What's Not To Love?

The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

This is Jonathan Ames' life story, thus far, told in short dirty snippets that are disgusting and wonderful all at the same time. I loved this. Jonathan Ames is this young Jewish guy, Princeton educated, struggling writer type. On the surface. But underneath, oh my god, what a strange, fascinating person.

In What's Not To Love?, he bares it all. He writes about what it was like to hit puberty at sixteen (and when it finally happened one night, how he ran naked into his mom's room, snuggled up next to her in bed, and showed her with profound excitement this strange new phenomenon called an erection!), the sadness of going bald, his sexual encounters with post-op transsexuals and lonely Italian men, his accidental son, what it was like to smoke crack rocks until his mind melted away from his body, his involvement with the development and publicity of the Mangina (a female vagina that is placed over the penis so the testicles hang down and form a sort of natural labia), his adventures with enemas and colonoscopies and pooping in his pants on more than one occasion, and how he got crabs from a doctor's unwashed hands when he went to get his genital warts checked out.

Dirty, right? But through it all, he maintains this kind of childlike innocence, this beautiful sense of humor about the whole thing, and you can't help but really really like him. This was a lovely read. I recommend it, as long as semen stains and handjobs from matronly grandmothers don't make your heart flutter.