The National Book Award winning memoir with a new foreword by Kathryn Harrison, author of The Kiss.

Fiercely committed to bequeathing a map of his psychic terrain, to spare others the pain of his solitary journey, [Monettes] fine memoir is affirmative and ultimately celebratory. New York Times Book Review

A child of the 1950s from a small New England town, perfect Paul earns straight As and scholarships and shines in social and literary pursuits, all the while keeping a secretfrom himself and the rest of the world. Struggling to be or at least to imitate a straight man, through Ivy League halls of privilege and bohemian travels abroad, loveless intimacy, and unrequited passion, Paul Monette was haunted, and finally saved, by a dreamThe thing Id never even seen: two men in love and laughing. This searingly honest, witty, and humane merging of memoir and manifesto has become the definitive coming out storyand a classic of the coming-of-age genre. It was awarded the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction.