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

If Didion alienated me, the book I’m working on now in our pool angers me. It is A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood. An inscription inside implored me not to see the movie. It’s boring…all extreme close-ups and grainy film stock…Tom Ford naked for two hours would’ve been better. Please read this.Written in 1964 and hailed as a forerunner of gay fiction, it concerns George, a middle-aged California college professor, over twenty-four hours. His lover Jim has been dead for several months. He was killed in a car accident. Their dog was in the car. All closeted George does is mope. I’d rather be Sally Bowles, one of Isherwood’s other creations. My benefactor must think of me as this English-born protagonist, the ex-pat outsider. Isherwood ultimately leaves him drunk and probably dead. Any Cliffs Notes for this would be printed on jaundice-colored paper.


Chapter 43