Jack's Reviews > Intimacy Idiot

David Sedaris' raunchy love-child set loose (and sometimes very loose) in the wilds of upper Manhattan, with a few digressions. Oliver is refreshingly, bitingly honest about his libertine sexual adventures, so if drop-trou-before-exchanging-names will set your blood boiling, you might best avoid these essays, poems, and diary entries. He gets around a LOT.

But can he write! The stories are generally short, snippets of life in the life of a young, very single and not always especially choosy gay man in NYC right now. He meets men on Grindr and Match and at writing retreats; sex comes early, and often, and friendship or relationships rarely follow. But he soldiers on. The story about his escapade with a drunken former minor-league hockey player had me laughing out loud; at the end of the book, I went back and read it again, and it delighted me just as much as the first time. (Something that the author rarely experiences.)

The "subway diaries" are perfect sketches of urban life, told with biting wit and occasionally dazzling insight.

Perfect summer reading on Fire Island or Provincetown, or anywhere, as long as you like a tinge of hot sauce.