"Sordid Truths" by Aiden Shaw
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When you were a child, you dreamed of being a star.

You were going to wow ‘em from center stage with your incredible acting abilities, bringing the audience to tears with your words. You practiced air guitar or air drums, sure that fans would someday clamor for your autograph. Or maybe you told and re-told your best jokes, in order to get the timing just right.

When you were a child, the whole world was your stage. But what would you really do to become famous? In the new book “Sordid Truths” by Aiden Shaw, you’ll read about the early years of one man’s career and how he got into film.

It was 1986, and when the first phone responses came in from the local Personals ads, Aiden Shaw and his flatmate, Cubus, were nervous and well beyond their comfort zones. Broke, randy, and looking for excitement, the boys were planning on making big money by giving “massages:” for the two of them together, a punter paid sixty pounds British, just under 100 dollars U.S.

Within three years, Aiden was in high demand, working days at a “gentlemen’s club” and making an abundance of money by giving massages and “extras.” After-hours were spent at nightclubs with friends and lovers, doing drugs in toilet stalls and dancing.

Outside the gentlemen’s club, Aiden found his own clientele, eventually moving up to a management position at a “clinique.” That, and his physical attributes, allowed him to claim the best customers for himself. And he claimed a lot.
“I was a good whore,” Aiden said. “I knew my job and I knew men.”

But life wasn’t all a happy bag of tricks. One of the boys Aiden loved tried to commit suicide and succeeded. Favorite punters drifted in and out of his life, as did beautiful men and boyfriends. Though money was never a problem, AIDS was a constant worry. But what was worry with opportunities everywhere: when he met a man at a charity ball, Aiden decided to move to LA to ply his talents in the Adult Film industry.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I felt as though the things I’d experienced in life had, on a profound level, soiled me….”  Still, when asked to choose a pseudonym, he chose his own name, unapologetically deciding to remain unashamed of his life.

With the wonderfully understated sense of sarcasm that only a Londoner can achieve, author Aiden Shaw tells a story of eccentrics, sex, parties, sex, drugs, and more sex in the late 1980s, long before everyone got careful.

Though sometimes those same Britishisms can be half-confusing and half-charming, “Sordid Truths” is an enjoyable book because of its lack of self-consciousness and its wealth of honesty. Much like he does in his films, Shaw bares all in this memoir that starts pre-career and ends when Shaw moves to California.

Fans of “My Undoing” (Shaw’s prior memoir) or anyone seeking a quick memoir will definitely want to add this book to their Wish List. For them, “Sordid Truths” gets top billing. 

The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books.

Tags: 2010, 37-4, LATE FEBRUARY