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I first met Madison Young when we performed together on the same bill at the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. I was immediately struck by the wonderful mass of contradictions. Smart but humble. Cute but fierce. Physical but articulate. Frankly, everything you’d want in a porn star. I’ve been following her career ever since. I was so happy when she took her revolutionary ideas of sexuality and began directing, creating filmed sex that’s the next step in the evolution of erotic filmmaking. She has a new memoir out called Daddy. So I thought I’d sit down and pick her brain about sex, movies, writing, and yes, Daddy.
David Henry Sterry: What made you decide to become a professional pornographer? Were you worried about how your family, and the world might judge you?
Madison Young: I first entered into the world of erotic filmmaking as a performer and model in 2002 and then started directing films in 2005. As an artist and activist, the highly political medium of documenting sexual desire on film in an authentic way that captured and portrayed the way that I experienced my own sexuality, was a huge incentive for me to explore and participate in the world of pornography.
I also needed a reliable steady income to support my life as an artist as well as supplement my non-profit arts organization, Femina Potens. Working with in erotic film allowed me the freedom to pursue my work as a performance artist, give back to the community through the curation of hundreds of queer, feminist, edgy visual and performance art events and express my sexual self in a performative and film making capacity. Simultaneously I was making a political statement and creating change with in the adult film world by focusing on the advocating of authentic expression of self with an emphasis on pleasure and connection.
It’s amazing how powerful the documentation of authentic self can be. It has the ability to create space for others to recognize unexamined parts of their own psyche, their own self, their own desire. It grants them permission to explore uncharted parts of themselves. It grants courage for others to embrace and celebrate who they are. I try to embrace those qualities through out all the work that I do.
I wasn’t especially worried about how the world or my family would judge me, but I realized there would be judgments. One of my mottos is “Reveal All Fear Nothing” I knew if my work and my life were going to be about living life out loud, in the open, and encouraging people to express and celebrate who they are – then I would need to first learn how to do that myself.
If I was going to celebrate and create space for the authentic expression of self I wasn’t going to do so behind closeted doors. I first really examined the work I was doing, why I was doing it, and the social importance of the work I was doing with in the industry. I had to gain a certain understanding of myself before I could communicate the intricacies of my complicated and frequently misrepresented and misunderstood work.
After well over a decade working with in the realm of sexuality and dozens of open conversations, my family is supportive and understanding of the work I do. They understand that I’m an artist and educator and that I work with in the realm of sexuality and pornography. They weren’t always super supportive. They had concerns around safety and I understand that. I started introducing my mother to co-workers and producers of the erotic events and sex toy shops that I was teaching at. Companies like Good Vibrations. Those visits gave my mother a better understanding of how both myself and my work were being presented and the part of the world of sexuality that I was working with in.
When my work started to gain notice with in the university and academic circuit it set my mother and father at ease. I think they thought , “If Yale supports the work that my daughter is doing and is presenting her work well it must not be that bad”.
Largely the greatest judgements I have received are from anonymous folks commenting online when I’m interviewed. These tend to be people who are largely unfamiliar with my work and have heavily judgmental opinions about sex and sex work. It’s understandable and comes with the territory.
Our society heavily shames our sexual desire and simultaneously attempts to capitalize on our sexual fears and anxieties, encouraging body negativity. My work directly works to obliterate the sexual shame that is so inherent in our society by documenting the expression of authentic sexual expression, intimacy, love of our selves and others.
DHS: What made you decide to become a professional memoirist? Were you worried about how your family, and the world might judge you?
MY: Writing was maybe one of the first places that my thoughts and feelings had a place to go and be fully authentic in their expression of self. I remember my first journal as a seven year old child. I would fill the journals up with my most intimate thoughts and feelings, feelings that I didn’t feel safe expressing anywhere else. I remember writing my first queer experiences of self down in my journal. Writing and creation of art and performance have always been a safe container for the exploration, processing, challenging and discovery of self, for me.
I had been working on different variations of “Daddy” for a few years. In the summer of 2012, I met with my publisher Tyson Cornell at Rare Bird. I had handed him the memoir I had been working on and then we had this really great conversation about the book. Through that conversation I discovered the much more challenging and compelling story that needed to be told — a story of a girl finding a place of belonging, needing to believe in something outside of herself, and then watching as everything she thought she knew and that she thought she believed in started to crumble before her eyes. That is when we discover our real strength, our power, our courage, our inner hero, our inner “Daddy.”
Of course that was the most difficult story to tell. The imperfect story. The story that was still very tender and raw and difficult to express. I was most definitely worried that the world would judge me. It was a very vulnerable work. Parts of my life that I hadn’t really discussed publicly before. Parts of my life that weren’t accompanied by well articulated sound bites. And at the same time, I knew that was where the real art existed, where the compelling story was. It’s terrifying to embrace your humanness. But at the same time liberating. I keep going back to my own words of “Reveal all Fear Nothing”.
DHS: You are also an activist, how does that play into your role as an artist?
MY: I feel like they are essentially the same – artist and activist. All artists are essentially activists. We catalyst societal and personal change through the creation of visual and performative work. Art pushes and inspires. Art changes ourselves and the world. It creates space to question everything that we think we know.
DHS: How did you learn to be a filmmaker? How did you learn to be a writer?
MY: I learned how to write by writing and how to make films by picking up a camera and making films. I haven’t been formally trained in any of the arts that I practice. I studied theater at performing art school and then went on to college as a theater major. I think my experience in theater has helped me to be a better filmmaker and writer.
One of the most significant lessons that I remember learning in theater class was when I asked the teacher, “How do you act?” and my teacher said “You just do it. You just are. You allow yourself to be”
I think that knowledge has given me courage to tackle any medium that has drawn me in as an artist. I articulate and dream and visualize the manifesting of my film or a chapter in my book and I try not to let my cerebral bits get in the way.
If I have a film narrative that has been calling to me I lie down and close my eyes and focus in on the character in my visualization. I allow my character to move and dance and fuck and evolve. I follow them on their adventure, learn who they are and try to retain a mindfulness of the cinematic shots in which I’m viewing the actions as they are appearing in my mind.
I do the same with my writing. For the memoir- I would envision the scene in which I would be writing about. I’d view it like a film and listen but this time I allow a voice over narration in my head to slip in and tell the story.
As a kid I spent a lot of time in my head slipping away into those stories. It was a way that I escaped dealing with bullies and being social with my classmates who all seemed to despise me for being different. Overall escaping into the worlds in my head allowed me a great power to visualize and manifest the worlds that I was dreaming up. It prepared me for being an artist.
DHS: I found when I was in the sex business that the lines tended to blur sometimes in a way that was not entirely comfortable. Does having sex professionally affect how you have sex personally?
MY: I don’t think that it does. It’s sometimes easier having sex professionally as there is this specific negotiated container for sex and passion and sexual exploration and to exist in. There is a charge and energy on set that is supportive of you exploring your edges.
In my personal life there are greater negotiations of space for sexual expression, sometimes our sex is closer, smaller, more intimate – largely because of energy levels of working all day and parenting all day and attempting to not wake up our sleeping toddler.
