The End of It All (ePub)

This is a story of existential crises. Nick Stanton is a contemporary gay man who is searching for answers to questions he is unable to articulate.

Part One: While having drinks with his boyfriend in a New York bar, Nick is confronted with a sharp awareness of time. In this section, we follow Nicks fragmenting consciousness as he begins to assess his life with his boyfriend, Giovanni. There are several breaks into the past.

Part Two: This section follows Nick through a linear twenty-four period before he drives to home to Florida alone. It is a chapter of sexual abysses. He lunches with his best friend, April, and tries to express what hes going through. April suggests therapy. They extend their late lunch to happy hour. They meet a group of Wall Street twenty-something and Nick feels out of place. He breaks from the group and grudgingly befriends two college students from Michigan. During his drive to Florida, he has a self-abasing sexual encounter at a rest stop.

Part Three: We are introduced to his family and old friends. Nick experiences them all under a new awareness. The unexpected appearance of his first love produces a fresh possibility, but hes crushed again. Hes involved in a fatal car accident on the drive back to New York.

Part Four: Nicks recovery and culpability. In hospital he meets a young man from the accident. Is terrified over the intense human turn of guilt and responsibility. Nick returns to New York, to the former routine of life but with numbing expectation. Boyfriend leaves for Europe for two weeks and he is left to brood. Meets an idealistic young man on the subway train; suggests he could be the one but Nick gives him up.

Part Five: The young man from the accident appears at his doorstep. They are together for several days and, in the end, Nick is forced to make a choice.