National Network for Equitable Library Service

The mid-forties are that time in a gay man’s life when his major paradigm shifts from sexy to sensible. But when Barry Grooms's partner of 20 years is killed on Barry's 45th birthday, his world doesn’t so much evolve as it does explode. After navigating through the surreal conveyor belt of friends and family, he can't eat another casserole or swallow much more advice, and so, still numb, he escapes to Key West, then New York. He embraces a new mantra: Why the hell not? He becomes so spontaneous he's ready to combust. First, 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 20 years his junior, so youthfully oblivious he thinks Karen Carpenter is a lesbian woodworker. Yet no matter how great the retreat from the man he used to be, life's gravity spins Barry back to the town where he grew up for one more ironic twist that teaches him how to say good-bye with grace.