“They were all posturing all the time. Everything they did was a posture, defensive or offensive, meant to demonstrate something to the outside world, perhaps that they were worthy or good or all right, perhaps to imply that they were in on the joke, that they were nothing and all they had were these crude choreographies of the self.”
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I knew after the first chapter that I would finish this book that day. I literally could not put it down. I’m not sure words can suffice for how I felt about this book, but I’ll try. 

Taylor absolutely captured how the assumptions and interpretations we make about others are often far from their lived experience and intention. That everything we perceive comes through the lens of our lives and ourselves, sometimes (or often) to our detriment. 

There was extreme and unexpected cruelty here. It didn’t feel gratuitous- it felt real and grounded in truth. 

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that didn’t fetishize or imply shame around gay men’s intimate love in some way. To have Taylor write such a beautiful, erotic, and normalized scenes of physical intimacy between men was so refreshing. 

He was also incredible at capturing the metamorphosis many of us go through in our early 20s. The seeking, finding, and reinventing of selfhood that occurs at that age. And really, how we are all just doing our best and trying to eke out a meaningful existence amongst a world that is ambivalent to our dreams and goals. I loved this book with all of my heart and will be reading Taylor‘s other works.