"The Happy Hooker" by Xaviera Hollander

Yes. I remember she had a "tail" about sex with a dog. That was pretty radical! But the rest was most sexiful.

As i recall there were always rumors. Was she a real person? Did xaviera hollander really exist? Some said the author was really a pervy old man.

You'd think if she had been real, she'd have eventually become a major celebrity. A la Heidi Fleiss at the very least.

Hollander WAS a celebrity at least on the level of Heidi Fliess.

There were interviews and news stories about her all over in the early 70s.

there was film, starring Lynn Redgrave.

My grandmother had this on her bookshelf. I read it when I was staying with her, aged 13, with a cushion on my lap to hide my boner.

I remember her sex column for [italic]Penthouse,[/italic] "Call Me Madam," which included a photo of a woman applying lipstick in the shape of a wang.

I bet this book and "The Joy of Sex" (complete with drawings of naked hirsute hippies banging) made many a 1970s pre-teen realize exactly how Mommy and Daddy did "the special hug where the daddy plants a seed in the mommy's tummy".

R2 - not only was she real she still is.

I grew up on both these books. My mother had the joy of sex on her bookshelf and my older sister was reading the happy hooker. I stole that book and read it myself at a very young age. I was more careful with the Joy of Sex, making sure to replace it and make it look like it was not touched.

When my mother and I had the talk, all she did was talk about my period and then give me some science book about sex. I red that cover to cover, but thought with what you have in the house you can't do better with a talk?

Xaviera Hollander was a real person, who played a definite part in making unorthodox, less uptight sex more mainstream and acceptable at the time. However, Hustler magazine's "Kinky Corner" monthly feature, in which readers supposedly wrote in to ask questions about their sex lives and seek advice, was mostly faked. I know, because as a freelance porn writer I often wrote it, both the "letters" and the answers, whenever we didn't receive enough real letters which were interesting (translation: explicit and provocative) enough.

I also wrote "letters to the editors" and responses for Penthouse, Blueboy, Firsthand, etc.. I apologize in the unlikely event that anyone actually found that crap arousing, Hey, I was young, impecunious, and glib on a typewriter. I took the money and I ran.. Those were more innocent times.

[quote]I bet this book and "The Joy of Sex" (complete with drawings of naked hirsute hippies banging) made many a 1970s pre-teen realize exactly how Mommy and Daddy did "the special hug where the daddy plants a seed in the mommy's tummy".

Also "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex - But Were Afraid to Ask" (also made into a movie by Woody Allen.)

AIDS probably put a damper on Hollander's advocacy of a "free love" lifestyle. Still, for awhile she represented a typical 60s and 70s swinging, sexually liberated lifestyle.

Loved your work in Blueboy. That mag sure brings back memories.

Yes, when I was a pre-teen and young teen all of these books were my bibles. Plus "The Sensuous Man" and "The Sensuous Woman." Many adults openly had a shelf of sex manuals. I remember religiously practicing exercises from the books. There was one where you peeled grapes and rolled them around in your mouth to practice sucking balls. My parents wondered why I ate grapes so oddly.

Compared to later, it was a sex-positive era.

I met her once,, when she was living in Toronto. She was funny, down to earth, self-deprecating, and very supportive of the gay community, Her status (at the time) as a sort of a fake, manufactured celebrity seemed to amuse her, which I found endearing. I liked her, and I have only fond memories of our encounter. I got her autographed photo!

She's still kicking—she runs a B&B with her husband in Amsterdam. (Before she married him, she was in a long-term lesbian relationship.)

In 2004, I stayed in Xaviera's "pension" in Amsterdam. I was booking my trip last minute, there was a gigantic convention in Amsterdam at that time, and Xaviera's place was the only lodging that was available. Xaviera was a delightful old broad. She greeted me with a joint, said I could do coke of her coffee table if I had it, and we stayed up late, splitting a bottle of wine, while she regaled me with stories about her being a madame in New York. I only stayed with her one night, before I moved over to the gay guest house, but I'm glad I did it, though I did make sure that I locked the door on my bedroom.

Thanks, R14. Back then, in those pre-internet, pre Microsoft Word count days, we hack writers were literally paid by the word. Some poor flunky actually counted the number of words in our typescript (pounded out on a manual, later on a state of the art IBM Selectronic), and we got a check in some odd amount, accordingly. Easy money!

When you think about how much money successful books used to make back in the '70s, she must have made a fortune. That book sold millions.

I liked "The Happy Hustler". Lots of fun.

Hollander started out as pretty and petite but in the years to come turned into an overweight whale - the photos were shocking. It showed what overindulgence can do, whether it be about sex, food, drugs, whatever. What appeared to be accepting and liberated was simply a disguise for decadence and over-the-top behavior. She was an extremist counterculture person who was simply trying to make a lot of $$$$$$$$$$$ for herself.

