Excerpt from The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Join us, Andrew," said a stocky, effusive guy, somewhere in his fifties but with thick dark hair and the tough-guy mug of an Irish bartender. "I'm Reggie O'Malley and I promise I won't hit on you until I've had three more Manhattans."

"For a total of eight," said the far older man sitting next to him, who was frail, with hearing aids in both ears, but with decent posture.

"And this is Daniel Bitchface McPissypants Narwell," Reggie said, pointing to the older guy. "Who was once a lawyer on Wall Street but now has a YouTube channel where he sells replacement serving pieces for Royal Doulton and Wedgwood, in case you've shattered your favorite tureen and can't live without another one exactly like it. And next to Danny…"

Reggie indicated an intimidatingly suave couple: a slender guy with one of those long, strict, professorial faces and his broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted companion. Their tuxes were sleek and their cufflinks glinted. "This is Terry Swanberg, who claims to be a fabulously successful architect of Hamptons beach cottages for white-collar criminals, and that's his disgustingly dreamy husband Miles Hespers, whom you may recognize from three years ago in the Summer Olympics, when he won a bronze medal in men's diving, and his mother is very proud. And yes, Miles is Brazilian, but he emigrated as a toddler and he'll be competing again this summer."

Terry and Miles nodded at me in unison as I thought, Is everyone here more accomplished than I'll ever be?

"And on the other side of the table," Reggie went on, "are Mikaela Varley and Pei-Sze Huang, who sell high-end real estate."

"But not just because we're lesbians," said Mikaela.

"And satanic negotiators," added Pei-Sze, who I believed, because both women were expensively elegant, in taut black velvet and what I imagined were casually real diamonds.

"And then we've got Maunders Coxley," Reggie informed me, "whose name I can barely say without giggling, but he's a highly respected celebrity florist."

Maunders, while self-contained, had a tousle of blond curls, a pale yellow rose in his lapel, and his tux included a vest embroidered with a pattern of tiny orchids: he was a sartorial garden.

"Of the Philadelphia Coxleys," said Maunders, which sounded like a football team composed of debutantes.

"And finally," Reggie concluded, "please say hello to Timothy—Timothy, what's your last name this week? Timothy's a porn star who makes more than all of us combined by bending over in a jockstrap on his OnlyFans, and he'll have you know that he does not escort, not since this afternoon."

"Beckley, my new last name is Beckley," said Timothy, who was cute but not obviously sexual, which I'd later learn was the key to his desirabilty: "I look like everyone's cousin," he'd tell me, "who they see at a wedding and wonder if he's nerdy or maybe secretly hot, and if I wear my fake eyeglasses and play video games in a leather harness, my income doubles."

These dinners, Brock had told me, were held a few times every year for nothing except gossip and light networking. As the meal progressed, and more cocktails were served, the voices got louder, the laughter more unhinged, and topics ranged from Broadway musicals to the closeted sex lives of movie stars to when a tablescape veers from quietly tasteful to "so fussy it's like Martha Stewart swallowed Gwyneth Paltrow and vomited all over the sideboard." Other remarks I overheard included:

"Everyone in the Top Gun sequel had sex right after they shot the touch football sequence. They're not gay but they'd gotten so buff and oiled up it just happened."

"I loathe hydrangeas. They're common. Hydrangeas are the three-inch penises of shelter magazine photo spreads."

"He's one of my regular clients. I didn't even know he was a senator until I saw him on CNN, banning books with queer content in Texas. I just wanted to raise my hand and say, 'Excuse me, do any of those books cover rich brats whose parents paid for their campaigns and who like to be called a dirty little muskrat whore while being choked?'?"

Excerpted from The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick. Copyright © 2026 by Paul Rudnick. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.