Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent [Hardcover]

The book is not fun but it's well written. You get an unfiltered look into an ugly world. Luckily, the author escaped the chicken life relatively unscathed.

How successful will this book be? Somehow I don't expect to see this book on too many people's coffee tables and I doubt that it will be cocktail party conversation.

"Chicken" tells Sterry's story of family dejection and his fast leap into the freakish world of prostitution. On the journey, he mentions various strange meetings and requests of his "clients"--but don't be too anxious to believe these vignettes will tantalize. It's obvious Sterry is speaking from the heart and instead of exciting me (I didn't expect it to) this well-written book made my stomach turn. Even with all the mentioning of orgies and sexual conduct, you can still sense the young boy whose life is being destroyed.

The prose is beautifully, albeit aggressively, written. And other than a few anachronisms (were there really pagers in the seventies?) you can't help but love this book. One of the best I have read this year.

And as you read Sterry's book--and I highly suggest you do--you can't help but hear the echo of what the author calls instruction #8: If something seems weird, it probably is.

He registers for classes and works frying "industrial chicken, " of which we learn quite a lot. In a few weeks his boss, a seedy, weirdly friendly guy, asks him if he's ready for Real Money. Real Money, it turns out, is to be made "partying" with women. He won't be a streetwalker, but will be on call. Sterry insists on women only: "I started having sex when I was thirteen, and I took to it like a well-watered carrot in fertile earth. I'm fluent in Sex. I take direction well. I love making women feel good, and I've learned the importance of a slow hand, a sweet mouth, and paying attention." He is seventeen.

Sterry gets his pager and his instructions which, aside from the instructions regarding pay, aren't as far from the Boy Scout credo as you might think. ("1. Don't be late. 2. Don't rip anybody off. 3. Don't speak unless spoken to. 4. Be clean. 5. Say as little as possible. 6. When in doubt say even less. 7. The customer's always right. 8. If something seems weird it probably is. 9. GET THE MONEY UP FRONT!"). For the next nine months he's a boy toy for pay: $100 an hour, more or less. It's all here. This book is painful and trusting and generous. It's appalling in places, not a turn-on but a page-turner.

So how does a seventeen year-old boy do in the sex trade? It seems that he did pretty well. Oh, he trained some. "On the first day of my rookie season, Frannie gives me excruciatingly explicit instructions in her droll monotone, detailing exactly what she wants me to do and how she wants me to do it. I'm ready. I was born for this work." His customers, mostly middle-aged women - among them lonely married women, aging rich hippies, lesbians, the horribly disconcertingly grieving mother of a dead son his age - were pleased with him. He is workmanlike, puts forth effort, and he is kind. His customers say "Please," and "Thank you." He strives to understand not only their physical selves, but the rest of them, too. Best of all, the pay is amazing ...

It turns out that, at least for Sterry, the provocation of the female orgasm is the easy part. The more difficult thing, and the true sticking point, is the impossibility of living in a way that gives him even a modicum of happiness. His relationships with his peers (specifically Kristy, a coed - in whom he is interested) are strained to the breaking point. The pager keeps going off, and he can't not obey its call. Lying in the service of the keeping of his secret is behavior which feels "familiar and familial." It becomes a way of life. Something's got to give, and after nine months, it does.

This is a strange story told easily and well. The ragged particulars (and often eloquent and heartbreaking throwaway lines) of the daily life of a seventeen year-old boy who happens to be turning tricks for a living while attending college are no small thing. Sterry intersperses trenchant and interesting vignettes from his childhood and the ongoing drama of his parents' troubled lives. It works well. The precocious and energetic boy "for rent" has clearly grown up to be a man who is smart and wise and compassionate This is a terrific read.