The New York ad exec discusses I Am Not Myself These Days, his new memoir of a double life as one of Manhattan's most popular drag queens.

By Christopher Cappiello

"I was always a polite drag queen," says Josh Kilmer- Purcell. "If I had a really good gig I would send a thank you note to the promoter." When meeting Kilmer-Purcell, it's easy to believe that the gentle, articulate and soft-spoken author would follow proper etiquette when conducting business. It's harder to believe that that business would ever involve the outlandish exploits he so entertainingly shares in I Am Not Myself These Days, a memoir of his years working as one of New York's most popular drag queens.

Kilmer-Purcell was a young advertising executive when he moved from Atlanta to Manhattan in the early 1990s. He had developed his drag persona, Aquadisiac ("Aqua" for short), down South, but perfected her in the Big Apple. Aqua's gimmick? Fish. "Goldfish, usually," he explains in the first chapter, "since they survive longest in my clear plastic tits." Kilmer-Purcell engineered his drag costumes so the breasts were always clear plastic domes with mirrors on the back. With tiny flashlights illuminating the domes from below, he filled his breasts with water and dropped a goldfish in each before heading out into the fast lane of New York's downtown club scene.

With wit and sometimes hilarious humor, I Am Not Myself These Days tells of his double life, getting through presentations to clients by day -- in spite of massive, 15-vodka-tonic-induced hangovers -- and taking Manhattan by storm by night. The memoir is, at its heart, a love story as Kilmer-Purcell falls for a cute boy named Jack who ends up being a very high-end male prostitute whose wealthy, international client base affords him an Upper Eastside penthouse. Was it hard reliving those heady but dangerous days? "It is a challenge to write a memoir about a time when I was blacked out a lot," Kilmer-Purcell says with a gentle laugh. "Every other chapter opens with, 'I wake up on a subway train,' 'I wake up here,' 'I wake up there.'"

In one richly detailed chapter Kilmer-Purcell describes the ritualistic, painstaking four-hour process of becoming Aqua, where showering, shaving (the whole body), makeup and dress all take on a liturgical air of meaning and power. After Aqua had been retired for many years, the author had to embody her one more time last summer for publicity photos. "It was sort of strange because back in the day people only knew me as Aqua or they knew me as Josh. Very few people knew both," he explains. "So it was strange this time to get re-madeup in front of everyone who knew me as Josh -- the editor, the publisher, the publicist -- and it was really hard to make that switch over. Finally, after about the fifth champagne, it kicked in, and shortly after it kicked in my editor left. She wrote me the next day and said, 'It was fantastic. And I saw it happen, but it was too strange to watch.'"

In one entertaining chapter, Kilmer-Purcell's mother comes to Manhattan for a visit and, being loving and supporting, wants to meet his boyfriend. Jack's high-class hooking means his beeper can go off any time of day or night and he needs to respond to a client's fetish or desire. The couple tries to figure out how to justify this without telling mom that her son's boyfriend is a prostitute. They finally settle on passing him off as some kind of travel agent to the super rich, whose demanding clients need first-class arrangements made at the drop of a hat. "She didn't know the truth until she read the book," Kilmer-Purcell reveals. "She knew I was lying to her, but she didn't know what the truth was. I didn't let her read it until after the final edit and she was very pleased with it. She's giving it out to her church group to read. And some of her friends are my biggest supporters."

Even though Aqua and Josh both get themselves in situations that most of us are lucky enough to avoid -- from gay-bashing pickups to Jack's overdosing client passing out in the living room -- Kilmer-Purcell's story is somehow easy to relate to. The reader can imagine how events could snowball as they do into life-threatening self-destruction. "Every decision I made, most everyone would make the same decision," the author points out. "Even before I began writing it, I knew it could go both ways. I knew I could either write a book that says, 'Look how different I am,' or I could write a book that says, 'Look how normal I am.'"

Clive Barker has already purchased the film rights to Kilmer-Purcell's story and a couple of Hollywood directors currently have exclusive reads on his own screenplay adaptation. When asked who would be the ideal actor to play Josh and Aqua, he says, "I personally would like an unknown to play it. Producers would kill me, but I think that to be true to my life you have to have somebody who can really do both characters [Josh and Aqua]. I'm afraid that if it was somebody with a name, like Orlando Bloom, then it's Orlando Bloom and Orlando Bloom in a dress."

Kilmer-Purcell is an old friend of author James Frey, who was recently publicly upbraided by Oprah for fabricating details of his own best-selling memoir A Million Little Pieces. The first edition of I Am Not Myself These Days has a prominent promotional blurb from Frey on the front cover (the publishers are removing it from subsequent editions). "At least I'm not the poor shlub who has both this one [Frey] and JT Leroy!" the author muses. "Personally, I don't care. James is a friend of mine and he's an amazing writer and he's an amazing reader. He's one of the most well-read people I know. It's a compliment, you know? So far I haven't had any people claim guilt by association. I think the media has been a bit hyperbolic."

Did writing the book give Kilmer-Purcell the urge to break out the clear plastic breasts and resurrect Aqua? "I don't miss it. I have a very domesticated life with my partner. It's been nice, some of the people in the book, some of the drag queens, have found me. I've gotten back in touch with Lady Bunny, who was so dear to me. So I feel like I have my foot back in it a little bit. But, no, I don't want to do it again, ever."