[close] Tim Miller became famous for two not unrelated reasons: taking his clothes off during his (critically acclaimed) performance art pieces and being seriously chastised by Senator Jesse Helms for doing so by having his National Endowment for the Arts grant rescinded. Miller's genius has always been his just-folks approach to talking about his life and sexuality. His memoir, Shirts and Skin, which uses excerpts from his performance scripts, is a genial, witty, and engrossing portrait of the artist as a young satyr. Moving easily from tales of school and sex to love and sex to work and sex, Shirts and Skin entertains and illuminates the importance of the erotic in everyday life. Always graphic but never prurient, Miller consistently manages to make sex into healthy, good, clean, American fun. Take that Senator Helms. [close]