WONDER BREAD AND ECSTASY, an unintentionally anti-capitalist screed against the vacuity of consumerism

WONDER BREAD AND ECSTASY: The Life and Death of Joey Stefano
CHARLES ISHERWOOD
Out of print (non-affiliate Amazon link)
Various prices from different vendors

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Drugs, sex, and unbridled ambition: These were the main ingredient in the lethal cocktail that killed gay porn's brightest star, Joey Stefano. As pornography's most marketable gay face and body, he was filmed having sex in more than 35 hard-core videos, danced an unforgettable striptease in clubs across America and Europe, and hustled his way through thousands of dollars paid to him by clients around the globe. But none of this filled the void inside Nicholas Iacona, a.k.a. Joey Stefano. From his childhood in the country's heartland to his tragic rise and fall in Los Angeles's dark and dangerous world of gay porn, Wonder Bread and Ecstasy paints a grim portrait of American life gone berserk.

My Review: Reading that blurb twenty-five years on, the first thought that comes to mind is, "Oh, Sasha...stop being such a drama queen." Sasha Alyson's eponymous publishing house brought this book out two years after Joey Stefano's death from an (almost untreated, in a scandalous twist I hadn't known when I first heard of the event) overdose of party drugs. It also marks Charles Isherwood's only book publication to date. (You've probably been scratching your head about Charles Isherwood, thinking permaybehaps of Christopher, but Charles if the theater critic who got canned a few years back. One sees in the Vulture piece linked that the now-reviled Scott Rudin's name appears prominently in the mishegas; much could be explained if that involvement was, well, one of Rudin's usuals.)

Anyway. Back to Joey Stefano...he was a standard-issue kid from a typical, unexceptional background; no one would've thought it was unusual at the time, nor would anyone have seen in a young boy's truculence and troublesome personality a clear danger sign of childhood sexual abuse. Isherwood, as he had no access to the deceased, doesn't say directly that there was something of incest actually happening; it doesn't take any intense reading between the lines, though, to see it's among the likely explanations for the gay only-male-child's unfillable void of love. What the surviving family denies is, in my observation of families with abusive parents of any stripe, typical circling the wagons behavior. What I think happened is that there was abusive behavior in his past...too many things point to it. What we can't know is the form that abuse took.

What a ride of a life the beautiful creature led, though, messed up from a middling sort of childhood which led to a complete absence of ordinary career paths after his father died and he, grieving, left high school. With his sisters and mother clearly unable to provide what he needed in terms of support and guidance, he did what those pretty enough to do so have always done: He sold his body for his daily bread.

Nothing unusual there...but the time this was happening, 1983, was the absolute nadir of the AIDS epidemic. A teen hustler on the make after older men in a time before the concept of "safe sex" had even been articulated still less codified? Guaranteed he's going to do risky things. And thse risky things were exactly what he wanted to do anyway, the guy was a size queen and a truly complete bottom. Look at any one of the many scenes he filmed: This was a man who loved his job. He loved the sex. He loved the cameras. He loved the attention. And, as most porn figures of the era used to their advantage, the VCR revolution that came along exactly as the AIDS epidemic hit meant that the films they made were a form of advertising their wares the same way the old club scene was slowly moving away from.

Here came the most beautiful young man, the least debauched looking angelface, to do the most titillatingly extreme things! On film! You could watch it six, eight, ten times in a row and not once would it fail to deliver! Wealthy men saw; they wanted; they paid and he came. And there was the beautiful body they craved. On screen or off, there was a glory of nature and it was yours for the right (steep) price.

So Joey Stefano got used to being used and used to using people, places, and things. He was, with his eager cooperation, a packaged product...and he had a shelf life.

The glory years were glorious indeed if you're destined by background to mediocrity and by your actions to poverty. The gift of beauty needs to be harvested quickly, and he (showing what I think is a strong shrewd streak) took every chance that hove into view and made it an opportunity. I loved that about him as I read the book. I could, with the distance of time from his death, see which way the parade was headed, and still think "that's exactly what a businessperson with a perishable asset *should* do."

Time, however, has no respect for the asset. Overexposure...changing industry tastes...Joey was the first porn star bottom, the first not to be called a "stunt butt." Inevitably for a business built on pandering to the craving for novelty, he lost some luster, and lost his sense of purpose.

