People are usually able to remember three or four embarrassing stories from their life relating to their family, friends or puberty. Jonathan Ames doles out one self-defacingly comic story after the next in all 33 chapters of What's Not To Love?. Ames describes his encounters with late-onset puberty, impotence, his first blow job, enemas, venereal disease, crack and his Oedipus complex. Once you've swallowed these anecdotes there are 25 other queer vignettes that will so uplift the spirit you'll wonder if Ames is for real.
Jonathan Ames unravels each story with a lack of inhibition that allows him to proudly narrate a depraved orgasm he has while his grandmother kisses him good night and tucks him into bed. He also admits to driving a taxi cab for two years after he graduated Princeton. If driving a cab after earning a degree from Princeton University is not socially degrading enough, the writer goes on to describe how his occupation led him to a secluded sex shop where he pays a 50-year old lady to spank him.
Despite the 50-year old dominatrix, What's Not to Love? is only amusing enough to thrust itself into the large stack of books at Urban Outfitters that can be found under the index "To Be Read When Stoned." But looking over the book again, I find that Ames' disjointed and perverse autobiography describes the rigorous life of a contemporary author who engages in the celebration of sexual taboos. Ames devotes pages to describing his shortage of money, especially when he spends $60 buying crack for himself and a transsexual on Christmas Eve. What's Not to Love? provides impeccable bathroom reading and amusement for those taking a night off from partying.
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