You'll Never Make Love in This Town Again

A trashy book about three women and their experiences working as prostitutes in Hollywood, published to cash in on the Heidi Fleiss trial. I came to this book through my good friend, Producer, Robert Evans, then engaged to Brig Sweet. Strangely enough; two of the women in it, Elisha and Brig Sweet, were in the season 7 of the Series: "Falcon Crest". Robin Greer's account is the least harsh, being only about the bad relationships she's had. Brig's story is grimmer; molested in her early years, she soon began using drugs and then fell into prostitution. (I don't think I'll be able to take the same glee in the episode's skewering of the movie's bad acting and nonsensical plot, knowing that one of the actresses was falling apart.) Two other women tell stories similar to Brig's. The point of the book is ostensibly to be a cautionary tale, but that's just a figleaf because the prose is often pseudo-Penthouse titillation: "my tight buns rocked back and forth", "I felt I would explode", etc. There's also a sickly fascination with the ritzy hotels and expensive gifts that show up in anecdote after anecdote. All of the women have stories of sexual encounters with various celebrities; the copyright page has a disclaimer that tries to ward off lawsuits. (A 1998 WashPost story discusses the publisher, who specialized in lurid books that often attracted lawsuits. Liza Greer later sued for royalties and won.) To be read while wearing gloves, because this book will stain your fingers with oil and vitriol.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.