As emotional as it is funny, Swish is the moving account of one man's journey from stereotype to truth. Joel Derfner is a knitter, an aerobics instructor, a cheerleader, a go-go dancer, and a musical theater composer, but when he realizes one day that he's a walking gay cliche, he embarks on a quest for deeper meaning. Confronting the demons of his past at an LGBT summer camp, using the Internet to "meet" men (many, many men), or going undercover to a conference of ex-gays, he discovers that what he's looking for--and sometimes even finds, hidden under the surface of everyday life--is his own identity.