When Bubbles Collide

1978 — on the Amtrak Colonial to Providence after two separately gay wild weekends in Manhattan: a 19 y.o. student pot-head and a 39 y.o. boozy actor … each with a past. No trigger warnings needed for this recent New Yorker story "Bronze" by Jeffrey Eugenides, whose sprawling Middlesex we read twelve years ago. Everyone comes out ahead in this tight little drama (though neither necessarily with the head they started in on). Eugene's little secret:

    He wanted to be beautiful. If that didn’t work, noticeable would do.