Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent [Hardcover]

David Henry Sterry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2002

I walk all the way up Hollywood Boulevard to Grauman's Chinese Theatre: past turistas 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.

Here is a story like no other: The unforgettable chronicle of a season spent 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 his first week looking for off-campus housing on Sunset Boulevard he was lured into a much darker world -- servicing the lonely women of Hollywood by night.

Chicken -- the word is slang for a young male prostitute -- revisits this year of living dangerously, in a narrative of dazzling inventiveness and searing candor. Shifting back and forth from tales of Sterry's youth -- spent in the awkward bosom of a disintegrating dysfunctional family -- to his fascinating account of the Neverland of post-sixties sexual excess, Chicken teems with Felliniesque characters and set pieces worthy of Dionysus. And when the life finally overwhelms Sterry, his retreat from the profession will leave an indelible mark on readers' minds and hearts.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Henry Sterry's account of his nine months as a male prostitute in Los Angeles could easily have been unrelievedly sordid. Instead, because he relates his bizarre adventures in the boy-toy trade with dark wit and considerable compassion, it proves to be that rare walk on the wild side you can thoroughly enjoy and not hate yourself for in the morning. The frank descriptions of his "dates" range from wickedly funny (two women hire him to clean their house dressed in nothing but a see-through black apron while they have sex with each other) to baroque (at a costumed orgy, he performs various acts with "Tinker Bell" while "Peter Pan" whips her) to extremely disturbing (one client has him dress in her dead son's clothes, then vomits after their encounter). It all seems sadly, even touchingly human, thanks to Sterry's matter-of-fact empathy for his disturbed customers. He's tougher on his parents, depicting them as essentially abandoning their 17-year-old son to the streets, but even here he sardonically steps back for the bigger picture, labeling Mom and Dad "embodiments of the American Dream. They came to this country with basically nothing but the clothes on their backs, and after twenty years of hard work, sweat, and sacrifice, they were getting divorced, totally broke, and deep in therapy." Passages like that give Chicken its bite; the book gets its soul from Sterry's nuanced portrait of his growing anguish as the work takes him to increasingly scary places, physically and emotionally. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

A cross between Midnight Cowboy and Boogie Nights, this tell-all memoir of a Hollywood Boulevard-heterosexual-teen-boy-male-hustler in the 1970s has all the makings of a week's worth of Jerry Springer shows. Emerging from a slightly dysfunctional upper-middle-class family of British emigres (where father was domineering and distant, and mother's female friend turned out to be her lover), teenaged Sterry fled to a Catholic college in Los Angeles and found himself working for an escort agency as well as attending classes and dating a nice girl. While the material here is fascinating, Sterry doesn't seem to trust its basic appeal and relies on a gimmicky, Hunter Thompsonesque prose style "I can do this. Woman's pleasure. Loverstudguy" to pump up the volume. This same lack of trust shapes the tone of the book. Attempts to shock fail, as when Sterry is hired at an s&m costume ball, because he portrays his clients as bizarre rather then empathetically displaying their humanity. The book's climactic, Midnight Cowboy-esque scene, in which Sterry gets violent with one of his few male clients and finally quits the life, may feel good for the wrong reasons. Sterry's book is an easy but not an insightful read. (Feb.) Forecast: An NPR syndicated feature and four-city author tour may draw aspiring Dirk Digglers or Mrs. Robinsons to this title from among literate vicarious thrill seekers, but it is unclear how many of them would be caught carrying it around.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: HarperEntertainment; First Edition edition (February 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060394188
• ISBN-13: 978-0060394189
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,435,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Henry Sterry

David Henry Sterry is an author, performer, educator, activist, and muckraker. David is the author of 13 books, the first of which was published in 2001. Prior to becoming an author, David was a professional actor and screenwriter.

The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published (Workman, 20100. This soup-to-nuts guide will educate and entertain as it tells you everything you need to know about how to get successfully published in this crazy new cyber-intensive world of publishing.

Satchel Sez; The Wit, Wisdom & World of Leroy Satchel Paige (Crown, 2001). Picked by the ALA as one of the best books of the year for teens.

Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (ReganBooks, 2002). A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Sold into nine countries. Under option by Showtime for a TV series.
"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
"Stunning... Sterry's prose fizzes like fireworks. Every page crackles... Very easy and exciting 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?" -The Irish Times

Putting Your Passion into Print (Workman, 2005). Based on the Stanford Workshop created by himself and his wife, former agent and author, Arielle Eckstut.
"Before you write your own book, read this one first. Arielle Eckstut and David Sterry understand the process of publishing. Their advice will help you envision and frame your work so that publishers will be more likely to perceive its value." -Jonathan Karp, Publisher, 12 Books
"This book demystifies the process of getting published and is a must-have for every aspiring writer with a dream to see his or her passion in print. With input from agents, editors, and writers, this book is thorough, forthright, and importantly, also quite entertaining."--Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Travis & Freddy's Adventures in Vegas (Dutton, 2006). Written under the pseudonym Henry Johnson.
"This is a winner."-- Library Journal

LittleMissMatched's Pajama Party in a Box (Workman, 2007)
LittleMissMatched's Fabulous Marvelous Me (Workman, 2007)
LittleMissMatched's The Writer in Me (Workman, 2008)
LittleMissMatched's The Artist in Me (Workman, 2008)
LittleMissMatched is a company dedicated to inspiring creativity and self-expression in girls of all ages. These books, created with David's wife, Arielle Eckstut, have been sold everywhere from FAO Schwarz to Toys R Us to Disneyland.

Master of Ceremonies: A True Story of Love, Murder, Rollerskates and Chippendales (Canongate/Grove-Atlantic).
"Master of Ceremonies is dizzying, tender, and... resplendent with seedy glamour, hilarious backstage madness, and unflinching honesty."--Library Journal

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent-Boys: Professionals writing on Life, Love, Money & Sex (Soft Skull, 2009). Now in its fifth printing.
"Eye-opening, astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny... unpretentious and riveting -- but also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper."--The New York Times Sunday Book Review (front page review)

The Glorious World Cup: A Balls-Out Guide (Dutton, to be published in April, 2010).

Confessions of a Sex Maniac (Kismet, 2011)

David is unique as an author in that he brings together his love for the written word with his love for performance. In his life as an actor, he performed with everyone from Milton Berle to Will Smith to Michael Caine to Zippy the Chimp. He performed in over 750 commercials, including 4 Clio winners, starred in HBO's Emmy Award-winning Encyclopedia, and emceed at Chippendale's in New York City. As a screenwriter, he wrote for Disney, Fox and Nickelodeon. After his memoir, Chicken, was published, David put his performance and playwriting skills to work and wrote and performed a one-man show based on the book. After a highly praised debut in San Francisco (the chief theater critic for the San Francisco Chronicle said, "Richly entertaining and thought-provoking... Speaks cleverly and provocatively to anyone who's ever been or had a child."), David took his one-man show to Edinburgh's Fringe Festival where it was named the #1 play in the UK by The Independent week after week.

For each and every book David publishes, he puts together a unique and robust publicity and marketing plan which utilizes his performance skills. Examples include:
 A 6-hour workshop on how to get published at Stanford University
 A high concept event like "The Art of the Memoir" which he's done everywhere from City Lights to the Strand to the 92nd St Y
 A cutting-edge reading series like "Sex Worker Literati", which has become a sold-out monthly event at Happy Ending Lounge in NYC

David also makes sure to stay in the public eye between book publications through blogging for the Huffington Post, writing for other people's anthologies (his story in San Francisco Noir was a finalist for the Henry Miller Award), and writing for publications such as The London Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and Penthouse.

Due to his PR efforts, David has been featured in dozens and dozens of media outlets including: The New York Times, The London Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Details Magazine, BBC, NPR's Morning and Weekend Edition and Talk of the Nation.

David has taught at Stanford University, University of New Orleans, Reed College, UCLA, SF State, and the US Department of Justice. He's assisted lawyers, models, architects, and writers to present themselves and their ideas with clarity and passion. He's also helped many amateur writers become professional authors. He's worked as a chicken, a chicken fryer, a master of ceremonies, a soda jerk, a cherry picker, a poet, a building inspector, a telephone solicitationist, a limo driver, a barker, an industrial sex technician, and a marriage counselor. He graduated from Reed College, and loves his cat, his girls, and any sport involving a ball.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing adventure story, April 5, 2002

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (Hardcover)

David Henry Sterry grew up in Dallas during the '70's, the brainy, sociable, and much loved son of striving English immigrants. He writes that a "rosy patina of relentless suburban niceness shimmers on the surface" of his childhood. In this terrifically readable account he writes about his parents with compassion. This is not a "victim" story. "My mother was an emotional woman who cried at the drop of a pin. At the drop of a hat. At the drop of a hat pin." He describes her, achingly really, as someone who "could make a wild wailing hard-baked baby coo with the soothe of her touch." He loved his dad - and strives to understand him. Sterry's an adventurer who happens to feel and think deeply, and he's written a thoroughly absorbing adventure story about the nine months he worked as a prostitute in Los Angeles "partying" with women while he was a freshman in college.

