I picked this up because I wanted something brisk and amusing to read that wouldn’t require undivided attention while I watched my kid at the library, and this fit the bill. It reminds me of nothing so much as I Feel Bad About My Neck, in that it’s random amusing anecdotes told in a fun manner, but I don’t know that it’s enough to sustain a book. When I flipped to the back cover and found that Janetti wrote for Will and Grace my first thought was “yeah, that’s about right.” Nothing too challenging, pleasant, kinda funny.
The book is mostly about Janetti’s growing up as a gay man in the 90s, and the concluding essay about dancing while knowing so many AIDS victims couldn’t was touching, but for the most part we’re not in deep waters here. The opening essay muses about Janetti wanting to join the Peace Corps mostly out of an idealized version of what that would entail, and joining a temp agency instead, subsequent tales follow Janetti as a bellman at a hotel working with future models and awkwardly encountering former successful classmates.
It all feels like magazine articles or diary entries, anecdotes that don’t have a nucleation site that binds them into a book. Especially given the slight length, this just felt like it was written due to the author’s previous successes rather than because he had something he needed to say. It wasn’t bad, but I’m glad I read it at the library.