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

Once I determine Mom hasn’t died, I wonder if I should scare Olivia first, then get the paper bag, or let her regulate her breathing before screaming, “Boo!”


Olivia was wrapping a scarf around our mother’s prominent neck bones and clavicle when she heard Mom say, “I hate you.” She is convinced of it.


I reason with Olivia. “Mothers may not like their children very much, but they don’t hate them.” The sentence, I continue, was obviously severed by a fresh surge of narcotics. The missing second half was “…are going through this. Or “…will have to watch me die.”


Olivia tries to belch, then inhales. “We’ve always been so Terms of Endearment.”


I try to roll my eyes from the insides. “Except you had a brother and a father, we don’t know any astronauts, and you’re not the one dying. Stop this.”


Chapter 98