Whore Stories?

It's all about the sex, isn't it?

Blame modern society, maybe. Especially the fearful and repressive idiots within modern society who conspire to make an ordinary thing extraordinary-because-evil, who negatively fetishize a pleasurable, basic biological process.

And they do this due to, what? Some weird horror inculcated within a tradition of patriarchical mythos? Do we have to point the old j'accuse finger at religion yet again?

Anyway …

Sex, and the bullshit that comes with it: Always a hot topic, with tangents that include the recent verbal flatulence of Daniel Tosh (and the brilliant response of Curtis Luciani), gay marriage (which is about love, actually, because the fucking is already going on, and so I guess some freaked-out citizens are worried that the act of marriage will officially condone sex that is abhorrent to them? Jesus. Mind your own heteronormative business, you sad vanilla geezers, and STFU), and – bringing this ramble back to the subset of prostitution – Chester Brown's Paying For It.

The focus is definitely on the World's Oldest Profession this Wednesday night, as Austin's own Tyler Stoddard Smith takes the BookPeople second-floor lectern to regale the audience with tales from his collection of, yes, Whore Stories. But – what's it like, this collection? Just what sort of document are we dealing with here?

Robert Ontiveros takes a closer look in advance of the BookPeople event.