"There is scant passion in sad-sack Joel Lingeman's fictional life. His sinecure as a Congressional researcher midway through Clinton's presidency bores him. His lover of 15 years has left him. He's drinking too much, he's traumatized by the prospect of dating again, and he's too depressed by it all to care that his suits no longer fit his pudgy frame. But when real life fails, fantasy fills the vacuum. Joel turns to the masturbatory memory of a beautiful man modeling a skimpy bathing suit from the truss-ad back pages of a 1964 magazine - then, an electrifying erotic image for a 14-year-old boy; now, a foolish, possibly fruitless obsession for the middle-aged jaded queen he's become. Joel's quest to capture past passion is the captivating, imaginative core of Man About Town. But Merlis' novel also has much that's sage to say about gay men aging gracelessly, the complexity of interracial romance, and closeted hypocrisy in Washington politics. This is uncommonly grown-up work by a writer with a keen, affectionate eye for gay foibles and failings." Richard Labonte -- Books to Watch Out For
Review
Joel Lingerman has been with his lover and his inscreasingly unsatisfying job for years when, without warning, his lover dumps him for a much younger man, leaving Joel alone with questions about himself and his past. In particular, there is the indelible image of the model for an underwear ad at the back of a magazine for the would-be debonair man - an image tha has haunted Joel since he was fourteen, forcing him to acknowledge and act upon his sexual attraction to men. Now, with his presumed future lying in emotional rubble, Joel embarks on a search for his past, beginning with a quest to find that long-lost model in the back of a long-defunct magazine.
