Working Stiff

by Grant Stoddard

  “Okay, that’s two minutes!” Jamye said and helped my pull off the mold. With some effort on her part and a slurping, sucking sound, the mold finally came off, and after a few more minutes we filled the void with a rubber solution and put it on a shelf to harden overnight. While I took a shower Jamye washed the mixing bowl we’d used for the plaster so that I could mix the eggs, cream, chives, black pepper, pancetta, and parmesan for the linguine carbonara recipe that I’d perfected during my tenure at the ranch.

  The next evening, immediately postcoitus, I looked over my shoulder at my penis as it proudly jutted forth, spent yet unflagging from between Jamye’s legs.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I lied as I tried to reconcile the vulnerable and empty feeling my penis’s clone had left me with. “I think I just need to lie here for a minute or two.”

  “I’ll get you some water,” she said and walked to the kitchen, dismantling the harness that held the prosthesis to her body.

  Michael said that he’d continue to call on me to write freelance bits and pieces for Nerve, but the real end of my career there was ushered in with Jamye’s final pelvic thrust. My ass, like my whole future, was up in the air. It was at this moment that I began to experience the sensation of freefall I’d gotten every time I’d taken a leap out of my ever-expanding comfort zone, the fear and exhilaration of the unknown. Any pang of shame I might have felt from the circumstances was overridden by the question I asked myself over and over. I’d always told myself that in this day and age, my being a former sex worker would not be a strike against me in an interview situation, but now that I would presumably be putting this to the test, I was suddenly less secure in the assertion. When I began writing the column I was too concerned with having a roof over my head and a little pocket money to think about my time as a gonzo sex columnist being a great dirty stain on my résumé. Where would I go from here? How long could I coast before having to make some possibly difficult decisions.

  Over the next two weeks Jamye and I hung out and worked on our respective projects while I counted down the days until I would eventually leave the rustic idyll of the Circled W ranch and get back to New York. I’d missed it immensely and found myself constantly daydreaming about my return: the plane’s wheels touching the tarmac, the frigid February air filling my lungs, treating myself to a cab back to Manhattan. I felt that the new me, sans column, already resided there, and I was eager to get back to Manhattan and see what he would be all about.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Ross and Jordana Martin, Lisa Carver, Michael Martin, and Nerve, my agent, Claudia Cross, at Sterling Lord Literistic, Kelly Harms, my editor, Jeremy Cesarec, Jeff O’Connell, Drew Reed, and Antony Topping for your largely undeserved patience and support.

  Love and thanks to the entire Stuehler Family, my boys, David Fateman, Chris Apostolou, and Bran Battjer, for keeping me fed, clothed, housed, and inspired during numerous rough patches. You are the personification of good old American hospitality. Thanks to Jennifer Choi for your thoughtful guidance and tutelage.

  A very special thanks to my family for their love, support, and promising never to mention that they’ve read any farther than this page.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More…

  About the author

  A Conversation with Grant Stoddard

  Meet Grant Stoddard

  About the book

  On Writing Working Stiff

  “I Did It for Science”

  Read on

  A Disturbance at Leather Camp

  Talk Like the Author!

  Useful Phrases for One’s Stay in Essex

  About the author

  A Conversation with Grant Stoddard

  How did you first learn about sex?

  It was when I was eight or nine. This kid found a dirty porno mag under his dad’s bed and brought it into school and disgustedeverybody with it because it was, frankly, grotesque. These sorts of hirsute, rotund continental women and super sleazy guys. So this kid shows this to a group of third graders! We all saw it and freaked out and he informed us that that’s what everybody’s parents do, and I was forever traumatized. It was eventually confiscated by the headmaster. I don’t think I got any real parental talk. Maybe two or three years after that, by which time I saved them the trouble and told them I’d seen it all, and then some. In our school we had a lesson called P.S.E., which stood for personal and social education. It was taught by our gym teacher, this little Welsh dynamo named Mr. Power. He was my favorite teacher even though I routinely disappointed him in football, rugby, tennis, track…everything. He eventually threw me out of the P.S.E. class when I couldn’t keep it together when required to put a condom on a banana. I remember my report card saying that I didn’t possess the maturity to deal with the subject of sex and adult relationships. Prophetic.

  Me, about three years old, suffering from advanced malnutrition

  In high school did you know this would be your destiny?

  Um…no. I strongly suspected I would die a virgin. I really did think that. Up until it actually happened the prospect of actually having sex was becoming more remote by the day. It didn’t help that I looked like Garth from Wayne’s World. I wish that someone would have staged an intervention back then; made me over into a less vile prospect as a sexual partner.

  When did you lose your virginity?

  I was around eighteen. She worked at a stable and smelled of horse shit half the time. It was a group of firsts. First kiss, first everything. It all came at once.

  Was that when your destiny became clear?

  Not at all. I was actually kind of underwhelmed by the experience, as I’m sure she was.

  So you went to college and lived with this ancient woman—Did this arrangement preclude sexual adventures?

