Like every dutiful gay subject who has lived under her reign, I went to several Soho bookstores this Tuesday to buy the new Madonna biography. It was the day of release, yet a succession of assistants looked puzzled at the enquiry. Flustered, I spotted another pristine hardback written by another Italian-American woman of stout gay repute, another attention magnet who blithely dusts controversy off her shoulder, another absolute dame who defines her particular New York moment.
With arched eyebrow wit and candour, Julia Fox’s memoir is titled Down The Drain. On the arresting cover, she is dressed for a fashion editorial, falling down a tube of crinkled silver foil, a drug reference she makes good on from the age of nine in this most startling of memoirs. Within two chapters I, too, was hooked.
