A gritty, revealing look at the troubled, eventful life of an adult film star.
Keasey presents a memoir about addiction, pornography, and facing life’s challenges.
The author moved around a lot as a child; he recounts how his family lived in locales as diverse as South Africa and Lititz, Pennsylvania. These places were not always easy to navigate, but by the time he reached high school, Keasey had established his identity as a gay kid who was into theater and got along with most people. The author met his future long-time partner Henry while in college in Pittsburgh; the two would have a relationship for 17 years. They bought a cabin together in northern Vermont. All seemed to be going well for the couple on the outside, but on the inside, the author was restless. He had some flings with other men, and when his relationship with Henry ended, he made a somewhat surprising career change from education to pornography. Keasey began a stint in adult films as a star for a production company called Titan. Under the moniker Spencer Quest, he was featured in films like 110° in Tucsonand Cirque Noir. People began to recognize him, and he even got a part in an off-Broadway production of Naked Boys Singing. Still, his day-to-day existence was often difficult: He got hooked on crystal meth and suffered through money problems (pornography didn’t pay a whole lot), and he had to resort to escort work to help make ends meet. The author eventually tested positive for HIV. His struggles with addiction and mental illness have been longstanding, but he has, on the evidence of this book, survived it all with a story to tell.
Keasey provides quite a lot of insider information about the pornography industry—or at least what the industry was like prior to, as the author phrases it, the modern era of “DIY and OnlyFans porn.” The text does not skirt the details, no matter how explicit—for instance, the author writes of how, early in his career, he didn’t appreciate the act of “rimming.” He describes the simple nuts and bolts of how the business works, such as how “an actor is typically paid for two cum shots—one oral, one anal.” Even his forays into escort work are discussed in a matter-of-fact way; many clients “wanted to talk as much as they wanted to fuck.” The memoir attempts to cover a lot of ground, ranging from the author’s alleged trauma as a child to his penchant for knitting to his ongoing relationship with his parents. While the varied material keeps things lively, some sections are drier than others. When the author mentions how he started a blog at one point, it is not precisely a spellbinding moment—the blog may have been part of his mission to connect with the world, but statements like “the blog I wanted to start would not just be about porn but also my struggles along the way” do not pack a whole lot of punch. Admittedly, the disclosure that the start of the blog came after having “fucked ferociously for days” certainly lends a certain edge to the narrative; it is an edge that is palpable throughout the book.
A gritty, revealing look at the troubled, eventful life of an adult film star.Pub Date: Dec. 25, 2024
ISBN: 9798350977721
Page Count: 272
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
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