I Am Not Myself These Days (2006)

Imagine that you leave work at a high-pressure Manhattan ad agency one night, bleary-eyed because you were performing in drag at a nightclub the evening prior. On the foyer floor of your crack-addicted hustler boyfriend's apartment lies a naked businessman who's hog-tied and whimpering and begs to lick your boots. This jaw-dropping existence fueled Josh Kilmer-Purcell for years before he finally crashed. His trenchant memoir, I Am Not Myself These Days, 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 Wisconsin boyhood are particularly wrenching.) Dating ''Jack'' was another full-time job for Kilmer-Purcell, who had to know that they'd never find happily-ever-after. Remarkably, he retells the saga of their doomed affair with levelheaded grace.