The mid-40s are that time in a gay man's life when his major paradigm shifts from sexy to Sansabelts. But when Barry Grooms's partner of twenty years is killed on Barry's forty-fifth birthday, his world doesn't so much evolve as it does explode.<br><br>After navigating through the surreal conveyor belt of friends and family, he can't eat another casserole or swallow much more advice on what constitutes grief. Still numb, he leaves his homestore and design business in the care of others as he escapes to Key West, then New York. There he gets a thankless new job working for a crazy lady in a poncho, then has too many drinks with a narcissistic Broadway actor. Next it's a nude exercise class that redefines flop sweat, and from there he's on to a relationship with a man twenty years his junior.<br><br>Yet no matter how great the retreat from the man he used to be, life's gravity spins Barry back to the small town where he grew up for one more ironic twist that teaches him how to say goodbye with grace.

The Cool Part of His Pillow

Crashes. Screams. It’s easy to convince yourself it’s CGI. The camerawork looks staged, as its operator runs toward the site for a zoom-in money shot of Merciless Bitch being slowly buried.


Not being a civil engineer, it is hard to understand what I see. As precarious as it appeared, why still did nothing hold? It is not hard to understand why no one could survive it. The pelting brick is like shrapnel.


I see other things. A jogging man in a rugby shirt comes into the furthest corner of the frame. His head jerks up. He was one of those bloodied and injured, I assume.


I see a bird take flight from a pole seconds before.


I click on another. This version appears to have been shot off a TV screen with a video camera; I can see the reflection of an ottoman in the lower left corner.


I’m filled with rage by the juvenile, pointless viewer comments beneath:


Dyam that’s intense! awesome $100k car


Chapter 24