sweet solace. Soccer succor. On June 12, against England, our former imperialist, colonialist oppressors, USA opens their World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Join me won’t you, and dive into the peaceful waters where awaits the blissful baptism of a true Believer. I know the more mojo, hoodoo and juju we can send through the power of our collective will to Team USA in South Africa, the more likely it is for our dream to come true, to see Lando and T-Ho hoisting the World Cup over their heads and forever basking in the pantheon of soccer gods with Booby Moore, Gordon Banks and Bobby Charlton.
David Henry Sterry is co-author, with Alan Black – San Francisco legend and notorious soccer lunatic – of The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatics Guide, featuring internationally renown soccer junkie Irvine Welsh, soccer crazy best-selling author Po Bronson, and the best soccer writer in the world Simon Kuper. A laugh-out-loud ride of a guide for the fanatic in all of us. http://www.davidhenrysterry.com/category/books/
I love this website, and the guy who runs it is way cool, David Gutowski. i had a blast putting this 2gether.
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2010/05/book_notes_davi_13.html
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
As I grow older, my love for soccer increases every year while the appeal of other sports wanes (both as spectator and participant). The World Cup is my favorite sporting event, combining the international aspect of the Olympics with the fervent passion of soccer fans.
David Henry Sterry has co-written The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide, a wildly entertaining book on the event, its players, and its history. Whether describing historical rivalries, infamous events, or the great players of the game, Sterry and his co-author Alan Black deliver a thoughtful yet always entertaining commentary.
As a bonus, the guest essays (by Irvine Welsh, Po Bronson, and others) are among the best soccer writing I have read.
If, like me, you are looking forward to the World Cup, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.
In his own words, here is David Henry Sterry’s Book Notes music playlist for his book, The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide:
I am genetically predisposed to kick balls with my feet and butt them with my head. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a professional soccer player in England, back when a professional soccer player had to have a day job to feed his family. At the age of 16 my father, who grew up in a tiny mining village outside Newcastle, had a choice: become an apprentice professional soccer player, or go to college. He had a coal mining dad later died a miserable death when black lung disease planted its flag into his respiratory system. So my father chose college, the first in his family to attend school past the age of 16. He immigrated to the United States just before I was born. When my parents became citizens, five years to the day after they arrived at Ellis Island, we had a huge party, sparklers twinkling atop a red white and blue sugar lard icing cake. When I was little, soccer was something played by dark swarthy men with too much body hair who spoke strange grunting languages. And it was certainly never seen on TV. But as I reached high school, the greatest players of their generation were brought to America to ply their trade as the bright light of their careers faded. Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff. That’s when I really first fell in love with the game. I was lucky because the North American Soccer League sent there players out to coach high school kids. So I was trained by the center half of the Dallas Tornadoes, a man named John Best. He and my father taught me what it was to be a soccer player. The speed and the skill but most especially the cool under fire take no prisoners passion that characterizes the best soccer players.
After college I went and trained back in the mother country. Yes, I was taking coals to Newcastle. I played in the top amateur league in the northeast of England, and we were paid the equivalent of $50 a game, $100 bonus if you scored a goal. One of my teammates had been noticed by Newcastle United. At that point in history, being an American playing in England, I was such an anomaly that they wrote article about me in the local paper. So when my pal brought me along to the training ground of Newcastle United, one of the great teams in Europe (present circumstances notwithstanding) I was allowed to train with the under-21 squad. It’s kind of like a peasant from Outer Bumfuck Slovakia getting to practice with the New York Yankees.
There I learned the craft of being a Hardman. How to lurk in the shadows and deliver punishment without looking like you’re doing it. How to get inside the prima dona diva goalscorer’s head. To drive him crazy and take him out of his game and make him look over his shoulder every time the ball’s coming towards him, wondering if you’re going to chop the knees right out from under him, or plant the sharp bone of your elbow into his rib cage. Happy days.
It was there I also learned about the religious ecstatic tribal grandeur of soccer. It is truly a game of the people. Completely democratic, in part because you don’t have to be a genetic freak. So anyone can become great if they pay their dues to the Goddess of Soccer. And all you need to play is a ball. In fact if you don’t have a ball he can tape up a few old socks. Or, like Pelé did when he was a child, you can play with a grapefruit if you have to. I used to go to Newcastle United games and chills would electrify my spine while the roars would rattle my bones. And they’d break into these old ancient chants and songs spontaneously. No scoreboard telling a bunch of sheep when to cheer. It was organic, hewn out of the very earth from which my hearty, sentimental, sarcastic, hard yet generous working class people sprang. Anyone who ever tells you that soccer is boring has never been to a packed stadium full of Geordies in full throated roar as their beloved warriors try to bring home the glory.
