Our narrator hopes to maintain his new relationship with the talented musician Bobby James, who is handsome, charming, and twenty years his senior. But then everything seems to change when they head off together to spend the entire summer of 1976 in the sexual candy store that was Provincetown, Massachusetts. In no time at all our narrator is greeted by a rival—the dangerous Jake Holman; a distraction—the charming John Alegria; an obsession—the handyman Heath Woodford; and enough new encounters to make his head spin. Will the relationship survive? The narrator must learn to swim in uncharted waters. Luckily, he finds some new friends to help him on his journey: Bunny Babbit is a wise-cracking Black drag performer with uncanny perception, and Anita Lopes is a middle-aged housewife and mother who shows our narrator just how deep a heart can go. But not until he passes through profound grief and even violence can he manage to do some growing-up and finally find his voice.