à  mémoire

It was called to my attention that a famous actress died last week at the relatively young age of 58. Maria Schneider, forever branded in our cultural memories as the baby-faced lover to an aging Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. I had to pause to reflect on Maria, as there had been a way in which she had touched my life. Or that I had felt a sisterhood with her, some common bond.

Read full essay on Open Salon.

Sometime in the early years of the millennium, prior to collapse of Wall Street, yet after the Invasion of Iraq and 9-11,  in those carefree years of innocence and longing, the waning era of my wayward youth, in a dingy apartment in a neighborhood on the verge of “trendification”, amidst countless dates with countless groping men,  I got a crazy idea in my head. I decided to become a “courtesan.”

I hadn’t much of an idea of what a courtesan did except for prance around in lingerie and fuck. Lingerie is probably my favorite thing to wear and fucking my favorite activity, so it seemed like a good career move for me. Besides I never really felt like I fit in.

And I must admit, I needed the money. Let’s face it, my dates were not paying my rent. They were sort of grinding me down and putting me in a foul mood. None of them were marriage material or anyone I’d like to marry anyway. My dreamboat hadn’t arrived on the scene yet. I figured that I may as well get paid.

And well, then there was the internet: Craigslist, a very new experience… (My Experience as a Craigslist Hooker)

So I started to write a memoir about what I was doing and before I knew it, the memoir had morphed into a novel. Because as Virginia Woolf wrote, “Fiction is likely to contain more truth than fact.” And I became less concerned with telling my story and more concerned with telling the story of the world I saw around me. A world that I saw as excessive and greedy, sometimes cruel, a world that doesn’t always support the human heart.  I guess that’s mostly what American Courtesan is about, finding one’s heart in the muck.

Oh, did I tell you it’s a comedy? Because, well, if we didn’t laugh, we would cry. And it’s got lots of sex in it. I think it’s pretty fun. A fun book that makes you think.

American Courtesan will be available in the spring of 2011.

YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT NOW FROM ANTAGONIST PRESS:

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