A collection of short stories by the author of Kaye Wayfaring in Avenged features the tale of fifty years of gay life in the flamboyant cultural wilds of New York City and a semi-retired transvestite ballerina. Two novellas deal with fifty years of gay life in New York City and the memories of a semi-retired transvestite ballerina From the author of Mawrdew Czgowchwz ... and Kaye Wayfaring in Avenged ... - two wildly brilliant, moving, electric stories of gay life in New York during the last twenty-five years.The first story introduces Delancey, performance artist and, in his words, one of the sole survivors of a band known as the Eleven against Heaven. Delanceys recollections of four decades in the flamboyant New York wilds - spirited, defiant, festive, bright as paint (or acid) - are filled with the force of longing and the melodrama of remembering.Delanceys prologue sets the stage for the title story, Time Remaining, in which the formidable Odette ODoyle - semi-retired transvestite ballerina, veteran of foreign wars, and polymath recorder of the stories of valiant lives - assumes the spotlight. On a midnight train to Long Islands South Fork, Odette reports on his just-completed mission: he has deposited the ashes of eight of the former Eleven in various rivers, canals, fjords, and harbors of Europe. Through the ceremonies of time, travel, ritual re-enactment, and eternal return, this renegade celebrant officiates at something very like an Irish Catholic wake. He recalls a glittering chain of outrageous adventures and a terrible history of decimating disease and death while conducting a private service of reconciliation and renewal.Time Remaining is a moving, defiantly hilarious solemnization of life and love in the age of AIDS.
