Let's Get Back to the Party by Zak Salih

Sunday, Apr. 22, 2023--San Antonio

Let's Get Back to the Party by Zak Salih follows the lives of two estranged childhood friends--two loner-type pre-puberty boys.  One moves into the area and is befriended by the other on his first day at his new school.  It comes clear to the local boy that the household where the new boy lives is not a safe and healthy environment, so he also welcomes the boy into his family and home as much as possible which allows then both to develop a first true friendship.  After a few years, when the boys are just reaching puberty, the new family moves again.  Sebastian, who is left behind doesn't understand why, but he is deeply affected by losing his friend Oscar.  Oscar moves on with his life without ever responding to Sebastian's attempts to try to maintain contact.  When they, ten years later as college students at different universities, finally run into each other at party, Sebastian desires a warm response, wants an explanation for my Oscar didn't stay in contact, and hopes for a chance to renew their friendship.  Oscar, however, continues to be aloof.  They don't reconnect again, also incidentally, for another 10 years when they both live in the Washington, DC, area--with Sebastian being a suburban high school teacher and Oscar being a graphic designer living in the inner city.  At that time, each learns that the other is gay.  Sebastian has led a more subdued gay existence with a lover for 3 years who has recently left him.  Oscar is obsessed with living a life partying and of frequent anonymous sexual encounters arranged via a phone app.  Sebastian would like to redevelop their close relationship, but Oscar cannot conceive of such a thing; it would be too much of an interruption of his whole way of life, and Sebastian is just too boring.  In the meantime, Oscar meets an older man who is a known author of books about his own life of gay debauchery.  Oscar is worried that his fellow city friends are changing--developing relationships, marrying, moving to the suburbs--and leaving him behind, so he doubles down on continuing his life of random sexual encounters inspired the books that his author friend has published--books which are about the author having lived his whole life that way.  For various reasons, Sebastian and Oscar keep running into each other with each encounter being frustrating for both--Sebastian still wanting to experience the closeness they had as boys and Oscar fearing that any relationship with Sebastian would be an end to the way he thinks he should be living his life.  There are many details about events in the separate lives of each of them.  Both encounter problems that challenge them and the way they are living.  The book emphasizes that there is no one way to live life as a gay person, but also that such lives evolve over time.  I enjoyed the book and gave it 4 stars out of 5.