Space Between: Explorations of Love, Sex, and Fluidity

In this love-it-or-hate-it memoir, Younger actor Tortorella, who identifies as a “queer... nonbinary, bisexual (or pansexual, depending on the social-context semantics), happily married, polyamorous/nonmonogamous human being” and uses they/them pronouns, recounts their transformation from “a culturally uneducated white stoner suburban kid” to an advocate “against the rigidity of standardized gender identity.” Tortorella grew up “about as white and privileged as you can get,” doing theater and art on Chicago’s North Shore. As a teenager, they had their first gay experience (“I wish that I could say I didn’t feel dirty, but I did”) before going to art school and meeting Bethany, “who had become this validation in my life that I wasn’t exclusively gay” and who later became “my wife, my husband, my best friend, my partner, my everything.” Tortorella traces the continuing evolution of their identity (“Through this creative process of healing, I’ve learned that I wasn’t born into the wrong body. No, I was born into the wrong world”), their success as an actor, and their descent into addictions to alcohol and drugs. Tortorella jumps between subjects in sincere but frequently overwrought and pretentious prose (“I’m giving birth to myself right now, as I write”); this is less a seasoned literary reflection than a fierce declaration of existence. It’ll please Tortorella’s fans, but probably not win many new ones. (Sept.)