Written by: Norah Vincent

Publisher: Viking Adult

Anybody can play drag in the East Village. To do it for real beyond St. Marks, passing undetected and un-brutalized, takes balls—concealed, synthetic or figurative. That’s what Norah Vincent did for over a year as the boyishly cute “Ned,” disguised with stubble, a prosthetic man-crotch and carefully practiced walk, stance and voice. A political reporter and a lesbian, Norah is not transsexual or gender-confused. In her experiment, she didn’t want to stand out; instead, as told in Self-Made Man, she blended in where only the manliest of men tread: a bowling team, a super-skuzzy strip club, a men’s retreat, a testosterone-flinging crew of door-to-door salesmen. Ned even courted dozens of straight women through a dating service. Were the dudes with whom Ned fraternized sex-crazed, misogynist, patriarchy-touting pigs? Some, but such tired queer-feminist vitriol was never the spirit of Norah’s project. Perceptive, funny and deeply personal, her book is much more than a costumey stunt. This tour through the inner lives of men—their friendships, rivalries, desires, hideous demons and crippling insecurities—is driven by empathy so profound that it took her by surprise. She endured her odyssey of lap dances, pissing matches and awkward hugs to uniquely humanize the evasive fathers, brothers, husbands, bullies and catcallers in everyone’s lives.

Reading Oct. 31 at KGB Bar at 7 p.m.