  It would be easy to use Mrs.Montague as a scapegoat. I think I did a thorough job of staving off any prospects on my own. I just had no game. I really felt awkward in my own skin, and people pick up on that immediately.

  Meet Grant Stoddard

  At twenty-one, perennial virgin GRANT STODDARD came to the United States in pursuit of true love. Within eighteen months he was a couch-surfing ne’er-do-well, scavenging scraps of food and living in danger of being deported back to England. His saving grace appeared in the form of his winning an online trivia competition, resulting in his appointment as New York’s most intrepid sex columnist, despite having little experience in either sex or writing. He lives in New York City.

  How did the metamorphosis come about?

  Your line of questioning assumes that I somehow changed at some point. I really don’t think that’s the case. When I go home, I automatically snap back into that mode. It’s being here that gave me a chance to leave a lot of that behind.

  So you were corrupted by an American girl, and then America was your destiny?

  Yeah. I always kind of had, from family vacations to the Midwest when I was a kid, the amount of oohing and aahing over me. People actually took an interest, which was very novel. I felt like I was included.

  What was it about you that got you out of Essex and to America?

  This is going to sound dumb, but years ago in England there was this TV commercial for British Airways, or maybe it was Virgin Atlantic, I’m not sure. Anyway, there’s this guy and he’s walking down the street and someone’s lifting a grand piano into an eighth-floor apartment and the rope breaks and the piano comes hurtling toward him, and just prior to impact, the action freezes. Then the viewer sees all these fast cut vignettes of him in exotic locales, running along a beach with these beautiful women, hanggliding over Rio, going nuts at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, on a camel in Morocco, etc., doing these crazy death-defying things, and the tag line was something like; “When your life flashes before your eyes, make sure you have something to watch.” As corny as that is, it stuck with me. I guess I just wanted that; I wanted to stockpile adventures. When my friends and I were around eighteen or
nineteen we went through this period of doing things based primarily on how good a story it would be when we recounted it at the pub.

  Sharing yet another secret with my mother

  Me in the colors of Herd Lane Primary School

  You wrote in the book about your encounter with Lisa Carver that led to a position with Nerve and, later, the column “I Did It for Science.” You described it as very much accidental. But it takes a special kind of person to do that.

  By that point I’d learned that the very occasions when I just throw caution to the wind and hope for the best—these are the moments when it all seems to work out fantastically well. Where I’m from, people aren’t conditioned to take giant leaps of faith or stray very far from a predetermined life path. Various members of my family have, however, and I suppose they were supportive in breaking out of that mold. So with regards to the column it was just another opportunity that plopped into my lap that I felt compelled to take. All the other interns at Nerve would have given anything to get their writing published and I just thought it was funny that that the only intern who had no aspirations to write is the one who ended up with the opportunity to do so. I would never have had the guts to do any of those things under my own steam. Some of the “experiments” that the editors were suggesting were actually things that I had an interest in doing. Having it be my job made my feel less creepy and disgusting about it because I was required to do it. It was a great alibi to have. It also kind of allowed me to play catch-up for all the years that I was a wallflower.

  My hair as birth control

  Are you an exhibitionist? Some might say you’re the very definition of an exhibitionist.

  No. I dunno. I always imagined an exhibitionist would revel in it. During everything I’ve ever done I was nervous to the point of nausea. I was always hoping that somehow I wouldn’t have to go through with it, right up until the last moment. I always thought an exhibitionist would feel some sort of joy. I was terrified about doing everything. A friend of mine said it’s not an adventure until you’re wishing that you were back at home tucked safely in your bed, and there’s probably some truth to that.

  My life in heavy metal

  Would it be fair to say that without Lisa Carver’s praise of your oral sex skills, you would not be where you are today?

  I think she was just being nice. I dunno. Whatever skills I had then I think I’ve lost since. But I dunno, she recommended me for a job based on little else, so I suppose I did something right.

  Did IDIFS make you more or less saleable on the dating market?

  It was certainly a great icebreaker. It’s one of the most insane jobs, practically untoppable at a dinner party: “I’m paid to have bizarre sex with strangers and write about it.” In addition to being a great icebreaker, I suppose it gave me more confidence. There was a period in which girls who were fans of the column were making it extremely easy for me to have sex with them. I certainly couldn’t have foreseen that happening.

  Have you gotten feedback from anyone you grew up with who wrote you off?

  Aside from my own immediate family I’m not sure my friends from home actually have any idea. It’s difficult. I got a Myspace message from a friend I hadn’t seen in eight years who said, what have you been up to? And I kind of skirted the question because I think it would be difficult for them to get their minds around the idea of me and my bizarre lifestyle. At a certain point, the story becomes unrelatable to a large portion of my friends.

  What experiment do you regret?

  The orgy. I took the wrong girl, had the wrong mind-set, and I wish I had enjoyed it more, because it’s something I may never do again.

  “There was a period in which girls who were fans of the column were making it extremely easy for me to have sex with them. I certainly couldn’t have foreseen that happening.”