I prefer larger energy exchanges (although intimacy can be nice). We do get out of the house and create space for some of our larger than life kinky and sexual fantasies to fly high though. Mostly that happens at dungeon spaces or hotels or rental cars. I really want to try out the San Francisco Hook Up Truck. I’m hoping to try that this weekend with Daddy for his birthday.
DHS: Do people make assumptions about you because you make movies that have explicit sex in them?
MY: I’m sure they do but I don’t usually get to hear what those assumptions are. I’m very open with the people I meet about my work. I’m very grateful to live in the bay area where I feel there is greater acceptance of sex work than in many areas of the country. I feel like I’m also very accessible. When folks have questions or want to talk about the politics and inner workings of pornography and it’s social and culture impact/significance – I’m nearly always open and available to delve into that conversation. Those conversations to debunk negative and harmful stereo-types that are propagated through the media.
DHS: What kind of pornography turns you on? What kind of pornography turns you off?
MY: I love beautiful porn. Erotic films that capture the beauty of the body, the beauty of sexual desire. The erotic films and porn I enjoy often have an artistic edge to them. I love a lot of the old Vivid Alt films by Eon McKai, Dana Dearmond and Kimberly Kane. I tend to like films with heavy kink elements to them, queer sex, connected, hot sweaty, expressions of lust and desire.
Its a huge turn off if I’m watching a porn and I feel like the performers are not actually having an incredible time or are absent or disconnected – that’s just a huge turn off.
The porn that I shoot and direct is a big turn on for me. It’s like looking through a photo album of pleasure induced moments with on and off screen partners. All these years I’ve been documenting my own sexual evolution, and that really turns me on.
DHS: The word feminist has become so loaded in our culture? How do you define it in your life and in your work?
MY: Feminism with in the context of my life focuses on empowerment and choice. Choice of gender expression, choice to love, choice to express and articulate my sexual desires. Feminism informs my submission, my politics, my work, my writing, my film making, the way I make art, the way I parent. It involves a degree of consciousness of the intersections of systematic oppression, how to operate with in or outside of those systems, self awareness of how our individual actions contribute to larger existing power struggles.
Feminism with in my parenting looks like empowering my child with knowledge of self – asking my child what their preferred gender expression or preferred name is rather than assuming roles based on the sex they were assigned at birth. I empower my child with knowledge about their body – names for their body parts: vulva, anus, uterus. My child knows how to negotiate space for themselves, how to ask for consent to hug or kiss another person and knows that others must ask for their consent to gift affection toward them. Teaching agency over one’s body is a key factor in how feminism plays into my parenting.
I also emphasize through a mantra with my toddler ” Be gentle to yourself, Be gentle to others, Be Gentle to the world around you.” Very simple yet very radical.
Many of these same simple feminist concepts I carry with me into my own work. Both expressing consent and agency over my own body and facilitating space for others to communicate the type of affection they wish to exchange with one another, facilitating that negotiation and then documenting it. Facilitating space and celebration of gender expression. Advocating for my own self care on set, advocating for other’s self care. Being gentle with myself, with others and with the world around me.
We don’t talk about things in our house using words like good and bad. I’m trying to do away with this binary way of thinking. Life is much more complex than that. We talk about how anyone is capable of being gentle or not gentle. A police officer might have a job of being gentle but I’ve seen some cops being down right not gentle at protests for nothing more than occupying space in this world. The radical gentle. Radical love. Love. Loving gentle actions. So simple yet so radical.
DHS: Was it difficult taking the seemingly random events of life and crafting a random out of them into a book? Was it difficult revealing yourself on the page?
MY: Yes it was definitely a challenge. I had to simultaneously create enough space from my life to view myself as a character in a narrative and craft a very specific story from very specific scenes in my life while delving into really personal emotionally intimate and challenging moments. It was a challenge and I’m so happy that I had such a great team at Rare Bird that I was working with to really focus the story. There are so many very significant people and elements of my life that just didn’t make it into the book because it wasn’t absolutely essential in the telling of this story. I try to frame the story by letting the reader know they are only reading one slice of my life. This memoir could have been told a dozen different ways. Maybe some of those stories will come to fruition in future books. It was really hard editing and approving edits for the memoir though. Seeing people or parts of your life not make it to the final cut, that was hard. There’s just such an emotional investment there. But then I’d take a step back from it and see the art that we were sculpting, the essential elements of the story, carving out everything that isn’t that story. Regarding revealing myself, some chapters were definitely more difficult than others. I wanted to just revel in the chapters that were filled with love and lust. The chapters dealing with topics like sobriety, depression and infidelity – those were difficult chapters. But it felt really healthy and cathartic making my way through the tough stuff.
DHS: What advice do you have for beginning writers? Beginning adult filmmakers?
MY: For beginning adult filmmakers I’m facilitating the first ever 3 day- 30 hour Erotic Film School(www.EroticFilmSchool.com) in which students will have the opportunity to create a film in a collaborative, hands on experience working with industry professionals as we tackle everything from pre production: shot lists and model negotiations to post production: editing and submitting films for erotic film festivals. For anyone interested in erotic film making I highly recommend applying at www.EroticFilmSchool.com . Also I’m currently working on my next book, the DIY Porn Handbook:Documenting Our Own Sexual Revolution.
For film makers and writers I encourage really developing a practice. Don’t wait for some magical time or degree to pick up a pen or a camera. Borrow a camera, shoot on your iPhone, start viewing the world through a lens and see what you see. What do you gravitate toward? Where do you find beauty? Get to know yourself as an artist through your practice. Volunteer or intern for a working artist, filmmaker or writer. Study them and the way that they work. I’m always staffing volunteers and interns to assist me with my projects at http://IAmTeamMadison.wordpress.com . Be fearless in your pursuit of your passion, your truth.
Madison Young is a sex positive Tasmanian devil. This sexpert grew up in the suburban landscape of Southern Ohio before moving to San Francisco, California in 2000. Since then this mid-western gal has dedicated her days to facilitating safe space to dialogue on the topic of fringe identities and cultures as well as documenting healthy expression of sexuality. Young’s breadth of work in the realm of sexuality spans from documenting our sexual culture in her feminist erotic films to serving as the Artistic Director of the forward thinking non-profit arts organization, Femina Potens Art Gallery. She can be found on Twitter @madisonyoung.
David Henry Sterry is the author of 16 books, including Johns, Marks, Tricks and Chicken Hawks: Professionals and Clients Writing about Each Other and Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money and Sex, which was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. His new book is Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (10-Year Anniversary Edition). He can be found on Twitter @sterryhead.
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/
In this original, excerpted interview, David Henry Sterry interviews Veronica Monet about her journey from corporate America to being a high profile courtesan to becoming an author, couples therapist and radio host. Her essay “No Girls Allowed at the Mustang Ranch” appears in the anthology “Johns, Marks, Tricks & Chickenhawks.” It’s a riveting story about a woman who wants to go to the Mustang Ranch as a customer, and does so for her birthday with her husband.
