He also tells Ben to try and reconcile with their mother, which Ben rejects at first, but ends up happening towards the end of the novel.

Callum begins playing the game of disappearing for a bit, leaving Adam very stressed, but it becomes increasingly obvious that Callum is very, very sick.Īt the same time, while Ben is discovering himself further and trying his hand at the fashion and creative industries in New York, his surgeon brother, Gil, shows his concern in a callous and slightly homophobic way. His favorite movie is of course Amadeus, and despite their romance initially seeming like a slow burn, a kiss outside the 42nd Street NYPL reveals to Adam that Callum has AIDS. Callum seems a bit older than Adam and works as an usher at Lincoln Center, as he loves music with a passion. While Ben is wandering the streets of New York, looking more stereotypically gay than Adam and thus becoming a bigger target for the homophobic people who have their own issues, Adam meets a boy he desperately falls in love with: Callum. He considers applying to FIT (my alma mater!) because he loves fashion with a passion, but ends up tagging along with his brother’s girlfriends to her photography shoots for magazines. On the other hand, Ben has been kicked out of his Poughkeepsie home by his mother and shows up at his brother’s doorstep willing to make a new life for himself in New York City. These inner worlds are rich and colored by their personalities, as Adam’s narrative is ridden with a love for film and its history, while Ben is up to date with all of the current fashions of the time period.įor the native New Yorker Adam, who loves film with a burning passion, he’s prepared to make his next step as a student at NYU in order to study cinema formally.

For the most part, though, the vast majority of the novel is spent in their own worlds.

The narrative switches back and forth between the two boy’s stories, although they do end up eventually meeting and getting more involved in each other’s lives. The “chapters” in this book are actually splitting up the passage of time it takes place towards the end of the school year, and both of the protagonists are thinking about their next moves and dreams. Two young gay high schoolers find their coming-of-age in New York in the middle of the AIDS crisis.

Tucker shaw when you call my name