ORGY AT THE STD CLINIC

A gay man navigates the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on a hellish mass-transit system in Townsend’s fraught picaresque novel.

It’s the summer of 2021, and Todd Tillotson, a 60-year-old ex-Mormon, commutes to his job as a supermarket cashier on Seattle’s municipal buses and light-rail lines. In addition to the ordinary travails of slow travel times and erratic schedules, he gets in tussles over masking rules—“Do you need some help keeping your mask up?” he asks a woman with a brazenly uncovered nose—and has other conflicts with obstreperous passengers. He feels lonely since the death of his husband, Brigham, who was hit by a car while they were marching in a Black Lives Matter protest, and he thinks that his heavy physique, due to the effects of AIDS and diabetes, will keep him from ever finding a new love. Todd finally takes steps to get out of his rut: He loses some weight, makes efforts to attract men (sporting a T-shirt reading “Consenting Adult” and “Just Say Yes”), and enjoys casual but gratifying hookups followed by a serious relationship with a bus driver named Carson. Then he’s blindsided by a shocking outbreak of violence. Townsend offers a marvelously detailed portrait of a big-city transit system, with bleary-eyed working stiffs, ranting inebriates, people carrying all their worldly belongings in garbage bags, anti-vaccination protesters, conspiracy theorists, and rushes of elation and despair. Todd is shown to be raptly observing all this, with his White liberal guilt making him painfully aware of his privilege; his unease is only heightened by pandemic paranoia and a freak heat wave with a portent of climate catastrophe. Townsend’s writing delivers deadpan humor, sharp characterizations, and vivid evocations of down-and-out Seattle. But despite all these apocalyptic imaginings, the author also points out how Todd manages to focus on small, steady tasks—“I simply tried to pay attention, be willing to reevaluate, accept correction and do a tiny bit better the next day”—that add up to a triumph of humane sensibility.

A richly textured saga that brilliantly captures the fraying social fabric of contemporary life.