"Let's Never Talk About This Again" is a touching memoir about birth, death, and dad's amateur erotica career

In 2012, I was given the privilege of performing my high school ska-punk hit song "Adam Wants A Blowjob" during a performance ofMortified in Brookline, Massachusetts.Mortified is a gloriously hilarious and cathartic evening of performance, wherein people perform excerpts from their actual, real-life high school and college journaling and other writing. It's embarrassing; it's touching; and it's utterly delightful. In the years since then, I've had the privilege of performing my absolute worst high school pop-punk songs some of which are so bad that itphysically hurts me to play them for sold-out audiences in Boston, New York, and Portland, Maine.

Over these years, I've gotten to know Mortified producer Sara Faith Alterman. Besides being a generally wonderful person, Alterman has a knack for figuring out the best way to present your most embarrassing high school material in the most enjoyable and emotionally impactful ways; I've worked with her enough that I can genuinely say that her curatorial eye is a true and rare talent.

And it's that unique talent that she's channelled perfectly into her new memoir, Let's Never Talk About This Again. I had glimpsed pieces of the story over the years throughMortified performances, and through social media but reading it all compiled with Alterman's trademark wit was a wonderful experience.

Given all that context, let me just pause for a moment to give you the official synopsis:

Twelve-year-old Sara enjoyed an G-rated existence in suburban New England, filled with over-the-top birthday cakes, Revolutionary War reenactments, and nerdy word games invented by her prudish father, Ira.