Jimmy Neurosis

November 5, 2018
A gay teen seeks self-definition through sex, drugs, and punk rock in this sometimes grim, sometimes exuberant coming-of-age memoir. A food journalist and Top Chef Masters judge, Oseland (Cradle of Flavor) recalls his late-1970s high school years in a dreary Bay Area town under the thumb of his fragile, homophobic single mom and rowdy, homophobic schoolmates, who were forever spraying him with epithets. He started venturing into San Francisco, where offbeat gal-pals introduced him to the emerging punk-rock scene; he also experienced giddy gay trysts and a serious relationship, at age 15, with a 38-year-old artist. (“We laughed” after discussing the statutory rape question, he writes.) Oseland adopted the nom de punk “Jimmy Neurosis” along with dyed-orange hair, eyeliner, torn shirts, and women’s capri pants, and weathered familial conflict, a savage beating by thugs, and trying to “shake the sense that I was a stranger in a strange land.” Oseland’s memoir juxtaposes suburban banality with grungy punk clubs, Quaaludes and heroin, and furtive men’s-room hookups, in a stew of atmospheric prose (“The band started playing... a corrosive progression of electronic noises, loud enough that it felt like a solid mass I could lean on”). Oseland’s adolescent sulks sometimes grate, but at his best he presents an engrossing portrait of his emergence from childhood constraints into a frightening, exhilarating adult world.

January 1, 2019
Early in Oseland's memoir of teenage rebellion and self-discovery, the Top Chef Masters judge describes his childhood ritual of binging on chocolates with his mother. The pages that follow are also full of confections, though the highs come not from sugar but from art, sex, and music in late 1970s San Francisco. But Oseland's story is hardly sweet. It's one of abandonment (by his father), harassment (by his classmates), and alienation (from his straitlaced mother). He drops out of high school and escapes the Stepford-like setting of the suburbs by taking refuge in San Francisco's experimental cinemas, pre-AIDS-era cruising culture, and flamboyant underground punk scene. There he adopts the name Jimmy Neurosis and finds connection with a young punk named Blackie O, an older political artist from New York, and, later, after enrolling in art school, a coterie of like-minded classmates. With them, Oseland experiences wild, drug-induced all-nighters at back-alley clubs; sexual intimacy and violent, antigay bashing; and a creative awakening. In these countercultures, Oseland finds acceptance, and himself, finally becoming comfortable in his own skin.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)