When restaurateur Hugh Neumann rebukes Oliver Nicholas’s very public proposal to his boyfriend during a Valentine’s Day dinner, the diverted Cupid’s arrow strikes Hugh not in the heart, but in the ass.<br><br>After a media storm of commentary, ironically pro and con, gains national steam, what Hugh begins to refer to as his personal “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” begins to affect home life with his partner, Dominick Brodie.<br><br>Was Hugh’s overreaction pandering to his largely heterosexual clientele? Or did the incident trigger his own panic about same-sex marriage? Will the public scrutiny threaten his decade-long commitment to Dom?

Bended Knee

“What were you thinking? Would you have done the same to two disabled people in love?”


She didn’t let me answer. Was I also willing to discriminate against midgets and those bold enough to wear white in winter? She remembered to thank us for the red satin heart-shaped box of carob that Dom and I always sent before hanging up so loudly our French bulldog, Petie, barked.5


The armchair quarterbacks of the Internet, bloggers and website critics, are like baby birds, heads always tilted skyward squawking for more. I did my best to remain willfully deaf to the growing chorus of boos and closed my eyes the way John Travolta must to avoid all those accusations of inappropriate behavior during massages. I forbade the intrepid from helpfully telling me what was being said, but enough began to bleed through my barricade to give me a persistent loose stool.


Chapter 7