When I got back to the good ol’ US of A, I was shocked to see fields of blonde haired blue-eyed children playing soccer. There was even a new idiomatic phrase that had slipped into the vernacular of America: Soccer Mom. I was offered a professional contract by the Vancouver Whitecaps, whose general manager was none other than John Best, the man who trained me so well. The day after I got the letter inviting me to Vancouver, I tore my left knee to shreds training. Shattered kneecap. Shattered dreams. I was in a cast for six months. In truth, I’ve never really recovered fully, physically, spiritually or emotionally.
Some Americans still don’t understand that the World Cup is like the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NCAA basketball championship, the NBA finals and Stanley Cup all rolled into one. If every nation in the world were invited to play. It is a pilgrimage, an odyssey, a journey to the center of what makes it a joy to be alive.
And this year, the mother of all sporting events will be landing for the first time on the mother of all contents: Africa. Yes, I love watching the greatest players in the world beating each other to a bloody pulp for a month. Yes, I believe in my heart that this is the year the United States could actually make it to the final (remember, they should’ve beaten Brazil in the finals of the Confederations Cup in South Africa last summer). But I think what I enjoy most about the World Cup is that it brings together and makes the strangest bedfellows out of humans from literally every corner of this great and crazy planet. I love that.
When Bay Area legend Alan Black, the transplanted Scotsman who made the Edinburgh Castle an epicenter of literary excellence in San Francisco, asked if I wanted to put together a guide for the upcoming World Cup, without even thinking I said yes. We really wanted to capture the grandeur, passion, madness, ecstasy, agony, misery and glory that is the World Cup.
Music has always been a big part of soccer. One of the pleasures of this brave new world in is it there are approximately 800 squazillion soccer videos floating around the World Wide Web, where people take music and put it over soccer greatest-hits highlights. So here’s some of the stuff I was listening to, and watching, as we put together this guide to World Cup South Africa 2010.
“Ole Ole Ole”
The classic crowd chant. There are so many different versions of this song it kind of boggles the mind. But unless you’ve ever been in a stadium with 100,000 people chanting it while blowing whistles and beating drums, and as will be the case in South Africa, playing the vuvuzela, the local insane fan trumpet, you have not truly lived.
“We Are the Champions”
God bless Freddy Mercury. The world was truly a sadder, less exciting, more fucked up place when he left us. There’s something about his over-the-top yet totally sincere bravado to that matches the Olympian scale of the World Cup, when literally the whole planet sits on the edge of its seat holding its breath to see what happens next. And this song, of course, has been sung all over the world by rabid fanatics celebrating their team’s triumph.
Another video
“Lust for Life”
Nothing quite says lust for life like the World Cup. And I just love those drums and that yowling howling Iggy Pop. Here’s a very cool video with that song in it and how it figured in the movie Trainspotting, which was written by Irvine Welsh, who just happens to be a contributor to our book. It’s the story of the most famous goal in the history of Scotland and how it relates to pornography and tartan folklore. By the way, the goal that Scotsman Archie Gemmill scores became the basis for a modern dance piece.
“Pata Pata”
By the terribly missed Miriam Makeba. So sad she’s not gonna be able to sing for the globe when it comes calling for the World Cup. A beautiful artist who really captures the rhythms and the spirit of Africa.
“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
I know it’s the most overplayed song in the world, but I still love it and I wanted to put some images of Africa in here.
When I was performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I was on a radio show with an American comedian named Greg Proops. He’s a very funny fellow. I knew him from my stand in San Francisco in the 80s. The musical guest that day was the Soweto Gospel choir and they completely tore for the roof off the joint. Just blew the whole place up. I make a point of trying to see them whenever I possibly can.
And here, the best England World Cup song ever.
I don’t necessarily like the music in the links below, but the soccer action is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbQVdLRqJ1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SveYH_Dxudc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p21ZC9pBZDs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9L9rj4swhs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBHICeJ1ZmY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3ys_2UUEpk
Thanks again, Largehearted Boy, and enjoy the Greatest Show on Earth, as the Glorious World Cup crash lands in South Africa this summer.
David Henry Sterry and The Glorious World Cup: A Fanatic’s Guide links:
the author’s website
the book’s website
Facebook page for the book
Bollocks review
Soccer Insider review
Largehearted Boy Book Notes music playlist by the author for Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys
Sports Cackle Pop interview with the author
English Teachers Award
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides
gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like
underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a
guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of
those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country
speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar
eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was
room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes
just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated
because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge
at a
formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a
bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag
filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an
eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and
Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. Instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you
fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across
the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having
left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka
at 4:19 p.m., at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences
that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who
had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the
East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only
one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil,
this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not
eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either,
but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land
mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender
leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with
power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells,
as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
The Pope and his people, reacting to recent allegations that he actively participated in covering up for pedophile priests who violently and repeatedly raped deaf boys, are allegedly on the verge of making a deal with legendary producer Joe Francis to produce a video series tentatively titled, “Priests Gone Wild.”
