I'll post my draft review of the book below -- hey, it's new stuff, even if it isn't exactly on the Damsel/Villain/DiD theme. The book is interesting and a quick read. It's got a lot of graphic sex in it -- the author was a full participant in the orgies of Studio 54-era NYC. It isn't even particularly about a BDSM relationship except toward the end. So the interest in it is really from a social point of view -- the intersection of extreme lifestyles and the glitterati of pre-AIDS New York, as well as an inadvertently poignant tale of a relationship that is really kind of doomed from the start, although neither participant sees it. The narration is very much in the moment, so there is zero treacly sentimentality -- a plus in my view.
This was a new one for me: I do not read these kinds of books -- hell, I have never read Anais Nin! So although I liked the book, this is not "an endorsement from the author of In My Clutches" -- the book is too far off topic from the blog and the material is something I am nowhere near an expert in. But if you do read erotic memoirs, you might want to look into it. Anyway, here's the review:
Review of Laura Meets Jeffrey
Laura Meets Jeffrey is a frank, no-holds-barred memoir of “swinging” life in pre-AIDS New York. It is also – by the end of it – an unexpectedly sweet and charmingly unlikely extended love letter from Jeffrey to his former love. It also is exactly what the second billing says: an erotic memoir, and as the author spent a lot of time in 1970s and early 1980s orgies in New York, that means a lot of very graphic sex. Unusually for memoirs, the book also contains several extended passages from Laura, giving her point of view of their relationship and activities. It’s nowhere near a 50/50 split, but that matters less than the presence of a distinct voice from the author’s, which makes this memoir more interesting.
LMJ was suggested to me because of my blog, which travels on the fringe of BDSM. That is the sole point of contact (and a tenuous one) between my life and that of Laura and Jeffrey. As a bitter and twisted Gen-Xer, I also generally have little patience for the blank hedonism of the 1960s or 70s. All of that makes me a harder sell on this book than one might think from my blog. But LMJ managed to keep me engaged all the way through – I was never bored, or repulsed, or otherwise provoked into judgment.
As for “what all the way through” means: oh boy, well, at the beginning, lots and lots of orgies, described in blunt and sometimes hilarious terms. For someone who is not turned on by porn, I did not find the multitude of sexual escapades tiresome or repetitive – no mean feat, as you get a lot of them in this book. While the descriptions of the swingers scene – the types of groups , the cast of characters, etc – do not reveal anything you don’t already know about these sorts of activities or the times, the author’s voice and genuine enthusiasm makes it immediate all over again. It takes a special, sometimes cock-eyed, view of the world to make what would be cliché new again. You may agree or disagree with Jeffrey’s point of view, but he never descends to nostalgia, not even at the end.
Laura takes a while to make her appearance in the book, and from then on both drugs and ever more extreme s/m behavior start slowly to take over. One can see the end, not just of their relationship (this, trust me, is not a big spoiler) but also of the whole culture of sexual licentiousness of pre-AIDS New York. Along the way we are also treated to digressions on Norman Mailer, Ryan O’Neal’s boxing, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Jerzy Kozinski, and other luminati of the time. (I have to thank the author for rehabilitating Mailer for me – in the end, what a mensch!) This memoir implicitly asserts that the (to contemporary mores) extreme sexual New York culture before AIDs was by no means a sordid bubble of its own but brushed against high profile and even elite intellects and talents and was at least partially integrated into high society as a whole.
LMJ never succumbs to the retrospective realization that the party just has to end sometime. In the book the author mentions that Mailer suggested the book be called a novel rather than a memoir, and when you’re done with it you can see why. Part of its liveliness stems from the author’s insistence on trying to relive those times in the moment, without the knowledge of the future (ie now) that he obviously possesses. It means the future is unwritten, and for a memoir of this type that makes a huge difference in how it comes across.
That in-the-moment feel makes the narrative more compelling in light of the outcome of the story. As Laura demands more satisfaction of her masochistic desires as well as indulges in increasing amounts of cocaine, we feel the author’s lens shrink, the focus contract, until it really is just about the two of them – or to be more specific, about Jeffrey’s attempts to rein in what he sees as Laura’s more self-destructive tendencies. Here again, a superficial and ungenerous reading of this book might dismiss it as a story told many times – and it is – but it really is not just that. The painful breakdown is contrasted not just with a beautiful beginning – as would be the case in a typical love story – but against the author’s open-ended sexual practices of the beginning of the book. It might be an accident – part of Jeffrey’s offbeat charm is a blindness to his own future – but accident or not the narrowing of Jeffrey and Laura’s relationship should prove poignant to anyone with a modicum of decency and a willingness to suspend judgment a little bit. It’s the exact opposite of how relationships are supposed to grow – and it says a lot that Jeffrey ascribes this constriction solely to drugs, as opposed to a fundamental lacuna in the way he approached relationships (at least at that time). I felt myself rooting for both of them all the way through --because of this lack, not despite it – even though the outcome is never really in doubt.
