Oh yeah, this is where Mary Ann gets evil

Hey, it's the second part of the twofer, with Volume 5 of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, Significant Others.

Again, we're mid 80's and dealing with AIDS and its impact on San Francisco. Michale has been diagnosed as HIV antibody positive and has been mostly virginal since that result. His friends are trying to change that. So, when he meets Thack on Alcatraz as part of a dying friend's bucket list, a new relationship gets planted. Mary Ann, on the other hand, is now running her own local version of Donahue, and is going to appear on Entertainment Tonight. Brian's uptight nephew arrives in town, leading to Brian to find one of his old conquests to deflower him. Mrs. Madrigal is trying to save the wooden steps leading up to Barbary Lane. Mona is dating a post mistress in England. DeDe and D'or are headed to Wimminwood, while DeDe's mother's husband Booter is headed to the Bohemian Grove. We meet Wren Douglas, the plus sized model, who ends up getting hired by Booter for an extended weekend.

Things get complicated as Brian ends up heading north with Thack and Michael as he deal with his own HIV scare (This alone leads to one of the most painful exchanges in the book), Booter's friend dies, sending him drunk in a canoe down river, and DeDe and D'or start fighting about trends in feminism and lesbianism of the era. (DeDe, being a Dowry Dyke, is a lot more conservative than Radical D'or, D'or wants to go topless, DeDe doesn't, DeDe pulls a security shift at the festival and winds up letting rednecks in who trash the place, D'or lusts after lesbian poet Sabra....)

With Booter floating down the river, he misses an appointment with Wren, who calls in Thack and Michael to find out what happened. Brian ends up joining Wren and finally working through many of his issues by talking with her. Booter winds up at Wimminwood, captive of Rose, the authoritarian head of security.

It all eventually works, out, and Brian does eventually tell Mary Ann what happened. The one question I wind up with has to do with Sabra, whom I assume is a cypher, much the way ____ _____ was for Rock Hudson a few books back. The question is whom she's supposed to be.

This installment has a bit more humor than the other two books in the middle third, but it also has a bunch of meditations on love and loss, and occasional new beginnings. Probably the best of the middle three.