He didn't lose his need to fill his devouring emotional vacancy with drugs. Nothing else could work. No one else could be enough to keep the need to numb the pain of losing something you never even felt you deserved. Numbing the loss of his father, the unlikely chance that he could've built some kind of trust and love between them. That was taken away in 1983; that was just the ignition point, not even the start of the trouble, the gay only son of a bog-standard father...this wasn't going to end well no matter what. And it didn't.

Dead at 26. Self-inflicted harm. And all because he bought the line of bullshit about Stuff, getting and having, being a solution instead of a problem...drugs, money, sex, it's all part of the "more more more is better better better" mentality that costs so many people so very dearly. Just not usually, unlike unlucky Joey Stefano, their continued life.

THREE MEMOIRS OF GAY HUSTLING, all with happy endings...not THAT kind

ASSUMING THE POSITION: A Memoir of Hustling
RICK WHITAKER
Out of print (non-affiliate Amazon link)
Various prices from different vendors

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Rick Whitaker divulges the complex reasons that drove him to prostitution and reflects on the cost of a life of half-truths and emotional lies. With an unsentimental eye, Whitaker chronicles his descent and eventual resolution.

My Review: That's a pretty sparse description for a pretty intense book. It's a short thing, pared down to its essential points, and purged of prurient detail. (Darn it.)

Whitaker was the editorial assistant to publishing legend Gordon Lish. You know, Raymond Carver? Richard Ford? The one who edited, or quite possibly more than edited, their best stuff. He was, apparently, absorbing a lot from Lish (not a double entendre that I know of) because he wastes no words here describing his descent from broke publishing minion to crack-addled sex worker AND broke publishing minion.

It's amazingly easy to understand and sympathize with Whitaker. He's not some rotten-souled vile being who expresses himself by Doing Shocking Things. He's a guy who needs a center to his life, needs a sense of belonging and of mattering. I speak from experience here: If one needs those things, NEW YORK IS NOT THE PLACE TO LIVE. I watched it eat people alive, make others miserable, and all because the one thing those folks needed was the one thing the city does not reward. Either arrive already centered, focused, or understand that you are driven by a goal...or the city will have you for breakfast with a side of bacon.

Whitaker sold access to his body for drug money, for the momentary illusion of power, and for the sheer hell of it. He ended up not wanting what he found, and got out, and told his story so all the experience would not go to waste.

I like the book, where lots didn't much. I respect sex workers for the sheer magnitude of their performance capability. I admire their generosity of spirit (how many pretty people do you imagine subcontract their sex lives? Lots of old, lonely, ugly, fat folks do). I've had some very good friends (without benefits, thank you for asking) who did this demanding and difficult job. Whitaker's was a story I've heard with variations for years. It's not something I'd suggest one read for titillation, but any moralists who have accidentally stumbled into reading my reviews (you must feel so lost, poor lambs) should give it a whirl, as should those inclined to judge and find wanting all those billions and billions of people not precisely like themselves. (There is overlap in the categories, but they aren't all the same people.)

Empathy can be learned. Try this and see if you can't find some for a man searching for acceptance.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SECRETS OF A GAY MARINE PORN STAR
RICH MERRITT
Citadel Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Here’s the story of Rich Merritt—the good son, teacher’s pet, Southern gentleman, model Christian student at Bob Jones University, Marine officer, and the not-so-anonymous poster boy for a New York Times Magazine article on gays in the military—whose complicated sexual past caused an international scandal when The Advocate “outed” him as “The Marine Who Did Gay Porn,” putting his life in a tailspin.

It’s the compelling, poignant story of how a boy who never listened to pop music, never cursed, and didn’t have his first drink until he was eighteen exploded into a life of drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, prostitution, and pornography. And above all, it’s a triumphant story of self-forgiveness and identity, of a man who refused to allow himself to be defined by the standards of anyone else—gay or straight. Along the way, Rich Merritt writes with humor, compassion, insight and naked truth about:

• What it’s really like growing up behind the “Fortress of Fundamentalism” and how he ultimately came to despise their views
• The harsh realities of military life under the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” Clinton policy
• A real insider’s experience of working in the male porn industry—the good, the bad, and the extremely hot
• Why he chose not to reveal his porn past to the New York Times journalist
• What it felt like to be the most notorious marine in the world and what it took to come through the fire

By turns harrowing and heartbreaking, angry and affirming, Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star is that rarest of memoirs—a fascinating slice of life that reads like the most absorbing fiction, but is all true.