  Are you scarred for life by your experiences? Is there any hope for you to have a monogamous sex life?

  I think that I was more scarred by the period when I was a sexual persona non grata. A period of time I like refer to as the 1990s. I think that was the most damaging. If any damage happened to my psyche, it happened then. The opportunity to be reborn as a sort of literary gigolo actually resulted in my having a healthier mindset.

  Are you not more impressed with yourself than you used to be?

  Um…I suppose. I think that I’m most impressed with how I’ve been able to adapt. When I take inventory of all the amazing opportunities that have come my way since arriving in America, I can’t help feeling electrified by the unordinary life I’ve found and I feel quite invincible for a minute.

  About the book

  On Writing Working Stiff

  IT’S FITTING THAT WORKING STIFF came about in the same manner as all of the other wonderful opportunities I’ve had since arriving in America from England in the late nineties. Like leaving my staid little hometown, moving to New York City, getting a record deal, becoming a sexpert, and having Viacom fund my eponymous TV pilot, taking stock of my experiences in a memoir was something that somebody simply thought I should have a crack at. Whether it’s my accent, the cut of my gibe, or just good old American hospitality at work, time and time again people ask me to do things I’m in no way qualified to do. It came as quite a shock to me that I was the type of person to run with any opportunity that came my way.

  “I eventually wrote thirty installmentsof the column, though I’d only written about six when the idea of writing a book was first mentioned.”

  Working Stiff is primarily about the three years I spent writing my experiential sex column, “I Did It for Science,” for Nerve.com. I eventually wrote thirty installments of the column, though I’d only written about six when the idea of writing a book was first mentioned by a man whom I’d just witnessed urinating on a masturbating stranger, ostensibly for episode number seven. He put me in touch with a literary agent in London, whom I met with on my next trip home in the summer of 2002. Before meeting me, the agent envisioned an anthology of my columns, but over lunch I expanded on my journey from the perennial wallflower to accidental sexplorer and he suggested that this transformation should be the main theme of the book, not just the columns themselves. As the column—and the transformation—was ongoing and with my humiliation growing exponentially with each installment, I decided that writing an account of the experience at that point would have been blowing my figurative wad too soon.

  As my column grew in popularity, I found myself writing sex and relationship features in several other publications and making TV appearances as some kind of expert on sex, to the startled amusement of anyone I’d gotten into bed. My raised profile had my employers at Nerve thinking of spin-offs into other media: audio, TV, and books. It was at this point that I left Nerve.com full-time and seconded to Los Angeles to make a TV pilot that had less to do with sex and more to do with my propensity for being immersed in bizarre situations. The TV show Granted was created and produced by Ross Martin. Ross introduced me to Claudia Cross of Sterling Lord Literistic in New York, who seemed enthused about representing the project I had recently started referring to as Working Stiff.

  This created tension with Nerve.com and derailed their plans to spin off “I Did It for Science” and something called the “Grant Stoddard character” into other Nerve-branded media. However, as I was a popular columnist on Nerve, I continued to write “I Did It for Science” on a freelance basis.

  Once the pilot was shot and my days as a columnist for Nerve were clearly drawing to a close, I was given an opportunity to disappear into Ross’s vacation home in California’s Central Valley to commence work on the book that several people wanted to read. Three months in the seclusion of a 4,000-acre ranch seemed like an opportunity to write Working Stiff while awaiting the fate of theTV show. But it soon transpired that I was losing my mind in isolation, and I arrived back in New York without my bread-and-butter column, anything towards my memoir, or the TV show being picked up for production. Once back in Manhattan, I m
ade a semblance of a living writing for New York magazine, Muscle and Fitness, Glamour, Black Book, Men’s Health, Playgirl, Vice, Vitals, and the British edition of GQ, leaving me little time to concentrate on Working Stiff, though it had been almost three years since the idea was first floated. Interested parties redoubled their efforts to have me squeeze out a proposal, though with my being flat broke, I felt that I needed to concentrate on paying the rent. To that end, I got a temp job as a filing clerk at a French bank and some weeks later bizarrely became the managing editor of Playgirl magazine. It was in between hours of shuffling through nude pictures of oiled beefcakes and editing hausfrau erotica that I finally put a proposal together, and Claudia Cross deftly sold the project to HarperCollins. I quit my job at Playgirl, having clocked up five and a half weeks there, and began writing.

  Me on my last day at Nerve, cleaning out my desk

  I completed Working Stiff some four years after the project was conceived, though the timing was opportune. I had never had a clear idea of the book’s shape until the column had truly ended and I had been given a buffer of time in which I could make sense of what had happened to me, the mania slowing down just enough to see the story with some clarity.

  “Flat broke, I felt that I needed to concentrate on paying the rent. To that end, I got a temp job as a filing clerk at a French bank and some weeks later bizarrely became the managing editor of Playgirl magazine.”

  “I Did It for Science”

  THE BULK OF WORKING STIFF is about the three years I spent writing my column “I Did It for Science.” I think I explained the concept in the body of the book, but here’s an idea of what it actually looked like.