Dangerous When Wet

February 15, 2015
A former New York publishing executive's darkly humorous memoir about the difficult relationship he had with his mother and the alcoholism that came to define his life.Even as a child, Texas native Brickhouse knew that all he wanted was "to be at a cocktail party with a drink in one hand [and] a cigarette in the other." He also knew that he wanted as much of his larger-than-life mother Mama Jean's attention as he could get. By the time the author was a teenager, Mama Jean had introduced him to both champagne cocktails and a dazzling New York world she encouraged him to make his own. She also forced him into the role of her "happy little prince," the little boy who could never express his true feelings. In the meantime, Brickhouse indulged liberally-and at times dangerously-with gay sex and alcohol, while Mama Jean showered him with expensive trips, clothes and a private college education. But her generosity had a price: Anything he did that his mother didn't like "meant that [he] didn't love her." Brickhouse moved to New York to live out the dream to which Mama Jean had helped him give birth. Yet for all his outward signs of success in the publishing industry, in private, the author drank heavily, experimented with drugs, routinely cheated on his long-suffering partner and eventually contracted HIV. Only after a less-than-glamorous film noir-inspired suicide attempt, a stint in rehabilitation-funded by Mama Jean-and his mother's dramatic decline and death did an older, wiser and newly sober Brickhouse realize the truth. Not only would Mama Jean always be "a bigger star to [him] than Joan Crawford or Elizabeth Taylor," but Brickhouse would never be able to outrun his attachment to her because it "was love in its purest form." Unabashedly campy but always candid.

March 15, 2015
Brickhouse always knew he was gay and knew he was still Mama Jean's beloved boy. When in college, he came out to his parents. They accepted him but, as always, with Mama Jean's tough warnings delivered, as always, with her God damn emphasis. With humor, wryness, and an openness that sometimes threatens to overwhelm, Brickhouse details his romantic peccadilloes and rowdy life, a life made rowdier by alcohol. Working as a publishing executive in NYC and living with a man he loves, he winds up drinking more often and, more often than not, waking up in someone else's bed and taking a sick day at work. After a suicide attempt and a stint in rehab, he struggles to stay sober, but he is still under the loving thumb of Mama Jean, until she is overtaken by dementia. There's the story, but it's hard to do justice to Brickhouse's dance-, song-, and celebrity-filled prose, escapades, good-natured storytelling, and unflagging hope. A funny, sad, and fine first book by a contributor to the New York Times and the Huffington Post, among others.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)