I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir (P.S.)

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Description

The New York Times bestselling, darkly funny memoirof a young New Yorker’s daring dual life—advertising art director by day,glitter-dripping drag queen and nightclub beauty-pageant hopeful by night—was asmash literary debut for Josh Kilmer-Purcell, now known for his popular PlanetGreen television series The Fabulous Beekman Boys.His story begins here—before the homemade goat milk soaps and hand-gatheredhoneys, before his memoir of the city mouse’s move to the country, TheBucolic Plague—in I Am Not Myself These Days,  with “quite a few dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight” (WashingtonPost).
I Am Not Myself These Days is Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s outrageously intimate memoir of a young man living a double life in the heady days and nights of mid-’90s New York City. As we follow Kilmer-Purcell through alcohol-fueled nights and a love affair with Jack, a crack-addicted male escort, he offers up an alternative universe where normal is “a Normal Rockwell painting that, if you leaned in close, would discover is made up entirely of misfits.”

By day, Josh drudges off to a Soho-based advertising firm where he creates ad campaigns for corporate clients. At night, he dons live goldfish to complete the look of Aqua, a 7-foot-tall award-winning drag queen who trolls gay clubs looking for her next drink/one night stand. In between, he spends his time trying to build a stable, loving relationship with someone whose beeping pager is a constant reminder of the pair’s almost inevitable fate. Yet at the same time as Josh’s escapades get more and more absurd, Kilmer-Purcell is at all times there to remind us that the story we’re reading is real, and that fundamental human emotions and desires are essentially universal. In spite of everything, everyone just wants to be loved and to fit in somewhere. And whilst the lesson may seem hokey at times, Kilmer-Purcell’s sharp wit rescues the memoir from becoming an exaggerated sob story:

The night before any major holiday is at all times a blockbuster night at gay clubs. Thousands… across the city fortifying themselves for long trips home where they’re going to be met with awkward silences, stilted conversations and cousins with whom they’d experimented with decades ago.

From start to finish, I Am Not Myself These Days is an peculiar journey into an amazing life. To be a fly on the wall is an adventure that are meant to not be missed. –Gisele Toueg

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