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From Inches Magazine, March 20, 2001
Reviewer:
Excerpted from a large review in the May, 2001 issue of Inches.
In his preface to The Male Escort's Handbook (Your Guide to Getting Rich the Hard Way), Aaro Lawrence, escort extraordinaire and former Inches centerfold, writes that, after years of turning tricks, he felt a need to update John Preston's book on teh subject, Hustling. Unlike Preston's classic, Lawrence's thorough how-to book is aimed at a generation that is both entrepreneurial and wired. Preston, an unrepentant member of the Stonewall generation, saw male hustling as one more tool for carrying out the (homo)sexual revolution. Such sentiments don't figure in Lawrence's more-pragmatic approach. The author states at the start that he'll be looking at "escort as a professional endeavor for people who want to make serious money." But Lawrence is neither purely mercenary nor bereft of idealism. Rather, Lawrence's idealism, like that of his generation, extends more to the realm of personal improvement (both to the escort's and his client's) than to the socially utopian.
Once you accept that The Male Escort's Handbook is a primer tooled to the somewhat narrowed ambitions of our times, you can judge the book on its own terms. The verdict? It's hard to see how this excellent book could better fulfill its intentions. Lawrence writes clearly, efficiently, and his self-published book is more meticulously edited than most books that major publishing houses spew out these days. Any guy who's a sex worker or is contemplating becoming one will want to read it. And it's full of information that will be of use to current or potential clients of male escorts, or to anyone with an interest in male prostitution.
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