Books always have buzzwords and the rave reviews of others sprinkled all over them so that you, the reader, will buy them. You know what I mean—"hilariously honest…jaw-droppingly entertaining…a cross between Jesus and Pamela Anderson…"
But Porn Again: a Memoir brings to mind an entirely new lexicon. To be fair, the author, Josh Sabarra is not a writer. He just isn't. Sabarra is a salesman, the pitchman, the classic PR guy with obvious natural instincts for what sells and what does not. His memoir had incredible potential. Unfortunately, through a combination of terrifying editing and an almost comical overuse of a thesaurus, Porn Again fails to deliver what it promises.
Sabarra begins his memoir with the tale of a date gone awry. So far so good. Bad dates and quirky guys are always funny. Somehow, though Sabarra manages to make himself the villain and his date the unlucky comic-book hipster nerd victim of his A-listy, West Hollywood scorn. Beginning with an irrelevant reference to his "Porsche Cayenne" and continuing with a litany of useless and self-aggrandizing information, Sabarra manages to turn himself into the least sympathetic human being alive. In a memoir, that is a very bad start.
The odd thing is, aside from Sabarra's rather privileged upbringing in the household of a prominent West Palm Beach urologist, his childhood was not much different from most gay men. This leads me to ask, "So what?" He was bullied. I don't know of a single gay man who was not taunted, beaten up, teased and left a virtually friendless outcast from age 5 through about college, with a few rare exceptions. Sabarra actually has defining moments, hilarious mishaps and personal problems that single him out as who he is and why he is who he is today, but he doesn't cultivate this field at all. An OCD child at a Jewish day camp? This should be laugh-out-loud funny. But everything is either very dramatic or very tragic, with occasional side commentary that's meant to be witty but comes off as disingenuous and flat. How many times in one book can you mention Liza Minnelli, Cher and Barbra Streisand?
I'm aware that Sabarra is basically a baby gay so his heavy-handed reliance on gay cliches might be expected. He's only been out for a handful of years and, to him, Judy Garland references are fresh. In the same way, Sabarra is infatuated with penis—moreso than you'd expect from even your gayest best friend. Once the flood gates open and he actually starts having sex with men other than his first boyfriend, the book should have just been made into a pop-up book filled with body parts. Sure, sex was a big part of his life but the list of sexual conquests, rather than being the homoerotic garden of earthly delights it should have been, becomes the kind of bland inventory you might see on a gay couple's registry at Crate and Barrel: "One older man into pig play? Oh, shoot! I think Aunt Gretchen already got that for them. What else is on there?"
The most surprising thing about this memoir is the sudden shift it makes in style, voice and even quality in the last 70 pages. Frankly, the book reads as if someone else wrote the other 260 pages and just now Sabarra decided to take an interest in writing his memoir. These last chapters are warm, funny, fascinating and endearing. One catches more than mere glimpses of the author but you see him plainly. It left me scratching my head wondering where this person had been all along. When he discusses those who he truly loves and cares about, walls come down, thesauri are thrown away, and the simple and charming stories of someone who has actually lived through something make their way to the surface.
The biggest problem with the vast majority of Porn Again is that it seeks to portray someone who does not exist: Josh Sabarra the bitchy, power broker, too-witty-for-words, "too hot for you" gay guy. No. Sabarra's failure is that he is not that person and in those last pages of his memoir, you absolutely know it. After hundreds of pages of rolling your eyes and wondering, "Just how many mirrors does he own?," you are met with a man who loves his family, who is capable of falling in love even with those many others would never take a second look at and who is capable of knowing the difference between true friendship and the Hollywood mannequins that surround him. Porn Again: a Memoir leaves more questions than answers. You, the reader, are left with two portraits of the author. One you would probably leave in your garage with a sheet over it and the other—well, that one is priceless.
