Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir

Patrick Moore

Kensington

$15, paperback

The crystal meth epidemic is plaguing not only the gay community but the world at large. Yet year after year, people are still using meth – a staggering 1.5 million regular users in a recent count.

Patrick Moore was but one of these numbers years ago, when he found himself naked in a Los Angeles residence, chatting it up with a possum he thought was God.

With sobriety under his belt, he has taken pen to paper and delves into his past as a self-described “nice boy from Iowa,” when his grandmother Zelma, an alcoholic artist who knows all about the wonders of decoupage, was the one person he gravitated toward. Then came the other woman in his life, “Tina,” with whom he describes his love/hate relationship with.

From wild, meth-fueled nights where teeth were ground endlessly, dance moves were performed effortlessly and sex was a just a commodity, Moore describes a world as intense as the addictive nature of the drug he became a slave to.

Moore is a well respected journalist for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and The Advocate, among others. His memoir has been described as “observant, funny and harrowing,” and “an eye-opening, fasten-your-seat-belts ride in and out of the depths of meth madness.”

My Undoing: Love in the thick of sex, drugs, pornography and prostitution

Aiden Shaw

Carroll & Graf

$15.95, paperback

Aiden Shaw, the gay porn star of such films as Forced Entry and Boot Blacks 2, lets it all hang out in a different way with his memoir, My Undoing. Among the things on this laundry list of his undoing are sex, drugs, pornography and prostitution. The memoir also covers Shaw’s HIV-positive status, his Irish Catholic rearing and an auto accident that left him temporarily paralyzed.

But those elements are just one portion of his story. The underlying theme is about Shaw’s quest for true love, which for an adult film super stud can be a very lonely journey. Sounds like a very interesting episode of “Sex and the City”… did you know that the show’s writers named their Aiden Shaw character after this real-life Aiden Shaw?

This is Shaw’s third book, of which one critic said, “He’s the only one I know who can tug at your heartstrings and your crotch at the same time.”

Cirkus: A Novel

Patti Frazee

Alyson Books

$24.95, hardcover

In Patti Frazee’s Cirkus, readers are transported back to the summer of 1900, where they meet a colorful array of characters. There’s Mariana, a fortune teller by day and invisible eavesdropper by night. Shanghai is a fire-breathing dwarf and a secretive individual. Conjoined twins Atasha and Anna yearn for the parents who sold them to become exhibits A and B in a freak show. Alcoholic circus owner Jakub keeps his wife, Mariana, at a distance but the bottle well within reach in an effort to escape from the life he has created for himself. The guarded secrets under the big top are threatened as Shanghai and Atasha begin a love affair that brings consequences for some and liberation to others.

Cirkus has been described as “a feast of words and dreams” and “a marvelous epic poem.”

Frazee teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She received an honorable mention from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice 2005 Emerging Lesbian Writer’s Fund.