She tipped her head sideways her lips offering themselves to his. He remembered the fire those lips contained the promise her kiss held. . . . In 1962 David Carkeet s drowsy hometown of Sonora California snapped awake at the news that it had inspired a smutty potboiler titled Campus Sexpot. Before leaving town on short notice the novel s author had been an English teacher at the local high school where Carkeet was a hormone-saturated sophomore. Leaving was a good idea it turned out for most of the characters in Campus Sexpot had been modeled after Sonora s citizens. Carkeet uproariously recaptures his stunned youthful reaction to the novel s sleazy take on his hometown. The innocent nowhere burg where he despaired of ever getting any action became in the pages of Campus Sexpot a sink of iniquity echoing with animal cries of delight. Blood pounded dams of passion broke and marriages and careers--not to mention the basics of good writing--went straight to hell. As Carkeet relates his own romantic fumblings to the novel s clumsy twists and turns he also evokes the urgently hushed atmosphere in which the book circulated among friends and neighbors. Eventually Carkeet stumbles into adulthood where he discovers a truer definition of manhood than the one in the pages of the pulp fiction of his youth. A wry look at middle-class sexual mores and a witty appreciation of the art of the hack novel Carkeet s memoir is above all a poignant and hilarious coming-of-age story sure to revive our own bittersweet teenage memories.