When You Were Me — Robert Rodi

What would you do if you could trade lives with someone else?
In his long-awaited new novel, master satirist Robert Rodi reveals it's not so easy to walk in someone else's shoes. Between bouts of marathon sex, high-society soirees, cardiovascular crises, and family calamities, two gay men are about to discover the perils and pitfalls that come with altered egos.


When You Were Me
All work and no play have made Jack Ackerly a dull boy. It's also made him very rich. Now, at age 53, he regrets devoting his youth to capitalism over hedonism. Alas he can't turn back time; but according to a self-styled "fusion witch" named Francesca, he can trade places with a willing participant. He just has to find a hot young stud ready to make the switch.

Enter Corey Szaslo, 26, a jaded party boy whose life of sex, drugs, and barhopping has left him with no education, no career, no assets, and no prospects. Jumping into the skin of a retired millionaire seems a fair way out of this predicament, even if it means doubling his age and adding five inches to his waistline.

Faster than you can say, "Be careful what you wish for," Jack and Corey are living each other's lives to the fullest. As Corey, Jack prowls the gay meat market night after night, racking up a string of sizzling conquests, while Corey, as Jack, is busy socializing, globe-trotting, and pushing his new middle-aged pecs at the gym.

But their successfully swapped lives soon begin to come apart at the seams. And when Jack's former lover comes back, begging "Jack" for another chance, all bets are off, driving both Jack and Corey into unsuspecting competition--and resulting in a climax that takes each of them farther beyond their essential selves than they ever dreamed they'd go.

With When You Were Me, the always engaging Robert Rodi has crafted a wise and winning novel about identity and self-knowledge, envy and ambition, age and experience that sheds new light on the arc of every man's life. It will strike a chord with any reader who's ever thought, "If only..."