Veronica Monet is the author of Sex Secrets of Escorts (Alpha Books 2005) and a Couples Consultant specializing in Anger Management and Sacred Sexuality. Monet has been a vocal and highly visible spokesperson for the sex worker rights movement since 1991 having appeared on every major network as well as CNN, FOX, CNBC, WE, A&E and international television programs. Veronica has been profiled in The New York Times and has lectured at a variety of academic venues including Kent State, Stanford and Yale Universities. Veronica Monet combines over 14 years of “hands-on” experience as a courtesan with many years of formal education. As a Certified Sexologist (ACS), Certified Sex Educator (SFSI), Certified Anger Management Specialist (CAM), Trained Volunteer for the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence (CARDV) and an Ordained Minister (ULC) her subject matter marries the body and the soul on many levels – reuniting sex and spirit in down-to–earth terms and providing compassion, intuition, integrity and safety. Veronica Monet coaches men, women and couples over the telephone, via Skype and in-person at her northern California office. Veronica hosts a radio program The Shame Free Zone – her online radio program at http://www.
Ho’s cover
David Henry Sterry: How did you get into the sex business?
Veronica Monet: It was 1989 and I had just resigned from a secretarial position at a major computer corporation. Since graduating from college in 1982, I had held a variety of jobs in corporate settings including one as an office manager and another as department manager. I resigned from my last straight job because my supervisor was a sexist who wrote me up for stupid things like “not smiling enough.” At the time I was dating a male stripper whose live-in girlfriend was also an exotic dancer. I considered becoming a dancer in one of the San Francisco clubs. Then I met this beautiful woman who worked as a prostitute and I quickly realized that she enjoyed her life and her work a lot more than the exotic dancer seemed to. The prostitute also made a lot more money than the girl who danced for a living. After I began dating the beautiful prostitute, I asked her to teach me the business so I could enter the profession too. Funny thing was that despite my college diploma and seven years in corporate jobs, I had a lot to learn about being a successful escort. Turns out it is not a job for dummies, contrary to popular opinion.
DHS: What are some things you’ve learned working in the sex industry?
VM: I learned that when you take his clothes off and provide him with one of the most emotionally moving orgasms of his life, a man will show you that he is not all that different from most women. Men, too, want to be held while they cum and will cry during an internal (prostate) orgasm. There is softness and a desire to be nurtured which I never saw in men until I became a prostitute. I literally went from hating men and the oppression they represented to me at that time, to loving men and feeling regret that we live in a world culture which demands that men sublimate their feminine side in preference of appearing in control.
DHS: Do you tell friends and relatives that you were/are a sex worker? Not, why not? If so, what has their reaction been?
VM: People sometimes assume that sex workers lie about their profession because they feel ashamed of it. This is not true for most sex workers. Instead they hide what they do from anyone who might hurt them because of it. For instance, a prostitute can be evicted just for being a prostitute. Sex workers can lose custody of their children. Sex workers almost always lose their day jobs if their employers find out they are doing any type of sex work, whether it is legal or not.
I chose to be out as a sex worker from early on when I decided to become politically active on behalf of sex worker rights. Appearing on a multitude of national and international television shows including many programs on CNN and FOX News as a sex worker, there was no way to keep my status as an escort a secret. And I certainly paid a price for that honesty. I was evicted and audited and arrested and spent two years in family court, all due to being an out prostitute. People I thought were my friends rejected me. My family was ashamed and embarrassed by my choice of professions.
Many of the women I knew in the trade were unable to sustain a relationship with a man because men are simply too jealous and possessive to tolerate their woman being a prostitute. Fortunately for me, I was married to my soul mate for 14 of the 15 years I worked as an escort. He was loving and supportive of me and although we are divorced today due to other circumstances, I will always be grateful that he loved me while I worked in the sex industry. I know how rare it is to find a man who possesses enough confidence and self-esteem to be the partner of a prostitute. I was extremely fortunate to have my husband’s emotional support and loyalty throughout my career as a sex worker.
DHS: What are some other jobs you had?
VM: I have worked the graveyard shift in a cannery, as a change-person in a casino, as a waitress for a family restaurant, as a personal secretary, as an administrative assistant, as an office manager, as a department manager, and as a marketing representative for a radio station. I received many awards and I was promoted several times. Although some might term my seven years in corporate jobs successful, I was never happy with the 9 to 5 grind and I hated commuter traffic. When I discovered that I could be self-employed as a sex worker, I felt freed from the claustrophobic nature of cubicles and released from the insult of taking orders from people enamored with their own transitory power. As an escort, men far more powerful than the ones who had previously employed me as their secretary, catered to my interests, needs and desires while paying me handsomely for the privilege of my company.
DHS: Would you recommend the sex business as a way to make money?
The “sex business” is a broad term encompassing a vast array of services, some legal and others illegal. I don’t “recommend” any profession as I think that is an individual choice, which should be based upon personal attributes, goals and desires. When I am asked about escorting as a profession, I do my best to inform others of the positive and negative aspects of the profession. For instance, as long as prostitution remains illegal, prostitutes and escorts remain a target for crimes such as assault, rape and murder. Fear of arrest plays a huge role in the lives of prostitutes as well. And then there is the matter of scape goating, stereotyping and outright rejection from those very support people most of us rely upon to create stability and security in our lives.
If an individual has an independent and self-supporting nature; if they feel they can shrug off the judgments and projections of people they care about; then prostitution can be a very rewarding profession. But money should be only a secondary goal. Yes, escorts can make amazing amounts of money in a short time and the temptation is to envision escorting or any other branch of the sex industry as a “get rich quick scheme” but if you go into it with that goal, you will quickly find yourself on a dismal and destructive path. Like all professions, the best reason to get into the sex industry is because you enjoy helping other people. If you bring your love, compassion, empathy and nurturing to the sex professions, then you will not only make a lot of money, you will create a lot of happiness for your clients and yourself.
DHS: What are some of your best and worst experiences being a sex worker?
VM: My worst experience being a sex worker was being arrested. It was a humiliating and disgusting effort to “teach me a lesson” for shooting my mouth off as a sex worker rights activist. I fought back and in the end I prevailed as I was neither convicted of anything nor did I go to trial. But still, the handcuffs and the sexual leering from the police officers at the station were insulting and degrading. The irony of course is that law enforcement is fond of saying they want to “save” prostitutes from a “degrading” lifestyle.
There are so many happy memories of my escorting days. It is difficult to say which are the best. My first trip to New York City often stands out for me. It was my first foray into the life of a courtesan, which is distinct from that of an escort. The courtesans of old had only a few patrons and became quite wealthy by associating with the wealthiest and the most powerful men of their day. Likewise, as I moved from being a high-priced escort to a true courtesan, I stopped charging by the hour and began obtaining a fee for several days of companionship, which may nor may not include sex.
