Candy Girl

October 3, 2005
Why, you might ask, would a healthy, college-educated young woman start stripping for a living, when she could work in a nice, clean office? Cody, now an arts editor for Minneapolis's alternative weekly, had spent her whole life (all 24 years) "choking on normalcy, decency and Jif sandwiches with the crusts amputated." When she moved from Chicago to Minnesota to live with the new boyfriend she'd found on the "World Wide Waste of Time," she took a job at an ad agency—a setup with good "porn shui
" (desk well angled for undetected online porn surfing) but not much else. Attracted by a local bar's amateur stripping contest, Cody soon moved from stage stripping to lap dancing, from tableside to bedside customer service and, finally, peep-show sex. Removing her clothes and dry-humping strangers in sex clubs had become her way of escaping premature respectability. Quite inexplicably, her boyfriend was completely cool with her new occupation, even joining her on occasional sex jaunts. When the inevitable burnout set in, Cody switched to phone sex, until that, too, got old, and the 9-to-5 straight world beckoned. Cody's so alarmingly entertaining, readers will wish the book were longer, though they'll be glad it ends before anything really ugly happens. Agent, Paula Balzer.

December 1, 2005
As a college graduate from a stable family, with a boring job at a Minneapolis advertising agency and a supportive boyfriend (now husband), Cody decided to become a stripper. She jumped in on an amateur night at a local bar and then pursued her interest at several different venues, from so-called gentlemen's clubs to peep shows. Cody, now an arts editor with Minneapolis's alternative weekly, "City Pages", describes in explicit detail her experiences stripping, lap dancing, and masturbating for clients. She has a fondness for the other strippers, who range from teenagers to thirtysomething mothers, but Cody has only disdain for the clubs, which generally treated the women badly and demanded a large portion of their pay. Cody tries to explain her attraction to stripping, but her descriptions of her encounters and the physical toll the work took on her body leave readers wondering why she kept going back -despite the fact that she earned enough to buy a house. Still, a very readable account of life in the sex trade. Recommended for public libraries." -Debra Moore, Cerritos Coll., Norwalk, CA"

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2005
A copy typist by day in Minnesota, Cody was hardly a likely candidate for entering an amateur stripping contest. But her curiosity got the best of her and, encouraged by her boyfriend, enter she did. The contest left her with an increased curiosity about the profession, and Cody decided to take an evening job stripping at Schieks, a local club. There Cody learns the ins and outs of stripping--how to catch a client's attention, how much the house takes, how some nights are highly profitable and others leave a stripper in debt to the club. Eventually Cody outgrows Schieks and moves on to Deja Vu, a bigger club that's much faster paced. A promotion at her day job forces her to give up stripping temporarily, but before long she's back in the adult entertainment business, this time stripping behind glass in an emporium. Cody's lively romp through the adult entertainment business is bound to appeal to those wanting a peek inside the inner workings of the sex industry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)