Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent Book

In the spirit of Mary Karr's The Liar's Club or Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss, here is the unforgettable memoir of a season spent walking the razor-sharp line between painful innocence and the allure of the abyss.

On Friday afternoon in late Hollywood August, I'm seventeen-year-old freshmeat, just arrived to start my college career at Immaculate Heart College. David Sterry was a wide-eyed son of 1970's suburbia, but within his first week looking for off-campus housing on Sunset Boulevard he was lured into a much darker world—servicing the lonely women of Hollywood by night.

Chicken—the word is slang for young male prostitute—revisits this year of living dangerously, in a narrative of dazzling inventiveness and searing candor. Shifting back and forth from tales of Sterry's youth—spent in the awkward bosom of a disintegrating dysfunctional family—to his fascinating account of the Neverland of post-Sixties sexual excess, Chicken teems with Felliniesque characters and set-pieces worthy of Dionysus. And when the life finally overwhelms Sterry, his retreat from the profession will leave an indelible mark on readers' minds and hearts.

About the Author:
David Henry Sterry has worked as an actor, a marriage counselor, a screenwriter, a comedian, and an athlete. Also the author (with Arielle Eckstut) of Satchel Sez: The Wit, Wisdom, and World of Leroy 'Satchel' Paige, he lives in San Rafael, CA.