Too many memoirs are lazily labeled “painfully funny,” as if it’s unusual to read a story that softens its sad parts with a well-timed witticism. But in The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, Robert Leleux’s coming of age account of growing up gay in East Texas, the one-liners and pop culture references come so fast and furious it’s easy to lose sight of the story’s dark themes: abandonment, poverty and the struggle to find one’s place in the world. How many writers taking on the rather weighty subject of a father’s desertion would include references to Neiman Marcus, Dairy Queen, Hello! magazine, Connie Stevens and Bette Davis? Or, for that matter, a detailed explanation of the origins of the phrase pig fuck?

“I really enjoy being able to laugh at the horrible things,” Leleux (pronounced Le-LOO) says in a telephone interview. “Whenever you laugh at things that might be considered grotesque, you gain a victory over them. It’s when you can’t laugh at something that things get really scary.”

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy begins when Daddy leaves 16-year-old Robert and his narcissistic, wig-wearing, Blondie-listening mother behind in Petunia, a tiny East Texas town Leleux calls “Where God Stuck the Enema.” This departure—a loss more financial than emotional—leads Mother to take an Evian bottle full of vodka up to her bedroom (“something she often did when she was depressed but wanted to appear concerned with physical fitness”) and watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s on a continual loop for an entire week.

When she finally emerges (“If I ever have to look at Audrey Hepburn’s bony little face again, I’m going to puke all over myself,” she says), the campaign to land a second husband is underway, complete with breast implants, lip implants and a $1,000 “miracle” cure for female-pattern baldness that results in a scene reminiscent of the pie-eating contest in Stand by Me. These and a host of other desperate stunts put even Robert’s devotion to the test: “It seemed to me that the behavior of a 45-year-old woman should be held to a higher, less erratic, standard than that of her 17-year-old son,” he writes. Erratic or not, Mother’s campaign to find a rich husband works, sort of. Not long after the swelling goes down in her silicone-injected lips, she finds herself choosing between two unlikely and, in Robert’s mind, equally unsuitable suitors: Mr. Taft, a Cadillac-driving Civil War buff who carries pictures of his tomato plants in his wallet and shouts “We’re off to see the Wizard!” every time he gets behind the wheel, and Peter, an alcoholic jet-setter with “the depth of a mud puddle and the soul of a shoe."

Too many memoirs are lazily labeled “painfully funny,” as if it’s unusual to read a story that softens its sad parts with a well-timed witticism. But in The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, Robert Leleux’s coming of age account of growing up gay in East Texas, the one-liners and pop culture references come so fast and furious it’s easy to lose sight of the story’s dark themes: abandonment, poverty and the struggle to find one’s place in the world. How many writers taking on the rather weighty subject of a father’s desertion would include references to Neiman Marcus, Dairy Queen, Hello! magazine, Connie Stevens and Bette Davis? Or, for that matter, a detailed explanation of the origins of the phrase pig fuck?

“I really enjoy being able to laugh at the horrible things,” Leleux (pronounced Le-LOO) says in a telephone interview. “Whenever you laugh at things that might be considered grotesque, you gain a victory over them. It’s when you can’t laugh at something that things get really scary.”

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy begins when Daddy leaves 16-year-old Robert and his narcissistic, wig-wearing, Blondie-listening mother behind in Petunia, a tiny East Texas town Leleux calls “Where God Stuck the Enema.” This departure—a loss more financial than emotional—leads Mother to take an Evian bottle full of vodka up to her bedroom (“something she often did when she was depressed but wanted to appear concerned with physical fitness”) and watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s on a continual loop for an entire week.

When she finally emerges (“If I ever have to look at Audrey Hepburn’s bony little face again, I’m going to puke all over myself,” she says), the campaign to land a second husband is underway, complete with breast implants, lip implants and a $1,000 “miracle” cure for female-pattern baldness that results in a scene reminiscent of the pie-eating contest in Stand by Me. These and a host of other desperate stunts put even Robert’s devotion to the test: “It seemed to me that the behavior of a 45-year-old woman should be held to a higher, less erratic, standard than that of her 17-year-old son,” he writes. Erratic or not, Mother’s campaign to find a rich husband works, sort of. Not long after the swelling goes down in her silicone-injected lips, she finds herself choosing between two unlikely and, in Robert’s mind, equally unsuitable suitors: Mr. Taft, a Cadillac-driving Civil War buff who carries pictures of his tomato plants in his wallet and shouts “We’re off to see the Wizard!” every time he gets behind the wheel, and Peter, an alcoholic jet-setter with “the depth of a mud puddle and the soul of a shoe."

Meanwhile, Robert, raised to consider pastel pants a necessity and Neiman Marcus tangible evidence of God’s love, dreams of ditching his evangelical high school and moving to New York, where he would finally be free to tap dance with Kitty Carlisle Hart and sing with Liza Minnelli. “And still, I didn’t know I was gay,” Leleux writes. “Special, in some way involving flair and class and heat sensitivity, but not gay.”