“The Pope is totally stoked,” alleged one of his closest confidant, resplendently decked out in a purple ermine-trimmed robe glittering with Papal bling, “he’s talking about a director’s cut, he’s gonna do a bonus audio track, and we put together a blooper reel that is seriously lol.I thank God every day I got in on the ground floor of this because it’s gonna be huge.We’re going to do a whole line of Papally blessed adult products.The Vicar of Jesus Prostate Massager, the Pontiff Pocket P*ssy, and my favorite the Pope on a Rope, which is a soap and a fun adult toy for the whole family that leaves you feeling holy and clean inside and out.”
After decades of Catholic priests preying upon the very children whose souls and care they were responsible for, and the systematic cover-up of this sexual abuse, the latest news that Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal John Ratzinger, personally stifled the investigation of yet another pedophile priest has rocked the Vatican.Coming as it does on the heels of a gay prostitution ring supplying male hustlers to higher-ups in the very heart of the Catholic Church, the fact that this time the priest, Milwaukee’s Lawrence Murphy, is accused of sexually molesting over 200 deaf boys over the course of a quarter decade, has caused a firestorm of controversy.Add this to the fact that in Italy over 20 predator priests have been sexually victimizing upwards of 50 deaf boys and girls at the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf, and even the most devout Catholics are beginning to wonder why the Church has become a haven for fostering and protecting men who have sex with children.Alessandro Vantini, a survivor of relentless sodomizing at the hands of Catholic priests, declared that eventually he felt like, “I was dead.”And just two weeks ago, it was revealed that when Ratzinger was in charge of the archdiocese of Munich, he facilitated yet another predator priest who was sexually violating children.In fact, over 5,000 priests and deacons worldwide have been identified as sexual and physical abusers of minors, many of them in orphanages and reform schools. Only 2% of those priests have received prison sentences. In Ireland, the Catholic Church has settled with 48 victims, costing over €8 million, which outraged parishioners are now being asked to pay.In America the settlements have been staggering.In Pittsburgh, $1.25 million; in San Diego, $198 million; and in the Los Angeles diocese alone has paid out over $750 million. When you add all this up it’s easy to see why the Pope and the entire Catholic hierarchy were keen to rethink their strategy as they move forward in the wake of almost universal hatred.
“Hey, Pope Benny 26 is fed up.He’s pissed off,” one of his inner circle is alleged to have said, “and he wants to show everybody they have messed with the wrong Holy Father.I mean seriously, why are they always picking on us?Just because we enjoy using children for sex, that doesn’t make us evil.Lots of people are doing it.And these kids, especially the deaf ones, are now much closer to God because of all the holy bodily fluid the Catholic Church pumped into them for years.But that’s all the past.We’re putting a whole new spin on the brand.The Pope’s gonna be rocking YouTube, he’s getting his blog on, he’s all Twittered up, I’m serious, the man is a tweeting machine.And he told me today he’s bound and determined, with the help of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, to have more followers than Ashton Kutcher and Conan O’Brien combined.The Prince of the Apostles is going viral baby, this is definitely not your father’s Pope!So, we’ve got all this cool product we’re about to launch, and we’re developing a new Nuns Gone Wild Spring Break series that is mad hot, I mean crazy off the hook hot, believe me, nobody parties harder than a drunk nun.Not only is it going to make the Pope a serious playa, but we can use the money to pay off all the lawsuits.Win-win, right?”
When contacted, the Vatican refused to comment.
“If we can save $100 mill, f*ck custmores, make more money! 34 deaths is well below acceptable casualty level. Today America, tomorrow the world!” This internal e-mail was allegedly leaked from deep within the inner sanctum of Toyota’s US president, Jim Lentz, and CC’d to all top level Toyota executives including Akio Toyoda, grandson of Toyota’s founder, and currently the president of Toyota Motor Corp.. “Shame on you, Toyota for being so greedy!” Rhonda Smith, a victim of Toyota’s neglect, cried angrily at a recent congressional hearing. She was voicing America’s rage at Toyota’s preference for obscene profits over the safety of their customers. This was one of just three congressional hearings held recently in Washington to determine what is to be done about Toyota specifically, and the automobile industry in general, to protect Americans from dying needlessly in their cars.
