Getting Off: A Novel

Fiction. You can almost make just enough money to buy heroin every day by jacking off for people on the Internet. This is America. That makes you an entrepreneur. But how do you stop being human? Is it possible? What if you can't? What then? In this relentless, heart-shattering first novel, Jonathan Reiss gently takes your hand and leads you on a grand insider's tour of the nicest parts of hell, where giving up on everything is extremely hard work. "GETTING OFF is raunchy, sad, weird, smart, and riotously fun to read. Gross sex, drug shakes, LA, scary cults—what more can you ask for? Reiss has written a refreshingly dark book, with pretty much zero redemption for his characters but plenty of attention and love."—Paula Bomer "As soon as I read the first paragraph I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep till I'd finished. Because it was too real. Novels have endings, thank God."—Stoya "Jonathan Reiss is a real rocket ship of a writer. Wild and sad, GETTING OFF pops with complicated worlds of internet sex, dreams, and loss. This is a book full of web cam hook-ups and people wanting to be fucked by the ocean. It's a book asking you to show your chest and prove you're not a cop, even though we all are."—Scott McClanahan "Beautifully written, terribly sad, and frightfully funny. It's an experience almost so painful that you can't turn away from it, and it doesn't let up until it's finished. I loved it."—Sean Bonnette, cofounder of AJJ "A surprisingly affectionate novel...Reiss's sympathy for Simon—not to mention his sense of humor—carries his readers along on a trip that could have been tedious in the hands of a lesser storyteller. Neither Reiss nor Simon wallows in Simon's misery. Simon treats his sex work matter-of-factly; Reiss refuses to make jerking off for other men a straight guy's vision of absolute hell...Reiss sees the harm where it belongs—not in sexwork, but in the more overarching despair and primal self-loathing that causes and sustains most junkies' despair and self-destruction."—Ed Sikov "Much like its predecessors, such as Donald Goines's Dopefiend and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, Reiss doesn't shy away from showing the complete squalor a broke heroin addict lives in. . . . both disgusting and engaging, entertaining, and full of excellent writing...An excellent debut."—Ben Arzate