tlashop.com

Review

In his award-winning first book, Bob Smith offered up a witty dose of nineties reality with his observations as a happily adjusted gay man. Now, after breaking up with his longtime boyfriend, Smith looks back to his painfully normal childhood to see where all the trouble really began. Like every other American kid, Bob's adolescence was marked by alternating moments of blissful ignorance, hazy confusion, and humiliating self-consciousness. And in these pages, Bob evokes his youth with a vividness that will make you shudder and howl with recognition.
In these hysterically humorous pages, Bob Smith introduces readers to his comically unsympathetic grandmother, who makes light of his carsickness: "Bob only throws up because he's near the window and he can"; to his first teacher crush, whose "five-o'clock shadow could plunge a room into darkness"; and to his first brush with fame, when he fainted from his chair during a biology filmstrip ("Way to go, Smith!"). Sharp, observant, ingeniously ironic and wholly satisfying, this new Lambda Award-nominated collection is at once bittersweet nostalgic fun and a testament to the unquestionable gifts of a highly original comic writer.

An excerpt "Victor, the host of the party, was the office manager of a gay pornographic film company. I had just met him at Tampa's Gay Pride Celebration, where he was handling the appearance of three Bronco Studios porn stars. Victor was responsible for making sure that plenty of ancillary merchandise was available for sale to the porn star's fans. They could pay twenty dollars to have a non-erotic Polaroid taken with their favorite star or buy autographed copies of their videos. And for the fan who can't get enough, one of the porn stars sold plastic replicas of his penis, mouth and rectum. And I used to think that people who collected Gone With the Wind commemorative plates were weird. You really have to be a devoted fan to want to own a knockoff of your favorite star's asshole…When I flippantly inquired, "Victor, you don't happen to have any free sample assholes?" he answered, tongue-in-cheek, "Bob, those assholes cost money. We can't just be giving them away." I asked, "How do I know I'm getting a real porn star's genuine asshole and not some cheap imitation? Is his asshole copy-righted?" Victor smiled but didn't deem my question worthy of a reply. Pleased with myself, I then asked, "Victor, does your company have an asshole factory outlet? Where you sell assholes with slight imperfections at a substantial discount." Victor laughed and said, "I'm going to suggest that idea to my boss."