But there has been a cloud of suspicion around these hearings, as it was revealed that the automobile behemoth made massive contributions to over 40% of the congressman who are supposed to be investigating them, including head of the U.S. Senate committee on Commerce, Science and transportation, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
“No need to worry about senators and congressmen, we bought and paid for those greedy *ssholes like the high class old man ho’s they are!” This from another internal e-mail allegedly passed all around the top executives and board members of Toyota, even as they apologize, and claim to be embarrassed in front of Congress.
“We have not lived up to the high standards our customers and the public have come to expect from Toyota,” Toyota president Lentz said before Congress. Many doubt the sincerity of the apology, in light of the fact that he insisted in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that the problem was caused by misplaced mats and pedal mechanisms, and not from much more serious electronic/computer problems which cause automobiles to accelerate, while helpless drivers try in vain and terror to stop them. However, when a 2008 Toyota raced out of control and killed four people in South Lake, a suburb of Dallas Texas, the floor mats were in the trunk. Again, this matter was allegedly discussed in an e-mail within Toyota.
“Of course, we know it’s the computers causing runaway cars, but we made nice nice with National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and they totally bought the floor mat/pedal bs. Suddenly unintended acceleration! Nice spin, gentlemen!”
Sadly, it’s all starting to seem like a bad Hollywood movie, where you can’t tell the difference between the pillar of the community superstar lawmakers and the greedy corporate killers. Only in this sordid scenario there’s no Batman to swoop in and kill the Joker. In real life, the Jokers are laughing all the way to the bank.
“I can’t help myself, I crave men meat, and I crave lots of it, all the time. But I’m a Christian, I love Jesus, I hate Satan, so I think queers, fags, dykes, and all other perverts are agents of the devil and should be destroyed. And as sweet baby Jesus is my witness, I’m real real real sorry.”
This is allegedly the first draft of an apology written by state Sen. Roy Ashburn, of Bakersfield California. He was apologizing for being pulled over early in the morning on Wednesday, March 3, and arrested for driving drunk. He had allegedly been partying at FACES, Sacramento’s premier gay, lesbian, and transgendered nightclub since 1985. Next to him was an unidentified allegedly extremely attractive and incredibly homosexual man. Those in Ashburn’s inner circle allegedly talked him into a kinder, gentler apology. Ashburn said he was sorry for his “poor judgment.” He went on to, “accept complete possibility” for his actions and, that he was, “prepared to accept the consequences for what I did.”
Sen. Ashburn has a long history of fiery and outspoken opposition to gay rights. He organized many events supporting his Traditional Family Values agenda, which was based in part on attacking homosexuals and fighting against gay marriage. Rather than turning the other cheek and loving thy neighbors as thyself, these displays of intolerance and hatred were often cloaked in the disguise of “Christianity”.
This came as quite a surprise to patrons of FACES. One alleged regular, who allegedly referred to himself as Chi Chi, was allegedly visibly upset when informed of Sen. Ashburn’s voting record regarding gay rights. “Are you kidding me? That queen was flitting around here like Tinkerbell on Halloween, and at the same time gay bashing in the Senate and shit?! She better not show her saggy white ass around here again, I can tell you that!”
Sen. Ashton has subsequently come out of the crowded Republican closet, and confessed to being gay. It came as a great shock to most of his constituents, who naturally assumed from his actions that he had nothing but ill will toward homosexuals. According to an unknown source, it did not, however, come as a surprise to his children, or the wife from whom he is divorced.
This is just the latest in a long line of Republican conservative politicians who simultaneously attacked gay rights, while engaging in semipublic homosexual sex. Florida State Rep. Bob Allen, a Republican who was long in bed with John McCain; Sen. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig, a Republican who was trying to have anonymous gay sex in an airport; Mark Foley, who was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited children, while trying to have homosexual sex with teenagers; rabid gay basher Ted Haggard, an evangelist and alleged lover of George Bush, who hired male prostitutes to have gay sex with him.
Why have so many diehard Republican politicians who made their bones attacking homosexuality turned out to be “queer as a $2.00 bill”? We asked one of Sen. Roy Ashburn’s inner circle. Off the record, he alleged said, “It’s like that story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. No, maybe it’s like that Jerry Lewis movie that Eddie Murphy did, where the professor drinks the potion and turns into a crazy sex maniac. Or no, that new movie where the guy becomes a werewolf. Yeah, I guess it’s like all those movies put together. Actually I think that all those hateful things all those rich stupid white man politicians queens say about the homos is really about player hating themselves. Roy Roy, he hates that part of himself that loves getting banged by a dude. I think it’ll be better now that he’s all out and free to be you and me. It’s a relief for all of us actually, because now we can all come out. This is going to be the coolest office ever.”