He registers for classes and works frying "industrial chicken, " of which we learn quite a lot. In a few weeks his boss, a seedy, weirdly friendly guy, asks him if he's ready for Real Money. Real Money, it turns out, is to be made "partying" with women. He won't be a streetwalker, but will be on call. Sterry insists on women only: "I started having sex when I was thirteen, and I took to it like a well-watered carrot in fertile earth. I'm fluent in Sex. I take direction well. I love making women feel good, and I've learned the importance of a slow hand, a sweet mouth, and paying attention." He is seventeen.

Sterry gets his pager and his instructions which, aside from the instructions regarding pay, aren't as far from the Boy Scout credo as you might think. ("1. Don't be late. 2. Don't rip anybody off. 3. Don't speak unless spoken to. 4. Be clean. 5. Say as little as possible. 6. When in doubt say even less. 7. The customer's always right. 8. If something seems weird it probably is. 9. GET THE MONEY UP FRONT!"). For the next nine months he's a boy toy for pay: $100 an hour, more or less. It's all here. This book is painful and trusting and generous. It's appalling in places, not a turn-on but a page-turner.

So how does a seventeen year-old boy do in the sex trade? It seems that he did pretty well. Oh, he trained some. "On the first day of my rookie season, Frannie gives me excruciatingly explicit instructions in her droll monotone, detailing exactly what she wants me to do and how she wants me to do it. I'm ready. I was born for this work." His customers, mostly middle-aged women - among them lonely married women, aging rich hippies, lesbians, the horribly disconcertingly grieving mother of a dead son his age - were pleased with him. He is workmanlike, puts forth effort, and he is kind. His customers say "Please," and "Thank you." He strives to understand not only their physical selves, but the rest of them, too. Best of all, the pay is amazing ...

It turns out that, at least for Sterry, the provocation of the female orgasm is the easy part. The more difficult thing, and the true sticking point, is the impossibility of living in a way that gives him even a modicum of happiness. His relationships with his peers (specifically Kristy, a coed - in whom he is interested) are strained to the breaking point. The pager keeps going off, and he can't not obey its call. Lying in the service of the keeping of his secret is behavior which feels "familiar and familial." It becomes a way of life. Something's got to give, and after nine months, it does.

This is a strange story told easily and well. The ragged particulars (and often eloquent and heartbreaking throwaway lines) of the daily life of a seventeen year-old boy who happens to be turning tricks for a living while attending college are no small thing. Sterry intersperses trenchant and interesting vignettes from his childhood and the ongoing drama of his parents' troubled lives. It works well. The precocious and energetic boy "for rent" has clearly grown up to be a man who is smart and wise and compassionate This is a terrific read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars David Henry Sterry doesn't 'Chicken' Out, February 25, 2002

By 

"dawnamatrix" (Toronto, Ontario) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (Hardcover)

Chicken is impossible to put down, even, no, especially when the sky is falling. It is a true story of survival, of a teenaged boy on the brink of adulthood doing what he has to do. In turns vulnerable, tough, innocent and wise, the author tells the story of his time as a 'chicken' - a male prostitute in 70's Hollywood. Young David strives for normalcy, tries to break the patterns of his double-life, but cannot shake the feeling that he belongs with 'the freaks': those whose existence is outside the realm of acceptability. Tempered with hilarious characters and situations and a fast-paced jazzy writing style, this book has all the qualities that make a good read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unsettling, February 25, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent (Hardcover)

This book is fierce and funny; the account is especially moving because, unlike most memoirs, it is somewhat uncertain how much perspective has been gained--the writer seems to still be learning from his experience, perhaps even attracted to some of the more damaging aspects of it--and this brings an unsettling and honest immediacy to the reading.