David Henry Sterry, Editor of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, chats with Red Bank Orbit’s Tom Chesek about his recent Asbury Park appearance to discuss his work, a screening of “Hollywood and the Sexworker”, and a conversation about sex work with other writers. Chesek covers all the bases – from Sterry’s sex work history, his time in Hollywood, his writing, and his current inspirations…

“…Makes you wonder whenever you meet up with one of these couples at some fundraiser reception. And the flip side is that you never know when someone you meet has worked in the sex industry in some capacity.

Oh, sex workers walk among us! They’re our moms and daughters and aunts and uncles. They’re everywhere.

Hey, the other day my wife finds out that a college student she knows has her own page with an escort service that once employed Ashley Dupre, of Eliot Spitzer scandal fame.

Really! Well, that proves my point. There’s the stereotype of the woman who’s working her way toward getting her Masters, her Ph.D. Think about that next time you see a doctor. Once you look into it, you see just how much of mainstream society is buying or selling something in this world.

Well, you haven’t been shy about your own experiences in the industry.

I’ve written two memoirs from those experiences, Chicken and Master of Ceremonies. My next one will be Sports, Sex and Show Business. I had my own show business career for a time, you know; I was on The Fresh Prince for a couple of episodes, but I got tired of the acting world. I didn’t want to be second banana, didn’t want to be ‘Buddy #3′ anymore.

Well, if the highlight of your career is a supporting part on a sitcom, it kind of dooms you to be Larry from THREE’S COMPANY for life. You can’t get hired for anything else in Hollywood, but you can always star in LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS at Bucks County Playhouse.

Exactly! I just felt like a cog in a machine that I inherently hated. You know, I was already a troubled person back then, and things just came to a head — my hypnotherapist that I was seeing suggested that I write about my life, and that’s how I transitioned into being an author.

Not that being a writer is any more respectable than being Larry from THREE’S COMPANY.

Oh, the writer is way down on the pole from what gets up there on the screen. Everything they always said about writers in Hollywood is true — the writer has no power, still. You’re just a hired hand that can be fired at will…”

You can read the rest of the article at the Red Bank Orbit website.

Recently, David Henry Sterry (editor of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys) was interviewed by the editors of Lolita Mag; here’s an excerpt of the article.

“…And so, for the following school year, David Henry Sterry worked as a ‘chicken’, a teenage prostitute who was hired out to rich Los Angeles women for $100 plus an hour. His experience at the hands of the steak guy compelled him to insist he have sex only with women, and unlike most gigolos, he was young and good-looking enough to satisfy his pimps on this basis (although towards the end of his career; he did take the occasional ‘non-sex’ job with men, usually freaky types who wanted him to beat them up). Armed with a pager supplied by his ‘employment counsellor’, he punctuated lectures, sports and college dating with agency ‘tricks’, servicing some of the wealthiest women in California. Ironically, almost thirty years later, Los Angeles seems set to make Sterry rich again, with solicitations this time coming from Hollywood’s other big money trade. Now in his early forties, Sterry has written a memoir of his year in the sex business – Chicken: Love For Sale On The Streets Of Hollywood – and film studios are battling for the rights to his story. Published this month by Canongate in the UK, Chicken is a funny, illuminating and disturbing record of the high-rent lifestyle, a tale which belies society’s often one-dimensional attitude towards male prostitution. Its greatest strength is in showing how Sterry’s attitude to his career was (and is) painfully ambiguous – sometimes he thought he was the luckiest 17-year-old in the world, getting paid to have sex with older women, while at others he sensed he was nothing more than a shamefully exploited teenager. More often than not, he was both at the same time…

What kind of things did your clients require from you?
About half the women wanted very specific, fetishistic things. One wanted me to crawl under the covers and service her orally while she never made a sound or moved a muscle – it was like she wanted to reproduce something that had happened in her early life. And then the other half didn’t even seem to want sex – they wanted to talk about their miserable husbands and terrible kids. Most times they wanted me naked, and I think that says a lot about the power dynamic between the sexes in our culture – they wanted to pay a boy to take his clothes off while they remained fully dressed. These were all rich, powerful women who lived in mansions and drove huge automobiles, but they still felt powerless in life and sexually dominated by men. So they wanted to order someone around.

Were they mostly ‘frustrated middle-aged’ types?
I’d guess the youngest was about 30, and then I did have a grandma who’d never had anyone go down on her in eighty years! Someone gave me to her as a present. Everyone always says that must have been gross, but actually I felt honoured, and she was such a sweet, lovely person.