This makes it sound like the relationship part of LMJ is just a train wreck. If it were only that, it would be depressing without being edifying. But it’s not. The author really does throw himself into the spirit and mentality of his own self at that time. Time and again, the honesty transcends the cliché. Laura, on the other hand, comes across as a little more detached from her life in the period described in the book. This is a good thing as she was, by her own admission, a near casualty to cocaine. Overall the effect is not really a “balanced” view of what turns into a BDSM relationship; the difference in tone, in intensity, in location in time between Jeffrey and Laura makes it all the more poignant. It says a lot about Jeffrey (and you can read this as good or bad, inclusive or narcissistic -- but I don’t see the point of judging) that his girlfriend ends up writing part of his own love letter to her. For what it’s worth, I think it’s the author’s genuine way of showing love. The great success of the book is allowing us to see that love on its own terms.
LMJ was suggested to me because of my blog, which travels on the fringe of BDSM. That is the sole point of contact (and a tenuous one) between my life and that of Laura and Jeffrey. As a bitter and twisted Gen-Xer, I also generally have little patience for the blank hedonism of the 1960s or 70s. All of that makes me a harder sell on this book than one might think from my blog. But LMJ managed to keep me engaged all the way through – I was never bored, or repulsed, or otherwise provoked into judgment.
As for “what all the way through” means: oh boy, well, at the beginning, lots and lots of orgies, described in blunt and sometimes hilarious terms. For someone who is not turned on by porn, I did not find the multitude of sexual escapades tiresome or repetitive – no mean feat, as you get a lot of them in this book. While the descriptions of the swingers scene – the types of groups , the cast of characters, etc – do not reveal anything you don’t already know about these sorts of activities or the times, the author’s voice and genuine enthusiasm makes it immediate all over again. It takes a special, sometimes cock-eyed, view of the world to make what would be cliché new again. You may agree or disagree with Jeffrey’s point of view, but he never descends to nostalgia, not even at the end.
Laura takes a while to make her appearance in the book, and from then on both drugs and ever more extreme s/m behavior start slowly to take over. One can see the end, not just of their relationship (this, trust me, is not a big spoiler) but also of the whole culture of sexual licentiousness of pre-AIDS New York. Along the way we are also treated to digressions on Norman Mailer, Ryan O’Neal’s boxing, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Jerzy Kozinski, and other luminati of the time. (I have to thank the author for rehabilitating Mailer for me – in the end, what a mensch!) This memoir implicitly asserts that the (to contemporary mores) extreme sexual New York culture before AIDs was by no means a sordid bubble of its own but brushed against high profile and even elite intellects and talents and was at least partially integrated into high society as a whole.
LMJ never succumbs to the retrospective realization that the party just has to end sometime. In the book the author mentions that Mailer suggested the book be called a novel rather than a memoir, and when you’re done with it you can see why. Part of its liveliness stems from the author’s insistence on trying to relive those times in the moment, without the knowledge of the future (ie now) that he obviously possesses. It means the future is unwritten, and for a memoir of this type that makes a huge difference in how it comes across.
That in-the-moment feel makes the narrative more compelling in light of the outcome of the story. As Laura demands more satisfaction of her masochistic desires as well as indulges in increasing amounts of cocaine, we feel the author’s lens shrink, the focus contract, until it really is just about the two of them – or to be more specific, about Jeffrey’s attempts to rein in what he sees as Laura’s more self-destructive tendencies. Here again, a superficial and ungenerous reading of this book might dismiss it as a story told many times – and it is – but it really is not just that. The painful breakdown is contrasted not just with a beautiful beginning – as would be the case in a typical love story – but against the author’s open-ended sexual practices of the beginning of the book. It might be an accident – part of Jeffrey’s offbeat charm is a blindness to his own future – but accident or not the narrowing of Jeffrey and Laura’s relationship should prove poignant to anyone with a modicum of decency and a willingness to suspend judgment a little bit. It’s the exact opposite of how relationships are supposed to grow – and it says a lot that Jeffrey ascribes this constriction solely to drugs, as opposed to a fundamental lacuna in the way he approached relationships (at least at that time). I felt myself rooting for both of them all the way through --because of this lack, not despite it – even though the outcome is never really in doubt.
This makes it sound like the relationship part of LMJ is just a train wreck. If it were only that, it would be depressing without being edifying. But it’s not. The author really does throw himself into the spirit and mentality of his own self at that time. Time and again, the honesty transcends the cliché. Laura, on the other hand, comes across as a little more detached from her life in the period described in the book. This is a good thing as she was, by her own admission, a near casualty to cocaine. Overall the effect is not really a “balanced” view of what turns into a BDSM relationship; the difference in tone, in intensity, in location in time between Jeffrey and Laura makes it all the more poignant. It says a lot about Jeffrey (and you can read this as good or bad, inclusive or narcissistic -- but I don’t see the point of judging) that his girlfriend ends up writing part of his own love letter to her. For what it’s worth, I think it’s the author’s genuine way of showing love. The great success of the book is allowing us to see that love on its own terms.
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