By Don Hall

The book is out. It is being purchased both by friends and strangers. One friend texted me that he both loved and truly hated it. Another found it "harrowing and woolly and for all the pain it contains, fun."

It's an interesting thing, publishing a book about something so rough and so recent. It feels good to have it off my chest and out there. I'm happy with the structure, with the stories in the center, with the interrogation of it all. I also wonder if I got it right. The thing about a book is that it is a physical thing that will either sit on someone's shelf or get passed off to a used bookstore and picked up by someone else. While the paper is not forever, it feels more permanent than a digital piece.

So, I hope I got it right.

Sunday I received an email alert from Goodreads. I ditched Goodreads when I realized that my ex-wife was very active on the platform, was reading things like ‌Scars and Stilettos: The Transformation of an Exotic Dancer and ‌The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, and I really wanted nothing at all to do with her. As I told yet another friend "If I ever see her in person again, I will have failed." I ditched but apparently didn’t deactivate it.

The email was a five-star review of the book. The first review from anyone. From her. She who is the prostitute of the title.

Since leaving Vegas, I cut her out completely. I blocked all communication from her. I got rid of the old Gmail I had because it was attached to her accounts as a recovery email as well as a YouTube filled with her playing in bands and reading poetry. She had no way of communicating with me until she took this opportunity to troll the book.

EXCERPTED:

!!FIRST REVIEW!!

I'm about to star-rating catfish this sad, revenge-porn-filled, revisionist history, bewilderingly judgmental, impotent kink-shame laden sloppy mess of a collection.

Lucky me!! I AM the face that launched a thousand pieces of badly executed fiction!! This 5-alarm fool lost his best editor (and a willing support system) when he decided to discard his wife.

Discard his wife? Support system? I'd suggest that having sex for money for two-and-half years in secret flies in the face of that. As I put in the book, she stopped being my wife when she screwed a guy in the back of van for $100. Revenge porn? Is Jaws revenge porn against the shark?

Furthermore I can vouch: "Disillusionment" is the operative word in this gorey click-bait crap title. Because having illusions are very VERY important to this man.

Yes. The illusions of honesty, of monogamy, of commitment? All very important to me.

Straight from the "Whore-says mouth" (ha-ha!), comes a missive written in May of 2022:

She wrote this the month of our divorce? Cold blooded, man. I knew she was relieved to be shed of the secret but her unbridled glee at discarding me says more than the book.

It’s time! Would everyone please join me and raise a glass for the Anti-versary.

She must have written this on May 12. I was in Kansas, bleeding on my mother’s couch.

I’ve fired myself from a production spanning almost eight years. From a part I became quite familiar with, performed multiple auditions for, and went on to play really, extremely, incredibly well. Unquestionably the best of all the previous actresses. My legacy to this day was never more crimped, crafted and committed to print then by your hand, Herr Director.

Wait. What? I did get it right in the book. She lets the world know in one quick paragraph that it was all a performance from the start. Nothing like a simple clarity to feel better about writing the book.

Ah yes, Your work of art was me, Good Sir Author. For many a time you set up the play within the play, and now we site “creative differences” and move along. I look and discover I am human again, no longer a stand-in. Clutch understudy talent ensconced within the cloak of anticipation at places.

Again, confirmation that I saw what I wanted to see and she merely played along. Maybe I should write a follow-up: I Did Marry A Sociopath... Further, if a decision to commit infidelity on an almost comically epic scale amounts to ‘creative differences’ I suppose Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes might have a new legal strategy. George Santos must love the idea that his rampant lies are merely ‘creative differences.’

Oh Handsome Director- man of powerful opinion- The only fallacious executions to be acknowledged are carried out and forgiven by you. You are now the sole actor, producer, stagehand and tech that will ever be. It is the great and terrible will of your ego that makes up the companionless world before you and it shall be done. You are now completely and pitifully alone.

At least I’m handsome. Better to be pitifully alone than with a pathological liar, an actor playing out a role, an escort who pretends to be whatever a man may desire for cash. Isn’t that essentially what her ‘review’ reveals? That she was playing the part of ‘wife’ so she could have her rent paid?

Now, I must bow.

Freely and with attempts at grace, I go-

Hereby taking up a stunning new vow without this constructed production. Rightly disabused of its rigid way.

Getting back to playing the role I was born for, no longer the one recruited into. 🥂

The role she was born for: prostitute. In her mind, I recruited her. I thought I’d be able to find the good in at least the first five years but this ‘review’ effectively paints the full picture. I wasn’t playing a role; I was in love. I didn't write or publish the book for revenge. The book has been a part of my own process to move past a truly devastating circumstance with a sense of closure. I didn't know it until she wrote it but this 'review' is the perfect final nail in that closure coffin. And I really appreciate the five-stars.

So, if you're interested in reading a "sad, revenge-porn-filled, revisionist history, bewilderingly judgmental, impotent kink-shame laden sloppy mess of a collection" please consider purchasing your own copy.

And please review it. Reviews are fun.