When Sex Was Dirty

I used to work for a chick who had a small lap-dancing empire, and was thus denied the privilege of seeing the industry as anything but slimy, brutal and sometimes morbidly funny. It was a big feather in her cap-or single in her panties-that she knew Josh Alan Friedman, son of the writer Bruce Jay, who wrote for Screw magazine and had published a near legendary book called Tales of Times Square, which was out of print at the time. It was good, too.

When you cover the sleaze beat, one approach is to do it as an active participant, lingo and all, in the style of City of Night or the lesser-known Saul's Book (Paul T Rogers), alleged story of a Times Square hustler, and a big hit in its day (1983). Herbert Hunke and William Burroughs do it with a bit more love, Bruce Benderson, too-participants with their wits about them.

Friedman's journalism has more in common with A.J. Liebling, who described the various fringe hustlers of his day with a detached panache. No mere lay journalist, he sets himself the nearly impossible task of romanticizing Al Goldstein, his former boss, a raging addict and pioneer who founded Screw in 1968 and took the legal and societal, um, blows for it.

When Sex Was Dirty is a worthwhile collection of portraits of people who wouldn't even be allowed to order nachos at Chevy's or Red Lobster, in an era when nobody even has the balls to let Goldstein's foul mouth speak for itself:

"I'm not going to be everyone's fucking piece of shit, I'm not everyone's batboy. I believe in the next year I'll either die in the Tombs or Riker's, where they said I'd leave in a pine box, or by an assassin's bullet? I fuck you all. I dare you to try and stop me. You may kill me, but I won't go quietly." -Jennifer Blowdryer