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I came to this book through Parul Sehgal's NYT review where she notes, correctly, that at its best, this book finds profundity in the regular mundane descriptions of bars, drugs, lovers, sex, being in an open relationship, having younger men to fuck (loved the 20-something guy who refuses anal because of the "administrative work" involved). It's moving because it's real, felt, and impressions of which I have felt.

At its worst, as Sehgal notes, Lin tries to be profound and this is when the book is at its most mundane. This is a critical ode to the gay bar and so there will be tainted nostalgia. ("Gay is an identity of longing and there is a wistfulness to be holding it in a building", "Identity is not just inscribed in our bodies, but articulated in places we inhabit.") This leap of profundity grates sometimes.

The biggest flux this book is trying to put its finger on is what it means to be gay today after legislations protecting certain aspects of queer life like marriage, market, and military (what the radical queers fought against assimilating towards), even as it threatens other parts of queer life, like the ongoing legal tussles over trans people's rights.

Are we post-gay, where you are gay but over it? ("The dissolution of identity is the ultimate civil rights achievement") Or should being queer today insist on intersectionality (Lin quotes a shirt, "Not gay as in happy, queer as in Fuck Your Borders") Queerness becomes a starting point towards coalition building, as opposed to quarantining within a minority status. A more expansive queerness.

The book zooms between San Fran, LA, and London. Lin uses history in between anecdotes, and commentary in between dialogues. There's a sense of being rooted to both an academic sincerity and personal nostalgia. Sometimes the narrative feels stuck, unable to drive either deep enough. But when it soars, with tossed off lines of great meaning and resonance, it really kicks.