My Booky Wook
A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up
By Russell Brand
Collins
Copyright © 2009
Russell Brand
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-173041-2
Chapter One
April Fool
On the morning of April Fools' Day, 2005, I woke up in a
sexual addiction treatment center in a suburb of
Philadelphia. As I limped out of the drab dog's bed in
which I was expected to sleep for the next thirty
wankless nights, I observed the previous incumbent had
left a thread of unravelled dental floss by the
pillow-most likely as a noose for his poor, famished
dinkle.
When I'd arrived the day before, the counselors had
taken away my copy of the
Guardian, as there was a
depiction of the Venus de Milo on the front page of the
Culture section, but let me keep the
Sun, which
obviously had a Page 3 lovely. What kind of pervert
police force censors a truncated sculpture but lets
Keeley Hazell pass without question? "Blimey, this
devious swine's got a picture of a concrete bird with no
arms-hanging's too good for him, to the incinerator!
Keep that picture of stunner Keeley though." If they
were to censor London Town they would ignore Soho but
think that the statue of Alison Lapper in Trafalgar
Square had been commissioned by Caligula.
Being all holed up in the aptly named KeyStone clinic
(while the facility did not have its own uniformed
police force, the suggestion of bungling silent film
cops is appropriate) was an all too familiar drag. Not
that I'd ever been incarcerated in sex chokey before,
lord no, but it was the umpteenth time that I'd been
confronted with the galling reality that there are
things over which I have no control and people who can
force their will upon you. Teachers, sex police, actual
police, drug counselors; people who can make you sit in
a drugless, sexless cell either real or metaphorical and
ponder the actuality of life's solitary essence. In the
end it's just you. Alone.
Who needs that grim reality stuffed into their noggin of
a morning? Not me. I couldn't even distract myself with
a wank over that gorgeous slag Venus de Milo; well,
she's asking for it, going out all nude, not even
wearing any arms.
The necessity for harsh self-assessment and acceptance
of death's inevitability wasn't the only thing I hated
about that KeyStone place. No, those two troubling
factors vied for supremacy with multitudinous bastard
truths. I hated my fucking bed: the mattress was sponge,
and you had to stretch your own sheet over this
miserable little single divan in the corner of the room.
And I hated the fucking room itself where the strangled
urges of onanism clung to the walls like mildew. I
particularly hated the American gray squirrels that were
running around outside-just free, like idiots, giggling
and touching each other in the early spring sunshine.
The triumph of these little divs over our indigenous,
noble, red, British squirrel had become a searing
metaphor for my own subjugation at the hands of the
anti-fuck-Yanks. To make my surrender to conformity more
official I was obliged to sign this thing (see page 6).
I wish I'd been photographed signing it like when a
footballer joins a new team grinning and holding a pen.
Or that I'd got an attorney to go through it with a
fine-tooth comb: "You're gonna have to remove that no
bumming clause," I imagine him saying. Most likely
you're right curious as to why a fella who plainly
enjoys how's yer father as much as I do would go on a
special holiday to "sex camp" (which is a misleading
title as the main thrust of their creed is "no
fucking"). The short answer is I was forced. The long
answer is this ...
Many people are skeptical about the idea of what I like
to call "sexy addiction," thinking it a spurious notion,
invented primarily to help Hollywood film stars evade
responsibility for their unrestrained priapic excesses.
But I reckon there is such a thing.
Addiction, by definition, is a compulsive behavior that
you cannot control or relinquish, in spite of its
destructive consequences. And if the story I am about to
recount proves nothing else, it demonstrates that this
formula can be applied to sex just as easily as it can
be to drugs or alcohol.
Having successfully rid myself, one day at a time, in my
twenties, of parallel addictions to the ol' drugs and
drinks-if you pluralize drink to drinks and then discuss
it with the trembling reverence that alcoholics tend to,
it's funny, e.g., "My life was destroyed by drinks," "I
valued drinks over my wife and kids." Drinks! I imagine
them all lined up in bottles and glasses with malevolent
intent, the bastards-I was now, at this time, doing a
lot of monkey business.
I have always accrued status and validation through my
indiscretions (even before I attained the unique
accolade of "Shagger of the Year" from the Sun-not
perhaps the greatest testimonial to the good work they
do at KeyStone), but sex is also recreational for me. We
all need something to help us unwind at the end of the
day. You might have a glass of wine, or a joint, or a
big delicious blob of heroin to silence your silly
brainbox of its witterings, but there has to be some
form of punctuation, or life just seems utterly
relentless.
And this is what sex provides for me-a breathing space,
when you're outside of yourself and your own head.
Especially in the actual moment of climax, where you
literally go, "Ah, there's that, then. I've unwound.
I've let go." Not without good reason do the French
describe an orgasm as a "little death." That's exactly
what it is for me (in a good way though, obviously)-a
little moment away, a holiday from my head. I hope death
is like a big French orgasm, although meeting Saint
Peter will be embarrassing, all smothered in grog and
shrouded in post-orgasmic guilt.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from My Booky Wook
by Russell Brand
Copyright © 2009 by Russell Brand .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.