Let Me Kiss It Better (Elixirs From the Not so Straight and Narrow)

Billeh Nickerson tells it like it is: a wry and at times outrageous chronicler of contemporary gay life, written for those who can take it like a man, or at least read about it without squirming. In these charming and very funny essays, Billeh writes with disarming sweetness about love, sex, relationships, and subjects that might even make the women of Sex in the City blanch with embarrassment.

On occasion, Billeh is a Miss Manners for our times: after all, what would you do if you saw a friend at a nude beach who had toilet paper stuck to his genitals? Or what to do with friends who shave their pubes into artistic patterns, or those who insist on washing their dildos in the dishwasher? Billeh also writes about what it feels like to be the token gay at a house party; laments the lack of Speedo-watching at the Summer Olympics now that bodysuits are the fashion of the day; and describes what it feels like when the hot guy you’ve taken home turns out to be a Star Wars freak. (Nobody’s perfect.)

More naked than David Sedaris, more fraudulent than David Rakoff, Billeh Nickerson’s invigorating tonics are just what the doctor ordered. He’s willing to explore new life and new civilization, and to go where no fag has gone before.

Poet and columnist Billeh Nickerson lives in Vancouver. His collection of poetry, The Asthmatic Glassblower, was nominated for a Publishing Triangle Gay Men’s Poetry Prize.