Title: Ivy League Stripper Author: Heidi Mattson Publisher: Arcade Publishing Publish Date: 1995 Pages: 288 Genres:: Biography,Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

Rating:

Mattson’s story is a tale of a smart girl who thinks she is doing bad. How could someone so smart…so wise…so clever…be a stripper? Shocking! This "story" is told in 250 plus pages, the length mainly achieved through Mattson’s acute attention to useless detail and pointless personal stories, all of which leaves the reader wondering, “Should I stop by Brown and pick up an application?”

Unreadable, self congratulatory and boring lead the list of reactions to the first 180 pages. Sure, there is a groping incident with a Rabbi, but who hasn’t ridden a subway to Brooklyn and experienced the hand of a wandering Rabbi? There must be more to this story!

There is. A relationship with a mobster has promise but, like the book, the tale is lost because there is no point beyond the telling of it. She learned the finer points of book-making, true, and debt collecting, yes, but the use of this information and getting to the story of how she ran bets and collections with the wise guys of Providence, Rhode Island would just put the reader to sleep.

And if she did enter the gambling trade, it can be safely assumed Mattson did everything right, as another flaw, besides being void of plot, is that she is too smart. Too smart to get hooked on drugs; too smart to be having sex with the guys that have wads of bills in their pockets; too smart to make any mistakes that would make this story interesting. She handles all situations like a pro, but unfortunately unlike a real Pro. Confrontations at the club - Heidi deals coolly. Heckled by drunken frat boys - Heidi handles them like a seasoned comedian. What’s the point?

Ending the book was obviously a task for Mattson. Her final account deals with a heavy breather that keeps calling her and talks of jacking-off on her lingerie. Now, things may be heating up! A perv from the club? A stalker? Depraved brother? Danger? Action? No, it is all a set up for an anecdote that leads to the final words of her book, the moral of her story, “so much for stereotypes.” Reader breaks down and cries, “I could’ve opened the dictionary!”

College, for many, is a place where things are done that parents shouldn’t know about. But Mattson obsesses about her guilt over her college years while failing to realize people are doing much worse on her campus. That Ivy League Smack Addict would be more of a story. “You did what for that man?” “It was the drugs dad. I needed money to get drugs.” Private School Peeping Tom is another. “You get expelled from school for that?” “I guess so, dad.” But the Heidi Mattson story, in all of its self-inflicted glory, leaves the reader wishing Heidi would take down the braids, put something up her nose and jump the bones of the clubs janitor in a drunken drugged-out craze (her father himself was a custodian). Then she’d have a story to tell that might be worth the read. IvyLeagueStripper

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