It's a shame Rick Whitaker didn't take longer to write this book, which was published only a year after he stopped hustling. Some of the insights, and the prose, indicate he could have shed real light on a difficult, provocative subject. As it is, the book seems hurried (journal entries, which should have been reworked and woven into the narrative, are thrown in helter skelter), pretentious (Whitaker keeps quoting other, greater writers, whose stature he clearly aspires to...don't quote, write it yourself!) and, yet, in the end, it does have genuine power and weight. The author has had a tough life (an unloving father, a flighty mother, drug addictions) and is mature enough not to ask for pity. His insights into his own alienation and addiction are on the money. What may have tripped him up is his haste to come become a big time author. He admits that he couldn't get his novel published, and this book seems like his hasty answer to trying to launch a career. Since lots of people are jealous of people who can get published or paid for having sex (read some of the reviews below), he left himself open to getting slammed for opportunism. He deserves to be slapped on the wrist, but also encouraged. Despite its flaws, this is a sad, disturbing book that looks at some parts of the human heart most of us shy away from. Whitaker should maybe forget about trying to become a star, take a job of some sort (his idolatry of outlaws seems foolish at his age) and work on his writing. Perhaps the next book, with more time spent on the prose and insights, will be the one he is clearly capable of producing. Finally, this is reccommended for anyone who thinks male hustling is "glamorous." It comes across about as glamorous as working in a slaughterhouse, only with slightly better pay.

I picked this book up for cheap thrills and was surprised to discover a writer of directness, intelligence, honesty, and good sense. This may be the "How Proust Can Change Your Life" of gay male hustling--Whitaker explicates a familiar subject and uncovers pertinent and rather profound principles of life.

His experiences in the sex trade comprise a sort of "pilgrim's progress"--the tao of prostitution--and, yes, some of the experiences are quite sexy, too.

At one point I worried that the book was leading up to an obligatory denunciation of everything-that's-destroying-the-very-fabric-of-America, but I need not have concerned myself. Whitaker is above the just-say-no crap.

The book is nonjudgmental, intuitively grasping the needs and desires that lead one to certain choices in life. There are plenty of ways to prostitute oneself in life, and plenty of soul-devouring addictions--not all of them illegal or even disreputable, but all comparable in their impact on the human spirit.

Without fanfare, the book imparts its moral lessons to readers who have a mind open to them, a mind unconvinced that virtuous living entails making no mistakes or building hedges against experience.

For me, the book was a neat surprise. The writer actually has something to say, and he says it with modesty and wisdom.

This memoir is amazingly well written and honest. It's about the author's own experiences with sex for money, his drug addiction, and also his life growing up in a crazy family, and living in New York City in the 90s. It's sexy, intelligent, and moving. I highly recommend it, not only for gay men, but for everybody (over the age of 16 or so!). I hope Rick Whitaker writes many more books--and I hope I meet him sometime. (He's very cute, from the pictures of him on the book jacket.)