R18 Anyone still doing drugs at her age has got a few screws loose, a substance abuse problem and not in touch with reality.

R22 is your typical "Just Say No!" era prisspot that came along after the '70s.

A few years after her book came out (around '74 or '75), there was another book written by a man who claimed to be a bisexual "high class" escort. He claimed to have been born into a wealthy family and to have been "initiated" into sex by the family chauffeur and maid when he was just a kid, then being kicked out of the family for coming out, and turning to sex work. I cannot remember the name of the book or the name of the author. Most of the book was a discussion of his work with both men and women. There were veiled stories of sex with entertainers, business people, etc., with no names. Does anyone else remember the book?

R21, just realized you wrote "The Happy Hustler" rather than "The Happy Hooker." I think "The Happy Hustler" is the book I'm talking about.

R25, I vaguely remember the book, a friend had it. If it's the same one you're referring to. There were some nude pix of the author in it.

The guy who write that book became an actor. He was on a corny family series which featured a young male actor who had Down Syndrome. I never watch the show, I can't remember the name.

I recall there was some controversy that the gay actor had AIDs in real life and some of the performers complained that he was on the series. This was a during the time when people thought they could catch AIDs from simply touching a person who had it!

I remember going on a safari when I was 14 with my school and someone brought the book.

We would take turns reading it to each other.

While on a bus, it feel upon me to read the part about her getting fucked by a dog by a pool.

I had thought I was unshockable. I was wrong.

I also remember she referred to his pussy as "my little honey pot."

I loved the book, and I especially love the movie

The joy of sex and everything you always wanted to know about sex… were also enlightening

She had some MMF threesomes but they were all of the 2-guys-on-a-girl kind. One I remember where she got fucked on a dance floor from both front and back at the same time and never saw who fucked her from behind.

You've signaled your values R23

🙄

Go back to the part where she had sex with a dog

What was that about?

Like an actual canine?

[quote]I also wrote "letters to the editors" and responses for Penthouse, Blueboy, Firsthand, etc.. I apologize in the unlikely event that anyone actually found that crap arousing, Hey, I was young, impecunious, and glib on a typewriter. I took the money and I ran.. Those were more innocent times.

I loved the Penthouse letters, and I hope you're responsible for my all time favorites, the sex with amputees letters.

It's not that I found them particularly sexy, it was just that one month there was a letter about fucking an amputee and then it was as though the flood gates opened--month after month I read about amputees, double amputees, double amputee fucks double amputee--it was like Dalton Trumbo took a break from Johnny Got His Gun to pound off Penthouse letters.

I always wondered if any of them were real, if maybe that first letter had open some floodgate and all the readers who had been hiding their dark secret suddenly took pen to paper to tell their tale.

Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Sex was the book that opened my 12 year-old eyes.

I remember reading about men getting blow jobs in the bathroom at a bowling alley putting their feet in a shopping bag so police would only see one set of feet in the stall. I thought, "Hot -- and clever!"

Heck with Lynn Redgrave. She was eclipsed by Joey Heatherton.

R35 That's like the clip-art version of a movie poster.

Just did an IMDb search for the series with the Down Syndrome actor, it was"Life Goes On".

The actor with AIDs was Grant Tracy Saxon who also went by the name Micheal Kearns, he wrote 'The Happy Hustler" as Grant Tracy Saxon.

The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler?

I read the HH when I was in high school. I was far more interested in the nuts and bolts of running a whorehouse than the sex. If that wasn't a clue that I was gay....

Read it & loved it, as well as all the sequels - she has a fairly extensive bibliography. I picked them all up in thrift stores in Europe and they are great summer beach reads. She is really one of a kind.

I have no memory of how we got it, but my sisters and I read that thing from cover to cover. My mother eventually found it and read it, too. It was still floating around the house when I left for college. A classic.

I'm very happy to hear that I wasn't the only little 'mo whose world was rocked by this book. I never heard of "The Happy Hustler." Maybe I'll check that out.

When my sister was in 6th grade, she brought home a porn novel. I don't remember the title, but it was explicit. My favorite part was a woman "having to" give all the men in the neighborhood blow jobs so she and her husband could join a singers group.

My mother found the book and tried to shame us with it at dinner. It didn't work.

MOM [reading aloud one of the chapter titles]: Lesbos? Why not?

DAD: What's a lesbo?

ME: [laughing]

That made me laugh out loud, R43!

One of my relatives lived in her apartment for a long time --in the east 50s -- when she wasn't around, which was almost never. He liked her a lot, found her in to talk to, and of course, had sex with many women as a result.

