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

This next corner, yet another empty lot, is where the town’s tallest building once was. It now provides space to county agencies. I remember our parents shaking us awake and herding us into the car. The tallest building in town was burning. They took us to watch the unstoppable flames as we sipped chocolate milk in our pajamas. I’d never seen water shot so high and for so long. When the ash settled like black potato chips on our hood, Dad exclaimed worriedly how he just had the car simonized, and we left. The lesson of that night, I can’t figure. Maybe how temporary everything is, how things we admire can tumble. Buildings fall. Cranes, too. Maybe Mom and Dad just liked big fires. The only thing absent was Miss Peggy Lee.


Chapter 97