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I Am Not Myself These Days | 
 enlarge | Author: Josh Kilmer-purcell
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Category: EBooks
List Price: $10.95
Buy New: $8.76
You Save: $2.19 (20%)
Rating:  68 reviews
Sales Rank: 8521
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.77809747
ASIN: B001CDA3K6
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Amazon.com Review
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 in search of 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 even as Josh's escapades get increasingly absurd, Kilmer-Purcell is always there to remind us that the story we're reading is real, and that fundamental human emotions and desires are essentially universal. In the end, everyone just wants to be loved and to fit in somewhere. And while 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 always a blockbuster night at gay clubs. Thousands... across the city fortifying themselves for long trips home where they'll 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 extraordinary journey into an amazing life. To be a fly on the wall is an adventure that should not be missed. --Gisele Toueg
Product Description
I Am Not Myself These Days follows a glittering journey through Manhattan's dark underbelly -- a shocking and surreal world where alter egos reign and subsist (barely) on dark wit and chemicals...a tragic romantic comedy where one begins by rooting for the survival of the relationship and ends by hoping someone simply survives. Kilmer-Purcell is a terrifically gifted new literary voice who straddles the divide between absurdity and normalcy, and stitches them together with surprising humor and lonely poignancy. As Booklist raved "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.'"
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| Customer Reviews: Read 63 more reviews...
 What's it like being a gay Drag Queen in NYC? November 4, 2008
This book is both a small trip of New York and an intimate and skewed look of a man looking for himself and his place in the world. His somewhat shocking job, his transformation, his partying and his relationships. It is an interesting read, and you will often feel as if you were peeking trough a window and looking at something that you probably weren't meant to see.
Overall a good read.
 a world that is very far from my own, but very entertaining! September 25, 2008
This book is a fast read, it is harsh, fun, sad, crazy and amazing. the writer's ability to take you into a world of drag queens, gay male escorts, crack addiction, S&M -- all with a sense of humor and honesty. The characters go through a lot in a short time, not even a year in NY and Josh had experienced tons of things.. good and not so good! I read the book in less than a week, it is a fast read, partly because you dont want to put it down, you just want to know what happens to these very flawed people. this is a great book, and one i'm very glad i was able to read.
warts and all is an understatement... June 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I guess it always amazes me when people write books about their lives and just lay it all out there for the world and their mothers to see. Mr. Kilmer-Purcell pulls a chunk of his life from when he first landed in New York and covers the good--meeting a rich guy with a nice apartment, the bad--drug and alcohol addiction, and the ugly--the crash and burn when it all crashes down, a drunk drag queen the morning after, etc. As a comparison you could say it's sort of like Augusten Burroughs book Magical Drinking as they are both advertising copy guys who drink and drug a whole lot. It's funny how that particular career seems to have generated a number of writers and also amazing how they continue to drink and drug yet never manage to be fired or lose their jobs. I did enjoy the book, he has a light breezy writing style that makes the funny and sad material compulsively readable. Being a 7 foot, in heels, drag queen named Aqua definitely portends itself to riotous happenings and there are quite a few related to good effect here. But it's his addictive compulsive relationship with his hustler crack addict boyfriend that drives the story along to it's ultimate ending. The fact that he has recovered himself enough now to be a writer and columnist for Out Magazine seems like it could be a story in itself. Somehow you want to know how he managed to clean himself up after the extreme highs and lows he went through all in years time, hopefully in the next non-fiction book he does he will cover it. I do recommend this book, not only as an enjoyable read but a handbook of what NOT to do when you first move to New York.
Easily the Best Book I've Ever Encountered May 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There is really not much to say about Kilmer-Purcell's 'I Am Not Myself These Days'. Simply put, it is my favorite book, a beautiful book, a book that I have read to pieces, scribbled thoughts in, and highlighted to smithereens. This book changed my life (how cliche) and I have since passed it on to no less than 10 of my friends, all of whom have written in the margins and underlined passages that scream out to them.
Read this book.
Wonderful writer April 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You will not want to put this book down. Look for Josh's next book which will be available in May.
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