As the sex worker who was showing up on shows like Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect and in publications like The New York Times, it was not difficult for me to command an impressive fee for that day, while demanding the best in accommodations and travel arrangements. Gaining access to wealthy socialites and billionaires was fascinating for me as well as extremely educational. Born to working class parents and literally growing up in a trailer, this side of life was completely foreign to me. Learning what true wealth looks and acts like as well as absorbing the particular pains and challenges that wealthy men experience also expanded my compassion for others—regardless of how much money or stuff they might possess. I think that window into the world of exorbitant wealth and what our society terms “success” was very instructive for my own spiritual path. It gave me the freedom to walk away from money whenever I feel like it. I know the allure of money is mostly transitory and illusory. It is what lives in our hearts that determines the level of happiness each of us will attain.
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/
Dolores Has Lost her Clitoris
words: d h sterry pictures: peter seward
One Saturday morning Dolores
Discovered she’d lost her clitoris.
“Oh no! Oh my! Oh how can this be?”
“I can’t believe this is happening to me.”
Her breath got short and her eyes grew wide
She felt all wobbly and shaky inside
So she looked in her pockets and behind the door
She looked in each and every drawer
She looked in her sofa and under her chair
She even looked under her underwear
She looked in her pots and looked in her pans
Looked in the cabinet with all her cans
She looked in her closet and under her shoes
She looked in her cabinet next to the booze
She looked under her bed and under her pillow
Looked in the nightstand next to her dildo
She turned the house upside down
But her clitoris was simply nowhere to be found
She clenched her fists and fell to her knees
“Help me!” she yelled, “help me please.”
So she dashed out to see her boyfriend
Sure that he’d help make her misery end
“Oh please won’t you help me Boris,
“I’m afraid I have lost my clitoris!”
A blank vacant look came over his face
As he stared off into outer space
“Hhm…” said Boris, “to be honest Dolores,
“I didn’t even know you had a clitoris.”
Dolores shook her head and rolled her eyes
She gritted her teeth and let out a sigh
“Boris,’ she said, “I’ve had it with you
“Once and for all, we’re through!”
“I’m afraid,” said Boris, “I’m a little perplexed.
“Does that mean you don’t want to have any sex?”
“Of course not,” she cried, “I don’t wanna have sex.
“I just broke up with you, you’re my now ex.”
“And besides, why would I?” yelled Dolores.
“I just told you I lost my clitoris!”
She got so mad she stomped on the floor
And on her way out she slammed the door
Then she went to her parents and rushed inside
“Mother I’ve something I must confide
“I’m going crazy,” cried Dolores,
“Mom, I’ve lost my clitoris.”
Her mom looked away and her face got red
She looked like she would rather be dead
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,
“And I just remembered I have to go … out.”
Her mom grabbed her coat and ran out the door
Got in her car and away she did roar
Dolores dashed off to speak to her father
Who was polishing his balls in the billiard parlor
“Dear Father,” cried Dolores
“Please help me, I’ve lost my clitoris.”
“Clitoris,” he muttered looking up from his balls,
“That word’s not familiar, not familiar at all.”
“Please tell me, my darling Dolores,
“What does it mean, this word ‘clitoris’?”
“Aargh!” cried Dolores, “you haven’t a clue!”
Then out of the room like a flash she flew.
She sped back home and jumped in her bed
And into her pillow she buried her head
Then Dolores cried and cried and cried
Till it felt like there was nothing left inside
Then Dolores fell into a long black sleep
That was terribly terribly terribly deep
And when she awoke she was no longer vexed
Confused upset peeved or perplexed
Dolores stretched and sighed and yawned
As the birds sang in the beautiful dawn
When she ran her hands down to her thighs
Dolores got a tremendously surprise
Right there in her very own lap
Her clitoris was waking from a long long nap
“Come play with me,” cried her clitoris
“Come play with me dear Dolores.”
“There you are,” she cried ecstatically
“Oh, I’ve missed you so terribly.
“I vow,” cried Dolores, “that every day
“You and I will find time to play.”
“I’ll never take you for granted again
“From now on you’ll be my very best friend!”
“Oh joy!” cried her clitoris, full of glee
“Now come play with me immediately.”
It was a beautiful reunion for Dolores
And her sweet devoted clitoris
Together they found heavenly rapture
And they lived happily ever after
“There you are,” she cried ecstatically
“Oh, I’ve missed you so terribly.”
“I vow,” cried Dolores, “that every day”
“You and I will find time to play.”
“I’ll never take you for granted again
“From now on you’ll be my very best friend!”
“Oh joy!” cried her clitoris, full of glee
“Now come play with me immediately.”
It was a beautiful reunion for Dolores
And her sweet devoted clitoris
Together they found heavenly rapture
And together they lived happily ever after
The Chicken Clucks Defiant: A book review of Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent, by David Henry Sterry (to buy book click here)
Ann Lucas
San José State University
San José, California
As the subtitle of David Henry Sterry’s Chicken suggests, this book is a memoir of the author’s year working as a teenaged prostitute. At the age of 17, having arrived in Los Angeles to start college, Sterry found himself homeless when planned living arrangements fell through. In short order he was lured into a stranger’s home, raped, and robbed of his last twenty-seven dollars. Escaping, Sterry was offered refuge and a job by the manager of a fried chicken restaurant. In what Sterry now recognizes as a great cosmic joke, his boss also happened to be the purveyor of human chickens (i.e., a pimp); leaving fast-food wages behind, Sterry soon was charging $100 per hour for his services. His encounters with the colorful, seedy, bizarre, enterprising, desperate, and pathetic who lived on both sides of respectability in 1970s Southern California provide a framework and narrative thread for Sterry’s recounting of how his year in sex work affected him materially, emotionally and interpersonally. Throughout the book, Sterry’s accounts of assignations with clients and dilemmas in balancing his identities as rent boy and college student are interspersed with his childhood memories of growing up in an English immigrant family which is slowly falling apart. These episodes from his childhood and adolescence help provide a context, if not necessarily a cause, for his outlook on life and his foray into sex work. The book concludes with his decision to leave the sex industry.
The writing style in Chicken is brash and engaging. Reminiscent of “gonzo journalism” and Lewis Carroll, Sterry’s style includes vivid descriptions (“Frannie, perched like an anorexic bird in the plumage of her couch”) (p. 33), trenchant metaphors (Sisyphus and leaky buckets), creative compound words (“nuthugging elephantbells”) (p. 6 and passim), and a taste for alliteration (“black businessmen bustling by briskly”) (p. 6). Yet the book is more than just flashy, over-the-top recounting of colorful anecdotes. Rather, Sterry’s writing style serves his substance well, clearly evoking the milieu of 1970s sexual-revolution-era Hollywood and giving the reader a definite sense of his personal style and character as a lost but resourceful late-adolescent. At the same time, the book is visceral and brutally honest about Sterry’s emotional and physical ordeals during his year as a sex worker. He expresses both sympathy and anger for his clients; in regard to his own behavior, he is subtly introspective, smoothly moving between an account of his feelings at the time and a retrospective evaluation of his actions and motives. While his account does not appear to temper the meanness, sadness or vapidity of many of his customers, he does not shrink from reporting his own failings, either. For example, his recounting of his displaced rage on the basketball court is unflinching and heartbreaking (pp. 181-185).
