Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars

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He reveals a LOT about these famous people he knew (all of whom seem now to be gone); things which some feel would be better left unsaid (that is, if they're true). Bowers' illicit activities were never detected by the authorities; he kept all his contact information in his head. I’m more than willing to believe that he had threesomes with Noel Coward, or that Somerset Maugham would stage elaborate tableaus in which multiple couples (man/woman, man/man, woman/woman, group) would all perform in front him while he simply watched and sipped a drink.

But, if so, we will never know the full story: he is smart enough to know that that is not something to put in a memoir in the year 2012.I found the faux coyness the most irritating, where he'd dance around what he claimed two people (or more) did together, then in the next paragraph come out with thoroughly explicit language.

There are people taking issue with this book (mainly) because Bowers knew and had sex with many, many famous people. The pacing of the book is a bit uneven in places, choppy in others, and full of purple prose throughout (it's unclear, for example, why an account of his childhood on the farm needed to include a sentence like: "As my fingers tugged on the cow's soft teats, her warm milk squirted into the pail. It's not my place to characterize these events, obviously, but I found it really disturbing to read such a cavalier account of what was, legally, at bare minimum, repeated statutory rape. To hear him tell it, he’d been chased after sexually from a young age by all sorts of people – men, women, priests, people on his paper route. In so doing he exposes Hollywood's double standards: showbusiness relied on gay people and gay actors to make huge fortunes and create masterpieces and yet t it completely covered up and cancelled any hint of homosexuality, bisexuality and difference, instead portraying and propmoting the homogenisation of love and lust.That's surprising, given that 1) I am as far from being a prude as possible and 2) I found the documentary version intriguing enough to pick up this book in the first place. According to Bowers it wasn't abuse in the slightest; it was affection, it was natural, it was sex ed, and it led him to have a wonderfully high libido for the rest of his days. For almost his entire life - and for whatever reason - Bowers has been something of a sex machine and is almost completely unapologetic about it.