Great Works of Literature: The Happy Hooker

Horatio writes: Thanks to Dan from Ontario for this tall tale. If you had some classic material which fired your imagination and was pivotal in your physical emotional development, we would love to hear about it.

My family bought a cottage by the lake as a summer home with visions of opening my eyes to the glories of the Great Outdoors. Fresh water, mountains, the works. The summers I spent there were lifechanging in a way my parents never imagined. Especially since, in all of my time there, I barely left my own room. This is my story.

I was twelve when my parents bought the place. The the first thing I did upon arriving was to act on the curiosity of youth and sniff around the place, checking out every room, rummaging through all of the odds and ends the previous owners had left behind them. My parent’s room, the biggest in the house, was spartanly furnished. It had one medium sized formica chest of drawers in front of a bed. The chest was mundane on the outside. But its looks were deceptive for when I opened it, I was astonished to discover a veritable treasure trove of pornography – magazines and books. The magazines were mostly Penthouses, and my father who walked into the room seconds after my discovery made them vanish pretty sharpish. But thankfully, he was a picture person, and he left behind a couple of books that were also there. I quickly gave them the under the shirt treatment and whisked them back to my room for closer inspection.

One of the tomes was The Happy Hooker by a woman called Xaveria Hollander. A graphic autobiography by a woman who loved doing it so much that she became a prostitute. In the same way some Major League baseball players can’t believe they get paid to play the game he loves, Xaveria loves her work, hence the book’s title. I devoured the book from start to finish in one sitting in the way I imagine Tom Cruise felt as he read the work of E. Ron Hubbard for the first time. I delighted at the graphic positions, the dirty physicality, and the unbridled bliss, more than that, I loved the way the pleasure described in the pages mirrored the throbbing feeling it stimulated in my sweat pants.

I spent more time alone with Ms. Hollander that summer than I did with the rest of my family combined. I kept the book in a blue envelope at the back of my closet but it was rarely there. It was more often in my hands. I quickly identified the dozen parts of the book I liked best, and after turning down the corner of the page, would rotate through them. On those magical days I was able to use the book seven or eight times I would mix in a couple of B-level scenes to keep things fresh. I estimate that I knocked one of to the Happy Hooker close to ten thousand times over the next ten years which, fittingly enough, is as many women as Wilt Chamberlain estimates he had slept with in his lifetime. Just writing this makes me hard.

I just googled Xaveria. She now has a motel you can stay at in Holland. I would like to propose a Beat Generation Road trip on which we can discuss the literature that defined our generation.