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

Glib I tried to seem, but I was hurting. Platte was left a voice mail after hours about the sudden postponement of a Better Business Bureau dinner feting new members, on the books for months; no rescheduled date was offered. Our oven-fired gourmet pizzas were tremendously popular, yet we hadn’t a single carry-out for eight days. Even our right-after-work crowd had gotten spooked and found other hangouts. On that cadre of regulars, Platte even lost its permanent fixtures, the quarrelsome Gordy and Roy, the ones we often had to gently ask to “pipe down.” I would’ve wagered that a tsunami would have kept at least them shooting the shit over “just one more, and this time I mean it,” exchanging stories of how Gordy could reduce a car salesman to tears or Roy bemoaning how dial-up couldn’t stream decent porn.


Chapter 8