Dear John: A Customer of My Ex-wife Reviews the Book
The act of publishing a book as bizarre and deeply personal as "I Didn't Marry a Prostitute..." invites a host of opinions. How could it not? It’s a weird situation no matter who you are so a strong reaction is expected.
When I was in Chicago last month, as I was walking around the city, I decided to swing into a Starbucks and grab some caffeine. The barista was a guy in his late twenties I supposed and was very chatty. So I chatted back. Why I was in town, what I was doing.
"So, you left Vegas? Why?"
"Uhm. Well, long story short, my wife at the time decided to become a prostitute..."
"Good for her!"
It was not the reaction I either had grown to expect nor one I entirely understood but there it was. Likewise, as the friends I had asked to read from the book at the event that week took the stage, these stories that I wrote while I was bleeding out emotionally turned out to be... funny. Another unanticipated response.
When, this weekend, I was alerted to a new Goodreads review of the book, I opened up the website to discover a Five-Star review of the book from...
...one of her clients. When I say "client" I mean "john." By “john” I mean “paying customer.” Unexpectedly, he liked the book which, again, isn’t a response I saw coming.
When I told my mom, her reaction was shock and then amazement. "You live the most incredible life!"
It seems the reviewer joined Goodreads specifically to review this book, so perhaps the authorship is in question. That said, I present here the text of the review with a bit of commentary and some bold-type highlights along the way (not to debate but to clarify some).
"I am personally familiar with the “pixie” villain in this story. I met her about a month after this book was published. Most of the attributes ascribed to her in the book are accurate. Some might disagree with my use of the label "villain" for the author's wife (now ex-wife). But I'm going with it for grins.
She is an exceptionally pretty lady with an intriguing personality. She has that European or French elegance that comes naturally to her.
And she has class -- one of my kinks is to use degrading words/names and it took a little doing to get her to play along. She is happier to use names for her partners.
But what she is not is a heartless bitch. I've had the unfortunate occasion to meet plenty of those during my career as a polyamorous mongrel and she doesn't even come close to being that.
It appears to me that the author was either a cuckold or willfully blind to what she was showing him from day one.
Based on every definition of a cuckold, I was a cuckold. I'm fine admitting that. The modern porn definition includes men who find sexual gratification watching their wives have sex with other men. I was not of that stripe. I was an unwitting cuckold.
In one of the stories in the book there is reference to the wife snowballing her husband without his consent:
"Remember when I snowballed you? Sucked your cock, you came in my mouth, and I spit it back in your mouth? Without, what is it, consent? I did that to you, you got pissed and complained about it. I did that to my high school boyfriend and he slapped me in the face."
This really happened and was a microcosm of the two and half years of her infidelity. I was always who I appeared to be; she was a lot of things but duplicitous must be among them.
He wanted to stay in his imaginary world and liked her enough to turn a blind eye to the rest, until the truth was forced upon him. It was only when it appeared as if the truth might go public that he decided he could not handle the humiliation. Privately he was willing to suppress a lot but his public image was too fragile to handle a prostitute wife whom he married after a very brief courtship (in Chicago) in a very private wedding (in Vegas).
Contrary to that line of assumption, it was she who wanted her line of work kept secret. The divorce had nothing to do with public humiliation and everything to do with honesty. If fear of public humiliation was motivation why then would I publish a book about it?
Even though the title says "I didn't marry a prostitute," I suspect he did marry someone who displayed a poly lifestyle quite openly and he had every opportunity to be aware of that fact.
The best line in the book actually comes from the author's best friend in Chicago who was also his best man at the wedding. I'm guessing it's David Himmel but I can't be sure because it's shows up in a fictionalized story chapter wherein the names have been disguised.
"Here's the thing. You can give a homeless person with signs of mental illness a home but you can't remove the impulse that put them in the streets in the first place."
The vanishing tricks she pulled on the author (being AWOL for days) is vintage her style. After a 3-hour love fest in my hotel room, I had offered to take her out to eat. And she agreed, showered (perhaps for the new boyfriend?), and got ready. But at some point, after coming off the elevator I lost her in the crowd on the casino floor. She pulled a Houdini on me! She apologized later when I brought it up.
She had also requested that I don't leave any marks on her. So, my guess is that it was for the benefit of the new boyfriend who also might be unaware of the true extent of her poly lifestyle, although she has told me things that suggest that maybe he is aware. Or perhaps it was for the benefit of her next poly rendezvous.
One question I asked myself at the time was whether she was really a prostitute or not and just said so to get out of the marriage. That question is definitely laid to rest here.
For the record, having a sidepiece and lying about it for three years isn't polyamorous. It's infidelity. Working as a prostitute isn't polyamorous. It's having sex in exchange for money. To paint either as simply a "poly lifestyle" assumes that included in that lifestyle is deceit. I'm pretty sure those who profess to be polyamorous would not agree that wholesale dishonesty is part of the program.
She is the kind of person you cannot easily forget. Don Hall provides many descriptions, short stories, and even some poetry to paint that picture quite vividly.
The book is extremely well-written and enjoyable (not dense), albeit it could have used a bit more proof reading since I did find several typos, especially numerous towards the end. I wish I had the patience to note them and pass them on to the publisher (Literate Ape Press), but I was far too embroiled in enjoying the author's character sketch of the book's villain.
His use of certain words (like "dioramas") was refreshing to me. I haven't seen other authors use them, perhaps because I read mostly non-fiction.
