In 1981, Steve Sorrentino, a gay man living in New York City, returned to his conservative hometown in West Long Branch, NJ to take over his family’s luncheonette after his father became paralyzed. The experiences, detailed in his heartfelt and engaging new book, Luncheonette, involved putting his life, dreams, and even his sexuality on hold as he made porkroll-egg-and-cheese sandwiches—using “the New Jersey state meat”—for various offbeat customers. “I have a lot of affection for the people mentioned in the book, despite the fact that I was so unhappy and irritable at the time,” Sorrentino says, on the phone from his New York apartment. “I did love the constancy of the work, the routine. It was comforting seeing the same people all the time. People get on your nerves some days; you love them others. It’s like friends and family.”

To write the book, the author changed the names of the personalities and made composites of others to protect their true identities. In addition, he condenses the time frame of some of the events, but everything described is “authentic” to the author’s experiences. He even recalls writing his waitress Dolores’ “zingers” on kitchen checks in preparation for writing the book.

“I have a stack of kitchen checks with the malapropisms, her mangling of the [English] language, and her use of Polish [vulgarities]. They are almost 25 years old,” the author boasts. Luncheonette chronicles Sorrentino’s close relationship with his family, and his duty to care for the business he loved to hate. “I willingly volunteered,” he says about taking the job. “I think it has to do with being the eldest son in an Italian family. It’s a birthright,” he recalls with a laugh.

And while he took over the luncheonette, and kept it running, Sorrentino says it did not help him appreciate his father any further, and this made him angry. He explains, “My father was somewhat of an enigma to me. He did not communicate very well in relationships. I never quite understood—watching him becomes a paraplegic—how his spirit did not become broken.”

It was perhaps Sorrentino’s confusion, combined with the frustration of giving up his life in New York, and dealing with a family crisis, that drove him back into the closet during the Luncheonette period. The author describes his decision to conceal his homosexuality upon returning home. “I think at the time, I wasn’t ‘soup’ [grown into one’s skin] yet. I was very careful not to make this a story about being a closet case, or a self-loathing homosexual. I wasn’t ready to step out into the light and be who I was. I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and it was not easy for my generation to be out. I just wasn’t ready, and I didn’t know how people would accept me. It wasn’t about me. My father was going through the biggest challenge of his life, and he was the one who was suffering and needed care. I allowed my self to be in the backseat.”

Nevertheless, Sorrentino found an outlet for his same- sex desires through his private fantasies about a hunk he named “Mr. Pepsi,” (since he delivered soda tanks to the luncheonette), and his secret dalliances with an old high school crush named Brent Jamison. Sorrentino ran into Jamison—who was married, and with children at the time—in a nearby gay bar during his luncheonette days, and began an affair that gave Sorrentino both grief and satisfaction at the time.

Looking back, years later, however, he has a much clearer view of the unhealthy relationship. He remembers, “That affair was like junk food. I was in desperate need of a romantic obsession. In actuality, it was a distraction. I become so unhappy, I found comfort in food, sex, and the appearance of love.” He continues to describe his tools for coping with the stress of his life at the time, “Like Brent, food was one of my drugs. I was not able to express how I was feeling. As a gay man in the closet in a small conservative town, I got comfort from the food.” In one moment of despair, the author eats an entire chocolate creme pie.

Sorrentino is much more comfortable with who he is today. While he dates, he is not currently involved with anyone. And, not surprisingly, he loves to cook for his friends. “We’re a family of choice,” he says about the people who gather round his table on Sunday nights. “I tend to cook a big dinner every week. I love making a sausage and pesto lasagna, chicken parmesan, and meatballs—just no porkroll-egg-and-cheese sandwiches!”