Pillow Talk

By the time he dies, Tim Miller calculates he'll have slept in at least 1,000 hotel rooms after all his book-signing tours throughout the Midwest. And the self-christened "queer performer" has been obsessing about it ever since he was a kid. "The idea thrilled me as a boy, since I loved being in bed greatly and knew in my life that the bed would loom large as an emotional, political, and psychic hot spot," says Miller, who's in town tonight to sign his book, 1001 Beds: Performances, Essays, and Travels. "I knew my deepest sense of self would be forged in bed. History is made in bed. And creativity and life force are generated from between the sheets."With fellow gay scribe Alistair McCartney (The End of the World Book), Miller will talk about his travels — from a night in a sleazy hotel across the street from the Hollywood Bowl to a sex romp on a mattress in a cop-shop holding cell. He'll also explain his fixation on numbers. "It is this dangerous love of life statistics that made me calculate, when I was 17, how much semen I was likely to ejaculate over the course of a lifetime," says Miller. "I figured coming at least three times each day until I was 35 — somewhat less since then — I was going to fill two large Hefty garbage bags with come." Meanwhile, he'll continue to hawk his bed-hopping book in a way only a gay dude knows. "My mission is to be always ready to run around and perform my lean-and-mean, homo-drenched performances, cultural agitating, and generally being a way-out gay role model and/or target," says Miller. "Whenever I need to hop on a tiny plane for Des Moines or Chattanooga, I am ready to show the rainbow flag." Miller and McCartney sign their books from 7 to 9 tonight at Suspect Thoughts Books, 4903 Clark Avenue. Admission is free. Call 216-631-2665 or visit www.myspace.com/suspectthoughtsbooks.
Fri., March 21, 7-9 p.m., 2008