In this meditative and haunting memoir, renowned cultural critic Jonathan Dollimore recounts a life spent dedicated to understanding the delight and disorder of human desire. Through recollections of his struggles with depression, his discovery of love and literature and his adventures cruising in the gay subcultures of late twentieth-century New York, Brighton and Sydney, Dollimore weaves a candid, nuanced narrative of life in a newly liberated and hedonistic world, soon to be devastated by AIDS. Effortless blending the tragic and comic, Dollimore's unique voice relates a life haunted and torn by loss, and the at once intensely personal yet universal experience of suffering and longing.