April 21, 2026
Adulting for Amateurs, by Jess H. Gutierrez
I made a new friend last week, and her latest book is out today, and if you think it’s all been a bit fast, you would be correct. I watched Jess H. Gutierrez being interviewed at the live taping of the Totally Booked Podcast on Thursday, and fell in love with her sparkling personality, as you will too when the episode airs, and then afterwards we got to talking, and couldn’t seem to stop, having the very best time walking down Sixth Avenue and being endlessly impressed by the big city whirling (and honking) around us. And then we bid our farewells, and I made my way to the train to the airport, sorry to be leaving her company.
But then once I was on the plane, I opened her book, Adulting for Amateurs: Misadventures of a Geriatric Millennial, and there she was again, Jess, just as as vivacious on the page as IRL. The first essay is titled “Same, Girl. Same,” and omg, same, girl. Same. Have you been reading toxic shock syndrome warnings on boxes of tampons while pooping since you turned twelve? Does Kermit strumming a banjo while singing “Rainbow Connection” break your heart? Were your at-home-from-school sick days “resplendent with waiting for paternity tests and familial ass-beatings on Jerry Springer?” Or selling random shit on the roadside (“It’s your damned day, because my dad stupidly left a partial roll of Rolaids hanging out in his van.”). Flight of the Navigator trauma, not to mention the hazmat suit people from ET, and unlikely diversions (involving mullets) on our sexual discovery journeys.
The next essay is “Garage Sale Gold Mine,” about Gutierrez’s childhood adventures mining suburban yard sales with her Auntie Jill, and the incident that led to her mother’s most emphatic teaching: “Listen to me, Jessie… Never ever EVER do we wear other people’s panties. Never.”
Adulting for Amateurs is a collection of essays about the weirdness and wonderment of coming of age at the turn of the century, and about that feeling of arrival that never arrives. Whether Gutierrez is donating plasma for cash (!!), discovering her boyfriend giving a blowjob to a lad in a skirt, trying and failing to be convincing as a death metal chick (“If Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty” was the wrong kind of music, I didn’t want to be right”), being the world’s worst dog-sitter, and booking mopeds for a joyride in Hawaii that turned out to be …not quite the thing, this reader was cringing, LOLing, same-ing, and gasping in horror and hilarity.
Gutierrez hardscrabbles her way into her 30s and 40s, into a steady job and good health insurance, into marriage, and motherhood, but the humour and incidents of calamity never stops, life being life. Maybe it’s the magic of Jess and her writing, or just the era we grew up in, that the life and times of a lesbian from Arkansas as just so doggone relatable (same, girl. Same). Anyway, I’m just excited that I made a new friend last week, and now her wonderful book is in the world, and you can meet her too!
