THE TROPIC OF LIBRA
Billy
Goodwin, the young writer in "The Tropic of Libra," lives with his lover Mark
in a third-floor apartment in the "wrong" section of Philadelphia's Germantown
section. It's the late 1970s and Billy, a struggling novelist, begins a diary
to help him make sense out of life and a relationship that is spinning out of
control.
When
Mark ends their six-year relationship, Billy scowers the city for a new partner.
He discovers Anthony, the meth-addicted bisexual drug lord and Italian stallion.
Soon after he invites Anthony to share his apartment, an Inferno opens as Anthony's
friends—crack heads, pushers and prostitutes-- turn the place into a twenty-four
hour ‘needle' crash pad.
Billy's diary
is his only consolation as Anthony unleashes torrents of domestic horrors. Billy,
now a prisoner of a sociopath, realizes he must escape to a downtown apartment
house. When his escape is complete, he writes about the men he meets in an attempt
to replace Mark—musicians, straight trade boys from small Pennsylvania towns,
a suburban sadist, businessmen, strangers encountered in streets, bars and adult
movie houses. In the end they all fail to make the grade except one—Francis,
a working class Irish boy as desperate to find love as Billy. Francis and Billy's
paths cross at a city intersection late one night, but before this happens the
diary is privy to an army of boyfriend wannabes as well a parade of astrologers
and gypsy psychics, most of them con artists, who attempt to guide Billy though
the human love minefield. Only two psychics, the buxom Dana Morgan and the gay
Bishop John, a mystic from Baltimore, exert positive influences.
Before
the meeting of Francis, Billy, determined to find a partner at whatever cost,
goes back to the life he wants to leave behind whenever love disappoints—the
sordid peep show and adult movie house circuit where he finds danger and sexual
satisfaction. Life in downtown Philadelphia, Billy's struggles as a writer,
his encounters with the eccentrics and oddballs in his hi- rise apartment building,
the coming of AIDS—through all of these experiences Billy's one consolation
is knowing that-- as a writer-- he must, "experience everything."
That "everything"
becomes the "building" of the diary that he now sees as almost having a separate
life, as if he were describing the exploits of a character in fiction. The diary
emboldens him to take chances, with men, with love, with his family, and especially
with Francis, the boy who also has an 11th hour "secret."
