Chicken: Love for Sale on the Streets of Hollywood by
David Henry Sterry
pbk out April 03
(Canongate Books)
at £9.99
What do you do when you find yourself penniless and homeless in
Hollywood at seventeen and need to fund your way through college?
David Henry Sterry thought he'd found the perfect solution, being paid
for sex by women. He was also paid to dominate men though he refused
to have sex with them.
This is an intriguing and compelling read as the author weaves memories
of his childhood with anecdotes from his life as a young prostitute or
chicken. He's paid by everyone from a doubly bereaved wife and mother
to a pair of lesbian lovers who like to humiliate men. But he finds that
the work increasingly impinges on his college life and that his character
changes as he decides to `assassinate the part of myself that cares.'
Some reviewers have praised the book for its humour and whilst it has its
comic moments - `I feel trapped between my cock and a hard place' – the
theme is increasingly one of pathos. Sterry alternately pities and despises
his clients and comes to despise himself for fulfilling their fantasies.
He makes the point that ninety percent of sex workers have been sexually
abused before turning to such work – and because he only mixes with the
most damaged people in the industry, the reader is left with the
impression that all sex workers are desperately unhappy. But that's
merely the side that the media chooses to focus on: we rarely hear of the
globe-trotting page three girl who would otherwise be doing mindless
repetitive work in a factory, the dominatrix who has paid her way through
university, the sexual surrogate who has helped numerous men to
overcome their deepest fears.
If you've read about rent boys before then you won't find this is the
bizarre, weird world that the publisher promises. But it's lively, honest
prose which cleverly combines the past with the present.
Chicken: Love for Sale on the Streets of Hollywood by
David Henry Sterry
