I don't know if Blogger will let me put "sluts" in the title of this post...

So, to introduce this post, I’ll mention that the genre I most commonly read, when it comes to just my personal reading, is YA. If we want to get super specific, the G in LGBTQIA+, but I’m not opposed to any of the other letters, I just find more relatability in miss G.

    And with that intro done, that nicely leads me into my point to the fact that I recently read The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. With a name like that, I wasn’t expecting anything remotely close to something YA, especially when the blurb and, I don’t remember exactly what it’s called, but the copy (the product description?) told me that this book essentially chronicled one escort’s journey and the fame/infamy that surrounded him.

    Now, given that I had (semi) recently read London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp, which followed three men’s experiences with prostitution and escorting in three different time periods, part of me had the idea that it would be something similar to that since it followed a similar concept. So, I was expecting that, nothing YA. What I wasn’t expecting was there to be mention of fisting within the first 10 pages… Picture me, sat on a lovely little camping chair – one of those little green fold out ones that has a cup holder – on the beach, watching the waves. Then imagine a wave, not a massive one, but one big enough to come along and knock me off the chair. In this metaphor, I am myself, and the mention of fisting is the wave.

(Dennis Cooper really had me reading about fisting, huh...)

    I’ve realised, from my notes, that this post is going to be more of a book report than anything else. So do with that what you want. Also, spoilers. But this book came out more than 15 years ago so…

    Either way, the book is told through several different sections, and it’s all, and I don’t know the correct term, but I did do a course on “Experimental Writing” during my BA, so I think it’s something along the lines of “found” something, or “appropriated” something. I know “found poetry” and “appropriated poetry” exists, I just don’t remember the terms for fiction. Still, it’s told through found stuff. The first chapter is reviews of, I suppose, the main character, Brad, who is an escort. And these reviews tell the reader some of the things that they did with Brad when they hired him (hence the mention of fisting.)

    Then this other man, Brian, appears in the reviews, essentially commenting on people’s reviews, and claiming that some of the things the reviews are saying about Brad is false.

    Now, I think the main draw of this book is that the whole thing is told with a multitude of unreliable narrators. So, with everything that happens, there’s this air of you (the reader) wondering whether anything that any of the (sometimes downright gruesome) stuff that is mentioned throughout the book is actually true or not.

    In part three of the book, “Board”, which is a message board in which people are discussing what has happened to “Brad”, as he become relatively famous within the realm of prostitution and escorting for the extreme measures he lets his johns go to with him. Within this section, someone claiming to be a journalist turns up and asking questions about Brad and Brian, claiming to want to research them. However, a little later, there is another post claiming that the journalist isn’t in fact a journalist, but someone obsessive over Brad and Brian, and just wanting details, and is also just someone known as “Zack Young”.

   Within the next section, “email/fax”, we see correspondence from Brad to Brian, where Brad is explaining to Brian what is going on in his life. But during this correspondence, Brad asks Brian to send him money, but to address it to someone name “Thaddeus Stroh”, and that it was a long story. And then at the end of the section, we see Brad send one final fax to Zack Young, the one who pretended to be a journalist.

    So, bitch, things are messy. The whole time, there are other people chiming in on the sections, like “Board” and “Site one”, questioning what is happening, and offering theories, and because of all of them, the mess happens, and we sort of lose the plot of what is actually happening. And while I did get confused, I do think that that was the point of the book. It was meant to be messy and confusing.

    Still, “Site two” sees “Brad” and “Brian” reunite with Brian essentially working as Brad’s manager as Brad returns to escorting. It mirrors “site one” in that it’s told through reviews of Brad. However, in one of the reviews, it is mentioned that “Brad” calls “Brian” “Zack”. Now, I know that’s a lot of quotation marks, and I’ve been wresting on how frequently to use them, but we’re going to have to deal with what we’ve got. And these reviews proceed to get messier and messier – both in terms of content and plot – to the point where it gets difficult to follow what happens.

    Now, this final section will spoil the ending, so I’m saying that now. But again, this book is at least 15 years old, so you’ve had time.

    Anyway, it eventually comes out that the Brad from “Site two” isn’t actually the real, original, Brad, and neither is Brian the real Brian. This Brian is indeed Zack Young, and this Brad is Thaddeus Stroh – someone who looks conveniently like the original Brad – and that Zack Young was trying to make money off of the people’s hysteria over the original Brad and his life, while trying to give them the story of his life that they were secretly wanting.

    And right at the end, we get this confession from Zack about what he did, and that a bunch of the final reviews were all him trying to keep the Brad mystique alive, despite it being good and gone. While it’s written as this clear-cut thing, it’s obviously meant to be done at the point where we, the readers, have already been handed so much mess that we’re meant to be left questioning whether Zack’s confession is even the truth.

    I realise that I’ve managed to write a thousand words and say very little, but that’s just how this post has gone. I’ve never claimed that this blog was meant to be anything other than me just shouting my thoughts into the void, and if that shouting takes the form of a book report (lmao) then so be it.

   Still, that was The Sluts. It wasn’t what I’d normally go for. And while I don’t think I’ll be racing to read anything else that mentions fisting and castration any time soon (because there was indeed castration in this book…), it was still wild, I can’t lie, and while there were parts that were a little too extreme for my tastes, I can't say I didn't like the book.

            Okay, bye!