PORN AGAIN: A MEMOIR

The life and times of a randy Hollywood public relations guru.

Entrepreneur and television personality Sabarra’s spicy debut memoir begins with an awkward sexual episode (the first of many to come) and ends with a genuinely heartfelt epiphany. He writes of being a sensitive Jewish child growing up in South Florida, where the heat was oppressive. School and summer camp were uncomfortable, he says, for a precocious young boy who explored gay sex at an early age. The accompanying guilt and shame made him swear off sex until he was in his early 30s, despite his high sex drive. Compounding these issues was his burgeoning obsessive-compulsive disorder and a platonic affinity for women—particularly for his junior high school teacher Sylvia Bastaja, whose life would later end suddenly. As a young man, Sabarra took solace in food, ballooned to 175 pounds and underwent several fat-reduction surgeries. His fascination with film in college manifested itself in an internship at the soap opera Guiding Light. The baby-faced author honed his schmoozing technique on set with Hollywood stars and soon rocketed up the executive chain at a major Hollywood studio. The memoir’s sex scenes flow as freely as the lavish name-dropping after he comes out to his parents and begins to date again. However, the book’s G-rated anecdotes about his bar mitzvah, his trials in Little League baseball and his “Jewish T-Rex” college roommate are also delightfully funny, painting the author as a man who struggled with youthful insecurities but emerged as a gleefully self-confident adult. Sabarra also offers insider details about his tumultuous friendship with the actress and talk show host Ricki Lake and his flings with actor Alan Cumming, figure skater Johnny Weir and a deeply troubled porn star with mild Tourette’s syndrome, which leads to the book’s most undeniably moving scenes. The narrative’s pacing can be sluggish, and the book’s title is potentially misleading. However, that shouldn’t deter readers from picking up this heartfelt, honest autobiography.

Sabarra’s multitiered chronicle is salacious and provocative yet also intimate on a whole different level.