Were you ever unable to get it up for a client?
I always managed to perform, though I can’t say my heart was always in it. But then you’re not paid for your heart, you’re paid for your body. There were many times when I faltered and drooped, but I had this mechanism where I would activate this voice in my head that I called the ‘loverstudguy’. It was like one of those cheesy, corny soundtracks to bad porno with this voice going: (adopts Barry White style growl) ‘Ooh, yeah, baby, you love it, don’t you baby’. That’d make me feel like this sexy guy who could perform.

What did the job teach you about female sexuality?
I was once hired by a hippy chick who taught me how to do tantric sex (one of the greatest jobs I ever had in my life!), and she gave me such a valuable lesson. She said, ‘If you can make a woman’s pleasure your top priority and figure out what makes the woman in front of you happy sexually, then that woman will do anything for you’. They’re just so fucking grateful, because they get so little of it in life. After that, they’re like: ‘You want me to put on the Scuba outfit? Well, OK, honey.’…”

To read the full interview, you can visit the Lolita Mags Website (please be warned, there are numerous explicit ads and graphics, so don’t click from work!).

Just before Thanksgiving day, Allison McCarthy posted her eloquent review of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys on the Womanist Musings blog. She talks not only about her thoughts on the book, but also her experience of attending the reading at Busboys & Poets….

“In a reading that brought down the house at Busboys and Poets, Sterry’s rendition of “I Was a Birthday Present for an Eighty-Two-Year-Old Grandmother” was both incredibly funny and a fascinating anti-ageist commentary on the things we’re all afraid to ask for (namely, women asking for oral sex).”

We think you’ll enjoy her review – you can read it here (and feel free to leave a comment)!

Largehearted Boy’s Book Notes series showcases authors’ music playlists to relate to their published books.  David Henry Sterry created a seven song playlist to accompany Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, and lists his Top 25 songs about sex workers.  Read the full article here!

Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent Boys took me six years to write.  Which is odd when you consider I didn’t actually write it.  It’s an anthology I put together with my partner in crime RJ Martin, Jr.  There are 71 writers in this book, and the only thing they all have in common is that they made money in the sex business.  They are from the creamy top and shitty bottom of the economic food chain, and everywhere in between.  $2,500 an hour escorts, $100 rent boys, and $10 crack hos are bedfellows in our book.  Trust me, it’s just as strange as it sounds to wrangle 71 industrial sex technicians.  A bit like herding cats in heat.  With many of the same drawbacks and benefits.  Ironically, this book full of hos was an act of pure love.  After we paid everyone, we actually lost money.  And it was such a stupidly difficult book to put together.  We were inundated with submissions from industrial sex technicians all over the world.  From Xavier Hollander, the happy hooker; to Dr. Annie Sprinkle, Post Modernists Porn Priestess; to Georgina Spelvin, legendary star of the great movie with sex in it ever made, the Devil in Miss Jones.  And lots of work-a-day, meat and potatoes, working stiffs.  Frankly, most of the writing was atrocious.  Actually, that was the only other thing these people have to have in common.  Their writing had to be good.  But a big huge chunk of it came in handwritten scrawls.  We had transcribe and edit all that.  Add teh fact that it took us years of constant failure and rejection, from huge publishing houses, C-list agents, university presses, publishing houses that specialize in exactly this kind of book, even publishers so small that when you call them, someone picks up the phone and says, “Hello, this is Joe’s Publishing, I’m Joe, talk to me.”  This book changed my life profoundly, from Hollywood calling, to prostitution abolitionists and decriminalizationists both calling for my head on a pike.  But while I was making it, I often felt like Sisyphus, pushing that big huge rock up that big huge mountain for what seemed like eternity.  Agony, ecstasy, exhilaration, exhaustipaton, and finally a sense of intense satisfaction.  And with me every step of the way was teh thing that has always soothed my savage beast : music.  These are the songs I turned to a lot when I put this together.  I also accumulated a long list of songs about industrial sex technicians, which I’m including.

1.  ”Just a Gigolo/I. Ain’t Go Nobody,” Louis Prima
2.  ”Louise,” by Paul Siebel
3.  ”Sex Machine,” by the hardest working man in show business, James Brown
4.  ”Cocaine,” by Rev. Gary Davis
5.  ”Lady Marmalade,” written by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan
6.  ”Walk on the Wild Side,” by Lou Reed
7.  ”YMCA,” written by Jacques Morali, Victor Willis, Henry Belolo, and made famous of course by the one, the only Village People

Read the rest of the article & Top 25 songs here!