I couldn't help wondering if having a child might have saved their marriage (and robbed me of the opportunity to experience her splendor). This is an important point that is nowhere discussed in the book. Children often serve as glue in a marriage, helping to keep it together after the honeymoon period is over. Did neither of them want a child? Probably she didn't want one, because it's usually the female who pushes for it. But then it's also the female who usually pushes for marriage and in this case it seems Don was the instigator.
It's a weird book, unlike anything I've read. Perhaps, again, because I am a boring non-fiction reader. The book's villain would probably despise that about me and call me boring; grin. The book is part non-fiction, part novel, part poetry -- a volcano of emotions, self-pity, reflection, and whining! Don't get me wrong, it a well thought out tale he tells; not a mere telling of facts. But the organization is a bit haphazard. The switching back and forth between non-fiction and fiction left me unclear on what actually happened, but it’s a fun read nevertheless.
To clarify, that tonal shifting was intentional as it was the closest to emulating my mental state at the time. I'm thrilled you found it a fun read, though.
As a result, I remain unclear on the facts and timeline of the story. On page 189 he says he decided to divorce her BEFORE he found out about her poly lifestyle. I think that was the day he found out she had a boyfriend whom she intended on continuing to see. A day later he got additional confirmation about her deeply poly lifestyle.
There are some self-reflective and self-aware portions in the book. But overall, it's the annoying sound of a whiny child sitting behind you on an airplane who doesn't want to share his toys with other kids. What such monogamous brats fail to appreciate is that every time their toy is used by other kids, it comes back to them, and it comes back more experienced and full of ideas to enrich their relationship.
If you heard whining, that’s fair. It wasn’t the intent to sound whiny but that’s brilliance of the subjective.
A spouse isn't a toy to share with others unless the arrangement to share is agreed upon. The only ideas a married partner engaging in a nonconsensual open relationship brings is that only through lying can she continue to get her rent paid.
If only he had accepted the idea of an open relationship. He harps on the claim that he trusted her unconditionally. But that wasn't trust, it was blindness and a refusal to accept the reality staring him in the face until it threatened to become public. At that point he filed for divorce, in my view merely to save face.
There’s an interesting description of her late in the book, "She's a cat. When she wants affection, she gets right up in your face, when she doesn't she'll swat at you with her claws."
Was he a cuckold and he can't get himself to admit it?
Oh, I admit it. I just didn't know I was one until a few years of wearing the uniform.
Worth noting in this "ya whatever" tale is that unlike most Vegas chronicles, no one here is accusing the villain of hard drug addiction (opium, coke) or criminal activity (unless you're going to bring up prostitution or adultery here; yawn). Isn't that simply marvelous, considering that this was in Vegas?
Bottom line is that he pretends that her lifestyle choices were unforgivable and grounds for divorce. But such behavior is forgiven all the time, for the sake of the marriage. Prostitution, often referred to as the oldest profession, is alive and well. It is often cloaked as escorting, sugar dating, nude modeling, massage with happy ending, stripping, and so on. Usually, the villain of the story is the male who is labeled "abnormal", "deviant", or "cheating" on his spouse. Usually, the one turning a blind eye is the female spouse. It is as common and mundane as me scratching my balls.
What's unique about this story is that the roles are reversed.
If you read the book "Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality", you learn that engaging sexually with multiple partners is in fact “normal” and has been prevalent throughout history.
What is abnormal is the expectation of monogamy, which is the refuge of the insecure in today's "modern" and materialistic, ownership-oriented society.
The author had known that his wife was in that prehistorically true mold of human beings, also known as polyamorous. He had dealt with it for 7 years.
Towards the end of the book, he tells us that he deleted all her photographs. I've never understood that instinct some people have after a failed relationship. How can you delete the photographs of someone you claim to have loved for 7 years? Is your ego that fragile?
It’s a fair question. It's a bit like moving as far away from an abusive relationship as physically possible. The less one has to be reminded of the fool (yes, the cuckold) he had unknowingly become, the easier to heal up and get on with things.
I loved her deeply but the person I loved and the person she became over our time in Vegas were very different people. The stories, while a bit repetitive, paint the picture of that blindside (waking up next to a grizzly bear, being surgically hobbled by a serial killer). Those pictures were of the person I loved not the person who spent a third of the marriage humping strangers for cash.
I appreciate the author for writing this book and sharing his perspective with the world. I also thank him for his immense contributions to public media, especially NPR in Chicago."
I understand the desire to normalize prostitution. As I write in the book, I have zero problem with legalizing the entire profession but to soft-sell it by calling the practice merely polyamorous is that same sort of concept creep that has us considering a dirty joke told in the office the same as sexual harassment. No, the divorce was not due to the sudden revelation that she was screwing half of Nevada for a Venmo payment.
The split had everything to do with the sum total of nearly three years of lying about it. As I said at the time, open relationships don’t happen after one partner has been scratching that itchy twat for a few years. Some folks are on board for open marriages but it is not my cup of tea and insisting that I should bend the knee to that lifestyle is like declaring my distaste for sushi is a moral deficiency.
At this point my elevator pitch version of things goes something like this: “Engaged in three dates. Married in Vegas. Five years later we moved to Vegas and she secretly became a prostitute. We divorced. I wrote a book about it.”
I can now tag the pitch with “And one of her clients wrote a five-star review of the book.”
My mom is right. I live an incredible, bizarre, absurd life.
