Inferno Diary

New York City. 1982

A man's obsession leads him on a Dantesque journey in search of lost love.

Part I - Hell

Jerry leaves his Upper East Side apartment for what he thinks will be just another night-weekend prowling the streets and bars of Greenwich Village and Chelsea; something he has been doing every weekend since his lover, Richard, left him a little over a year ago. This night, however, shortly before "last call," he meets a stranger (always strangers) who takes him to . . . Hell. In each descending level of Hell he has episodic encounters with former lovers and tricks triggering memories of what was and could have been . . . until he finds Richard, his obsession. Expecting to continue where they left off, Jerry goes ecstatically with Richard to the lower depths where he is abandoned. Distraught and confused, Jerry is taken to even lower depths by emissaries of the Sexless-one and the Grey-Haired Man where, as a consequence of his love for Richard, he suffers all of the celebrated Passion as the degrading, painful depravity it was . . . only to go on . . . without Richard.

Part II - Paradise

The stranger (Dante) reappears and takes Jerry back uptown, "home," which is now Paradise! Dante introduces him to Mary, his Beatrice-like guide in Paradise, who takes him to a dinner party in the triple-terraced penthouse of theatrical agent Leo Renril - who thinks of himself as Margo Channing from the movie "All About Eve!" The other selves of some of the people Jerry met in Hell are also at the gathering. As the accused in the game(?) of the night, "Inquisition," Jerry learns that the political and religious powers-that-be plan to tattoo and exterminate everyone who leads his kind of life in order to stop the impending plague. Jerry can escape this fate if he agrees to be the example of what should not be. He refuses . . . unless he can return to Hell and bring Richard back with him into Paradise. Intense and shocking argument; verbal and physical mayhem ensue as each side tries to persuade Jerry to either join the powers- that-be in Paradise, or Dante and his followers against those powers.

You will be entertained, appalled, enlightened, angered and riveted by the characters and events of Inferno Diary.