Express Night Out’s Roxana Hadadi reviews and interviews David Henry Sterry.  Read the full article here!

There are pieces both from anonymous writers – with titles like “Boys Shouldn’t Kiss Their Fathers on the Lips” and “Co-Co County Boy” – and established personalities, like porn star and educator Nina Hartley, who proclaims in her entry, “Playing in the Sandbox”, that she “became a sex worker for narcissism, altruism, for voyeurism, for exhibitionism, and as a long-term field study.”  If “Boogie Nights” made you cover your eyes, then you should probably pass the book to a stronger-stomached friend.

EXPRESS: How did you get the idea for “Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys,” and how did the book come together?

STERRY: After my first book “Chicken” came out in 2002, I was recruited by both sides of the whore wars: The abolitionists, and the decriminalizationist.  And to both sides, I said yes – [that's a] good way to get into the sex business in the first place, just say yes.

And I quickly realized there was a sharp divide in the world of prostitution/sex work.  And, as with everything else in America, the bottom-line in ho-ing is money… there are people at the very bottom of the food chain who are basically sex slaves, being exploited in the worst ways imaginable by the most vile evil predators.  And there are women, men, and transsexuals who are over the age of 18, in full command of all their faculties, and are choosing to use their body and their brain to make money in the sex business.

And the crazy thing is, these two sides have a hard time acknowledging the truth of the other.  I had no political axe to grind: If you worked in the sex business, and you had a story to tell, and you had the skill to tell it, you were welcome in our book.  And because of my strange position in the world, [I] know lots of hos, and I put out to the word to all the hos I know, and they spread the word.  The writing poured in from everywhere.

As a result, I have writing by 15-year-old girls who were raped, beaten, burned, starved, degraded and exploited by the worst sum of the earth, and I have women who used sex work to pay for their master of fine arts degree at Berkley – and everything in-between.

Read the full interview on Express Night Out!

Kelly McClure reviews Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys on BUST Magazine Blog.  Read the full review here.

In these dark days of brokedom, who amongst us hasn’t lingered a bit too long in the Etc. section of the Craigslist job postings? I mean, I do have dainty feet with nicely trimmed toenails, and if I could make my rent just by stepping on some random businessman’s face, well who’s to judge?? Granted, I am not brave enough (or hard up enough) to go through with such an evening’s work (just yet), but the selection of writers featured in the anthology, Hos Hookers, Call Girls, And Rent Boys were not only brave enough to do it, and keep doing it, but were equally brave enough to write about it.
The first hand accounts, interviews, and poems featured in this book are so well written and organized, that the fact that they all center around the exchanging of sex for money falls into the background, and what’s left is an intimate offering of on-the-job gossip and late night horror stories that have you wanting to spend more time with the writer than the three or four pages a pop you’re given with each one.

Meet, Pay, Love by Toni Bentley of the New York Times writes about Hookers, Hos, Call Girls, and Rent Boys.  Read the full review here.

“From the unappealing title, you might think this is a truly trashy paperback. Far from it: it’s an eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe. Their writing is, in most cases, unpolished, unpretentious and riveting — but don’t worry, their tales are also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.”

““Lele,” a piece by Jodi Sh. Doff, who “grew up in the suburbs as someone else entirely,” recalls Henry Miller’s in-your-face exposition. She tells of a night at Diamond Lil’s on Canal Street, where “Viva’s sitting onstage, legs spread wide.” While her customer is buried and busy, she holds a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, and chitchats with a girlfriend about another girlfriend. “Every two minutes or so Viva taps him on the head and he hands her a 20 from a stack of bills he’s holding, never looking up.” We see in this wonderful set piece the whole money/sex connection enacted with raw charm and an immediacy that reaches far beyond this strip club, as the man’s stack of 20s, one by one, becomes hers. Multitasking Viva holds them “folded lengthwise in her cigarette hand.””

