The Extra Man
A Novella by Jonathan Ames
Washington Square Press: 1998
Reviewed by Cerise Richards

    Jonathan Ames, a columnist for the New York Press, writes refreshingly  about what he knows best, New York City and its transgendered populace.  "Without realizing it, miraculously the strap of that bra hooked itself into the cuff of my khaki pants and the bra was yanked out (of her gym bag) like a magician's handkerchief .  My weakness prevailed. I bent down quickly and scooped the bra up. The touch of it aroused me immediately. It was intoxicating. Then I did something mad."
And so we meet Louis Ives, a young English teacher, at a Princeton Prep School, who is caught in the faculty lounge by the headmistress "in flagrante delicto" with a bra over his tweed sport coat. This seminal event leads to his dismissal and propels him to Manhattan to live out his TV fantasies.  Jobless with very little money, he meets an elderly Dr. Henry Harrison, who rents out his only bed for a pittance in a dilapidated fifth floor walk up.  To make ends meet,  Henry sleeps on a stained old couch in the single common living area.  Henry is an eccentric part-time English Prof at Queensboro College, who has seen grander days in his youth. With their commonality of the English Literature and a fifty year age difference, we are treated to the humorous relationship that develops between these two characters. While the story is narrated by Louis, who pictures himself as a blonde Gatsby gentleman, Henry is the more developed character with opinions about everyone on earth.  His witty aphorisms and reorganized quotes of English authors tell us his philosophy of everything but his sexual preference.  Henry is a tireless WASP gigolo who has learned  to eat freely, winter in Palm Beach, and go to the opera, by escorting even older wealthy widows around the City.  Henry is constantly deriding the freeloader status of the English Royal Family, while claiming to be an essential freeloader.  Henry  is "The Extra Man".  "Women outlive men, so there's more of them, that's why you simply need an extra man at the table.  It maintains a good seating arrangement."
    So Louis endures the dirt, the cockroaches, the fleas and the mice until he lands a writing job for an environmental magazine.  You could call this a "Midnight Cowboy" for the Nineties in reverse.  But Henry, who dances by himself to Ethel Merman and Cole Porter, to keep in shape,  has become a father figure to this young neophyte, who is tasting all that New York has to offer.  Louis is not "EveryTG".  In short order, Louis has found the Queens at Sally's bar in Times Square and the Peep Shows which he equates with therapy.  He is repeatedly drawn to the transsexual prostitutes who offer him affection and oral sex.  He fantasizes how they could be his real girlfriends if only he had money.  But then he is overcome by tremendous Jewish guilt and hopes never to go back for fear that he might catch some dread disease. He lives constantly in fear of being revealed for his misdeeds.  Louis then tries being spanked  while dressed and finally the full makeup and dressup in a sordid apartment with a retired makeup artist.  These experiences while erotically described do not measure up to his or the reader's expectations.  We've come a long way baby!  In the end we realize that  Henry's intentions are asexual as the odd couple squabbles when Henry unexpectedly finds a nude transsexual in the apartment with Louis.  But all is forgiven after the spat with the admonition,  "Remember, no fornication in this apartment."  And the devoted happy couple continues to subsist by eating pizza and coffee and sneaking into plays and parties all over Manhattan. Everything in this novel is more fantasy than reality, but fantasy is what sustains their lives.
     I once opined on my Web Site, "That someone without our experiences, would never understand our desires and impulses. They just wouldn't get it."  Well Jonathan Ames understands and describes those intrusive thoughts so very well.  He says that he is just a cousin to the characters and describes himself as Victorian, not an "urning".  OK ! A good writer can empathize with his creations, but I also know a writer who almost lives this exact relationship. So grab this book written just for you and enjoy this wonderful fun read.  Hugs, Cerise