Sterry’s book reflects the truism that experiences shape perspectives. His views of his year as a “chicken” reflect, among other things, his age at the time, the circumstances in which he began the work (voluntarily, but also with some sense of desperation), his feeling of parental rejection and need for love, his recent sexual assault, his interactions with others, as well as the tenor of the times and his location. Thus, despite the fact that many young people are rejected by their parents, find themselves on the streets, and engage in prostitution, this Chicken is not an “everyman chicken,” but rather an account of a unique person in a unique situation.
That said, Chicken can also be placed in a larger literary and socio-cultural context. Sterry’s memoir is important for many reasons, one of which is that it is the first account of a young male prostitute working primarily with a female clientele. We have several examples of memoirs and lightly fictionalized first-person accounts by female sex workers (see, e.g., Almodovar 1993; French 1988; Quan 2001; Hollander 2002) and by male hustlers serving a male clientele (see, e.g., Whitaker 1999; Lawrence 1999). Sterry expands the genre of work created by these “sex worker literati” (Kuczynski 2001); in offering his unique story, he also enables those familiar with the genre to speculate about commonalities and differences among prostitutes (and among clients) as we compare his story to others. For example, like countless others, Sterry refers to his time in prostitution as “the life,” (Sterry, p. 125) indicating a recognition that prostitution in the U.S. is no simple vocation, but rather has larger implications for its practitioners and a broader significance in society. Indeed, Sterry’s book helps demonstrate why “the life” is often used as a synonym for prostitution: illegal and stigmatized, for most prostitution is no mere way to pay the rent. Instead it may involve false names and cover stories; the threat or actuality of violence; uncertainty due to the risk of arrest, eviction, expulsion, loss of custody, deportation and the like; emotional distance from loved ones; and inner turmoil, just to name a few. Whether a prostitute embraces or regrets his/her work, the fact of stigma and criminality often do lead prostitutes into “the life” of prostitution because of the things they must do to conceal their activities from others and the opportunities they forego because of the risk of disclosure.
In contrast, unlike many other “sex positive” authors of prostitution memoirs, Sterry reports that he had only one client who was not hateful (p. 125). Among myriad possibilities, Sterry’s claim may suggest that women as commercial sex consumers tend not to be appreciative of the services they receive; that the kind of women, particularly in the 1970s, who could conceive of, afford, and follow through on paying for sex are a unique sample of mostly troubled, superficial, nihilistic or misanthropic individuals; that teenaged sex providers are particularly taken for granted; or that something specific to Sterry–his own misgivings about his work, the way in which his manager procured customers, etc.–influenced Sterry’s interactions with and perceptions of his clients. While the reader can do little more than speculate about this matter, this kind of contrast nonetheless demonstrates the usefulness of Sterry’s book in helping those among us who research, observe, theorize about, or participate in the sex industry to (re)consider how specific or generalizable our own findings, conclusions, beliefs and experiences may be.
The complex relation between the specific and the general is implicated in other ways by Sterry’s memoir. For example, some readers may feel that Sterry wrongly sentimentalizes non-commercial consensual intercourse, drawing too stark a dichotomy between the nastiness of paid sex and the delights of unpaid sex. Remembering having sex with his college girlfriend for the first time, Sterry writes: “This is so different from working sex. That’s dank dark distant and mechanical, and I have to pump myself up into a loverstudguy to do it.” (p. 85) As people from all spectra of human experience have pointed out, including this reviewer (Lucas, in press), commercial sex is not always or necessarily impersonal and alienating, nor does non-commercial sex always or necessarily promote sharing, bonding and interpersonal connection. Yet Sterry should not be faulted for his viewpoint here, because, with few exceptions, his book consistently makes clear that this story is his alone; he never claims to speak for all rent-boys, rape victims, or homeless teens. Moreover, many teenagers see the world, including the world of sex, as black and white. Despite Sterry’s greater exposure than most adolescents to the extremes of sexual practice, given his conflicted emotions about his behavior, at this time he probably also viewed paid and unpaid sex strictly as a study in contrasts. Thus, rather than being faulted for portraying this view in his memoir, Sterry merits praise for recreating this duality so accurately.
However, when he ventures beyond his specific story, Sterry is on unstable ground. Sterry reports that “[o]ver ninety percent of sex workers have been sexually abused” (p. 82). This figure is wholly unsubstantiated. Studies reporting such a high rate of abuse have consistently proved invalid due to poor design, questionable administration, vague or over-general definitions of abuse, and inadequate sampling. Where even roughly accurate, such figures describe only specific and extremely limited groups of sex workers. For the population as a whole, it is impossible to know how many sex workers have been abused–even with precise definitions of abuse–because it is impossible to conduct random sampling or to establish that a sample is indeed representative of the larger population. Sex workers in general, and prostitutes especially, do not consistently admit involvement in the sex industry. As such, the size, spread, and basic demographic characteristics of this population are impossible to specify, including its rates of abuse. Moreover, it is probable that sex workers who are abuse survivors are more likely to come to researchers’ attention through contacts with law enforcement, safe sex outreach workers, drug counselors, and others, because their history of abuse may make them less able to conceal their activities, more at risk for problem behaviors, and more open to outreach workers offering help. In other words, researchers often start with a skewed sample. Finally, to the extent any generalizations are possible, they are most reliable for female prostitutes. Male sex workers are an especially poorly understood group, in part because they are rarely studied except in connection with HIV and AIDS. Absent more information about male prostitutes as a group, one cannot assume that findings applicable to women also describe their male counterparts.
However, this is a minor flaw in an otherwise outstanding work. In terms of its larger lessons, Sterry’s memoir reinforces what other sex workers and academics have said in their own ways about the many problems of stigma and the need for society to recognize prostitution as a legitimate and valuable profession when freely chosen. In recounting his yin-yang experiences and emotions regarding sex work, Sterry shows us what a minefield the terrain of prostitution can be for its practitioners. Like other prostitutes, both male and female, Sterry’s self-esteem was both enhanced by (or through) prostitution, and also, sometimes simultaneously, diminished–especially when his clients made clear their lack of regard for him and his ilk. Sterry’s memoir suggests that when prostitution is not fully chosen or continued, and when it is practiced by those who are vulnerable, immature, living in precarious conditions or otherwise at risk, it is a practice that may be highly fraught with tension and uncertainty. That is, a person who is both young and ambivalent about his or her work as a prostitute is likely to be particularly susceptible to societal condemnation, stigma, and self-doubt. These forces, in turn, can make it more difficult for such a person to navigate the terrain of prostitution successfully, find or create a support network, make decisions to promote well-being, negotiate successfully with clients, learn which clients (s)he prefers or how to select them, and the like.
