Best of Times, Worst of Times: David Sterry
The former Chippendale and gigolo, now 50, remembers the despair he felt as a struggling actor and sex addict — and how finding his voice as a writer helped heal past wounds
I met my first wife when I was a Chippendale. She was the wardrobe mistress. You have to have something to take off — when you’re the Barbarian you have fur, leggings and an enormous codpiece. She was in charge of keeping these sweaty, nasty costumes fresh. After Chippendales was over for me —when my boss got shot in the head, in April 1987 — she and I got married.
Then I won a part in a movie. I was the assistant sheriff in Memoirs of an Invisible Man. At the end of one take, this hardened crew started applauding. This never happens, so I was like: “I’m gonna be a movie star!” Eight months later, it was the opening night. I had my best suit on and my hair combed. But I’d ended up on the cutting-room floor.
I was inconsolable. I spiralled into this black maelstrom. I started having extramarital sex. I’d go to auditions and there were beautiful, vulnerable actresses there who were ripe for the plucking. I got other acting jobs but it never took off. Part of wanting stardom was this hollowness inside me, because really I was small and lonely.
When my wife and I divorced, the shackles came off and I was rampant. I’d go on sex binges that lasted days and weekends. It was pathetic. Then I got a screenwriting deal at Disney, so I could buy a fantastic house and car, but I was brutally miserable. I’d go on a date, have sex, drop them off, then go to the streetwalker district and pick someone up. There was no intimacy, no love. Then Disney chose not to make the film; they paid me off. Nothing was working.
I began to put myself in dangerous situations. I’d be chasing women in crack houses and I’d wake up as if from a dream with some guy with a baseball bat saying: “Gimme your money, motherf***er, or I’ll kill you.” I realised if I didn’t do something I was going to die.
So I looked for professional help. Finally I found a Jungian hypnotherapist, and over several years with her I dealt with my obsessive behaviour.
I’d grown up with a father whose idea of having a conversation had been to throw something at you. Then, when I was a teenager, my mother fell in love with a woman and they left together, with my brother and sisters. My father had come home and caught my mother and her lover in bed. I knew she wasn’t happy with my father, but I felt she had abandoned me. I had to stay with my father because he had a summer job for me. I resented that. Now, I realise she was going through her own misery, but at the time I acted badly. Once I was sick all down the wall of their new white house. It wasn’t conscious but my anger came out one way or another.
I moved to Hollywood and on my first day there I was raped by a large black man. Then I became a prostitute for nine months. I didn’t know I was suffering from post-traumatic stress. Being a gigolo sounds like such fun, but some of it was horrible. When you work in the sex industry you download other people’s sexual trauma. It lives inside you. Thanks to my therapist, I was eventually able to come to peace with myself.
But I couldn’t tell my own story yet. I’d always dodge the topic of my past. I was $30,000 in debt, living with a fiancée who was playing Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. One day she told me she’d fallen in love with the man playing Stanley. That was the end of the engagement. And that’s when I made a decision: I was going to be open and honest about who I was.
I showed my first book to everyone I knew. One friend said: “Do you mind if I give it to my goddaughter, Arielle Eckstut? She’s a literary agent.” It took Arielle nine months to read it. Then we had lunch and I was impressed by her; she was smart. She asked how my fiancée was. “Oh,” I said, “we’ve broken up.” “I’m so sorry,” she said, and there was a little glint in her eye. We went to a movie, then to a French restaurant, which is dating code for “I’m into you”.
We had a fantastic conversation and all of a sudden, it’s four in the morning. We started kissing and it was hot. Then she asked if I’d had a lot of sexual partners. I said: “Quite a few.” She asked if I’d ever been with a prostitute. This was the point at which, in all my previous relationships, I’d lie. But I took a deep breath and said: “Actually, I was a prostitute.” Instead of her running screaming into the night, she said: “Wow, that’s interesting.” By the time I’d finished telling the story she said: “That’s the book you should write!”
I put together a proposal, and in two hours it sold for $150,000. All of a sudden I had a new career. Arielle and I moved to San Francisco and had a spectacular wedding. My mother was there, and her lover. We had reconnected in this amazing way, because I was finally being truthful about who I was. I just wanted to hear her say she was sorry, and she did.
David Sterry’s book, Unzipped (Canongate, £10.99), is out now
Interview: Kathy Brewis. Portrait by Tim Knox