Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex [Paperback]

David Henry Sterry (Editor), R. J. Martin Jr. (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2009

The only thing the writers in this book have in common is that they've exchanged sex for money. They're PhDs and dropouts, soccer moms and jailbirds, $2,500-a-night call girls and $10 crack hos, and everything in between. This anthology lends a voice to an underrepresented population that is simultaneously reviled and worshipped.

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys is a collection of short memoirs, rants, confessions, nightmares, journalism, and poetry covering life, love, work, family, and yes, sex. The editors gather pieces from the world of industrial sex, including contributions from art-porn priestess Dr. Annie Sprinkle, best-selling memoirist David Henry Sterry (Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent), sex activist and musical diva Candye Kane, women and men right off the streets, girls participating in the first-ever National Summit of Commercially Sexually Exploited Youth, and Ruth Morgan Thomas, one of the organizers of the European Sex Work, Human Rights, and Migration Conference.

Sex is a billion-dollar industry. Meet the real people who are its flesh and blood.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A]n eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection . . . unpolished, unpretentious, and riveting. . . [a] rare ability to tell the truth, an ability that education and sophistication often serve to conceal.” —The New York Times

"Sterry, author of sex-worker memoir Chicken (a fact he mentions often) compiles an exhaustive (and exhausting) collection of writing from sex workers of all stripes. The sprawling project, grouped loosely by topic (Life, Love, Money, Sex, etc.), offers insight into seemingly all aspects of the sex trade: high-profile celebrities like Xaviera “Happy Hooker” Hollander and Nina Hartley make notable contributors, but it’s the unknown writers who will stick. The selections from the book’s closing section alone, written by members of Sterry’s San Francisco writer’s workshop for sex workers, range from triumphant to harrowing, making up for a lack of style or form with passion. Aside from exposing the complex web of relationships among phone sex operators, dancers, massage parlor workers, prostitutes and their customers, the book is heavy with raw emotions ranging from celebratory to shameful, giving armchair sociologists plenty to ponder. It’s not all dark and heavy: Sterry’s own account of his experience as a birthday present for an 82-year-old grandmother is touching and sentimental; veteran performer Annie Sprinkle is characteristically blunt, funny and honest. Best consumed in small doses, this volume houses some real gems amongst a number of redundant space-fillers." —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press; Original edition (July 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593762410
• ISBN-13: 978-1593762414
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #412,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Tales, August 22, 2009

By 

Kemble Scott (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex (Paperback)

I went to Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco to hear some of the contributors read from this remarkable anthology. These are people who reside on the front lines of humanity, experiencing life's extremes. There's no doubt these stories, poems and essays are naughty and provocative, but they are also ultimately revealing about America's obsession and hang-ups with sex. Putting this book together was a labor of love for David Henry Sterry and R. J. Martin (no strangers to hardscrabble lives themselves), and it's a tremendous achievement.
--Kemble Scott, bestselling author of SoMa and The Sower

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything You Wanted to Know...by Lulamae, August 18, 2009

By 

David Henry Sterry "Author of bestselling 'Ch... (montclair, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex (Paperback)

August 10, 2009: Sterry and Martin have managed to bring together a crazy quilt of essays, and work the fabric of the anthology into a rich tapestry. Their successful collaboration initially grew out of workshops conducted at SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation) and came to fruition in part, due to determination to give back to a community to which they swear allegiance, if no longer active participation. The entries are loosely grouped under the book's subtitle: life, love, money and sex; though they could be categorized interchangeably since all are inextricably connected. Some of the narratives are polished and savvy, or wonderfully matter of fact about the all too often hushed and vilified matters of fact under consideration. Some are as hard and rough as drug addiction that dogs a body and soul. Others reveal a tarnished realism about the painful truths of being in the life. Many include family relations issues that are not exclusive to hos, hookers, call girls and rent boys; to one degree or another we all know mothers who are witches and fathers who are brutes, lovers and others who berate or betray. The most compelling are those which give voice to the most vulnerable, in the chapter written by sexually exploited youth. Helping Daddy Pay the Rent is a devastating indictment of societal neglect and despicable acts of parental desperation combust in one abused child that will tear at your heart.

The writing is diverse and eclectic, a mirror into the nature of the industry itself. Sex workers with advanced academic degrees, porn stars and anonymous phone operators, exotic dancers in various states of gender and undress, have more in common than sex for money; they are united in their courage to tell their stories. They unabashedly relate their emotions, actions and reactions, in situations from victimization to domination, hunger to satiation; size twelve stiletto wearing cross dressers, full body massage providers, plaster casted exhibitionists all tell their tales in gripping first person I-live(d)-it-so-there's-no-sugar-coating-it manner. Hearts, heads and other assorted body parts, seedy strip joints, broken down bars and spirits, upscale hotels and high rollers are exposed with unflinching candor and gritty authenticity, bringing to light the world of industrial sex workers.

This book is more than an interesting and affecting read. In its entirety, in its insistence that the gamut of personal histories about sex/money/power/frailty is a reflection of the human condition, it speaks to a broad audience. A bit of paraphrasing may serve to place the content in its most valuable context: Roman philosopher, Terence, said nothing in humanity can be alien to man; and renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung said that light is revealed by uncovering shadow. HHCG&RB presents the universality of ancient archetypal themes playing out in modern day scenes, and in doing so, uncovers shadow for all.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars most interesting, September 22, 2009

By 

James Palmisano (Toms River, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex (Paperback)

A most interesting read.
A new view point of those in the sex industry, when you find out they are most times, the boy or girl next door. If your looking for a book full of trash, this is not for you.