FRIDAY

Like most men, Jonathan Ames has a bittersweet relationship with his penis. Although the humorist’s johnson has dutifully led his master into the beatific lands of lust, love, and big paychecks—good boy, good boy—Ames’ two-faced prick stubbornly refused to acknowledge puberty until age 15 and then, celebrating the arrival of pubic hair, caught a pesky case of crabs. What makes the horny ‘n’ hetero Ames different from the rest of us dudes is that he chooses to write about his little pal for the New York Press. In What’s Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer, Ames collects his laugh-out-loud-funny columns from the last three years and presents them in seminovel form. Perhaps nothing here is as joyfully cringe-inducing as “Pubertas Agonistes,” in which Ames details the agony of being the last guy in the locker room to develop below the belt: “I watched enviously as the other boys marched around carefree with their large penises. They took towels out of the towel bin and didn’t even bother to put them around their waists. Each boy’s penis and surrounding pubic hair seemed to be as distinctive as his face and hairdo….It was unfair. I was a cherub compared to them. My penis was indistinguishable from that of a five-year-old’s. I could still do the trick of pushing it in so that it disappeared momentarily, went to Connecticut or someplace and then came back to me in New Jersey.” Ames reads from his book at 7 p.m. Friday, July 28, at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Sean Daly)