My Review: Gay guys who become porn stars are very interesting to me. Their stories, I suppose, are all very much alike, and very much like the stories that drive women to pornography...low self-esteem, a sense of failure in one's life, a desire to capitalize on physical beauty while it lasts, greed, the usual. But those driving forces aren't unique to these people, they're common to all of us in some degree or another. Why do these folks do this (to me) very scary and risky job?

Start with a damn-near fatal upbringing in the grasp of an Evangelical family; proceed to the Bob Jones-ing of his entire education, all the way from kindergarten (there is no link to the non-University of Bob Jones due to, um, controversies shall we say) to time in seminary; waking up and realizing he can not pray the gay away, subsequent substance abuse, two deliberate decisions to end his life.

This author pilots us through his decisions made...he didn't have sex with anyone until he was twenty-three! and he was sexually repressed to the point that his first sexual encounter predates the first time he ever masturbated!...and accepted; this with a degree of skill and a commendable lack of embarrassment that surprised me. I was expecting a defensive tone to creep in to the reports. He instead simply informs the reader of his choices and seems, while not endorsing them with hindsight, not to disavow the life he lived, either. The sense I get is of a guy I'd enjoy kickin' back with a beer, some nachos, and a bunch of good jazz CDs on shuffle with.

Plus he's really so very pretty to look at.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

YOUNG MAN FROM THE PROVINCES: A Gay Life Before Stonewall
ALAN HELMS
University of Minnesota Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Young, intelligent, and handsome, Alan Helms left a brutal midwestern childhood for New York City in 1955. Denied a Rhodes scholarship because of his sexual orientation, he soon became an object of desire in a gay underground scene frequented by, among many others, Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein, and Marlene Dietrich. In this unusually vivid and sensitive account, Helms describes the business of being a sex object and its psychological and physical toll.

My Review: Beloved Boston cultural institution Alan Helms had a wildly exciting past! See the film! Admire his art collection, appreciate his cultured and elegant way of speaking, his breadth of cultural knowledge, and his charming sweetness.

What does a young, abused man from flyover country do the moment he realizes he's queer? RUN! Get to New York City as soon as possible. He got to Columbia University in 1955, leaving behind a life in Indianapolis, Indiana, that could charitably be described as "uncongenial." A father who thought his son was a bitter disappointment...how many of us queer boys can relate to that...a mother whose situation wasn't a lot better than his, a younger brother whose close brush with death was the single moment in his childhood when peace reigned. None of this is a recipe for a healthy adulthood...and add in the author's understandable, if off-putting, self-absorption and you get a difficult-to-empathize-with narrator.

But he was So. Beautiful. Look at that face on the cover! Hoo-ee!

And the awfulness of that...wow...to be so pretty and so readily available and so snobby, who can claim to be surprised that he wasn't a pleasant person? His sexual awakening came at the price of being raped. His family life prepared him for a life of abuse. He dived into it in the glamorous world of high-class hetaira-dom in closeted gay life pre-Stonewall. Pretty, sexually available, intelligent boys found innumerable lovers, and the author wasn't about to say no. (I totally relate to this and would've done precisely the same in his shoes. Damn the bad luck of not being pretty!) So a decade and a half passed in what I imagine was a golden haze...this book's largest part. It's a bit less charming to me than it might be to a younger reader. I look at the wreckage he glosses over and think, "there's the real story."

Yes, sleeping with famous Hollywood stars and titled Eurotrash is all very well. But the people you stood up, the ones whose parties weren't quite glam enough that you said you'd attend, and so on and so forth? How did you sleep, look in the mirror, launch yourself at the next big fish in your hifalutin' pond without thinking about them?

The Fall took place when he was thirtyish, and some semblance of human feeling broke the ice he'd cultivated to keep his agony at bay and under the surface of a freezing cold lake he called his heart. Escape to Boston and the tender mercies of a shrink who began the process of waking the author up from his frozen state. Then it happened: His body aged. He wasn't the hot young muffin anymore; he wasn't even visible to the hot young muffins. That had to be a bad, bad day.

