First published in 1989 and reissued multiple times, Tristes plaisirs (Sad Pleasures) remains a haunting, poetic, and deeply autobiographical account of Maud Marin’s years as a call girl in France. It is not just a memoir, it is a stark sociological document, a bruised love letter to the women who survive the sex trade, and a portrait of gendered suffering rendered with both tenderness and rage.
In her own words, Marin writes of the women who "mix the foam of pleasure with the tears of torment," a lyrical turn of phrase that captures the book’s central paradox: the intimacy of bodies shared not for desire, but for survival. Some women walk “like cattle, slow and serious, between a sidewalk and a squalid hotel.” Others drift between the glowing lights of the Champs-Élysées and the shadows of rue Saint-Denis, from hidden brothels to open-air working spots in the Bois de Boulogne. It’s a universe of contradictions, laced with cosmetics and fear, laughter and loss.
Maud Marin underwent vaginoplasty in Brussels at the age of 29, in 1974. Though she eventually secured recognition of her new legal identity, the streets did not let her go easily. For years, she worked under the control of the Zemour brothers’ gang, caught in a system where trans women were both desired and discarded. What makes Sad Pleasures so powerful is not just the content, but the voice. Marin writes from inside the experience, not above it. There’s no voyeurism here, no cheap sensationalism. Her prose is evocative, sometimes brutal, sometimes lyrical, always intimate. She captures the psychological toll of sex work, stage fright, trembling anxiety, dissociation, and the painful beauty of sisterhood among women living on the edge.
And yet, Marin’s story didn’t end in the shadows. With the support of Simone Veil, who vouched for her character when others would not, Marin transitioned from streetwalker to courtroom advocate. She studied law, earned her degree, and became the first openly transgender lawyer in France, perhaps even the world. Her past as a sex worker did not vanish; it became part of her legal mission. She fought for the rights of those still trapped where she once stood.
Marin’s career, however, was fraught with resistance. Though she began practicing in Paris, colleagues in the legal profession refused to fully accept her, citing her difference, both her gender identity and her unapologetic honesty. She eventually found a place at the Bobigny court in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the toughest jurisdictions in France. There, she defended the very people society preferred to forget: sex workers, immigrants, the marginalized.
By the early 2000s, financial hardship forced her to leave Paris for her mother’s house in Cahors. Attempts to rejoin the legal system through alternative routes failed, with the courts refusing to recognize the professional experience she had accumulated under her birth name, Jean Planchard. She retreated into rural solitude, living quietly “with her books and her memories.”
But Sad Pleasures remains. The book survives as her most enduring work, both literary and political. It is not just a story of prostitution, it is a story of forced invisibility, and the ongoing effort to be seen. Marin does not ask for pity. She asks for recognition.
In an era when trans stories are increasingly commodified or silenced, Tristes plaisirs still cuts through with unsettling clarity. It is a book that refuses to sanitize. It chronicles the cost of transition in a world that punishes difference, but also the fierce resilience that blooms in places most would rather not look.
Maud Marin gave those places names. And in doing so, she gave them history.
Available via amazon.com
and rakuten.com
Post a Comment