William Leith

A sex vampire on wheels

Who suffered most compiling this painful, frank record of sex- and drug-addiction: Jack Sutherland, or his ghostwriter father John?

The title of this book tells you a lot. Jack Sutherland, who grew up in London and Los Angeles, worked as a personal assistant to Michael Stipe, the singer in REM and, later, to Mickey Rourke. He also worked as a limo driver in Hollywood. A drug addict, he gravitated toward crystal meth, which can make you both wired and horny, sometimes for days on end. So we know to expect a particular brew of glamour, indignity and recrimination that perhaps some readers (including me) have come to enjoy.

Sutherland certainly delivers — with a bit of glamour, an awful lot of indignity and not too much recrimination. But there’s something else going on here. This book is a collaboration between Jack the addict and his adoptive father John Sutherland. Jack told his life story to John, and John turned Jack’s words into a book. Jack is dyslexic. John is the emeritus Lord Northcliffe professor of English Literature at University College, London, and the author of many books, including Last Drink to LA, the story of his own (raging) alcoholism.

So, as you read Jack’s story — the disturbed childhood, the alcoholic father, the gay teenage sex, the drugs and so on — you can’t help thinking of John, listening to Jack, and seeing himself through Jack’s eyes. ‘I learned to smell, at a yard’s distance, whether there was alcohol on his breath. That might well mean a bad night,’ says Jack of John.

Jack describes his first sexual experience. It happened in Griffith Park, in Los Angeles: ‘He knelt and went down on me,’ says Jack, ‘after slobbering all over me and feeling my nipples.’ And then: ‘I jerked him off.’ And then: ‘He climaxed.’ And then: ‘He upped and left.’

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