Pills, Chills, Thrills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person

Edited by Michelle Tea and Clint Catalyst. Alyson, 366 pages, $15.95 (paper).

The glossy Pills, Chills, Thrills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person occupied my life for a glorious week while riding the city buses. The subtitle could just as easily be Best Ever Bar Stories That Virtually Guarantee Free Drinks. Edited by Bay Guardian contributor Michelle Tea and Clint Catalyst, these stories, by writers such as Ali Liebegott, Bay Guardian contributor Charles Anders, and J.T. Leroy are full of naughty bits that beg to be read aloud to your housemates. Matters do get more dour as the book progresses – the protagonists seem to spend a lot less time high on PCP and shoplifting girls' underwear and a lot more time in rehab. "Cheers," by Pauley P., is so profoundly depressing and encounter group-y that the will to turn the page is momentarily sapped, but we'll just call that an aberration. Mark Ewert's "Dancing for the Beats" will make you wish you'd gone to Naropa as a tender youth to become Allen Ginsberg's boy toy, while Trebor Healey's tale will make you wish you'd made mad, humpy love on a Crisco-laden table in the back of Just Desserts. But you didn't. Or, rather, most of us didn't. And probably most of us hadn't thought about it much one way or another. But this collection does what all good literature does: it expands the bounds of human experience beyond our own selves and into the Crisco, as it were. (Heather Smith)