NONFICTION - March 17, 1996

YOU’LL NEVER MAKE LOVE IN THIS TOWN AGAIN by Robin, Liza, Linda and Tiffany. (Dove Books: $22.95; 251 pp.) Collected here are the stories of four Hollywood prostitutes (two of them worked for Heidi Fleiss): how they got into this particular line of work, whom they slept with, who treated them well and who treated them badly.

The two really sad parts of the book are the preface, a rather lame attempt to politicize the stories (“The real reason they [prostitutes] get paid is for their silence. . . . Ninety percent of all arrests are prostitutes and 10% are customers. . . . ‘You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again’ breaks the code of silence--the conspiracy--and tells the stories of the young women who found themselves trapped in a lie”) and the page-long descriptions of each woman that precede the stories (which actually read like Playboy centerfold advertisements for the purpose of attracting new clients, not like descriptions of people wanting career changes). Each one, under “Goals and Desires” writes something to the effect of “get married and have a normal life.”

What makes the preface so sad is that it is the voice of a world whose expectations have absolutely nothing to do with the planet Robin, Liza, Tiffany and Linda live on. The idea that this book changes anything about Hollywood and its sex life is a joke. And the disappointment of these women when someone they don’t even charge because they like him treats them less than romantically, or even respectfully, is even more absurd. Each one of them had just as many, if not more, choices than most women (thanks to their beauty and their middle-class upbringing), and they chose prostitution. Now it’s as if they can’t get out of what they’ve become, even if they really want to.