LIAR, ALLEGED: A Tell-All: Celebrities, Sex and All the Rest by David Vass – Memoirs, LGBTQ+ Humor, 1960s

Liar, Alleged: A Tell-All: Celebrities, Sex, and All the Rest is a raw and mature memoir, the account of a resilient individual, David Vass, who had felt ‘instinctively’ different and shunned since he was a child.

Vass was born in Baltimore as the seventh child of eight. His large family knew nothing more than chaos and absurdity, biting poverty, a violent father, and an eternal hand-to-mouth crisis. At an early age, he had recognized his inextinguishable fascination with other males, a discovery that he would later bring himself to express to his mother. He was pretty confident that being gay was core to who he would become.

By the time he was twenty-four, David’s parents had already passed on. But as fate would have it, he would come to meet ‘the mother he never had’ in the jazz legend Anita O’Day. She dealt with problems of alcohol, drugs, and men; the outcome had been nine abortions, stubborn guilt, and infamy as a heroin addict. Nevertheless, the two would become close confidantes until Anita’s demise at the age of eighty-seven.

Author Vass exemplifies his background in a forthright and emotional manner that will bring readers to laughter and tears alike.

He tells of a tightly wound household, and carefree buddies eager to determine whether he was male or female before answering his sexual longings and plea for companionship. In this book, readers get to learn of the prevalent suicide rate in the gay community around the late 50s and early 60s, with particular true stories narrated in articulate but bare street language.

Carol, one such true individual, revealed eye-opening details such as a little-known disorder that left her unable to feel remorse or guilt as she engaged in indecipherable sexual activities. In the setting of 1966 Baltimore, clubs paid politicians to allow underage workers, and Vass would greatly benefit from the arrangement. Readers may find their emotions stirred by such ordeals of the young teenager, who had started working in one of the shadiest, mafia-owned cross sections of America.

Liar, Alleged: A Tell-All: Celebrities, Sex, and All the Rest delivers a roller coaster of emotions that delves into the highs and lows of a resilient and warm human being.

The narrative is intense and unapologetically honest, leaving a lasting impact, with unfiltered, vulnerable storytelling. Vass refuses to hold back, offering readers a front-row seat to all the dark, raw, and unflattering drama. This memoir is conclusively enticing and well-crafted, and a worthy recommendation to those seeking a blunt and well-told experience of the world.