"I am not myself these days."

Excerpts from I am not myself these days, by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

"A wonderful book, a ridiculous book, a sad and beautiful book, a book I'll read again, a book I highly recommend."
-James Frey
(NOTE: this quote appears on the front cover of my first edition copy. If you enlarge the image at the right, taken from the website, James Frey's quote has been replaced. Damn Oprah!)






I had spent so much of my time growing up being afraid of being either too cool or too uncool. Fear eventually took over and became my default emotion. If I tried to be cool, I was afraid of disappointing my teachers and parents. If I stuck with the nerd kids, I had a nagging fear that I was missing out on something. I learned to become exactly what whomsoever I was with at the time expected me to be. Mostly I was afraid that if I didn't become what they wanted, then they would realize what I really was. A fey little faggoty kid hiding out in a small Wisconsin town. It was an exhausting dance.
When I finally came out, the first thing I wanted to get rid of was fear. You got a problem with queers? Tough, get a load of me in this dress. You think sex is bad? Watch me tackle four guys at once. Just say no? Just say blow.

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"Did he say where he was?" she asks.
"Did I not just say he won't talk to me?.....I think he needs real help."
"Really? Ya think?" she says. "Look, Tutti, Jo's got in with the bad crowd and there's nothing you, Natalie, Blair, or Mrs. Garret's gonna be able to do to get her out of this jam. She's gotta love herself first."
"Shut up, Cousin Gerri," I say.


"With the other end in his mouth, he picks up a tar-colored rock off a square of tinfoil on the counter, and puts it in the end with the Brillo.
He picks up the lighter. Flicks it.
He runs the flame up and down the length of the glass. A deep yellow smoke gathers and curls inside the pipe. He breathes in, still caressing the flame back and forth. The flame reached his lips, then recedes back the length to his fingers. It's seductive. Like when he used to run his finger lightly up and down my back.
I take a step toward him. My arm reaches up. I don't know if I'm reaching for the pipe or for him. I want to touch his skin. I want to breathe in what he breathes. The yellow swirl. I want to be the yellow swirl. I want him to breathe me in, be sent riding on oxygen molecules deep into his lungs. I want to travel through his body, seeing what makes him happy. Attaching myself to whatever place in him sparks to life on my arrival. His blood, his tissues, his muscles, I want to burrow inside the folds like a windblown dusting of snow, so that each time I melt away he seeks me out again.
There's no delineation between the pipe and the smoke and his body. It's all whole. I want in. I want him.


I look out over Jack's head in my arms at the skyline beginning to light up, sparkle by sparkle. It's impossible to conspire by oneself. Secrets that reside only in the mind of one person aren't really secrets. The're unspoken fears. It takes two to conspire. I kiss his hair, soft and brown, and breathe in deeply, smelling pine sap, and honey, and desert, and worry. I may be foolish, but I'm not stupid. I've learned a lot from Jack. Mostly to take things as they are at the moment they happen. And right now, this moment, I'm happy to be invited back into the conspiracy. I want to memorize his presence because I know what it's like when it's gone. I want to never not know this moment.
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*Funny how things often just seem to come along at the right time. The first excerpt isn't so unusual or unique maybe, but it still spoke to me - someone I once was, and on ocassion become again. The last half made me understand some things that I've recently been through. It isn't my story, but that's the brilliance.
-david