CAN'T THINK STRAIGHT

A former Forbes writer drolly details the emotional fallout after her fiancé admitted he was gay.

Not wanting to deceive her any longer, 36-year-old Aaron sat Blakeley down and tearfully admitted he’d been questioning his sexuality for the past two years. Initially amused but eventually shell-shocked, the author shifted into reconnaissance mode, wracking her frenzied brain to recall any signs of Aaron’s homosexuality that she may have missed. Blakeley grasped the brunt of her ex’s emotional and physical duplicity when she found anonymous personal-ad correspondence and gay-porn videos on his personal computer, a discovery which plunged her into “an eerie twilight world populated by those whom life had kicked in the teeth.” An attractive, newly single, 36-year-old woman in Manhattan, Blakeley was prone to crying on the shoulder of her gay friend Tyler and to fits of anger, insecurity and frustration. In attempts to recalibrate herself to single life, she hit the clubs, telling herself to enjoy and not overthink innocent, intermittent dalliances with guys like sensual, soft-voiced Rahil, sexy Pakistani Adi and a few ill-suited men from her profile on Match.com—all while stoking an apprehensive friendship with Aaron (“I love him, and I resent him”). The author was smart to steer clear of emotional ties until she met selfish, 30-something banker James, and all bets (and clothes) were off. Throughout the 320 melodramatic days chronicled in this amiable memoir, Blakeley remains a charming, witty narrator, squandering no opportunity to inject hip, biting sarcasm and hilarious insight into her adventures. Still, a bittersweet aftertaste lingers, reminding readers of “the crippling awareness that you could never know anyone…[that] the person you know best could be the person you know least.”

A touching, delicious, compulsively readable account of life after love.