Calls to the office of Sen. Ashburn were not returned.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/04/roy-ashburn-arrested-anti_n_485419.html
Opponents of same-sex marriage argue it is evidence of the further decay of the moral fiber of America, and that a child cannot learn good role models from homosexuals, who are living lives of perversion in the eyes of God. Proponents of same-sex marriage say that getting married is a basic human right, and trot out scientific research which shows absolutely no correlation between success and happiness in adults who have been raised in same-sex, as opposed to “traditional” households.
Even though there has been an informal “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy on Sesame Street for years, Bert and Ernie have not come out publicly advocating for same-sex marriage because they are afraid of the public backlash. An anonymous source overheard Bert and Ernie lamenting to Cookie Monster, Count von Count and Snuffluffigus that they were afraid if people knew, they might be evicted from Sesame Street, shunned by their monster friends and blackballed by the Muppet’s Union. Bert and Ernie are reported to have said, “It’s ridiculous, why should people pay taxes and not have the same rights as everyone else? It’s not about whether you’re gay or hetero, or whatever the heck else is out there, it’s about whether there’s love in the house. And everyone knows there’s always been a lot of love in the basement of 123 Sesame Street.”
Bert and Ernie have long been rumored to be gay. Many have speculated that Ernie’s international hit, “Rubber Ducky”, was actually a coded love song to Bert. They have, and continue to be, closed mouth about their personal life. An anonymous source had this to say: “Well, Bert and Ernie were carrying on, like they do, and Ernie said, ‘Look, what we do behind closed doors is our business.’ And Bert said, ‘Hey Ernie, is that a banana in your ear?’ And Ernie said, ‘What Bert?’ And Bert said, ‘I said Ernie, is that a banana in your ear?’ And Ernie said, ‘What’s that Bert, I can’t hear you, I’ve got a banana in my ear!’ Everybody just fell out. No matter how many times they do it, it’s always funny.”
Kermit the Frog was the only confidant of Bert and Ernie who would comment about this supercharged situation. And that was only on the condition of being off the record. “Hey, it’s not easy being green. And in this case, when I say green, of course I mean gay. Just to be clear, I’m not saying Bert and Ernie are gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. If two people want to live in the same bedroom together, that’s their business. Whatever gets you through the night, right? I mean come on, how many couples have been together for 40 years? I would take my hat off to them, except I am a frog, and I don’t wear a hat.”
Attempts to contact all Muppets, and their representative, proved fruitless.
Some quotes about same-sex marriage from the National Organization for Marriage, and religioustolerance.org:
“Gays and lesbians have the right to live as they choose. They just don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.”
“A loving man and woman in a committed relationship can marry. Dogs, no matter what their relationship, are not allowed to marry. How should society treat gays and lesbians in committed relationships? As dogs or as humans?”
“Marriage between one man and one woman is critical to maintaining social stability. Society as a whole pays a high price when marriage is devalued. You see divorce; you see single-parenting; you see a rise in out-of-wedlock pregnancies,” said Shari Rendall, director of legislation and policy for Concerned Women for America.
“An unjust law is (one that a) majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself … “Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up there privileges voluntarily,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. in a letter from a Birmingham jail.
Hear that faint distant humming sound, like a billion buzzing bees? That’s the sound of millions of soccer fanatics ratcheting their vuvuzela noisemakers as they gear up for what is predicted to be biggest sporting event on the planet: World Cup 2010 in South Africa. For the uninitiated, it’s like the Stanley Cup, NBA championship, Super Bowl, US Opens (golf and tennis) and the World Series all rolled into one. World Series? What world is that? No, in soccer, World Cup means everyone in the whole wide world has a chance to win. And because it’s the first time the tournament has been held on the African continent, this World Cup promises to be a Nelson Mandela, Euro-samba oriental blowout of global proportion.
Which brings us to South Africa, June, 2009, where poor, pitiful, ragtag Team USA was scheduled to compete in the last major tournament before next summer’s World Cup. Going up against a galaxy of Goliaths: 2006 champions Italy; world numero uno Spain; and mighty mighty Brazil. Armed without even a slingshot, based on their recent mauling at the hands of Costa Rica where they played like a bunch of soccer moms.
It’s been hard to be American lately. When you go into a bar basically anywhere in the world and say you’re American, people often look at you like you just tried to kill their dog. Bombing civilians, raping the landscape, setting up puppet governments and trading blood for oil. These are just some of the answers to the question that I’ve heard so many bewildered, innocent looking Americans ask: Why do they hate us? But if you are a member of the American national soccer team, you have felt hated for decades. You’ve had foreign fans throw coins, batteries, even baggies full of warm urine/hot p*ss at you all over the world. Worse, you’ve been the object of pity. The butt of jokes. Because so often you have just plain sucked. Sure, every once in awhile Team America would make a little splash. And they have come to dominate what is a very weak region of the soccer world. But time and time again, when they come up against the big boys, they have turned from men into mice.
