| Summary: | What is the measure of a man's life? Success? Love? Friendship. Ray Henriques has them all, and more, but lately its not enough. But it is not just Ray who is on a quest for deeper meaning and understanding of life's extraordinary landscape. For Jesse, Ray's lover of ten years, it is a quest accelerated by his imminent death from AIDS. And for young married father of two Mike Tedesco, it is a search for the heart of masculinity. The sexual exploration which begins when Ray and Mike meet awakens a restlessness in both men, which resoundingly alters their future paths. As Ray's life begins to draw him increasingly into the future, a future without Jesse, he attempts to tether himself to the here and now with frequent visits to a past where life's answers seemed simpler and more meaningful. But when Jesse's fundamentalist Christian mother rolls into town to take charge of her son's final weeks, he is yanked from his reverie to face an opponent unlike any he has ever known. Marked by shifting points of view and Picano's use of humor, descriptive brilliance, and unexpected revelation, Onyx is a multifaceted exploration of inner lives, motivation, love, and the sometimes hollow center beneath a polished surface. Felice Picano is the author of 18 books, including the international best-sellers The Book of Lies and Like People in History, as well as the acclaimed literary memoirs Ambidextrous, Men Who Loved Me and A House on the Ocean, A House on the Bay. He has been nominated for several Lambda Literary Awards, and is a winner of the Ferro-Grumley award for fiction. A longtime resident of New York, he currently lives in Los Angeles. CHAPTER ONE A stark, golden shaft of 7: 15a.m. October sunlight gleamed through a minute slit formed by two unevenly closed slats in a vertical blind, sparkling in the otherwise darkened bedroom. Light ped across the tousled, multileveled linen of the double bed upon which one male form slept, torso twisted, arms and legs extended, bent to configure a flawed letter X, nearly a swastika. Light spilled off the ivory comforter's tufted edge, briefly spangling the carpet, inducing its royal blue and pale tan pattern t
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