Again, this is not to fault Sterry or to diminish his successes and ingenuity in chickenhood. Nor is it to suggest that we can reach dispositive conclusions based on one set of experiences. Rather, it is to insist that we not discount this set of experiences as simply a compelling coming-of-age story, another example of triumph over adversity, or a Day-Glo® portrait of seamy Hollywood excess. While it may be these things, Chicken is more. It expands our understanding of who does sex work and what it involves; of how family dislocation, dysfunction and desertion affect children and adolescents; and of the complex interplay between social norms, sexual practices, “deviant” behavior, and identity. Academics might use Chicken profitably to help students explore non-fiction and memoir writing, or substantively in courses on gender, sexuality, adolescence, deviance, the sexual revolution, the 1970s, southern California, and related topics. As a floodlit slice of life or an object lesson about attempts to counterbalance (dare I say “straddle”?) propriety and impropriety, Chicken is highly recommended.
References
Almodovar, Norma Jean. 1993. Cop to Call Girl: Why I Left the LAPD to Make an Honest Living as a Beverly Hills Prostitute. New York: Simon & Schuster.
French, Dolores, with Linda Lee. 1988. Working: My Life as a Prostitute. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Hollander, Xaviera, with Robin Moore & Yvonne Dunleavy. 2002 [1972]. The Happy Hooker: My Own Story. New York: Regan Books.
Kuczynski, Alex. 2001, November 4. The Sex-Worker Literati. New York Times, sec. 9, p. 1. Retrieved May 28, 2003 from LexisNexis Academic database.
Lawrence, Aaron. 1999. Suburban Hustler: Stories of a Hi-Tech Callboy. Warren, NJ: Late Night Press.
Lucas, Ann. In press. The Currency of Sex: Prostitution, Law and Commodification. In Martha M. Ertman & Joan C. Williams (Eds.), Commodification Futures: The Role of Markets in Love, Sex, and Other Areas.
Quan, Tracy. 2001. Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel. New York: Crown Publishing.
Whitaker, Rick. 1999. Assuming the Position: A Memoir of Hustling. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.
“Just published in its 10th anniversary edition, I’ve never read anything quite like this memoir. David Henry Sterry performs a high-wire act in his vaudevilliain telling of life as a prostitute in 70s Hollywood. Alternately sad and hilarious, Sterry provokes serious thinking about family, sexuality, and addiction.” – Stacey at City Lights Bookstore
Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent, Ten Year Anniversary Edition
“Ten years ago, this debut memoir from Sterry burst upon the literary scene with an energy and inventiveness that captured his little-known subject matter—teenage life in Los Angeles as a rent boy working for a benevolent pimp named Sunny whose “rich, generous, horny friends,” Sterry explains, “pay good money to party with a boy like me.” Now back in print, Sterry’s memoir still crackles with its unsparingly honest approach: “I catch myself in the mirror, seventeen-year-old hardbody belly, pitprop legs, zero body fat, and huge hands. I’m seduced by the glitter of my own flesh.” Scenes from Sterry’s early dysfunctional family life not only add pathos to this tale of fall and resurrection but assure readers that he never sees himself as better than his clients, such as Dot, the wealthy 82-year-old, whose only desire is to experience cunnilingus for the first time—a desire that Sterry readily fulfills. “Even though I have no home and no family except for a bunch of prostitutes and a pimp, even though I have no future… at least I’m good at this.” (Oct.) – Publisher’s Weekly
Find Chicken at your local independent bookstore: Indiebound Amazon
“I walk all the way up Hollywood Boulevard to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre: past tourists snapping shots; wannabe starlets sparkling by in miniskirts with head shots in their hands and moondust in their eyes; rowdy cowboys drinking with drunken Indians; black businessmen bustling by briskly in crisp suits; ladies who do not lunch with nylons rolled up below the knee pushing shopping carts full of everything they own; Mustangs rubbing up against muscular Mercedes and Hell’s Angels hogs. It’s a sick twisted Wonderland, and I’m Alice.”
This is the chronicle of a young man walking the razor-sharp line between painful innocence and the allure of the abyss. David Sterry was a wide-eyed son of 1970s suburbia, but within a week of enrolling at Immaculate Heart College, he was lured into the dark underbelly of the Hollywood flesh trade. Chicken has become a coming-of-age classic, and has been translated into ten languages. This ten-year anniversary edition has shocking new material.
“Sterry writes with comic brio … [he] honed a vibrant outrageous writing style and turned out this studiously wild souvenir of a checkered past.” – Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“This is a stunning book. Sterry’s prose fizzes like a firework. Every page crackles… A very easy, exciting book to read – as laconic as Dashiell Hammett, as viscerally hallucinogenic as Hunter S Thompson. Sex, violence, drugs, love, hate, and great writing all within a single wrapper. What more could you possibly ask for? -Maurince Newman, Irish Times
“A beautiful book… a real work of literature.” – Vanessa Feltz, BBC
“Insightful and funny… captures Hollywood beautifully” – Larry Mantle, Air Talk, NPR
“Jawdropping… A carefully crafted piece of work…” -Benedicte Page, Book News, UK
“A 1-night read. Should be mandatory reading for parents and kids.” -Bert Lee, Talk of the Town
“Alternately sexy and terrifying, hysterical and weird, David Henry Sterry’s Chicken is a hot walk on the wild side of Hollywood’s fleshy underbelly. With lush prose and a flawless ear for the rhythms of the street, Sterry lays out a life lived on the edge in a coming-of-age classic that’s colorful, riveting, and strangely beautiful. David Henry Sterry is the real thing.” –Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
“Compulsively readable, visceral, and very funny. The author, a winningly honest companion, has taken us right into his head, moment-by-moment: rarely has the mentality of sex been so scrupulously observed and reproduced on paper. Granted, he had some amazingly bizarre experiences to draw upon; but as V. S. Pritchett observed, in memoirs you get no pints for living, the art is all that counts-and David Henry Sterry clearly possesses the storyteller’s art.” – Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body – Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body
“Like an X-rated Boogie Nights narrated by a teenage Alice in Wonderland. Sterry’s anecdotes… expose Hollywood at its seamiest, a desperate city of smut and glitz. I read the book from cover to cover in one night, finally arriving at the black and white photo of the softly smiling former chicken turned memoirist.” -Places Magazine
“Snappy and acutely observational writing… It’s a book filled with wit, some moments of slapstick, and of some severe poignancy… a flair for descriptive language… The human ability to be kind ultimately reveals itself, in a book which is dark, yet always upbeat and irreverent. A really good, and enlightening, read.” – Ian Beetlestone, Leeds Guide
“Brutally illuminating and remarkably compassionate… a walk on the wild side which is alternatively exhilirating and horrifying, outrageous and tragic… Essential reading.” – Big Issue
“Visceral, frank and compulsive reading.’ –City Life, Manchester
“Sparkling prose… a triumph of the will.” -Buzz Magazine
“Pick of the Week.” -Independent
“Impossible to put down, even, no, especially when, the sky is falling…Vulnerable, tough, innocent and wise… A fast-paced jazzy writing style… a great read.” -Hallmemoirs
“Full of truth, horror, and riotous humor.” -The Latest Books
“His memoir is a super-readable roller coaster — the story of a young man who sees more of the sexual world in one year than most people ever do.” – Dr. Carol Queen, Spectator Magazine
“Terrifically readable… Sterry’s an adventurer who happens to feel and think deeply. He’s written a thoroughly absorbing story sensitively and with great compassion… A page-turner… This is a strange story told easily and well.” – Eileen Berdon, Erotica.com
“Love to see this book turned into a movie, Julianne Moore might like to play Sterry’s mum…” – by Iain Sharp The Sunday Star-Times, Auckland, New Zealand).
