The Beauty of Men
Encyclopedia
The Beauty of Men is about Lark, a 47-year-old single gay man, who has moved to Florida to help care for his mother who became paralyzed after a fall.
At times he has to remind himself, She fell, I didn't. But it doesn't matter. She fell on him. All accidents on a certain scale, he notice early on, sitting in the waiting rooms of intensive care units, affect not only the person who had the accident, they affect the person's family as well. "She'd be better off dead!" his cousin said the evening she visited his mother for the first time after the fall; he wanted to slap her, for saying precisely what they could not allow themselves to think. "Would you rather have died the night you fell?" he recently asked his mother. "Oh God, yes!" she said in a loud croak. So much for the twelve years: They were victims, all of them, of Technology--she'd been on her way out of Life, in a revolving door, and been caught when the door stopped--she'd been stepping into Charon's boat to cross the river Styx when she was pulled back, one foot in the boat, one foot on the bank. Death had been devouring her and dropped her to the floor, like a dog distracted by other prey, mangled and crippled and sore.
His mother's injury allowed Lark to escape a world full of death. The novel is set in the mid-1980s when AIDS was ravishing a generation of gay men back home in New York City. Lark lives alone, has few friends, but he can blame this on his move to rural Florida. Had he stayed in New York he would be just as alone for a different reason. Now, instead of going to clubs and bath houses, he goes to the boat ramp and the one local gay bar two towns over in Gainesville. He has become obsessed with a local man named Becker with whom he spent one long night and has followed periodically since.
At times he has to remind himself, She fell, I didn't. But it doesn't matter. She fell on him. All accidents on a certain scale, he notice early on, sitting in the waiting rooms of intensive care units, affect not only the person who had the accident, they affect the person's family as well. "She'd be better off dead!" his cousin said the evening she visited his mother for the first time after the fall; he wanted to slap her, for saying precisely what they could not allow themselves to think. "Would you rather have died the night you fell?" he recently asked his mother. "Oh God, yes!" she said in a loud croak. So much for the twelve years: They were victims, all of them, of Technology--she'd been on her way out of Life, in a revolving door, and been caught when the door stopped--she'd been stepping into Charon's boat to cross the river Styx when she was pulled back, one foot in the boat, one foot on the bank. Death had been devouring her and dropped her to the floor, like a dog distracted by other prey, mangled and crippled and sore.
His mother's injury allowed Lark to escape a world full of death. The novel is set in the mid-1980s when AIDS was ravishing a generation of gay men back home in New York City. Lark lives alone, has few friends, but he can blame this on his move to rural Florida. Had he stayed in New York he would be just as alone for a different reason. Now, instead of going to clubs and bath houses, he goes to the boat ramp and the one local gay bar two towns over in Gainesville. He has become obsessed with a local man named Becker with whom he spent one long night and has followed periodically since.