Title: In The Flesh - Undressing for Success Author: Dillard, Gavin Geoffrey Published by: Barricade Books, 1998 ISBN: 1-56980-118-5 [hardcover, 249 pages]
It was sex, drugs, and disco dancing. And the strobe lights were focused on Gavin Geoffrey Dillard - young, gorgeous, and gay. The bathhouses were packed, pleasure was the top priority, and nobody had heard of AIDS.Gavin Dillard's story, frankly and vividly told, is of the wealthiest and most famous of the Hollywood scene, but it is also of baking bread in a Virginia monastery, chumming with flying saucers, channeling disembodied spooks, and searching for spiritual enlightenment with a bizarre cult.
Gavin came from a rural Southern family that could have taken up several hours on the Jenny Jones show. He fled as soon as he could and thumbed his way to Los Angeles, where at Cal-Arts he ended up suite-mates with Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Rubens.
But young Gavin found he could learn a lot more off-campus, cruising with his rich friend, Craig, hitting the bars, cleansing their brains with LSD, and living in a lane faster than most Americans could have imagined.
Then, in the great Hollywood tradition, Gavin was "discovered" and landed the starring role - in a porno film. Suddenly he was in a world where fluffers weren't for plumping pillows and getting prepared was more than learning your lines. His billboard was featured on La Cienega Boulevard, and some of the most powerful men in the industry wanted his number.
In the Flesh is a riveting, unabashed chronicle not just of Dillard's own sexploits, spiritual journeys, and artistic endeavors, but of every cultural wave and passing fad to hit America in the past thirty years. Wild and breathtaking, sexy and inspiring, sometimes hilarious, other times dark, it's a harrowing portrait of the '70s and '80s - and a one-of-a-kind autobiography of a man who took those years by storm.
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