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Best known for his madcap homage to P.G. Wodehouse, Wake Up, Sir!, Jonathan Ames has also made his name as a hilarious essayist and public performer. His latest collection of nonfiction pieces, I Love You More than You Know, captures the inveterate storyteller at his bawdy best, complete with an account of his encounter with a New Jersey dominatrix, the details of a “World’s Most Phallic Building Contest” and a brief discussion of how he cured his itchy butt. Capable of tenderness, too, he talks about his love for his great aunt and meditates on being a parent. We caught up with the Brooklyn-based Ames to find out if he ever feels embarrassed by his self-revealing stories.—Amelie Gillette

Time Out New York: Did you know that there’s an actor named Jonathan Ames?
JA: Yeah, because on that IMDb site, he gets credit for a couple of my things: my Letterman appearances and this movie called The Girl Under the Waves. I was the lead, but he gets that. But I also get his Moonlighting appearance. So he must be annoyed with me.
TONY: So you were never actually on Moonlighting?
JA: No. I want to get my own thing on IMDb because I’m starting to write screenplays. I’ve written a screenplay from my novel Wake Up, Sir, and that’s kinda moving along as a film. Jason Bateman is attached as the lead. We have a director. And I’m writing a script from my novel The Extra Man.
TONY: A lot of your essays are autobiographical. What do you think about this whole James Frey thing?
JA: I don’t know that I can put it into a summary statement. I did think that I probably had abused more drugs than he did, but I certainly don’t have the book sales.
TONY: But there’s a difference between the way he presented himself and the way that you have, right?
JA: Yeah. I guess he made himself out to be tougher than he might be, and I tend to make myself out to be more of a loser than I might be. No. No, actually, I’m probably more of a loser than I make myself out to be.
TONY: In your essay about the New Jersey dominatrix, you rendezvoused at a T.G.I. Friday’s. What was that like?
JA: Well, for a perverted thing to do, it was rather thrilling because there was a whole film-noir/secret-agent aspect to it. At T.G.I. Friday’s, I was supposed to be holding a pack of unopened cigarettes—that’s how she would recognize me. Then she would ask me for a cigarette and I wasn’t to give her one, but just follow her out to her car, where she would blindfold me and drive me to my odd S&M destiny. This mad drill was much more fun than the actual session, though the session was pretty good too.
TONY: A lot of your humor revolves around shocking people or shocking them into laughing. Do you set out to shock people?
JA: That might have been intentional a long time ago, but not anymore. I think what I’m trying to do is take risks. When I wrote the column for The New York Press, sometimes I’d be like, “Oh no, why did I put that down?” That was usually a good sign, because it was something that might really catch somebody’s eye and amuse them for a moment.

I Love You More Than You Know ($13 paperback) is out now from Black Cat. Ames reads Thursday 23.