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thomasroche's review
3.0
Reasonably entertaining account from two callgirls, one porn publicist, and a chick who does something, I'm not sure what, but seemed to be in the book because she was Heidi Fleiss's assistant for a while. I think she was mostly one of those Kim Kardashian what-does-she-do-again? types. That seems to be a running theme in this book; it's all so name-droppy, which I guess was the point of it, but it got a little thicker than I cared for. I was more interested in what the experience of doing sex work is, rather than whether Robin Williams has a hairy chest or Matt LeBlanc is a douchebag. There's some of both, but a LOT of name-dropping.
I almost skipped the porn publicist's story, having been there and done that and being kind of sick of it, but I put my emotional baggage aside and read it anyway; that was by far the most interesting section of the book. By [a:Carly Milne], it just had a lot more dynamism and self-awareness than the other accounts.
However, I picked this thing up thinking I would get a bunch of tell-alls from prostitutes, out of -- I admit it -- purely salacious interest. It's not really that. It feels icky and gross, and made me seriously not want to ever have sex again. The two women who were callgirls express some bizarre on-again, off-again contempt for sexual variation; one of them, in particular, seems to think every guy who's into anything even remotely atypical (like Aaron Spelling, who supposedly watched his wife Candy Spelling with another man) as maybe being gay. I dunno what that's about, other than typical bonehead homophobic ignorance.
The whole book gave me an icky feeling. I don't really feel like some of the "typical" sex worker presumptions are harped on, meaning drugs, sexual abuse, etc. There seems to be LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of drug use described in the book, but I feel like the authors were just describing their reality, so if there were really drugs there, I don't hold that against them in terms of prejudicial perception of sex workers.
But this I *do* hold against them: They all seem like really, really, really shallow bitches. That's probably why I liked Carly's section best -- because the porn stars in that section do come across that way, or at least empty and confused, but at least the narrator comes across as something different.
Having known a lot of porn stars and callgirls, I don't think the bubbleheadedness reflects reality at all. Maybe it reflects the callgirl scene in Los Angeles and a certain subset of porn stars; I've never known prostitutes from LA. The whores I know in San Francisco all seem to have half-completed PhDs in Russian literature. The girls in this book don't seem to. To be fair, I've known a LOT of porn stars from LA who are not stupid, even remotely, and who are incredibly nice people and not shallow bitches at all. So...there you go. Whatever.
The moral? Generalizing about a class of people from four life stories of people, especially in three different and essentially unrelated job functions (callgirl, madam's assistant, publicist), is dangerous. But it's kind of unavoidable when you're a reader, unless you stay extremely vigilant.
Overall, easy to read, fairly entertaining but sort of annoying for the reasons stated above. I still enjoyed it, and would give it four stars except the third author's insistence on speculating on male clients' gayness utterly infuriated me.
I almost skipped the porn publicist's story, having been there and done that and being kind of sick of it, but I put my emotional baggage aside and read it anyway; that was by far the most interesting section of the book. By [a:Carly Milne], it just had a lot more dynamism and self-awareness than the other accounts.
However, I picked this thing up thinking I would get a bunch of tell-alls from prostitutes, out of -- I admit it -- purely salacious interest. It's not really that. It feels icky and gross, and made me seriously not want to ever have sex again. The two women who were callgirls express some bizarre on-again, off-again contempt for sexual variation; one of them, in particular, seems to think every guy who's into anything even remotely atypical (like Aaron Spelling, who supposedly watched his wife Candy Spelling with another man) as maybe being gay. I dunno what that's about, other than typical bonehead homophobic ignorance.
The whole book gave me an icky feeling. I don't really feel like some of the "typical" sex worker presumptions are harped on, meaning drugs, sexual abuse, etc. There seems to be LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of drug use described in the book, but I feel like the authors were just describing their reality, so if there were really drugs there, I don't hold that against them in terms of prejudicial perception of sex workers.
But this I *do* hold against them: They all seem like really, really, really shallow bitches. That's probably why I liked Carly's section best -- because the porn stars in that section do come across that way, or at least empty and confused, but at least the narrator comes across as something different.
Having known a lot of porn stars and callgirls, I don't think the bubbleheadedness reflects reality at all. Maybe it reflects the callgirl scene in Los Angeles and a certain subset of porn stars; I've never known prostitutes from LA. The whores I know in San Francisco all seem to have half-completed PhDs in Russian literature. The girls in this book don't seem to. To be fair, I've known a LOT of porn stars from LA who are not stupid, even remotely, and who are incredibly nice people and not shallow bitches at all. So...there you go. Whatever.
The moral? Generalizing about a class of people from four life stories of people, especially in three different and essentially unrelated job functions (callgirl, madam's assistant, publicist), is dangerous. But it's kind of unavoidable when you're a reader, unless you stay extremely vigilant.
Overall, easy to read, fairly entertaining but sort of annoying for the reasons stated above. I still enjoyed it, and would give it four stars except the third author's insistence on speculating on male clients' gayness utterly infuriated me.
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