The years of economic stability for gay sportsmen, like the years of life accorded to splendid butterflies, is shockingly short. Once their intimate secret is out, sponsors evaporate, and what follows--participation in reality shows, modeling, television appearances and a perhaps-not-surprising amount of swimwear advertisement--is just as shockingly brief, because it basically endures as long as the athletes' beauty. The sexual proclivities of men who prefer men will never receive a free pass from the public in general, not when the sex they practice--in backrooms, urinals, saunas, bathhouses, parks, riversides and even in public in the gay ghettos of San Francisco--is not only defended by homosexuals, but is shouted from the rooftops by the likes of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and divulged by the toilet horseplay of George Michaels [not to mention pornstar Donny Wright arrested while ejaculating into the locker of a fireman], as well as the surfacing of private sex tapes, at times involving those the public had assumed to be clean-cut gays. If public disgust, and the economic instability engendered by sponsors fleeing boys suspected of not being straight, were not bad enough, there is the ostracism by the vast majority of heterosexual athletes who do not wish to strip naked in locker rooms in the presence of men checking out their virility, followed by shower and sauna, traditionally the ultimate all-male refuges and harbors of pleasurable heterosexual tranquility. This book entails the dauntless drive and determination of the world's greatest athletes in their resolve to reach the top of their sport, and their dogged efforts to live their sexuality as they see fit, men blessed with the gift of our ancient fathers, the Greeks, who knew the beauty of men and the unique happiness of the virile haven of a lover's arms.