I think Xaviera has been fairly ill recently - stroke or something but she still has a wonderful Dutch attitude. I like her.

She once told a story about Robert Goulet and his then wife, Carole Lawrence who preferred women. XH would work over Lawrence while Goulet watched and when CL was highly aroused RG would move in to pound her. That story came to mind and made me laugh every time I saw Goulet afterwards.

"The Happy Hustler" is the book I was thinking of. I'm surprised I don't remember that he went on to his Hollywood career, although I must have known about it at the time. The ravages of age . . . so to speak.

[quote] I remember reading about men getting blow jobs in the bathroom at a bowling alley putting their feet in a shopping bag so police would only see one set of feet in the stall. I thought, "Hot -- and clever!"

I read that and was convinced that I'd be molested if I peed at a bowling alley and that gay sex was all about seducing boys in public toilets.

Carol Lawrence was a les? Interesting, she always had such fake and superior air about her. I could never stand that woman. Lording around like her shit didn't smell.

Thinking about her actually having sex, and with a woman no less, is quite amusing.

Carol is still alive, she had three husbands: John Gregory (m. 1982–1983), Robert Goulet (m. 1963–1981), Cosmo 'Gus' Allegretti (m. 1956–1959)

After the second one she should have embraced her sexuality!

Carol Lawrence? As in Miss General Foods International Coffees?

Xaviera today

[quote]Carol Lawrence was a les? Interesting, she always had such fake and superior air about her. I could never stand that woman. Lording around like her shit didn't smell.

My favorite Carol Lawrence moment? I was Epcot Center with my BF.

ME: Who is that crazy woman tap dancing on top of an orange crate?

BF: She looks like Carol Lawrence. But it can't be. That would be too embarrassing.

CAROL: I'd like to dedicate the next song to Mr. Bojangles! Who knows? [DRAMATIC GESTURE TO THE SKY] Maybe he's listening!

ME: [LAUGHS]

You sound like an asshole R22.

This book was passed around by my friends when I was a teen. Despite the fact that Hollander is bisexual, she seemed to despise gay men, which I find puzzling, considering her free-wheeling attitude towards sex.

For some reason I did not read the book.

I read this book in the early nineties, boy was it hot. It might have fucked me up a little (or maybe I was already fucked up), in any case those remained my sexual goals for a long time.

The one I learned a ton from was The Sensuous Woman by "J" followed by The Sensuous Man by "M". The Joy of Sex set my development back by months because I couldn't handle those creepy drawings.

R52 She looks like an idiot desperate for attention. Hollander doesn't realize that her day has come and gone.

[quote][R18] Anyone still doing drugs at her age has got a few screws loose, a substance abuse problem and not in touch with reality.

Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs, r23.

R60 Life in the fast lane is never a good idea. Now go back to your coke and weed and your adoration of an old hag that has been trying to act 19 her whole life.

Maybe I'm remembering another book, but wasn't there a story in there about a married man who paid her several times to watch a man and a woman having sex, before asking her to find a man he could sleep with?

In the story, the guy she found couldn't get it up because he had jerked off too many times that day.

She finally found a guy with a big dick to fuck him, and the married guy couldn't sit down for a week.

Am I thinking of another book?

Oh, yes, I do!

I've read this book; unfortunately, I don't recall its actual content. I do recall the subject matter. (I was all of 13 when I read it. I was baby-sitting for a single, unwed mother who was into being a "Cosmo Girl," as in Helen Gurley Brown's magazine. Now, THAT was good stuff, in its day!)

r62, yes that is in the book.

r61, I'm obviously happier being an addled old contented fart than you are being a bitter, judgmental common scold.

As a young gayling I picked up some helpful hints from The Sensuous Woman...

I haven't thought about that book in decades

She was/is a real person. Many years ago I knew one of her Canadian clients. She wrote about him in the book but I can't remember what she said.

Vaguely remember being turned on by the "silver fox" guy being bisexual.

Xaviera is a goddess, she has a bed and breakfast in Amsterdam and a house in Spain.

I would recommend staying a night with her, she is a great hostess and will talk your ear off if you are interested in hearing about her illustrious past.

Any of you crones remember Nancy Friday? "My Secret Garden?" "Men in Love?"

She wrote novels of Penthouse Forum-style sex stories under the guise of psychological analysis. Smut, smut, smut.

Yes found it one summer visiting my grandmothers house. Livened up a dull vacation. She had a copy of a really trashy novel called Mandingo too. I read that too. The cover was very titillating.

No love for Martine Beswick and her Hollywood Xaviera?

She even got to blow Batman poolside.

I think she almost fucked Sgt. Bilko, too.