Description Calvin Marks is out of fathers. Half-closeted and horny, the stories his dad tells about former girlfriends and the redeeming pulse of history (as a middle-aged high school teacher, his dad’s spent enough time considering both) just won’t cut it. Calvin tries to make sense out of summer hookups and a bristling community memory of 9/11, but words fail and what’s familiar is becoming unrecognizable. Crashing in Williamsburg with his cousin Alexa, Calvin crosses paths with Gus. As Calvin becomes entangled in Gus’s world of jaded cover-band musicians, he wonders if adulthood doesn’t have to be synonymous with loss. Fifteen years later, Calvin returns from abroad to find the absences of his ex-partners still haunting him. Seeing his own journey in relief, he finds that coming of age, and into community, does not end – and the urge to isolate oneself in search of easier communion has to be fought at all costs. Ryan Schulte is a community gardener with NYC Parks. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Oyez Review 51, Blood Orange, and elsewhere. Ryan is a graduate of Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Hunter College. He lives in Washington Heights, New York. This is his first novel.
