I Am Not Myself These Days Quotes

“I try to make myself realize that I have learned the difference between right and wrong. That there is such a thing as right and wrong. But instead I've learned that these are things - this "right", this "wrong"- these are things that we are told. Simply told to believe. These are things we have not tested. And while most of the things we are told may be true, it is not until we have tested them, taunted them, flaunted them, that we truly know they are right. Or wrong. Or true. Or false. Or somewhere in-the-fucking-between. And I think I know now a little better which is which. And I also know I'll never quit testing this world. I'll never rely on common knowledge. Or common denominators. Or even common sense, for that matter.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“And sometimes the show can't go on.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“Blackouts can be fun if approached with the right mindset. You just can't sweat the fact that you've lost a small portion of your life for all eternity. Occasionally, little bubbles of memory will float up like surreal Mylar party balloons at unexpected times throughout the net day and start piecing together a colorful, if incomplete, version of reality.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“Secrets that reside in the mind of one person aren't really secrets. They're unspoken fears.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“More than anything I wish he were here with me. "A relationship is an accumulation of shared history," he'd said to me once. And here I was making history without him. It's lonely. And I can't wait to go home. Parts of me are showing through my Aqua, and I'm having a hard time keeping them separate.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“. . . New York doesn't leave a lot of time for pondering forks in the road. People who have paused to gather their wits often find themselves suddenly waking up in a cookie-cutter beige apartment in Hoboken. I will not ever leave New York. I don't know how long it takes to become a true New Yorker, but I assume that if I die here ... that would qualify me.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“Some people might get obsessed with figuring out how they wound up on the F train in drag, with no bag and only one shoe, but that’s simply not my style. What’s done is done. I’m sure I had my reasons.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“...once you've crawled into what's commonly thought of as the sordid underbelly of life, you realize it's all just different versions of normal.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“...no matter how beneficial a disappearing act might be for me, I could never tear myself away from a show in progress. Even when the plot's tragic ending is apparent to the entire audience. Perhaps there's a deus ex machina that will lower from the ceiling and turn the whole debacle into a romantic comedy. never can tell. Paid the full ticket price, might as well stay.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“We’re having Thanksgiving at our place,” he said. “An old-fashioned Thanksgiving.” “With drag queens and hookers and cranberry sauce?” I asked breathlessly. “Just like at Grandma’s,” he replied.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir

“I think it's a little presumptuous on his part to think that I would want to talk to him anyway. I mean, sure, I went home with him, probably slept with him, ate breakfast with him, and wore his clothes to work the next day. None of this I see as necessarily flirtatious on my part.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“There's a strange lack of knowledge about the role of drag queens in our culture. I attribute this to the appalling state of our country's education system. Others might blame an utter lack of interest. Who am I to judge?”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“I'm a drag queen. I'm a celebrity trapped in a normal person's body.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“Because holding onto someone is not the same as keeping them close."
- I Am Not Myself These Days”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“When I got this job in New York five months ago, I wasn’t confident enough to come to the city without a roommate. When I first saw Miracle on 34th Street as a child, I knew there was an apartment overlooking Central Park with my name on it. But then Welcome Back, Kotter got me worried that I’d have to take an elevated train covered in graffiti to get to it. Eventually, after watching Fame, I realized that I might just be scrappy enough to get by if I learned a heartfelt song or two and wore the right leg warmers.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“Secrets that reside only in the mind of one person aren’t really secrets. They’re unspoken fears.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir

“My arm reaches up. I don't know if I'm reaching for the pipe or for him. I want to touch his skin. I want to breathe in what he breathes. The yellow swirl. I want to be the yellow swirl. I want him to breathe me in, be sent riding on oxygen molecules deep into lungs. I want to travel through his body, seeing what makes him happy, attaching myself to whatever place in him sparks to life on my arrival. His blood. His tissues. His muscles. I want to burrow inside the folds like a wind-blown dusting of snow so that each time I melt away, he seeks me out again. There's no delineation between the pipe and the smoke and his body. It's all whole, I want in. I want him.
'Please,' I say softly, 'let me try.'
Without letting go of the pipe, he swings his hand holding the lighter with incredible force, backhanding my face. My jaw pops. The lighter swings back under the pipe undulating back and forth, inhaling the curl as it rises from the tar, exactly the same as before he hit me, only now he's staring at me, hating me.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“Back in bed I listen to every sound. The plastic tarp over the table on the balcony crunching in the cold wind. the two short clicks in the walls before the heat comes on with a low whoosh. I hear a constant base hum all around, the nervous system of the building, carrying electricity and gas and phone conversations to all our respective little boxes. I listen to it all, the constant, the rhythmic, and the random. It's hard to measure the night by sound, but it can be done. I know that when the traffic noise is quietest, it's about 4:30 in the morning. I know that when the 'Times' hits the door, it's around 5. Now the clock says it's morning, 5:45, but the November sky still says midnight. I hear the elevator ding twenty yards down the hall outside our door. Seven seconds later, I hear his keys in our lock, then his heavy backpack hitting the floor. I hear the refrigerator door open, the unsealing vacuum wheezing as the cold inside air meets the dry heat in the apartment. The cupboard door. A glass. The crescendoing fizz of a new two-liter Diet Coke bottle opening. It's a one-sided conversation with no one actually talking. I lie in the dark, close my eyes, and try not to listen to his movements around apartment. these are the sounds of our life together before it got so messy. I want to say something back. Anything, anything that sounds like things sounded last summer. Even just to myself. Just something out loud.
The inside of my eyelids turn pink. My door has been opened and the light from the hallway shines through them. I won't open them. There is no noise.
Like an eclipse, the world behind my closed eyes goes dark again. For just one second, before I feel a kiss on my right eye. I keep them closed. A kiss on the left one. I open them. Jack looks down at me and closes his eyes. He leans forward and puts his forehead on my chest and goes limp.
''Blues Clues' is on,' he says softly into my tee shirt. His muffled voice vibrating only a half inch away from my heart.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“There's a strange lack of knowledge about the role of drag queens in our culture. I attribute this to the appalling state of our country's educational system. Others might blame an utter lack of interest. Who am I to judge?”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“But there's something flirty/sexy about his voice that's appealing to my inner romantic comedy actress.
Then again, maybe it's just his penthouse apartment I'm hearing. My inner gold digger frequently beats the crap out of my inner Meg Ryan.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“And then when you wake up, there's a moment of sheer terror in your body. Every bit of softness leaves your muscles, and you greet the day like it was the apocalypse.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“But I know eventually he will be filed under "H" for "hooker" in my expanding file cabinet of funny stories to be pulled out whenever I need a cheap laugh.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“He tells me everything he does like any guy would after coming home from work. "Hi honey, bust day at the whore house today. Had to beat up three men and pretend to smoke a little crack".”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“I’m a drag queen. I’m a celebrity trapped in a normal person’s body.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir

“...sometimes the show can't go on”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“And sometimes the only way out is down.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“Pour me another, the future is stunning”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days: A Memoir

“The Ear is the local bar down the block from the agency. It’s one of the oldest drinking establishments in New York, and it got its current name because the neon curves on the letter “B” in “Bar” burned out years ago, leaving only “Ear” glowing.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“I start to wonder what the people all around me do on days like today. I live in a box in the sky with boxes identical to mine on all sides, and forty stories of identical boxes below me. What do all those boxed people do on Saturdays?”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days

“I’d ask him what the proctological emergency was, and invariably he’d concoct some scenario that would reduce us both to fits of giggling. Plausibility was strained.”
― Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I Am Not Myself These Days