'Trash' isn't a word a reviewer should use lightly, its blanket negativity implying that he or she hasn't really thought about their subject. However, 'The Upskirt Exhibitionist' proves that no matter a critic's industry or intelligence, sometimes no other word is more fitting. Chapters are presented as the confessions of 'Annette', a young woman exploring her sexuality, obtained via e-mail and transcribed interview by Gordon. In their episodic, plodding dullness, they knock out a story – to say 'tell' would represent quite unworthy praise – that has no more finesse than a drunken stumble home from the pub.
Annette's flashing fetish is the driving force behind her sexual encounters. However, their formulaic similarity (mostly with older men in positions of informal or actual authority) and the language she uses gives the lie to the book's 'verbatim account' conceit. Does even the most rampant nymphomaniac make constant references to their 'young body' or seriously describe evidence of their arousal as 'sex milk'? No – outside of lazy, porn hack fantasy, no-one talks in this way, of course. And if they do they're in dire need of psychiatric intervention.
Our heroine's experiences with Derek (family friend and her father's boss who guarantees his promotion as long as she performs for him), set the tone for the following episodes of blackmail and degradation, seeming to come from a place of the darkest misogyny: on the one hand, Annette oscillates from being a puppet, an exploited victim, to exercising what she sees as power over these men and win from them cash and consumer durables. Actually, all she's really doing is whoring herself, a decision that is sold as a kind of empowerment. Tied in with this is the equally distasteful idea that during these assignations – the worst of which is a foursome boasting double penetrations, insults and added urine – Annette somehow revels in what is done to her even as she seems to loath it.
Tacky, nasty and sloppy, 'The Upskirt...' is as unappetising as a rotting bin bag. And like a bin bag, the best place for it is under fifty feet of landfill.