Eighty-sixed (Contemporary Amer Fiction)

This is the story of two years in the life of B. J. Rosenthal: pre-AIDS 1980, when his only mission is to find himself a boyfriend; and in 1986, when a deadly virus pervades his world and attacks his friends and ex-tricks. Combing high-wire wit with genuine emotional resonance, "Eighty-Sixed" explores the pressing matters of life in contemporary America: maintaining a long-term relationship with a person of suitable gender and appropriate species; staying cool in the face of bad haircuts, appalling sex, and mortal illness; and other issues like life, death, truth, despair, therapy, sex, God, more sex, Jewish guilt, abstinance, phone calls in the middle of the night, safe sex, alchoholics, the meaning of life, and AIDS. Shockingly frank, bitingly satirical, and ultimately moving, "Eighty-Sixed" is a classic in the literature of AIDS.