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

I cannot pull up my socks. They straddle my ankles with the same forlorn grip as my Grandma Lola’s hose did when she tried to dress herself with full-scale dementia. She had someone to help her, though.


At least I have an unimpeachable excuse to skip my crunches.


And one more blessed delay in returning to work. 6: Lesson/Plan


Low clouds over the parking lot of Great Rooms! form an impenetrable canopy, like the folds of a gray parachute, full of the snow predicted for tonight. Twinkling white lights have been snaked through the topiaries, along with berries, but those are too bright, like red hots, and I wonder where they came from. Cold wind whips our American flag, cracking as it unfurls.


Chapter 33