My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays - Softcover

Brooklyn-based Ames's wild follow-up to What's Not to Love? is an entertaining salmagundi that tosses five short stories in among 42 essays, including past New York Press column installments, book reviews and e-zine contributions. A 1987 invitation to a nonexistent literary symposium sent Ames to a paranoid precipice, and his vivid, noir-style recollection of that mystery, The Nista Affair, makes a fine centerpiece. But the author is a man of appetites for sex, for self-examination, for performance, for weird experiences and this makes his book irresistible. He's like the dirtiest, smartest kid on the playground you might cringe, but you can't help being transfixed. In Booty and the Beast, he waxes rhapsodic on waitress watching; The Orgy chronicles his failed attempts to attend one. With bodily functions and sexuality the dominant themes, Ames's public diary his New York Press columns often feels more like a pubic diary. When he meets Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), they discuss the Mangina, a prosthetic vagina worn by performance artist Harry Chandler; Gear magazine assignments send him into a session with a female hypnotist specializing in penis enlargement and onto the set of a porn film. From recollections of prostitutes to reflections on an s&m support group, he documents numerous erotic encounters: When it comes to sexual fetishes, I can't be pigeonholed. Ames lays his soul bare here, and those who are easily offended should stay away. But for readers who don't mind the occasional squirm for the sake of the frequent belly laugh, this hodgepodge of oddities is highly recommended.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

"Ames elevates himself above most other sex-mad self-deprecators with this hilarious collection." -- Entertainment Weekly, August 2002

"Ames is once again sullying reader's minds and roughing up the literary community with the release of his latest memoir." -- Shout, June/July 2002

"Ames writes edgy, punchy, sexy, funny, and extremely eloquent prose . . . for readers who love offbeat observations and unique, resonant impressions." -- Booklist, July, 1, 2002

"An amiable, if slightly twisted, shamble through life. It's infected me. I want to read everything he writes." -- Anna Keesy, The Oregonian, June 30, 2002

"Hilarious . . . compulsively readable exploits . . . alternately pervy and poignant . . . imbues the smutty with sentimentality." -- Entertainment Weekly, July 12, 2002

"If you can't laugh with him, feel free to laugh at him." -- Maxim, July 2002

"Simultaneously self-effacing and full of himself, Ames has hit on a combo that, surprisingly, works." -- Dodie Bellamy, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, July 21, 2002

"Written in sympathetic style . . . the best stories are uncluttered by other people - just Ames and his troubled, self-conscious mind." -- Pamela Zoslov, freetimes.com, July 17-23, 2002

"[E]ntertaining . . . [Ames] is a man of appetites and this makes his book irresistible . . . you can't help being transfixed . . . highly recommended." -- Publishers Weekly, May 20, 2002