So, as America opened up against Italy, they seemed nervous, shaky, and insecure, like a homeowner six months behind on the mortgage who’s expecting a foreclosure notice any second. For one brief shining moment there was a ray of hope, as the penalty machine himself, former golden boy Landon Donovan, slotted home a penalty kick. Shockingly America had a lead. Before you could say badda bing badda boom, they were drowning in wave after wave of pressure from men with vowels at the ends of their names. Suddenly Italy was up 3-1. But it wasn’t just the fact that Team America was bitch-slapped so badly. It was the fact that they looked like a mediocre college team trying to play against the Yankees. The salt in the wound came courtesy of two brilliantly taken goals scored by a guy from New Jersey. Because his parents happen to be Italian, he got to choose which country to play for. He chose Italy over us. Bastard.
That’s when the nightmare really began. Because next up were the kings of soccer, the team that puts the beautiful in the beautiful game, Brazil. Sure enough, the samba masters toyed with the red white and blue like an alpha cat with three blind mice. The low point was when Brazil scored on an American corner kick. In football terms, that’s like being on your opponent’s goal line, handing them the ball, and watching them run 99 yards for a touchdown. The final score, 3-0, in no way reflected the utter degrading humiliation that Brazil laid on America in this righteous smack down. If not for T-Ho, the indomitable goalkeeper Tim Howard, the score could have been 10-0.
A great cry was heard on the World Wide Web: Fire Coach Bradley! He is home grown, not a fancy foreign import, but he is untested on the world stage. Plus, his son plays almost every minute of every game. And recently his son had been “skinned” as they say, turned inside out by an attacker, made to look like a rank pansy amateur. The heat was on. America had one game left, against Egypt. Who, miraculously, had beaten Italy. Which made America’s dismal loss to the Italians seem even worse. And Egypt had scored three goals against Brazil. Although they had allowed four. Still, Brazil had whipped America like a dominatrix at a submissiveness convention. So a stake was poised over the heart of Team America. Well, there was a tiny, slim, infinitesimal chance. But judging by how badly they had sucked, the fat lady was warming up to sing. By all accounts the Americans should have just pack their bags, and slunk away in shame, tails between their legs, licking their wounds.
Then something strange happened. America started being, well…America. Whatever America has had success on the world soccer stage, it’s because they worked harder, ran more, through their bodies around with mad abandon, left their hearts, guts, and nuts out on the field. Suddenly, against Egypt, the Americans were playing balls out. Flying around the field like this might be the last game I ever played. Not just in this tournament, but in their whole lives. Lo and behold, they got a lucky break. Funny how that works right? You bust your ass, you play with crazy passion, and all of a sudden you get a lucky break. How lucky? In this case, new boy Ricky Davies actually scored off the Egyptian goalkeepers face. Not how they draw it up on the instructional video. Abut a goal is a goal. The news came in from the Brazil-Italy game. Brazil was running roughshod over the suddenly hapless Italians. If Brazil could get three goals ahead, and America could win by three goals, the miracle would be manifest, and the USA would be through to the next round. Nose to grindstone, pedal to metal, fingers to bone, America scrapped and clawed, and there was Michael Bradley, son of the coach, stroking the ball home like an old pro. Scoring a goal for his old man on Fathers Day. Word came in that Brazil had spanked the haughty Italians sufficiently. America needed one more goal. They needed a hero. That’s when Clint Eastwood Dempsey made America’s day, streaking into the Egyptian goalmouth, muscling a header past the traumatized goalkeeper. Miraculously, America was through to the next round.
Now all they have to do was go up against Spain, the number one soccer team in the world, a bunch of it pretty, pampered, delicate genius multimillionaires who recently won the European Championship. To put it in perspective, the American striker Jozy the Pussycat Altidor can’t even crack the lineup of the second division Spanish team. But the USA came out guns blazing against the Spanish Armada: chins thrust forward, Devil may care glint in the eye, a jaunty red white and blue spring in the step. While the Spaniards looked like they sincerely believed all they have to do was throw their jockstraps out onto the field, and the uncultured, uncouth, uncool Americans would bow down before them. The Spaniards were in for a rude awakening. From the get-go the Spaniards were full of brilliance. And arrogance. While the Americans had a fire in their belly, and threw themselves relentlessly in front of everything the Spanish could muster. They chased and harried like hungry pack animals looking to feed. Their naked aggression seemed to offend delicate geniuses of Spain. Time and again, one day were tackled and stripped nude of the ball, they stood and counted like sulking children.
