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Bright young writer moves from Southern Baptist Virginia to the impious Big City and lands lodgings with roommates, in this latest gay-coming-of-age picaresque.

Novelist Gibson (Shelter, 1992) starts in a comic "you-big-silly flick of the hand" mode. The fey humor sticks to the end, but as his memoir progresses it takes on darker tones. Reporting it all to his simpatico lesbian pal Jo Ann, Gibson earns his chops working as a French waiter and a caterer's guy. Then he moves on to teleconference facilitating and English teaching. The narrative includes a close encounter with a Times Square hustler, a graphic description of a happening involving a fat man wedged on a toilet, a diagnosis of tertiary syphilis (or was it scabies?), hypochondria verging on MÜnchhausen's Syndrome, and AIDS, AIDS, AIDS. Gibson's apartment mate, a mysterious wraith named John, has nightly been retching hideously. John is dying, which is more than a little inconvenient for his two roomies, even though Gibson wants to do the right thing, because John is on the lease alone. Gibson's witty collage of the Life in New York—making the scene, scouting, dating, working, clawing through an existence—is packaged in acutely smart style and filled with empathy for most. (Well, maybe straights are a bit of an enigma, but there's empathy aplenty, missy, and don't you forget it.) Not quite at the high standard set by the likes of Andrew Tobias, this saga will likely still find a comfortable place on the shelf with other popular works of gay lit.

The limp-wrist aesthetic lingers, even as Gibson skillfully turns thoughtful, serious, and clever.