I Am Not Myself These Days

From Barnes & Noble

By day, Josh Kilmer-Purcell was a successful advertising executive; by night, he was a seven-foot-tall drag queen named Aquadisiac who sashayed around Manhattan's gay clubs in wig and heels, sporting giant transparent bubble breasts containing live goldfish. At that point, Josh's flamboyant public life was still relatively normal; he hadn't yet hooked up with male escort Jack, his crackhead Very Significant Other. I Am Not Myself These Days recounts a downward spiral so extreme that it leaves you reeling.

Simon Doonan

"I laughed. I cried. I laughed again. I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS is tawdry and brilliantly witty."

Armistead Maupin

"...absolutely hilarious and heartbreaking and heartfelt."

review by Audrey Brockhaus

"...Outrageously vulgar, unexpectedly moving, and one of the most sincere love stories I’ve read in a long time. "

HX Magazine

"Though Aqua is retired, her wit lives on in I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS, with priceless one-liners aplenty."

BookSense review by Audrey Brockhaus

“...Outrageously vulgar, unexpectedly moving, and one of the most sincere love stories I’ve read in a long time. ”

Advertising Age

"...a good read, as you’d expect."

Metro

"Funny and wise."

Adweek

"The book is at once a sensational memoir and...a universal love story."

Dallas Voice

"Kilmer-Purcell acheives the near-impossible task of getting jaded readres to root for this screwed-up pair..."

Book Sense

Book Sense Pick for March 2006

Zink Magazine

"...this life-altering (and ultimately heartbreaking) love story crawls deep into your veins."

Out Magazine

"...the book goes deeper, ultimately telling what is a painfully dysfunctional love story..."

Chicago Sun-Times

"...it’s one hell of a spellbinding read."

Washington Post

"...plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight."

InsideOut Nashville

" Through the varied and raucous details of his life experience, Kilmer-Purcell ...renders himself more accessible to all readers."

Booklist

"…a very entertaining read… 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.’"

Nashville City Paper

"...an exotic, whirlwind tale of an unconventional life."

Buzz Magazine

"...a talented new voice."

Elle

Recipient of Elle‘s Readers’ Prize 2006

Jezebel Magazine

"While Kilmer-Purcell’s way of life may be uncommon, his feelings of love, betrayal, loss and hope are universal."

HX magazine

“Though Aqua is retired, her wit lives on in I AM NOT MYSELF THESE DAYS, with priceless one-liners aplenty.”

The New York Blade

"...decadent and delirious, weird and wonderful."

Washington Post

“...plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight.”

Chicago Sun-Times

“...it’s one hell of a spellbinding read.”

Out Magazine

“...the book goes deeper, ultimately telling what is a painfully dysfunctional love story...”

Adweek

“The book is at once a sensational memoir and...a universal love story.”

Metro

“Funny and wise.”

Booklist

“…a very entertaining read… 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.’”

Elle

Recipient of Elle‘s Readers’ Prize 2006

Buzz Magazine

“...a talented new voice.”

Advertising Age

“...a good read, as you’d expect.”

Nashville City Paper

“...an exotic, whirlwind tale of an unconventional life.”

Dallas Voice

“Kilmer-Purcell acheives the near-impossible task of getting jaded readres to root for this screwed-up pair...”

Zink Magazine

“...this life-altering (and ultimately heartbreaking) love story crawls deep into your veins.”

InsideOut Nashville

“ Through the varied and raucous details of his life experience, Kilmer-Purcell ...renders himself more accessible to all readers.”

Jezebel Magazine

“While Kilmer-Purcell’s way of life may be uncommon, his feelings of love, betrayal, loss and hope are universal.”

The New York Blade

“...decadent and delirious, weird and wonderful.”

Lily Burana

While I Am Not Myself These Days doesn't plumb the great queer-love depths or broaden to any kind of universal scope, it features plenty of dishy anecdotes and moments of tragi-camp delight. A favorite: "I don't care what Butterball.com says, the hardest part about cooking the perfect Thanksgiving dinner is avoiding the splinters of broken crack pipes that collect in the crevices of the kitchen floor." Not quite enough to bust the Me-bubble, but it keeps the pages turning.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

In the go-go '90s, Kilmer-Purcell spent his days as an advertising grunt and his nights hopping around Manhattan's gay clubs as "Aquadisiac," over seven feet tall in a wig and heels with goldfish swimming in transparent bubbles covering "her" breasts. (Not that Kilmer-Purcell wanted to actually become a woman; as he explains to his mother, a drag queen is "a celebrity trapped in a normal person's body.") He meets a cute guy, and soon he's moved into Jack's penthouse apartment-which he pays for by working as a male escort. Kilmer-Purcell gives much of his story a Sex and the City-ish spin, finding comedy in the contrast between his and Jack's sweet, cuddly relationship and the sexual demimonde of drag queens, hookers and masochists they count among their friends. But there's always a dark undercurrent: before the two get serious, Kilmer-Purcell's alcohol-impaired judgment frequently puts him in dangerous situations, but things get worse when Jack starts smoking crack during sex parties and becomes addicted. The exact, unpitying detail with which Kilmer-Purcell depicts his downward spiral makes it impossible to look away, especially since it's not until the final scenes that he allows himself to succumb to sentimentality. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Advertising executive and former award-winning drag queen Kilmer-Purcell can now add one more accomplishment to his r sum : promising new memoirist. This is the story, told through a haze of vodka rocks and cocaine, of the Wisconsin native's early days in 1990s New York City, when he lived an exhausting double life working in advertising by day and as a drag queen ("Aquadisiac" or "Aqua" for short) by night to earn rent money, entertain bar-goers, and feed an insatiable drinking habit. 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.-Mark Alan Williams, Library of Congress Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The true adventures of a drag queen named Aqua: her loves, her trials, her goldfish. Real-life stories from the fringe seem to be the latest trend in memoirs, and Kilmer-Purcell makes a stellar debut in this genre. An art director by day (at an unnamed downtown Manhattan advertising firm that any New Yorker with a grain of sense can identify from geographical clues), by night he was a performer in drag with a distinctive specialty: water-filled fake breasts containing live goldfish. Being the fabulous creature named Aqua was actually work, the author reveals. S/he emceed at club after club, striving to be relentlessly shocking and to create a glittery, glorious, train-wreck persona that forced people to pay attention. Actually, the few hundred bucks in an envelope under the bar helped more than the attention did. Late of a typical Midwestern upbringing, Kilmer-Purcell was new to the city but couldn't imagine himself anywhere else, no matter how awful his East Village living situation. So it was good that he met Jack and moved into a sparkling white Upper East Side penthouse in the sky. Who would leave New York under those circumstances, even though Jack paid for the place by working as a high-priced hooker? (In the book, he's never more than one page away from having to head out the door with a backpack full of toys.) The author doesn't try to pretend that working during the day and spending evenings at the clubs, vodka permanently attached to hand, wasn't fun. The way he tells it, he also had a strangely perfect relationship with Jack, who didn't allow his profession-plus attendant addictions and erratic behavior-to keep him from being a near-to-perfect boyfriend. But everything thatgoes up must come down, and Kilmer-Purcell meticulously records the collapse in 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.

From the Publisher

"As tart and funny as a Noël Coward play." —-Booklist