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

There are a lot more rules than GRPL, delivered by a woman in overalls and no blouse, obviously from the Deep South because she bites into every word. “Do not talk over one another. No interrupting. Yes, raising your hand is an interruption. Making a face will result in expulsion. Forgetting or neglecting your homework insults those who did not.”


Homework? I listen but say nothing for the next seventy minutes as I picture myself in a dunce cap. The other freshmen and I are assigned to write an audit of where we think we are in the grief process.


“Sometimes you don’t know your story until you write it. It doesn’t have to be original. It just has to be real,” drawls Overalls, who pronounces “real” as “rail.” “You can write a posthumous letter to the person. Bring sections of your diary, if you kept one. Say what you wish the minister had said.”


Chapter 107