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 émigrés (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.
