From the author of THE NAVIGATORS and LODESTAR comes this novel of gay men discovering previously unknown possibilities and actualizing a new way of life in San Francisco during the 1970's. During little more than a decade between the Stonewall Riots and the arrival of AIDS in New York and San Francisco, gay male culture emerged from the shadows, reinventing itself for all the world to see and establishing its communities, traditions, and institutions. Riding on this unprecedented historical current, a new type of gay man came of age. These were men who were unapologetically loved other men, but at the same time they were sons, brothers, cousins, uncles, co-workers and friends--not the misfits, freaks and weirdos of stereotype but unmistakable as everyday individuals. Cooper, a Jewish bodybuilder from New York, arrives in San Francisco in the fall of 1973 to enter college. He takes to the new sociocultural reality like a hatchling salmon reaching open water for the first time. Farm boy Griffin, an aspiring concert pianist and refugee from backwoods superstition and prejudice, can barely bring himself to dip so much as a toe into the stream that seemed to threaten as much as it promises. THE CURRENT locates these two in their social and historical contexts and follows their journeys as they explore the hitherto unimaginable opportunities unfolding around them, fight to build the lives they dream of, and in the process discover their destinies.