XAVIERA HOLLANDER THE HAPPY HOOKER
BY ANTONIO PINEDA
Last summer i was invited to read from my novel in progress by Mila Jansen at the Hemp Bar in Amsterdam. I crashed at the crib of my dear friend Michael Burke on the Johannes Verhuylstraat, not far from Leidseplein, in the heart of the city. Xaviera graciously invited us to a literary luncheon at her place. Michael and I set out on bycycles, over the bridges and canals, under an unusually clement and warm Dutch afternoon. Xaviera has represented for decades a formidable combination of Eros and Logos. She has published a dozen books , been transposed into film , and her ouevre cultivated modern feminist authors like Erica Jong and Camille La Paglia.
Xaviera welcomed us inside, introduced me to her husband Philip, who took me aside to show me his cannabis plants. An eclectic mix of artists, authors, and the occasional sex worker graced the table.The magick puff preceded the luncheon, the wine flowed and the bonhomie enlivened the conversation. Xaviera graciously accepted a copy of my lysergic noir novel. Her abode also serves as a bohemian style Bed and Breakfast. She entertains her international guests and admirers with sexy stories from her past served with a dollop of humor.
The Philadelphia Independent Film Festival will screen a documentary film directed by Robert Dunlap re her work. The provocative title is, Xaviera Hollander, The Happy Hooker, Portrait of a Sexual Revolutionary. Xaviera will attend the screening and answer questions from the audience.She will also sign and dedicate her latest book co-authored with Katje van Dijk with the delicious title, The Happy Hookers Guide to Sex-69 Orgasmic Ways to Pleasure a Woman, published by Sky Horse Publishing.
Xaviera will be making two more book signing appearances at the Passional Boutique and Delicious Boutique. Her debut publication, The Happy Hooker, published in 1971 sold 16 million copies, its humor and zest for life continues to atract converts. She resides part of the year in Marbella, Spain, produces English Theatre productions in her houses in Amsterdam and Spain , and is always reinventing herself.
A musical based on The Happy Hooker is being made by Warren Wills and Dick Hansom. It will be a sexy, saucy celebration of the period 70-75 in NYC, the story of Tart with a Heart set against the backdrop of love, lust, and a dose of mystery and intrigue. She remains an icon of Sexual Freedom and Epression to men and women world wide.
The literary luncheon has gone down a storm. The magick puff makes the rounds as we enjoy the coffee and Cognac . I invite Xaviera to my reading at the Hemp Hotel, she politely declines as she has other plans, but promises to send her posse to represent her. Ever the perfect hostess she accompanies us to the door and kisses us good bye. We mount our bycycles and ride back to the hood, warm and tipsy from the feast of friends. It is far too easy for the Establishment to marginalize her place in literature. Polite society finds her ouevre threatening. Yet high culture and philosophy exists to challenge the Status Quo. Guillame Appolinaire understood that pornography had its place in literature proper. French tradition in literature and art reserves Eros dominion to be celebrated in the arts. Perhaps that is why on the bicentenary of the great Victor Hugo, or the centenary of Jean Paul Sartre , millions of French nationals take to the streets of Paris to celebrate the contributions of these extraordinary free thinkers. America does not manifest the same interest.
William Faulkner was perhaps the most respected author in America of the first half of the 20th century . He was lionized by European writers like Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene, Simon Beauvoir, Camus and Sarte. In the USA however his literary star was confined to a smaller readership. Hollywood provided him with financial gain, his screenplays for the noir classics, The Big Sleep And To Have and Have Not raised the rent. His international stature as a litterateur resulted in the Nobel Prize in 1951. He and other American writers like Thomas Wolfe ,Sherwood Anderson and Willa Cather did not recieve the respect due them in their own country.
Harold Pinter in the UK defines the process of poet, dramatist, screenwriter and intellectual for the last half of the 20th century. His screenplays for Joseph Loseys productions of The Servant and The Go Between remain classics to this day. His theatre pieces promulgated a renaissance of modern British theatre. He never stopped writing poetry and expressed his strong political views on the dystopian nature of the new world order. Like Faulkner he was awarded the Nobel Prize. He has acted in theatre and film. This renaissance man grew up poor in the East End of London and fought his way to the top , but never forgot the contribution made by literary outlaws to the evolution of art and the opposition to dark government forces.
I am ready to roll to the Hemp Bar. Michael and I strike out into the night on our trusty bycycles. The Hemp Bar is a cosy venue, notable for the inclusion of hemp beer, wine, spirits and of course plain smoking cannabis on its menu. Mila Jansen greets us, she is a pioneer in the free cannabis movement, a striking woman who made the concept of a Hemp Bar cum Hotel into reality, and the audience assembles, as the sweet scent of cannabis wafts through the room. Mila has assembled a crew of Amsterdams bohos and intellos, charming scallywags and underground artistes. True to her word, Xaviera has sent a posse of her people to grace my reading. Eddie Woods the poet holds court. High above the Amstrdamned, the ambiance is sly and fly, this city of progressive, liberal thought loves art and Eros. The reading is full on and goes down well, afterwards we socialize and mill about, smoke and talk trash , it has been a night to remember. Michael and I navigate our way back to the crib as the fog rolls in like pea soup.
I board the black and yellow train to Schipol Airport at the Central Station. I reflect on Xaviera and her body of work, as well as the influence she has had on society. The film directors and producers Martin Zweiback, Michael Sorenson and Allan Sussman all contacted me to relate the influence Xaviera wielded over them in their halcyon youth, liberating them from the repressions of bourgiose society. Xaviera is notable for her dignity, humanity, and sexuality, The train speeds throgh the city and deposits me in the subterranean bowels of the airport. I check in, board the plane to Bangkok. Amsterdam represents a totally autonomous zone. These zones are defined by the pirate enclaves in the Carribean that were kingdoms unto themselves, Paris in the 1920s at the height of the surrealist revolution, and San Francisco in the 1960s during the flaming apogee of Flower Power. Autonomous zones existed as laws unto themselves, by nature they explored freedom of expression and sexuality. They were the by products of free thinkers and extraordinairy social times, political confrontation and metaphysical exploration. Some new world order always appeared to crush, supress and drive these movements underground. High above the Amsterdamned I soar, chilling on vodka-tonics, musing over the wonderful people and events of this magickal city.
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