Tags
100 memoirs, 100 memoirs project, addiction, dominatrix, inspiration, Melissa Febos, redemption, sex work narrative, Whip Smart
People are going to pick up and want to buy Whip Smart because it sounds salacious, gratuitous, sexy. I picked it up because I thought, holy shit, how brave to admit this. I will learn something about how to write the stuff that most scares me to share about myself (spoiler: I’m not a dominatrix).
I was right and wrong. Febos is brave, and makes brave admissions—but not only in the way you think. Her entire tenure as a dominatrix was marked by her attempts at distancing herself from this work she did to put herself through college.
Whip Smart is an addiction narrative. And the addiction isn’t kink or sexual power trips, but every drug you can think of, most notably a serious heroin addiction.
What’s different about this particular addiction narrative is how well the narrator hid, while creating even more elements of her life to hide, all while hiding nothing from the reader. Continue reading
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