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.

Great Works of Literature: Cosmopolitan Magazine

Horatio writes: Thanks to Chris Levy of Edgware, London for this fine literature review.


I was fourteen when I discovered one of my Mum's Cosmos lying around the house. After a quick perusal, I soon sequestered it in the bogs where it stayed for the next seven years. There was one full-page lingerie advertisement by some French sounding brand with two models fully decked -out in suspenders, knickers, bras. The works. I must have knocked one out to that picture alone over a thousand times when I lived at home.

The key was that one was blonde, the other brunette. They reminded me of Pepsi and Shirlie who came to fame as Wham!'s backing singers before setting the world alight as a talented pop duo under the tutelage of Mr. George Michael who produced their big hit Heartache. I used to rest the ad on my knee while I was sitting on the bog and mentally transport myself from my suburban home in North West London to a hotel room in New York in which I was doing it with both of them.

Fire all of your guns at once and explode into space

Horatio writes: This critical appreciation of an important piece of literature was submitted by Dov in San Francisco:

The now defunct Bookmonger in San Francisco was the place you went to as a kid for your serious reads. The shelves were packed with second-hand copies of Jack London and The Odyssey. But it was also the place where I tapped into a major source of inadvertent smut, thanks to a semi-regular supply of Easy Rider Magazines which would randomly appear in the periodical section. It was always a great mystery to me -- who would sell their copies of this magazine "for adult bikers" to such an above-board institution as the Bookmonger? In my mind, it must have been someone who looked like Michael Landon circa Highway to Heaven and I bought every copy I could get my hands on. The magazine was packed full of photographs of old biker guys on their tricked out hogs. I could not give a shit about the men or the machines. But every couple of photos or so, these old biker men would be photographed with their old biker girls riding pillion, or as I learned through my dedication to the pages of Easy Rider, in the "Bitch Seat." And it was these ladies, with their dirty hair, missing teeth, sun-blasted, tattooed skin, who thrilled the front of my eleven year old pants, thanks to their predilection for riding topless and exposing their sagging, worn-out boobs to the entire circulation of Easy Rider magazine. I did not have a bike. I did not know anyone who had a bike. But here was a culture that excited me. After rushing the magazine home to give it an adequate "test drive" in my bedroom, I would carefully cut the pictures out and collect them in a large brown envelope I kept in my desk -- the one in which I kept a playing card I had found on the street. A ten of hearts with a naked Asian woman sitting uncomfortably on one side, seemingly embarrassed to have such a great muff.