And then there was Jozy the Pussycat Altidor, being fed the ball at the top of the penalty box. In every contact sport there is that mano y mano moment where it becomes one man’s strength against another. It’s caveman primal. Can I beat you down? Or will you beat me down? Jozy Altidor proved to be the better man, kicking sand in the face of the feeble Spaniard like he was a 98 pound weakling. Having bested his foe, the Pussycat took its sweet time; set his sights, locked and loaded, and pulled the trigger like that’s what he was born to do. 1-0. The world bugged its eyes, palms outstretched as if to say, “OH MY GOD!”
Wave after wave of the Spanish Armada tried to land on American shores. But each time, led by Oguchi Double O Onyewu, they were thwarted by another proud American giving up his body for his country. Once again, T-Ho was a God, repelling attacks with a fierce animal agility combined with a mind of a brilliant tactician.
There’s an old rule of love and war. When you attack him from the front, you leave your back door open. And the increasingly frantic Spaniards did just that, committing forces willy-nilly upfront, while their unprotected ass was sticking right up in the air. And there was Landon Donovan, restoring some of the golden boy luster, driving with the ball at his feet, making things happen, putting in nasty little cross. Still, the Spaniards had the situation well in hand. Except for two things. Their arrogance. And good old American never-say-quit. Clint Eastwood Dempsey, this time like a sneak thief in the night, nipped behind a multimillionaire Spanish defender, who had casually, thinking he had all the time in the world because he was so rich, talented, and dashingly handsome, trapped the ball right in front of his own goal. With some serious foot-is-quicker-than-the-eye action, Clint had the ball in the Spanish net before the Spaniards could say OLE OLE. On the replay there was a fantastic shot of the Spanish defender, beautiful as a supermodel, and just as confused and vacant, with a look on his face that clearly showed his brain trying to understand, “How did that just happened?”
America, that’s how that happened. Say adios, Spain! Team America had, against all odds, and with a horrifying start it seemed to confirm their own patheticality, made it to their first final of any FIFA championship. Now all they have to do was put away mighty mighty Brazil.
But the strut was still in the stride of Team USA. They were bright, confident almost cocky. Stroking the ball around, defending with calm assurance, attacking intelligently and economically. America was playing like, well…Brazil. Even more shockingly, Brazil was playing like America at her worst. Giving the ball away sloppy, passing the ball to no one in particular, crying like little bitches when they get hit. Then in the blink of an eye, very was again, Clint Eastwood Dempsey. With a silky delicate world-class touch, he massaged the ball into the Brazilian net like tantric master. USA 1. Brazil 0. Not by some crazy fluke. This is the real shock. USA deserved to be beating Brazil.
Naturally Brazil brought it hard and heavy. But the USA stood strong. At one point Carlos Bocanegra was riding Brazilian superstar Kaka like a pony. And once again, when you attack from the front, you leave the back door open. From Brazil pressure, America made a defensive stop, in three quick passes later, Landon Donovan evolved from golden boy into golden man. He made a monkey out of the Brazilian defense, and like a lion ripping the jugular of the throat of an antelope he slammed the ball home, triggering a wild red white and blue celebration. If you had offered a betting man $100 that the US would be going into the final of the Confederation Cup leading Brazil 2-0, you would’ve gotten looks suggesting your insanity, and 1000-1 odds.
But as soon as the second half started, Brazil demonstrated why they’re Brazil. Out of nowhere, out of nothing, a quick Brazilian pirouette followed by a slashing shot from Fabiano, and America was digging the ball out of their own net. USA 2. Brazil 1.
This is where USA teams of yore would have folded like a house of crooked cards. But not this team. They didn’t panic. They didn’t freak out. They kept defending. They kept attacking. And all the while, T-Ho the Magnificent was a true tower of power, near post, far post, and everywhere in between. He even showed some excellent acting skills, convincing everyone he had saved a Brazilian header which clearly crossed the goal line. Although he didn’t win an Oscar, he was named Goalkeeper of the Tournament.
But Brazil is, after all, Brazil. And they kept knock knock knocking on the door. Finally America cracked, just a little. A defender missed a clearance, the ball bounced kindly off a post, and suddenly the score was tied. As an American, with each second that ticked by, you hoped for the best, but you just had a feeling that somehow Brazil was going to find a way. That’s what they do, these world champions. They find a way.
America made it all the way to the 85th minute. 17/18ths of the way through the game. Then it happened. A big booming back post header. Brazil 3. USA 2. Even so, in the 88th minute, the USA had a free header right in front of goal. All they had to do was put away. But they didn’t. Brazil wins the Confederation Cup. Again. Ho-hum.
America didn’t win their first international soccer tournament. But sometimes winning isn’t the only thing. Sometimes getting to the finals is the next step toward winning the finals. We saw it with the Lakers this year. We saw it when Michael Jordan kept getting beaten up by the Detroit Bad Boys before he became the King of the World. Team USA showed that they can play with the big boys. They turned from mice into men right before our eyes. They hope that they can continue to be the Cinderella who ends up with the glass slippers back here in South Africa at World Cup 2010.
