by D.K. Holm

DIRTY TALK:

Gary Anthony spent more than 30 years writing music and screenplays but he says his professional career brought in very little money. He decided to pick up a few bucks as a "phone sex actor." He died in 1996 and another phone sex operator, Rocky Bennett completed this book.

Anthony, a chick with a dick, played whatever role the caller wanted over the phone. He says about half the men who called him took out their aggressions on the line, wanting a cunt, slut or bitch to do their bidding. He went with the flow, keeping them on the phone as long as possible to crank out the dollars.

His favorite callers were the foot freaks. They were the easiest, knew what they wanted and worshipped rather than degraded women. Anthony repeats himself constantly and seems smitten by tautologies, which are sometimes hysterical, like this: "Foot worshippers typically favor feet over other bodily parts."

This is one of those heavily padded books that could have easily conveyed the message in a magazine article. But I like the idea he was able to scam a book publisher into giving him a contract. Hope he was able to spend the advance money before passing on to the genderless Heaven.

THE EDGE OF THE BED:

While dusting a high shelf in the closet of her new apartment, a vibrator fell out and hit Lisa Palac on the head. The deus ex machina that unexpectedly intervenes to change the course of events is usually a foggy apparition or heroic character blazing with moral force in a play or work of fiction. Placing this heavy baggage on a vibrator in a true story is a bold move, but it works.

Busting out of her Catholic girl school mode, Palac began writing fem erotica, started her own zine, edited the lesbian hot rag On Our Backs and launched the cyber-sex magazine Future Sex.

Because the Catholic church has such a deep hatred of sex, it has probably produced more sexual libertines than any other religion. As Palac points out, the bottom line in the church is this: "The more sexual you are, the less moral you are. Yet I've found so much truth in sex, and some of my deepest spiritual experiences have also been sexual ones."

Those clever Jesuits would no doubt buy into a spiritual connection with sex confined to marriage, but what is Palac to think at age 14 when she finds squirreled away in her father's basement a copy of Hustler with a photo of an Asian woman smoking a cigarette out of her pussy? She caught onto the hypocricy surrounding sex rather than the possibility of uterine cancer.

But I think her father's hypocricy is commendable when he arrived home unexpectedly to find Lisa and her boyfriend bolting out of her bedroom. Confronting the boy, he says he understands his need to sow his wild oats and would applaud him if he were his son. "But you're not my son so if I ever catch you trying to deflower my daughter again, I'll break your fucking neck."

Fathers should behave this way with their daughters knowing, full well it is futile. Palac may not see it this way, but to her credit the moving portrait of her father and her own teenage angst are the best parts of this book. It bogs down somewhat when she grows up and goes on at length on the infighting at Future Sex, but overall her sense of humor and her direct style make this a fun read.