The Beauty of Men is a 1996 novel by Andrew Holleran, about Lark, a 47-year-old single gay man, who has moved to Florida to help care for his mother who became paralyzed after a fall.
The novel is set in the mid-1980s when AIDS was ravaging a generation of gay men back home in New York City. In Florida, Lark lives alone, has few friends, terrified of venturing out in the daylight. Had he stayed in New York he would be just as alone for a different reason. Now, instead of going to clubs and bath houses, he goes to the boat ramp and the one local gay bar two towns over in Gainesville. He has become obsessed with a local man named Becker with whom he spent one long night and has followed periodically since.
It was nominated for the 1997 ALA Gay Lesbian Bisexual Books award and the Lambda Book Award for Gay Fiction.
Don't play football
We play Fenders
We chop fish in kitchen blenders
We're a disgrace to our gender
We're the men!
Always together night and day
It makes our girlfriends think we're gay
But who needs women when you've got friends?
We're the men!
The men will never let me down
The men will always be around
The men won't argue, scratch, or fight
The men won't say, "I've got a headache tonight"!
On Friday night we'll all jump in a car
And blow all our money at a go-go bar
Sober up for a week to do it over again because
We're the men!
We're twenty-one, but we act like we're ten
We're as immature as we've ever been
Maybe we'll grow up, but I don't know when because
We're the men!
We'll get together
Drink together
Sweat together
Stink together
Laugh together
Cry together
Live together
And die together!