FISH TITS

In his flawed but entertaining new memoir I Am Not Myself These Days, Josh Kilmer-Purcell depicts his life as an alcoholic drag queen and his tempestuous love affair with a high-priced prostitute and crack addict named Jack. Its blend of wry humor and pathos recalls Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs' s account of growing up amid crazy people (By the way, the film adaptation of Scissors comes out in September, featuring Annette Bening as Augusten's totally bonkers mommy).

The best bits in I Am Not Myself These Days capture Kilmer-Purcell's wild drag queen exploits. By day he works for an advertising agency, but at night he becomes Aqua, a 7-foot tall (with boots, of course) wonder woman who fills two clear plastic globes with water and goldfish, seals them, and uses them as prosthetic breasts. Now why didn't I think of that when I took to the stage for a drag competition in college?

Like anyone who lives precariously close to the edge, Kilmer-Purcell pays a heavy price for his excess. As a result of spending too much time in bars and clubs, he develops a penchant for vodka that all but embalms him. And he only catches about two hours of sleep a night, showing up every morning at work with bloodshot eyes and a stormy stomach.

But at least he finds love. Well, sort of. He meets and moves in with Jack, a sex worker who fetches up to $20,000 per weekend for playing Daddy to sadomasochists with names like Houdini. Jack provides deluxe apartment accomodations for our narrator, but he also goes on crack smoking jags that leave him with burnt lips and a tendency toward violent outbursts.

Kilmer-Purcell is a talented writer who frequently delivers great punchlines and poetic observations of relationships and city life. But even at a modest 305 pages, it often feels like he's stretching the material to its absolute limit. Perhaps he makes constant references to his vodka ingestion to prove that his addiction never let up, but that doesn't make it any less tiresome to read repetitive, unimaginitive descriptions of him swigging down gulps of firewater. And though he is an undeniably funny fellow, some of his humor is way too pat to be satisfying.

Perhaps I Am Not Myself These Days would have packed a bigger punch had it been a long magazine article, or a contribution to a book of personal essays about drag queens. As it stands, it's still an admirable book. And it's a quick read, so it' s easy to forgive its shortcomings because it won't eat up much of your time.