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Check out Ho, Ho, Hos: Sex at the Holiday Party, Steve Lewis’ review of my holiday bash.

In Vegas it’s all around, as obvious as the neon, but here you have to squint a little, ignore the lights and sound to see it. The clubs are filled with the unemployed, who wear nice shoes, live in apartments, and stay out late every night. Some actually have parental support or have their own money, but many depend on the kindness of strangers.

With that in mind, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas everywhere I ho. This Friday at 9pm at the Bowery Poetry Club, my pal Zoe Hanson will host her Sex Worker Literati Ho-Ho-Ho-Holiday Party. It’s readings from ho’s, hookers, call girls, and rent boys—with help from friends and allies. It is an xxxmas xtravaganza, with stories from Raff from Cycle Sluts from Hell, Michael Alago & Keith Caputo, and many more perverts or reformed perverts. Speaking of which, our favorite rabbit, Heather Litteer, is dancing. Zoe told me, “These monthly readings have picked up a rather nice following, and I enjoy hosting. I have a Sonny & Cher thing going with David Sterry, it’s rather amusing to take the piss out of him, which my audience finds hilarious! Of course done with kindness & just a touch of Zoe domination!” From the press release:

“Sex Worker Literati is the slutty child of the groundbreaking and internationally acclaimed anthology Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys, which shocked America by rocketing onto the front page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review, and gave voice to PhDs and high school dropouts, soccer moms and jailbirds, $5,000 a night call girls, $10 crack hos and hard-working rent boys. David Henry Sterry and Zoe Hansen will ride herd over an all-star lineup of the finest ho writer/performers money can buy.”

There will be a sex worker quiz and giveaway, and there’s no cover – the first time this crew hasn’t charged in decades. The press release comes with a tag line that sounds rather clever: “In the exchange of sex for money a window opens into the soul.” I will ask one of my ex-wives to explain it to me, they should know.

Besides David Henry Sterry, who is described as “Ex-teen manchild ho, ex-sitcom actor, Huffington Post muckraker, and author,” and Zoe “Ex-madame, ex-junky, ex-hooker, and memoirist,” readers will include Mary Raffaele, a former metal queen singer in Cycle Sluts From Hell, who wrote a memoir chronicling misadventures of a Midwestern girl who moved to New York to seek glamour in the lowest of places; Christina Cicchelli, a AVN nominee and Feminist Porn Award winner; Matthew Lawrence, a writer and curator who will tell tales of why he wasn’t a very good escort; Keith Caputo, ex-Life Of Agony front man who once worked with Flea & Red Hot Chili Peppers, Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Björk, David Bowie, and the Pixies; and Michael Alago, who is famous for discovering Metallica. Michael is a talent scout, producer and writer who worked with Nina Simone, Johnny Rotten, Rob Zombie and Cyndi Lauper. He also turned to photography and put out the book “Rough Gods.” This event will of course attract all the unusual suspects including sweet, innocent me.

About Hos, Hookers, Call Girls & Rent boys:

“An eye-opening, astonishing, honest and funny collection from those who really have lived on the edge in a parallel universe… Unpretentious and riveting, their tales are also graphic, politically incorrect and mostly unquotable in this newspaper.”

Toni Bentley, NY Times

I was interviewed by Steve Lewis of BlackBook about Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, & Rent Boys.

Read the whole interview here.

source

From the  New York Times review: Hos Hookers Call girls & Rent boys’ Anthology

An eye-opening, occasionally astonishing, brutally honest and frequently funny collection of prose and poetry by all kinds of sex workers.

…actual bios for the contributors make for provocative reading and can leave one feeling like an unadventurous slacker. Zoe Hansen “achieved stability through methadone maintenance and felt it was time to open her own brothel, Sterling Ladies, which was on Park Avenue and 21st Street.”

It was the first of five brothels she opened during the next three years.” (I’m starting to get a brothel-opening feeling myself.)

Jerry Stahl had this to say:

Zoe Hansen writes like a three-day party in hell. She didn’t just walk on the wild side, she got her mail there. My American Dream evokes both the poetry of Kerouac and the low-life transcendence of Herbert Huncke. Hansen delivers nothing less than a literary speedball of danger and sex and sometimes funny, sometimes brutal beauty that is absolutely her own. It’s hard to say which is the bigger miracle: that the author has written such a fearless, nuanced, dementedly enthralling account of her hard-core life – or that she’s still alive to tell it… If I owned a cheap motel, I’d lose the bibles and put My American Dream in every nightstand. The whole joint would be up all night reading.

Jerry Stahl

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