The Celibate

After suffering a nervous collapse while serving at the altar, a young ordinand is sent to London for psychiatric counseling, where he descends into an unfamiliar world of outcasts, hustlers, rent boys, religious fundamentalists, and AIDS patients. In deepening despair, he starts picking up male hustlers and takes a job in London leading walking tours through the haunts of Jack the Ripper. As the past and present come full circle, he eventually comes to understand the true meaning of passion. Intelligent and emotional, the narrative structure integrates the contemporary and the historical, the personal and the theological, the comic and the polemic in a revelatory way.

Michael Arditti is the author of Easter, Good Clean Fun, Pagan's Father, which was nominated for a Lambda award, A Sea Change, and Unity.