Aiden Shaw’s memoir follows his move from broke art student to one of the most recognisable figures in the queer adult film industry. 

He through London clubs, sex work, modelling, celebrity proximity, drugs, performance, all the while being looked at for a living. It is a coming-of-age story, but one where “coming of age” means learning how quickly the body can become rent, ticket, mask, weapon, product, and proof.

The interesting thing here is not the porn-world material, though obviously that gives the book its immediate heat. It is the way Shaw writes from inside the machinery of desirability: what happens when beauty becomes labour, when transgression becomes industry, when freedom arrives wearing the tiny dead-eyed hat of another market. One for readers interested in queer memoir, sex work, 90s/00s counterculture, fame and body politics.

Alyson Books paperback, first Alyson Books edition, November 2009. Good second-hand condition with light shelf wear; pages appear clean and binding sound.