Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boys
Professionals writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex
Edited by: David Henry Sterry and RJ Martin
Soft Skull Press / ISBN: 15937624
Features the essay, “Vice”, by Juliana Piccillo
(for excerpt of J. Piccillo's essay click here)
About the Book:
Sex is a billion-dollar industry. Meet the real people who are its flesh and blood. Ho’s, Hustlers, Callgirls & Rentboys strips away the glitter and stiletto heels, the myths, prejudices and misperceptions, and humanizes the men and women who we pay for sex. They are PhDs and high school dropout, soccer moms and jailbirds, $2,500-a-night call girls and $25 rentboys. This anthology gives voice to an underrepresented population simultaneously shamed and glamorized, ostracized and glorified, reviled and worshiped.
Hos, Hookers, Callgirls, and Rentboys is a collection of short memoirs, whore war stories, confessions, nightmares, journalism and poetry. It contains new writing from sex worker literati: art-porn priestess Dr. Annie Sprinkle; the infamous Happy Hooker, Xaviera Hollander; author and LGBT activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore; star of The Devil in Miss Jones, Georgina Spelvin; best-selling memoirist David Henry Sterry and sex educator/movie star Nina Hartley. But it also includes crack hos, male hustlers, pimps and the teenagers they exploit. Funny, terrifying, tragic and inspiring, this collection is unprecedented because it includes people from all walks of the sex for money world.
From back-alley Tenderloin massage parlors, to glittering Beverly Hills hotels, to Times Square porn palaces, to the meanest streets in Harlem, Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys is a collage of sex and money, shining light on this hidden underbelly of America, from sea to shining sea.
Reviews:
- The Rumpus Review
(for complete review, click here)
“The standout offering, however, is Juliana Piccillo’s “Vice,” an exploration of her relationship with an invasive and needy client that rendered her alternately gratified and repulsed. Piccillo relentlessly mines the conflicting emotions that come with clients who want to play the white knight, a common but relatively undiscussed topic in most sex worker literature. “His fatherly concern co-existed with his hard-on,” she writes. “He left me to reconcile this.” She also admits to coming unintentionally (and practically unwillingly) while working in a job that generally disgusts her, and not wanting to leave in spite of hating the routine—paradoxes that many prostitutes shy away from acknowledging.”
***
- California Literary Review
(for complete review, click here)
“At 36 years, to her, “Bob” was ancient, a john who could never be anything more. He was also a lost soul. His marriage had dissolved, he’d lost his job—as a vice cop—and was as unmoored and lonely as Wordsworth’s cloud.
The golden daffodil he chanced across was a 17-year-old masseuse, Juliana Piccillo, “Samantha.” Bob decided to “save” Samantha, a lithe and lively, self-willed teen who had only recently escaped a dismal home life by way of the total body massage emporium. He increasingly gave her unsought gifts – most frequently hundred dollar bills. He then badgered her to go to college, with him as sugar daddy. “His fatherly concern co-existed with his hard-on,” she writes. As his visits became more frequent, she became more resistant. Rescue had become, as it often may, a synonym for control.
In this particularly well written autobiographical essay by Juliana Piccillo, the denouements for both parties, particularly for Juliana/Samantha, are surprising. With the sixty some-odd stories in the volume, it’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that Juliana, under her own steam, eventually garned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona…She also wrote and directed the movie, “I was a Teenage Prostitute,” which has been shown at numerous national film festivals.”
***
click here for New York Times review
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