Recently, I have made no bones about my new found mad love for the docu-series The Fabulous Beekman Boys on Planet Green. I had actually caught the first episode while flipping channels one day and was instantly in love with the concept of two gay Manhattanite execs giving up their city life and becoming goat farmers. Now this show is really the only reason I watch Planet Green at all. Goat farmers! Really! Gay goat farmers! Awesome!
However the Beekman Boys are not just any ordinary two doodz in love. Brent is the former VP of Martha Stewart Healthy Living, and his other half Josh is a bestselling author, advertising executive, and former drag queen. Brent of course being from the world of Martha Stewart is a perfectionist to the nth degree on the border of looking downright insane. Josh is far more laid back and is kind of the mothering type and just wants Brent to chillaaaaaax once in a while. They bicker, they argue, but they’re so stupidly in love with each other it’s endearing. And the occasional footage of goat hijinks and their llama Polka Spot doing something adorable just seals the deal. I’m hooked. I must have more.
I decided to trot to Barnes and Noble yesterday to pick up both of Josh’s memoirs, I Am Not Myself These Days and the recently released The Bucolic Plague. On a side stop during my shopping outing to have lunch I read the prologue to I Am Not Myself These Days and instantly I was hooked and knew I had to read it to my fellow Beekgeek mother.
The bestselling book is about Josh’s days before the Beekman farm, before Brent, and before he got himself mostly together. By day Josh was an advertising art director just going through the motions. By night he was the hard drinking and occasional coke snorting darling of the club scene the drag queen Aquadisiac. Notably Aqua’s claim to fame where the fake clear plastic breasts with live goldfish happily bobbing within.
On one drunken night of partying he meets Jack, he barely remembers him the next day, but slowly but surely Jack and Josh’s lives collide in the tragic comedy of a love story. Whereas Josh is the relatively normal one with working his butt of at the ad agency and then partying his butt off as Aqua, Jack is a hard working male escort paid thousands to humiliate people, beat them up, and smoke a little crack. And somehow to Josh This Is All Okay.
Obviously since Josh has now been with Brent for ten years things with Jack did inevitably go south. Did I mention the smoking crack? Yeah. That would perhaps strain a relationship.
I Am Not Myself These Days is hilarious, poignant, and pretty kinky. My throat is raw today from reading three quarters of the book to Mom yesterday. She went to bed and I couldn’t resist finding out the conclusion to Jack and Josh’s tragic affair so I stayed up to some ungodly hour finishing the book. I got tired at one point but I had to know how it ended so I pushed though. By the end of it I was choking up that despite the crazy doomed relationship I was hoping Jack would eventually get clean because you couldn’t help kind of liking the guy despite the OH EM GEE HE’S A BAD BAD MAN. And his name was Jack and I couldn’t help picturing The Promise’s Jack instead. As a crack whore. I have problems obviously.
Today I can’t seem to stop and as soon as I’m done with this post I’m going to tear into The Bucolic Plague to learn the origins of how the Beekman Boys became The Beekman Boys. And goats. It’s all about the goats.
In a bizarre twist, I can’t help but see traits of John in Brent and traits of Ahimsa in Josh only toned down to actual human being levels. It’s so fascinating to see it all unfold before me and viewers everywhere. Brent can be kind of mean or cold to Josh sometimes but he apologizes when he really needs to. And treats Josh to candlelit pizza dinners when Brent tells him they’re not attending a fancy dinner gala with the produce from their own farm and Josh is notably irritated. I’m so completely smitten and charmed!
I’m seriously hoping in the near future Brent mans up and pops the question to Josh because every boy deserves to be treated like a princess~ Only if Brent can stop obsessing over every little detail of the farm like the precise parking of the tractors and how their buckets should be raised at an exact angle.
It’s okay. I’ll keep watching for the star of the show. The llama Polka Spot.