Hos and Hookers

You really wonder why, as Americans, we get so hung up on sex, and on sex work. You’d think in an uber-capitalist economy, monetizing fucking would be a good thing, but we get hung up anyway.

I’ve been very pleased while reading Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys that I thought I knew almost nothing about sex work, but some of it is familiar – the substance abuse, the “first time” story happening when the woman in question was 13. But what I didn’t know was how much a 17 year old hustler might not hate having to go down on an 82 year old woman, or how, for an American living in Mexico, sex work could be both dangerous and sweetly naive. The stories in this book are good, even if they occasionally make you wish that really really great writers had done sex work and written about it, but in fact, there are at least a few really remarkably well-written pieces in here, & then a whole bunch of fascinating but proficiently-written stories. There is very little that isn’t good in one way or another (which, imho, could be said about sex itself, too).

Do check it out if you’ve ever had any curiosity about sex work. I’ve never been on either side of a sex-for-money equation but this book’s stories kind of made me wonder why I haven’t.