Meet Paul Blick, fifty-something, with a life both ordinary and extraordinary, and driven by a need to know how he's ended up where he is. Navigating his way through an alternately tragic and joyous youth, Blick finds himself cast up on the shores of adulthood - and there begins the sexual adventures which characterize much of the next four decades. As his life moves from one episode to another, so the political scenery behind him shifts, reflecting both a nation in flux and a man desperately trying to make sense of the forces that have shaped him.