Torch Song Trilogy

Tells largely of the love as opposed to sex life of insecure New Yorker, gay female impersonator Arnold Beckoff, in three distinct acts covering the 1970s, and which is mirrored by the torch songs performed by his drag queen persona, Virginia Ham. Those insecurities are due to a combination of being gay, not being traditionally handsome and thus believing he being out of the league of the "pretty boys", and the Jewish guilt heaped on him by his parents, especially his overbearing mother who loves him but doesn't love the fact of him being gay. While monogamous in relationships with who he believes he is in love, the presentation of the two men in his love life intertwines over these three time periods. The first is Ed Reese, a bisexual schoolteacher who picked Arnold up in a gay bar. The question becomes not only if they can overcome the outward issues between them, Ed being a farm boy at heart, but if Ed is willing to embrace the same-sex side of his sexuality, which up until Arnold was largely "slumming". The second is Alan Simon, a much younger well-off model who saw Arnold perform as Virginia and the two who only got together by chance. Despite the difference in their age and Alan being one of those proverbial pretty boys, especially in being a model, their outward outlook on life is much closer, including their stated individual goal of wanting to have children.