Women Pursuing New and Old Professions

THE ONLY BUSH I TRUST IS MY OWNBy Periel Aschenbrand 197 pp., Tarcher/Penguin .95.

DIARY OF A MARRIED CALL GIRLBy Tracy Quan 318 pp., Three Rivers Press .95.

FORTY years ago Andy Warhol predicted that "in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." A decade later he revised that to "in 15 minutes everyone will be famous." Now the concept gets another update: With eight words, Periel Aschenbrand will be famous.

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Two years ago the Eve-tressed Ms. Aschenbrand, slender as a Chupa Chup stick, was teaching philosophy to college-bound students in a summer arts camp when she came up with an extracurricular activity far more fashionable than lariat braiding: silk-screening confrontational political statements on T-shirts. One student printed a shirt that read, "Larry Kramer for President"; another shirt read, "Rwanda." Ms. Aschenbrand, thinking ahead to the 2004 presidential race, printed a shirt that read, "The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own."

When she returned to Los Angeles, she strolled into a boutique, wearing her creation, and the owner commissioned a batch on the spot. The fashion designer Betsey Johnson dropped by the shop and bought a pair, and when Ms. Johnson met Ms. Aschenbrand at a fund-raiser soon after, she hailed her as a "creative genius" in an encounter noted in Women's Wear Daily.

Since then Ms. Aschenbrand has founded an "anti-clothing line" called Body as Billboard, has enlisted politically conscious feminist luminaries like Susan Sarandon, Eve Ensler and Gloria Steinem to pose for photos in her signature shirt and has now published a chronicle of her apotheosis, a slim, jaunty addition to the annals of exhibitionism.

In the book she discourses chattily on her family, sex (usually with women), Mormonism, Judaism, hemorrhoids, waitressing, Salman Rushdie and coprophilia - in the manner of a female Howard Stern. Like a Stern broadcast, Ms. Aschenbrand's narrative is both random and unsavorily compelling.

You might think a woman who could cause such a hoo-ha would make a mother proud, but the person Ms. Aschenbrand refers to as Mommy still worries, as the book attests. "Are you provoking people?" Mommy asks when her daughter calls from an anti-Bush rally during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Later she frets, "I tried so hard to bring you up properly, and this is how you behave, it's terrible."

It's hard to be both a dutiful daughter and a provocateur, and Ms. Aschenbrand has made her choice.

In Tracy Quan's novel "Diary of a Married Call Girl" (the sequel to "Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl") the high-rent trollop Nancy Chan balances the duties of wifehood and hookerdom, putting a new spin on multitasking. "I should be the kind of wife who can turn a trick at 3 p.m. and help her man decide between boxers and briefs a few hours later without raising a hint of suspicion," she reproaches herself, while rushing home from a threesome at the Waldorf. Ah, the innocent insecurities of the new bride!

Eager to please her investment banker husband, Matt, but determined not to give her career short shrift because "I've been married to the business for much longer than I've known Matt," she agonizes that cozy Sundays at home are dulling her competitive edge in the flesh trade. Worse, they're "totally clashing with my quota."

Nancy is committed to standing by her man, but she is equally committed to standing by her men: Colin, Darren, Terry, Milt, Roland and whoever else buzzes her hot phone. Spending her days toting fuzz-lined handcuffs, high heels and Reddi-wip to hotel rooms and snuggeries about town, she returns home in time to stash her loot under the sink and to steam trout in bay leaves for dinner with Matt.

Why does Nancy bother to hook when she doesn't need the money? Never mind. Nancy is not a navel gazer (at least not of her own navel), and at heart she is a creature of habit. "I've been faithful to the business since my teens," she boasts. In short she's been living life on automatic-harlot for so long that she can't conceive of another way to spend her time.

Nancy Chan's double life is a salty, saucy concoction - "Belle de Jour" meets the "Robyn Bird Show" - that doesn't bear close scrutiny: it's the kind of fantasy that someone who books a tryst at the Waldorf might want to believe in, but that anyone else would consult chiefly as a novelty tip book. Certainly any husband who thinks his wife is using Ms. Quan's novel as a career planner might want to cut back his time at the office.

It's said that when a woman marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattentions of one. Nancy says, don't be so sure.

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