Now, let me not try to hide my glee here. This event has occurred in my life, too. I can not imagine how much worse it was for a formerly gorgeous creature, feted and celebrated and wined and dined, to be cut off from that gushing geyser of distractions. Luckily for his sanity, Helms had a brain and a deep love of the life of the mind that he'd never left behind or neglected. While learning what he'd never known, that feelings are best felt in the moment and not in retrospect, I'm sure he left more carnage behind in his wake. But the fact that no one ever killed him means that he learned enough to at leas fake his way through professional, if not personal, relationships. So hope still shines for him to pull his head out of his ass and recognize that, in his swan-paddle through youth, he got into some ugly emotional habits that would be wise for him to shed before he's patted in the face with a shovel and 120 cubic feet of dirt dropped on him.

I guess it shows that I don't like the man I got to know from reading this book too terribly much. Yes, part of it is envy: I would've LOVED to live among those glittering parties and glamorous people, and I'm jealous that he won nature's looks lottery. But more of it is the sense that grew and grew as I read his (ampersand-laden) memoir that he wasn't sharing his journey with me.

He was bragging that it happened.

I suppose I would too, and that is a disappointing self-revelation that elicits deep sadness in my shallows. Read the book, o ye queer boys over 50 to relive a lovely, dead time when we were few but fabulous; QUILTBAG youth, especially young and pretty ones, definitely think about your history; y'all straight folks, umm, on balance I'd say not unless your Gay BFF approves it for your personal tastes.

SHUCK, a gay man's roman à clef of 90s Manhattan

SHUCK
DANIEL ALLEN COX
Arsenal Pulp Press
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: “Set in the late 1990s, Shuck describes with great clarity and verve the last gasp of a gritty Manhattan.”—Bruce LaBruce, film director

Shuck is the intense, dazzling diary of a male hustler in New York who tries to manage his reputation as the city’s porn star du jour when he’s not dumpster diving, tweaking, or trying to get published. A remarkable peep show of a novel about what binds artists and prostitutes, and the collateral damage of what happens when they try to recover what they have lost.

Daniel Allen Cox is a former porn star. This is his first novel.

My Review: In the late 1990s, hustler/street trash Jaeven Marshall gets rescued by remittance man/blocked perfectionsit artist Derek Brathwaite, who grooves on Jaeven's bruised and abused body. The two begin a peculiar and passionate love affair that never involves sex, but truly touches the heart of any romantic in its deep and vital connection. Jaeven uses Derek as a home base, a touchstone, and a security blanket. He rises (!) in the just-then-efflorescing porn world as a porn performer and a model, taking it as his 22-yr-old naif would: His due.

What no one but Derek, and the strange photographer/trick Richard, know is that Jaeven is a writer. A real one, one who writes and who sponges up images...the book is littered with lists Jaeven keeps of the "shit and ephemera" that Manhattan excels at putting in the path of the observant, letting the reader in on Jaeven's private coping mechanism for his rampant ADD (and his inability to break past the surface of anything, too)...so while he's using himself to live and eat and keep moving, he's fueling the creative rage inside himself. Derek, blocked because surfaces are all he knows, uses Jaeven's unpublished writing to break through into an actual creative frenzy, painting at last the gaudy and exciting colors that he's seen but never managed to reach inside to create before. Jaeven's downward track is, well, inevitable: He gets into meth, gets meth-mouth, stops getting calls from his various munificent tricks (except the peculiarly loyal Richard), and even manages to make Derek so angry that he gets thrown back onto the streets he's only just clawed his way up from. In the end, though, as is inevitable in a first novel, the redemption occurs and all is well.

It's a first novel, or I would've been more chary with my stars. I think it's a fun ride through a Manhattan that's been sanitized out of existence. I liked that Manhattan, I trolled it, and I felt at home in it; I'm inclined to spot Mr. Cox some points for that. It's reasonably clear to me that it's also a roman à clef, and that also counts in my ratings. I have no way of knowing how much of it is self-referential, but at a guess I'll say a lot. I like a writer whose take on himself isn't in any way reverential. I like reading about the world that my thirties were spent in. I like a lot the amiably nihilistic, irretrievably broken kid comes out (!) with hope, and therefore a future. It's not perfect, but damn it's good. Read it!