Just your typical boy-meets-boy-dressed-
as-girl-who-accessorizes-with-goldfish love story. (Only with booze and crack.) A darkly funny and brilliantly written noiresque memoir of a young New York City advertising art director by day/glittering nightclub drag queen by night, who finds himself struggling to keep his high heels grounded during a doomed romance with his penthouse-living, crack-addicted, male escort boyfriend.
PRAISE FOR
“I am not myself these days”:
!["heartwarming and hilarious and heartbreaking"
ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
"To say Kilmer-Purcell lived a double life is an understatement... A talented advertising copywriter by day and a popular drag queen by night, he was also a major alcohol and cocaine abuser and the inamorato/a of a professional male escort. Parts of his autobiography are as tart and funny as a Noel Coward play, for Kilmer-Purcell is especially good at dialogue, and as in Coward's best plays, under the comedy lies the sad truth that even at our best, we are all weak, fallible fools. Again and again in this rich, adventure-filled book, Kilmer-Purcell illustrates the truth of Blake's proverb, 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.'"
JACK HELBIG, booklist
"...a delicate narrative that spares not an ounce of pain but never once aims for contrition. Effortlessly entertaining yet still heartfelt; the romance of life as an escape artist."
KIRKUS REVIEWS
"jaw-dropping....[Josh Kilmer-Purcell's] trenchant memoir captures the madcap rush of the once-closeted arriviste's first brush with city life, a fall from innocence that still haunts him. (Passages recounting his idyllic boyhood are particularly wrenching.) Remarkably, he retells the saga of their doomed affair with levelheaded grace."
Entertainment Weekly
"Advertising executive and former award-winning drag queen Kilmer-Purcell can now add one more accomplishment to his resume: promising new memoirist…Filled with witty dialog, confusing awakenings, and extraordinary situations, the narrative also chronicles the author's struggle to build a conventional relationship with Jack, his male-escort boyfriend, even as Jack slips into an abyss of crack addiction. Readers will find this tale of good-boy-turned-bad-drag-queen darkly hilarious and entertaining, even as they realize they are watching lives unravel in slow motion. Highly recommended for all public and college libraries."
Library Journal.
"Josh's drag queen alter ego, Aqua, is so fragile, so funny, and so hopelessly self-destructive that you can't help but want to follow her into this story and somehow protect her from the freaks, crack heads, and ad execs she must face. Outrageously vulgar, unexpectedly moving, and one of the most sincere love stories I've read in a long time."
BookSense Pick
"plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight."
Washington Post Book World
"I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS is a glittering, bittersweet vision of an outsider who turned himself into the life and soul of the party. Kilmer-Purcell's cast is part freak-show, part soap-opera, but his prose is graced with such insight and wit that the laughter is revelatory, and the tears - and there are tears to be shed along this extraordinary journey - are shed for people in whom everybody will find something of themselves. In a word, wonderful."
CLIVE BARKER, author, filmmaker, artist
"Sex, drugs, money, men dressed as women, women trying to care for them, real jobs and pretend jobs, make-up and glitter and highheels and fake tits and goldfish, true love, doomed love, crazy stupid destructive love, big expensive apartments, dirty trash strewn alleys, heartbreak and loneliness, disco balls and dance clubs, pain pain pain and beautiful New York City, I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS is a wonderful book, a ridiculous book, a sad and beautiful book, a book I'll read again, a book I highly recommend."
JAMES FREY, author of "A Million Little Pieces", "My Friend Leonard"
"I laughed. I cried. I laughed again. I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS is tawdry and brilliantly witty."
SIMON DOONAN, author of "NASTY: My Family and Other Glamourous Varmints", ."](i_am_not_myself_these_days_files/shapeimage_2.png)