“There’s plenty of useful information in this book for those of you planning a little adultery or prostitution, or even just some old-fashioned phone sex. Lilycat describes the protocol of “Feed Me the Line”: “We couldn’t use any sexually explicit words or phrases till the caller used them first. . . . And strangely enough, getting a very horny man to talk dirty to you isn’t as easy as it seems.” The women were permitted to use medical names for body parts, but “Baby, I would like to do something pleasurable with your penis” was not — surprise, surprise — what the client wanted to hear (though it’s all you’ll get in this review). If the caller refused to talk dirty first, moaning was the fallback, and Lilycat reports the little-known fact that “if you moan for long enough you can become lightheaded and almost pass out” — “so baby, use your dirty, dirty words” and help the lady out.”

“This collection is a wonderful reminder that good writing is not about knowing words, grammar or Faulkner, but having that rare ability to tell the truth, an ability that education and sophistication often serve to conceal. While we are all, I suppose, in the business of surviving, some really are surviving more notably than others. The collective cry for identity found in this unsentimental compilation will resonate deeply — even, I suspect, with those among us who pretend not to pay for sex.”

From a review by Chris Estey called Scribes Sounding Off:

Speaking of people with low social status, the rock life has often been financed by people in really challenging occupations, from supportive girlfriends of guitar players to sweet souls like my own writing mentor in pre-hardcore NW punk days, who was lead singer in the OG incarnation of Sado Nation and danced naked for men in downtown Portland. “We Are All Prostitutes,” the Pop Group once sang, and Soft Skull Press has just put out a remarkable work memoir by sex workers and a couple of guys who help them maintain their dignity and health despite the lifestyle, and it’s no surprise that Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys is often an outstanding self-expression of the underside of people beneath the music scene.

Edited by David Henry Sterry (who scribed the praiseworthy Chicken: Self-Portrait Of A Young Man For Rent) and R.J. Martin, Jr. (an activist who helps sex workers with their trauma, abuse, and addiction), the anthology puts together work from contributors such as “sex positive” activist Annie Sprinkle, I Was A Teenage Dominatrix Shawna Kenney (who wrote a very rocking memoir under that title a few years ago, which many rock fanzines and websites covered), educator/porn star Nina Hartley, and even a section for “anonymous writers.” The vivid recollections of rough employment in an outlaw but billion dollar industry, like the music business now also struggling due to the Internet and the state of the economy, is a provocative read that trades revelation for empathy. Some tales are a little unexpected, like David Henry Sterry’s I Was A Bithday Present For An 82 Year Old Grandmother,” but like Kill Your Friends, sometimes the imagined glamorous life turns out to be less dazzling than you’ve imagined.

Annie Scott interviewed Candye Kane at Sex Worker Literati on August 6. Read the whole piece on Tonic.

Here’s an excerpt:

Tonic: So after you were a phone sex operator, you got into pin-up modeling. Did they make size a big issue back when you got started?

Candye Kane: Yeah, well, I was one of the first, ah, BBW models [that stands for "Big Beautiful Woman"]. There were a few of us, like Mary Waters, with all-natural boobs, you know, and that was a big deal. So, I was on the cover of a bunch of different classy publications, and then I got an advice column for Gent [Magazine] and that was like a real turning point for me, ’cause I could really write what I wanted. I could include what shows I was doing that week or where I was playing or what thoughts I was writing in the studio, so that helped a lot.

T: And you were a stripper for awhile, too?

CK: Yeah, then I became a stripper, but I was not a very good stripper. I was a good model, because I was good at like, squeezing my boobs together and making cute faces, and I have a pretty face, so I was okay at that, but I never really had a lot of dancing talent. I’m kind of uncoordinated.

[snip]

T: What would you say to people who want to change their career and change their life, not necessarily coming out of the sex industry, but wanting to make changes?

CK: Well, last year I had pancreatic cancer, and I had a major surgery and I’ve lost a hundred pounds since then, and I’m cancer free right now. And so I’m a very big believer in positive affirmation, and in intention. I really think if you want to do anything, you have to state your intention to the universe, and concentrate on that; put a lot of focus into it every day, and that can help facilitate the change. I also think having a real specific, strategic game plan is what you wanna do, be specific. Not just “I wanna change my career,” but “I want to make forty thousand dollars this year with my writing,” or “cooking,” or
whatever it is. I think if you state your intention that way, and you focus on that? That’s how I beat cancer, was by really focusing on what I wanted to do. I knew that I would to live, I knew that I had to make changes in my diet, and I took it as a blessing. And I let the collective healing love of the universe come in and heal me. It wasn’t just that; it was also a good surgeon and early detection, and a lot of factors.