Set in 1970 -- the last, dark days of hippiedom, when everyone was high --
Perv is the story of Bobby Stark, a sixteen-year-old bundle of angst and hormones who loses his virginity in a drug-addled tryst with a one-armed barber's daughter. His best friend, Tennie Toad, rats him out, and Bobby gets kicked out of prep school and shipped to Pittsburgh to live with his mom, a sozzled electroshock aficionado who still can't get over the insult of Bobby's father's suicide-by-streetcar. After myriad weird encounters with his mother's "dates," Bobby flees the horrors of Mom's condo and hooks up with Michelle, the girl of his dreams, a lapsed Hare Krishna-ette he's known since kindergarten. The couple decides, in the spirit of the times, to hitch to San Francisco. But before they make mile one, they're picked up by a pair of Bad Hippies -- Meat and Varnish -- spiritual cousins to Charles Manson. The adventure gets harrowing, as the duo narrowly escape rape, vanquish their assailants, and stagger from Meat's hell-fueled Lincoln Continental transformed, traumatized, and ready, of all things, to fall in love.
Set in 1970 -- the last, dark days of hippiedom, when everyone was high--Perv is the story of Bobby Stark, a sixteen-year-old bundle of angst and hormones who loses his virginity in a drug-addled tryst with a one-armed barber's daughter. His best friend, Tennie Toad, rats him out, and Bobby gets kicked out of prep school and shipped to Pittsburgh to live with his mom, a sozzled electroshock aficionado who still can't get over the insult of Bobby's father's suicide-by-streetcar. After myriad weird encounters with his mother's "dates," Bobby flees the horrors of Mom's condo and hooks up with Michelle, the girl of his dreams, a lapsed Hare Krishna-ette he's known since kindergarten. The couple decides, in the spirit of the times, to hitch to San Francisco. But before they make mile one, they're picked up by a pair of Bad Hippies -- Meat and Varnish -- spiritual cousins to Charles Manson. The adventure gets harrowing, as the duo narrowly escape rape, vanquish their assailants, and stagger from Meat's hell-fueled Lincoln Continental transformed, traumatized, and ready, of all things, to fall in love.
Set in 1970--the last, dark days of hippiedom, when everyone was high--Perv is the story of Bobby Stark, a sixteen-year-old bundle of angst and hormones who loses his virginity in a drug-addled tryst with a one-armed barber's daughter. His best friend, Tennie Toad, rats him out, and Bobby gets kicked out of prep school and shipped to Pittsburgh to live with his mom, a sozzled electroshock aficionado who still can't get over the insult of Bobby's father's suicide-by-streetcar. After myriad weird encounters with his mother's "dates," Bobby flees the horrors of Mom's condo and hooks up with Michelle, the girl of his dreams, a lapsed Hare Krishna-ette he's known since kindergarten. The couple decides, in the spirit of the times, to hitch to San Francisco. But before they make mile one, they're picked up by a pair of Bad Hippies--Meat and Varnish--spiritual cousins to Charles Manson. The adventure gets harrowing, as the duo narrowly escape rape, vanquish their assailants, and stagger from Meat's hell-fueled Lincoln Continental transformed, traumatized, and ready, of all things, to fall in love.
Jerry Stahl is the author of the narcotic memoir Permanent Midnight and Perv—a Love Story, both Los Angeles Times bestsellers, as well as the acclaimed novels Pain Killers, Plainclothes Naked, and I, Fatty. He has written extensively for film and television.
