Review: The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage

Roxana Shirazi led a double life as a scholar and groupie, and spares none of the dirty details

By Erin Petersen
Published: July 14th, 2010 | 6:55pm

The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage, the latest release from Harper Collins imprint Igniter was touted to make Pamela Des Barres' I'm With the Band read "like pages from a nun's diary" in comparison, removing the romantic soft-focus of des Barres' memoir and replacing it with a gritty and honest depiction of the innate chauvinism in male-dominated rock n' roll.

Roxana Shirazi was born in Tehran into a family of liberals and political activists, most of whom were jailed and killed under the Shah. Her depictions of childhood are bittersweet as she seems to articulate her upbringing through the voice of her five year old self, even when describing the most horrific of experiences. Peppered throughout her nostalgic memories of a loving grandmother, her favorite Iranian dishes and the first time she recognized her own sexual nature are glimpses of sexual abuse. Like most cultural and religious backgrounds concerned with propriety, her abuse was either unknown or unspoken, and Shirazi was left to deal with the emotional and physical effects on her own.

At the age of ten, she was sent to live in England. She struggles for some semblance of "home" only to be met with ignorance and alienation. Even in these earlier chapters, the author's words are laced with sexuality as Shirazi talks about her sexual self-discovery in early adolescence.

In 2004, desperate to sate a craving for all things wild, she delves into the world of backstage with nu-metal groups like Avenged Sevenfold and Papa Roach. Or in some cases, the latest incarnations of the ghosts of rock n' roll past with former members of Motley Crue, Guns n' Roses and Stereophonics.

Over the next four years she leads a double life.By day she's studying for her master's degree and lecturing around London. On the weekends she lives in seedy hotels and on tour buses with a handful of bands touring across Europe, engaging in all sorts of exciting debauchery along the way. Shirazi doesn't beat around the bush on anything, and describes each encounter (and she names names) in lascivious detail, to the point that it's uncomfortable and eventually gratuitous.

Roxana becomes infamous, much to her delight and later, chagrin. She thought she would find a free love playground, but instead found rules and etiquette: you don't sleep with any of the "openers," and roaming freely between tour buses comes at a price. In the end, boys in the band can bed as many people as they like without negative repercussions, but women, they're just...sluts.

What's unfortunate is that Shirazi's observations on this alpha-male culture and female stigmatization seem like a mere afterthought in the shadow of the egregious amount of space devoted to the viscosity of her orgasmic by-product, the all-night orgies, the girl-on-girl action and the author's own text message battles with washed-up rock stars. In the end, her consistently redundant prose comes out depleted of any philosophic musings about sex, sexuality and pleasure, and reads more like the script of a porno flick.