James burned.
With Mary. With God. With the Devil. With blood fever. Lately Mary came to him every night. Bathed in golden light. Sweet Mary, dripping love, dropping down with the wings of an angel as he lay on his small hard bed, Jesus on the cross behind him bleeding for his sinning. And he would pray to God. That she would go away. That she would come to stay. Flowing crow black hair. Raving raven eyes. Skin white clouds. Breasts secreting the milky blood of Christ.
James sinned.
As she floated down, a sister of mercy, sweet Mary, all over him. And he would pray to God to deliver him from evil, to help him resist temptation. But his God would be gone, and he could not resist. And she would whisper, “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” as she spread herself with her fingers and hovered over James, rigid as the rock of ages, the blossom of Mary so opening and he would be enveloped by the sheer drunken sin of it all.
James stiffened.
And she would put her breast in his mouth, and he would drink the milky blood of Christ as she slid down, down, down his vein of sin a pounding pillar, the shaft of his Satan. And he would whisper, “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.” And he would think to himself, O Jesus, save me, O Jesus, kill me. And she was like a cherub, the holy music of her filling him as he was filling her. Mary blanketed him like in holy snow.
James froze.
And his hot love of God would shoot into her valley of death, the Devil lurking, smirking in the corner. And James would scream, “O Lord, why have you forsaken me?”And then woke up, soaking from the wetness of his nightmaredream sweaty and sticky salty unholy water boiling on his belly. And God was watching him, James could feel the shame aimed at his heart, and he would pray for forgiveness. And afterwards, to calm himself, he would say, It’s only a dream.
James knelt.
And now, here she was. Mary. In her flesh. In his booth. Inches away. So close James could smell her flower blooming, perfuming through him, strangleholding his soul. James had to punch himself hard in the thigh. You are nothing, you are a servant, you are a vessel of the Lord our God. A vessel of God. You are nothing but your sacred duty, James told himself. You are hear to minister. Hear confession and recommend penance.
James swallowed.
“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” drifted from the darkness like a chariot of lightness, singing sweet and low, swinging him around her little finger. “What is your sin?” That is always the question, isn’t it? James thought. You are my sin. He’d never been anything but certain his whole life. He was the Whiz Kid Priest. That’s what all the papers said. Memorized the Bible by the age of ten. Already groomed to be a bishop, a cardinal maybe even. Audience with the Pope on his eighteenth birthday. Quoting verse and scripture, a greatest hits of the Good Book with the square jawed easy charm of Jack Kennedy back in the Camelot days, a poster boy for everything good about the church, a throwback to a happier time when priests weren’t predatory pedophiles and it didn’t matter if you had sex with Marilyn Monroe in the White House, as long as you didn’t do it on the Front Lawn. A face for everything good in the church
James sighed.
He loved the ritual of it, the pageantry of it, the hidden symbols and the rock hard unthinking certainty, the blind obedience of it all, from before he could even remember, making everyone around him so happy, his father, on his deathbed, pleading with him, James, the only son, the last hope, to be a priest, his mother so proud, beaming, telling everyone about her boy the Whiz Kid Priest. The pride of the neighborhood.
James pulsated.
And it had been so easy. Until Mary. In his booth. Now. Smelling like sin itself. “Father, I have impure thoughts,” confessed Mary with a breathtaking piety. Impure thoughts. Just the words raced his pulse, her skin ivory, hair ink black, a black Mass, parting to let him in. James had to punch himself hard in the thigh. He wanted to run, hide. And he prayed to God, his God, to give him the strength to resist, to pass this test, this plague of locust, He was inflicting on pious Father James, the Whiz Kid Priest. And no one was there.
James twitched.
“What are your impure thoughts?” James asked, straining to keep the quiver out of his voice, not really wanting to know the answer, desperately wanting to know the answer. “Well, Father… I’m too embarrassed to talk about it…” Mary said shyly. “I’m your priest, Mary, I’m hear to listen and forgive, as a vessel of Christ out Lord and savior. We all have impure thoughts.” James said. If you only knew, he thought.
James breathed.
“Do you ever have impure thoughts Father?” asked Mary, and it shivered him cold and lit a fire in his hell, sending a white-hot shot of juice jumping through him jumping under the hardening under his robe. O God please make it stop now. I have given You my life, please do this one thing for me. “Well, yes I do, of course I do. I’m not just a priest, I’m a…” But the word “man” stuck hard in his throat like a wafer with no wine chaser. “…that is to say, I confess my thoughts and sins and I pray to God to forgive me, and He does.” James said in his best Father James voice.
James clenched.
He had never confessed his sins of Mary. As if by not confessing them they weren’t really real. Maybe that’s why God is punishing me, that’s why God is testing me, for my mendacity, for believing I can hide anything from his omnipotence. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. “Father, I have wicked, sinful thoughts, and… I touch myself Father, I can’t help it… I… give myself pleasure… I can’t stop, Father, and I don’t know what to do…” James was trying to control everything, slow it all down, cool it all off. No more visions. No more breasts of Mary. No more holy bloody milk. No more Cardinal red lips. Save me for I am lost. Find me, miserable wretch that I am. Lord I am blind. Please, let me see. Help me cast out Satan. Make me roar, “Jezebelle, be gone!”
James quaked.
James thought about the way she looked at him when she passed in line after Sunday service. The way she always managed to corner him somewhere, when she knew no one was around, and stand a little too close, until she was almost brushing up against him, so close that he couldn’t even follow the thread of the meaningless conversation they were having. So close that he had no choice but to breathe in the ripe juice of Mary. “I want to do things, Father. O God, I want to do terrible things…” Deliver me from evil. Is this evil? It must be. It is. Sin. The sins of the flesh. Her flesh. The flesh of Mary. “Sometimes,” whispered the sweet breath of Mary, “I want it so bad, I don’t care if I burn in a flame hotter than any human fire for ever and ever.”
James shuddered.
Maybe I shouldn’t be a priest. Maybe I’m too weak. Maybe I’m just doing it so everyone will like me. So I won’t let my dead dad down. So I’ll be the Whiz Kid Priest. “Sometime I think God would understand. God understands love, doesn’t he Father?” Does He? Do You? I don’t know, James thought. I thought I knew. God is love. Isn’t He? Aren’t You? I thought I knew. I was so sure I did. Everything seemed so clear and simple. A sin of the flesh is a sin of the flesh is a sin of the flesh. Father James is not a sinner. Father James is a vessel of God. Devout. A son of the son of God, pure in His celestial mansion on earth.
James dripped.