And just for today anyway, it really doesn’t suck at all to be an American.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-henry-sterry/america-doesnt-suck-after_b_222031.html
Derek Zoolander: “I Hate British Singing Sensation Susan Boyle!”
British singing sensation Susan Boyle, an unemployed cat owner, has become, as a result of a mere five minutes of singing, an inspiration to millions of people all over the globe, a symbol that anyone with true, genuine talent can have their lifelong dream come true if they just keep trying. It seems like everyone has fallen in love with Susan Boyle, that plucky, spunky, I-won’t-change-for-anybody girl-next-door with a big heart and an even bigger voice. Everyone except a man who was once America’s most famous supermodel. Derek Zoolander.
“I’m really really really pissed off,” a source close to Zoolander reports he said, “Why does someone who looks like her get to have all that talent? It’s just not fair. And I think I speak for really really really good-looking people everywhere when I say, How come I don’t have any talent, how come I can’t sing or dance or tell jokes that are humorously funny? But still, I can make many excellent and exciting and sexy faces. Can Susan Boyle make any sexy faces? I don’t think so. Is she really really really good looking? No. Am I? Yes. So why is she so much more famous than I am? I’m telling you, it’s totally horribly totally not fair.”
According to a confidant, the ex-famous supermodel has watched Susan Boyle’s triumphant rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical Les Miserables over 10,000 times. “He just watches it over and over and over, and looks at himself in the mirror and makes sexy faces and saying stuff like, ‘Her features aren’t symmetrical. She has a bad haircut. And she hasn’t had any cosmetic surgery. My features are awesomely symmetrical. My haircut is super amazing. I had really really really really really great cosmetic surgery. Please, God, why are you forsooking me?’ It’s quite pitiful, if you want to know the truth. We’re thinking of having an intervention, but we’re having trouble finding a caterer in our price range.”
Susan Boyle’s 15 minutes of fame shows no signs of ending. And while everyone from Demi Moore to Ashton Kutcher to Oprah Winfrey are embracing her, a member of Derek Zoolander’s inner circle claims the former supermodel is bitter and angry. “Is that really the kind of world we want,” Zoolander is reported to have said, “where people who are not good-looking get to be famous? This is a way important issue that’s more way important than all these bad economy things, or whatever. We have to put our feet down. I don’t want the children of tomorrow thinking that it’s more important to have talent than it is to be really really really good looking. Anyone who wants to help can send money to the Really Good-looking People of America Fund.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-henry-sterry/derek-zoolander-i-hate-br_b_189048.html
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes’ yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, “I couldn’t have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you.”
According to sources in the Mexican government, President Calderone is begging American officials to, in the words of reggae great Peter Tosh, legalize it. “Oh yeah,” said an official close to the Mexican president, “Felipe is going crazy. He’s screaming at everybody who comes in, ‘Why don’t they make this sh*t legal already! You’re killing me here!’ Look, everyone knows, when you have Prohibition, you create gangsters. And the more you prohibit, the more gangsters you make. El Chapo is hero now to all those slumdogs who want to be millionaires. Kids in the street, when they play games, they all want to be El Chapo, the baddest man in the whole damn town.”
Meanwhile, many speculate that rich and prominent Mexican families are in cahoots with American businessmen in the alcohol industry, wealthy industrialists who launder the unprecedented profits from the drug business with their legitimate enterprises, and lawmakers who get gigantic kickbacks and payoffs to make sure that these drugs remain illegal, so they can remain rich, fat and happy. According to sources on both sides of the border, tens of millions of dollars in payoffs and kickbacks are stashed in Swiss banks every year, blood money from the brutal business made possible by a corrupt system supported by laws that don’t, and have never, worked.
Rather than putting El Chapo and his kind out of business by modernizing outdated laws and in the process making billions of dollars from taxing drugs (as is done with cigarettes and alcohol), United States government has spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars chasing its tail, and offered a $5 million reward for the capture of El Chapo. Many have said that the offer is unofficially: Dead or Alive.
Meanwhile, as an epidemic of murderous violence rages on the Mexican-US border, and the American government wastes boatloads of badly needed money on the illegal drug business which results from the Prohibition laws, El Chapo is laughing all the way to the bank. “Whoever came up with this whole War on Drugs,” one of his lieutenants reports he said, “I would like to kiss him on the lips and shake his hand and buy him dinner with caviar and champagne. The War on Drugs is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and the day they decide to end that war, will be a sad one for me and all of my closest friends. And if you don’t believe me, ask those guys whose heads showed up in the ice chests.”
To the original Huffington Post article by David Henry Sterry
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