That moment of sexual awakening comes soon enough, in the form of Michael, a sweet-natured, muscle-bound dance instructor eight years his senior. It is here, as Robert trades his devotion to Mother for a devotion to Michael, that the plot thins a bit. Several surrogate-mother types—the long-suffering Catholic mother, the big-haired country singer, the would-be Broadway star consigned to community theater—swoop in to offer young Robert advice on love and happiness, but no one can hold a candle to Mother. Whenever she pops in to finalize a divorce or interrupts Robert’s semi-enjoyment of The Mirror Has Two Faces with a phone call, the book regains its raison d’être.

But what the second half of this memoir lacks in momentum it more than makes up for in style, as Leleux breezily charts his journey from li’l ole Petunia to the Big Apple. It’s a path strewn with potholes, as when he considers quitting school after his geometry teacher threatens to out him, or when getting fired from his job as a Honey Ham glazer finds him comparing his life to that of Frances Farmer: “Though it might sound stagy to recycle old dialogue, I found it helped to preserve my dignity—after, say, being shocked by an electric meat slicer—to place myself in the company of a movie star or princess.”

With its offbeat subject matter and dryer-than-dry wit, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy has already drawn comparisons to two of the most popular gay memoirists working today: David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. But while Leleux swears he’s never read a word of either author, he’s not unhappy to be mentioned alongside them. “I’m just happy to be compared to anybody who’s sold more than three books,” he says, laughing. “[Sedaris and Burroughs] are beloved authors, so I’m very pleased to be in their company.

“Everybody seems to think you have some sort of choice in what you write. After my aunt read my book, she asked me, ‘Why write this? Why don’t you write something like Lolita?’ But you’ve just got to write what’s there. I mean, I never thought of myself as someone who would write books about his mother, but when you’ve got a mother who’s larger than life [and] whom you absolutely adore, it’s unavoidable.”

The adoration is especially palpable in the book’s closing acknowledgements, “Darlings, Suffer the Gratitude,” in which Leleux claims, “there is not a word in this book she hasn’t inspired, and then improved upon with her wit and smarts and style.... No child or man has ever been luckier than I.” It’s a sweet moment that, despite all that comes before, you’re likely to believe.

Meanwhile, Robert, raised to consider pastel pants a necessity and Neiman Marcus tangible evidence of God’s love, dreams of ditching his evangelical high school and moving to New York, where he would finally be free to tap dance with Kitty Carlisle Hart and sing with Liza Minnelli. “And still, I didn’t know I was gay,” Leleux writes. “Special, in some way involving flair and class and heat sensitivity, but not gay.”

That moment of sexual awakening comes soon enough, in the form of Michael, a sweet-natured, muscle-bound dance instructor eight years his senior. It is here, as Robert trades his devotion to Mother for a devotion to Michael, that the plot thins a bit. Several surrogate-mother types—the long-suffering Catholic mother, the big-haired country singer, the would-be Broadway star consigned to community theater—swoop in to offer young Robert advice on love and happiness, but no one can hold a candle to Mother. Whenever she pops in to finalize a divorce or interrupts Robert’s semi-enjoyment of The Mirror Has Two Faces with a phone call, the book regains its raison d’être.

But what the second half of this memoir lacks in momentum it more than makes up for in style, as Leleux breezily charts his journey from li’l ole Petunia to the Big Apple. It’s a path strewn with potholes, as when he considers quitting school after his geometry teacher threatens to out him, or when getting fired from his job as a Honey Ham glazer finds him comparing his life to that of Frances Farmer: “Though it might sound stagy to recycle old dialogue, I found it helped to preserve my dignity—after, say, being shocked by an electric meat slicer—to place myself in the company of a movie star or princess.”

With its offbeat subject matter and dryer-than-dry wit, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy has already drawn comparisons to two of the most popular gay memoirists working today: David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs. But while Leleux swears he’s never read a word of either author, he’s not unhappy to be mentioned alongside them. “I’m just happy to be compared to anybody who’s sold more than three books,” he says, laughing. “[Sedaris and Burroughs] are beloved authors, so I’m very pleased to be in their company.

“Everybody seems to think you have some sort of choice in what you write. After my aunt read my book, she asked me, ‘Why write this? Why don’t you write something like Lolita?’ But you’ve just got to write what’s there. I mean, I never thought of myself as someone who would write books about his mother, but when you’ve got a mother who’s larger than life [and] whom you absolutely adore, it’s unavoidable.”

The adoration is especially palpable in the book’s closing acknowledgements, “Darlings, Suffer the Gratitude,” in which Leleux claims, “there is not a word in this book she hasn’t inspired, and then improved upon with her wit and smarts and style.... No child or man has ever been luckier than I.” It’s a sweet moment that, despite all that comes before, you’re likely to believe.