I want Mary. More than I want God. Could that be true? Or is this Lucifer worming his way my Holy Soul? Making me want Mary’s sweetness. To eat her flesh. To drink her milky blood. James had to punch himself hard in the thigh. Her smell was everywhere. His dream flashed in front of him, the wings of the wet archangel Mary, the parting of her red sea, so rigid and dizzy under his robe.
James rocked.
“I’m touching myself right now, Father,” confessed Mary, “I’m touching myself, and I’m very… it feels very… Father, tell me, what should I do? Am I going to hell? I can’t help myself… Help me, please help me Father.” God was everywhere. God was nowhere. James felt God pumping hot blood under his robe. No, it’s Satan, this infernal damp dark underworld where black meets red. James wanted to die and go to Heaven, never having been tested. Please God, I’m ready. Take me now. Before Mary takes me. But God did not take James.
James shook.
And he was aware she had left her side of the booth, could faintly hear her walking to him. Mary was coming. Or was it a flesh demon sent to suck out his soul. Run James, run, that little piece of rational brain that was left screamed. But he couldn’t run. Didn’t want to run. Wouldn’t run. The door slowly opened as the worm turned. And then there she was Mary. Floating in on the wings of a prayer. Deliver me now from evil, deliver me through the desert like Moses to the promised land. But where was the promised land? It was here in his confessional booth. It was her, so pure sweet and Mary. Please, God show me. Tell me, for I am nothing. I am your vessel. Help me now or forever hold your peace. God did not come. God did not help. God did not tell James what to do. Betrayed thrice, thought Father James. By the Father, by the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
James sank.
He was alone with her. With this speaking in tongues, this massive tower of Babel so huge and confused under the shroud of his black robe. And James was filled with her crimsoning bouquet. Her ivory so flesh, bright burn of the eyes so Mary, the pleading of her thighs, her breasts so full of God’s blood and milk. Take, eat, this is my body and is meant for you. “If you want me to go, tell me right now, Father, I’ll go and I’ll never come back.” Mary blazed into him with God’s light. Yes, go! Be gone, whore of Babylon, temptress, she-devil, be gone. James heard the words in his head. But they would not come out of his mouth.
James muted.
And Mary did lean down to him, bathed in a golden halo of honeydew perfume. James heard a heavenly choir soaring and a devil’s organ grinding. And she did lean down to him, her breasts so full of God, closer, her lips florid, touching him, the first time a woman’s lips had ever touched him. I’m the Holy Virgin, James thought. And she is Mary. I’m the Unholy Virgin, James thought. And she is sweet Mary. Her breath is so deep so red so wet. And her tongue is so full of life and fruit so forbidden touching his lips so light and his holiness jumped under his robe and he was so full and taut and fierce. O God, I’m burning up. I’m already burning in hell, James thought, and I will burn in a flame hotter than any human fire for all eternity. For ever and ever world without end, Amen. And I don’t care.
James opened.
And Mary slipped her tongue, the hot tight serpent tongue of Eve, deeper into him. And a hurricane crucified his brain. And a twister spun through the third eye of the snake under his robe. O God, it’s so hard, James thought. And Mary took his face in her hands and her tongue slowly slid into his mouth and he moaned from his soul. And his hands reached out as if they weren’t his hands at all and grabbed her hips and she gasped under his grasp, sucked on his lips and those hips of Mary were liquid in his hands, undulating, swelling, swiveling into him. And James could smell her now. So fertile and earthly and heaven sent. And it made him want to give her everything he had. The keys to the kingdom of heaven.
James flushed.
And Mary pulled her breasts out of her blouse and she fed them to him and he dove in, baptizing himself in the milk of the flesh of Mary, so bursting in his hungry mouth, the rhythm raw and rocksteady. And there was no God and there was no Devil. There was only Mary. And Mary threw her head back in ecstatic rapture her tongue peeked out of her mouth, her eyes half shut in Biblical delight, the delicious quivering in her belly twitching all the way inside her, beating the drums fanning the fire. “Forgive me Father for I have sinned,” she whispered. And she took him in her hand scalding her flesh so hard and she disappeared into the black cauldron under his robe. And she kissed the tip of his stiff cross and he jumped and panted – “O God O God O God” – springing from his lips as she ran her tongue and cupped him in her hand gently massaging his world and swallowing him whole, slowly inch by inch into her Mary mouth and she moaned soulful and vibrated and he quaked, intoxicated by the dark depths of Mary.
James gasped.
Mary emerged, her lips swollen and turkey cock red, cheeks blazing cherries, eyes black fire, and she moved in and kissed him, let him sip his own saltiness sex on her lips. And then he was sitting on the floor and she was hovering over him, floating in the confessional like an angel of life, a devil of death. And she spread herself with her fingers. And she grabbed his gaze and would not let go. And James had never wanted anything so much as he wanted her. Mary. And she lowered herself, opening slowly, all over him. And she sucked on the very tip of the soul of him with her Mary, relishing the anticipation, feeling the frenzy until he could no longer stand it, and thrust uncontrollable and unconscious into this Mary. As if this was his sacred mission in life. As if this was his true calling. To be inside Mary.
James grasped.
And Mary pushed herself down onto Father James and slid her velvet tremor down, jamming, swallowing him whole, body and soul all the way with everything she had, squeezing him to the root, to the core, to the bone, to the moan, her foundation shaking, rocking his steeple, shattering her madness, rattling his stained glass windows, banging on the pearly gates, knock knock knocking on heaven’s door. And Mary grasped him, so tight and swelling and wet and delirious with him. And James found himself levitating, lovecrazy, heartcrazy, poemcrazy. This was bigger than him. More powerful. This wanting. This Mary.
James stopped.
Eye to eye, two windows into two souls. And there was a new incense filling the booth. The sweet scent of James and Mary. And she nailed him to her cross, took his crown of thorns, as she pounded down him, beads of holy water pooling into drops and raining down his face and chest and back, soaking his robe. And she rocked, insane, out of body, out of mind, in her body, his heart exploding as they climbed the stairway to heaven. And the animal in her eyes sprang at him, leapt into him, and he was possessed by the passion of her possession.
James loved.
And he grabbed her hips hard now and pressed up against her as she slid sliding wet gripping grabbing and slamming, filling the confessional with their fury frenzy yes, “O God!” she cried in whisper, and “O sweet Jesus!” he whispered with a cry, and “O Mary!” he cried, and “O Father!” and “O Christ!” transported, transcendental, the ethereal house of the Father and the blessed Mary, the throne of God’s bliss, angels and devils dancing on the head of a pin prick, on the tip of their sin, skin drenched as Mary soaked him with her wet divinity, the holy of holies, until he could hold back no more, and his manna was shooting into her, from the balls of his feet through the thicket of his heart and into the river of his brain, and let their be light and together they entered the tender garden of the kingdom of paradise.
James collapsed.
And then she wept. And he wept. Drenching each other in joy and sin. Crying in great gulps of love and shame. And James held her tight in his arms. And Mary held him tight in her arms. And they held onto each other in that confessional like they were the last people on Earth. The last people in heaven. The last people in hell. Then James thanked God. His God. For giving him Mary.