Tuxedo Society

by Paul Rudnick

Genres: LGBT Gay

Synopsis

If Guy Ritchie directed an episode of Queer Eye, it might look something like this hilarious and action-packed spy thriller by Paul Rudnick, acclaimed screenwriter and author of Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style, that blends espionage and social commentary, with an elite, gay secret society.

They are fierce patriots. They are licensed to kill. And they are really, really gay. Welcome to democracy’s secret weapon, the Tuxedo Society.

When Andrew Birnbaum, a struggling actor making ends meet by working in a candle shop, gets invited to have dinner with the exclusive Tuxedo Society by his best friend, Brock, his life takes an unexpected turn. What seems like a group of wealthy socialites gathering for gossip and cocktails quickly spirals into a world of espionage, danger, and hilarity.

Andrew soon meets Reggie O’Malley, a Navy SEAL with a penchant for black tie, who recruits Andrew to join the society’s covert mission to protect national security. Armed with gadgets like an inflatable life raft backpack, a yoga mat that doubles as an assault rifle, and, of course, an AMEX Black Card, Andrew quickly finds himself tackling spies, thwarting assassinations, and facing a host of unexpected threats in settings from the White House to the Vatican to the Summer Olympic Games.

The stakes escalate when Andrew and his comrades are sent on a jet-setting mission to uncover the truth about an ancient artifact. Along the way, they clash with oligarchs, crooked senators, and a smarmy televangelist with sinister plans for world domination.

Packed with Paul Rudnick’s signature wit, The Tuxedo Society is a wild ride through decadence, danger, and unexpected heroism, as Andrew discovers that saving the world might just be the role he’s been waiting for.

Release date: May 26, 2026

Publisher: Atria Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Chapter 1 1
The first time I was invited to a Tuxedo Society dinner, I was dreading it. My best friend Brock had been nattering about these events, claiming they were “fun nights out” and “elegance personified.” All I knew was that I’d graduated from college almost three years ago, that I’d been turned down by every drama school in the country, and at twenty-five I was still working at a candle shop called Smells of the Season in a Herald Square vertical mall, persuading mostly tourists to buy squat glass jars of pastel wax labeled things like Summer Squall, Christmas Eve Cinnamon Fog, and, inevitably, Pumpkin Spice Harvest Embrace. Inhaling these aggressively chemical compounds for eight hours, six days a week, had most likely made me sterile and clinically depressed. Brock suggested the candle fragrances should include Suicidal Bouquet and Lilac Self-Hatred.

I was sharing a basement apartment in the far reaches of the East Village with two medical students who I rarely saw, and who, en route to examining femurs and spleens, would ask me, “So how’s the acting thing going?”—without waiting for a reply. I was grateful for this disinterest, which didn’t require me to chirpily answer, “Hangin’ in there!” or “Go fuck yourself!” By actually helping their fellow human beings, these students were my superiors in every way, which only increased my snarky despair, but I didn’t want to alienate them in case I got hit by a bus or set myself on fire in a lunge at becoming a candle called Failed Actor Moonblossom.

“But you’ll need to wear a tux,” Brock texted me. “You have a tux, right?”

Weirdly, I did. I’d unearthed a passable Armani tux at a thrift store for my gigs as a cater waiter. The tux came in handy for evenings spent balancing trays of champagne flutes at museum galas, where the wealthy patrons would ignore me or grab my ass. I’m not terrible looking, and riding my bike everywhere keeps my butt where it should be, so I put on the tux with my almost-clean dress shirt and, I’m ashamed to admit, a pre-tied black bow tie. Learning to tie such an accessory was far beyond me, because I’m mildly dyslexic and tend to reverse numbers and be unable to remember titles of movies or bands when under stress, as in, whenever anyone asks me to name my top ten favorite anythings, I go blank, which is why I work extra hard when memorizing a script, something that I haven’t needed to do in over a year. Fine, over two years. Improv with a comedy troupe where no one gets paid doesn’t count (although, and this is humiliating, I like improv and I’m sometimes pretty good at it).

The Tuxedo Society dinner was being held at a fancy-ish restaurant in Midtown, meaning it wasn’t a hangout for people my age, but more for corporate types and their guests from out of town. There were high ceilings, abstract Italian brass lighting fixtures, and tables set reasonably far apart, with well-dressed diners. I heard the Tuxedo Society regulars before I saw them, from a burst of raucous laughter and someone howling, “So I said, ‘I can’t understand you with that huge cock in your mouth!’?”

“Here he is,” said Brock, standing up. Brock is much more socially confident than me, since he’s tall and gym-built, and missed out on a modeling career due to being overly perfect. Even Brock’s admitted, “I’m too much of a blond cartoon Nazi, as if I should be waltzing with a von Trapp girl in a gazebo. Nowadays people want quirky models who look like they’ve just wandered away from skateboarding on a highway off-ramp or their twelfth try at rehab.” But Brock is good-hearted and supports himself as a salesclerk at the Ralph Lauren flagship on East 72nd Street, where his Aryan splendor fits right in.

“Everyone,” said Brock, “this is Andrew Birnbaum, who’s a wonderful actor and can get you a discount on scented candles.”

The eight people, six men of various ages and two stylish women in their thirties, were looking at me with welcoming smiles and a mood of “We’ll judge him on every level and compare notes later.” Everyone was in formal wear, although the tuxedoes ranged from custom-fitted to maybe passed down from a dad or brother who was a slightly different size.

“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?’?”

“She looked at over one hundred and twenty apartments before deciding to make an offer on the first one I’d showed her. I wanted to strangle her, but instead I just said, ‘Good choice, Millicent. Let’s go in at full asking,’ although of course, since she’s a billionaire shipping heiress, she wouldn’t hear of it.”

Mostly filthy jokes were told, and the soused chortles became increasingly rowdy, drawing disapproving glares from nearby tables. Toasts were made, to a beloved Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue hunk who’d overdosed, female pop stars who’d peaked thirty years earlier, and a new Netflix series set in ancient Rome with copious frontal nudity. The evening was entertaining, but at moments I became embarrassed, by the silent screen-caliber hand gestures and the group sing-alongs to both classic ballads and the raunchiest rap refrains. We were behaving just the way straight people think gay people behave, shooting everything over the top and into some rainbow-tinted stratosphere.

I had to pee, so I excused myself and found a bathroom stall, because I hate urinals, which are too exposed and neighborly. I’d had plenty to drink, and as I unzipped I heard the outer door open and then our brawny host Reggie’s voice, only he didn’t sound drunk in the slightest.

“Hand it over, and we’ll both walk out of here, with no questions asked,” he said.

Another voice, unfamiliar, replied in what I think was French, and Reggie answered, also in impeccable French. The door opened again.

“Is everything okay in here?” asked Timothy, the OnlyFans favorite.

“It will be,” said Reggie, and then the stranger hissed, “Faggots,” and there were grunts from a punch being thrown and someone shoved violently into a wall. A trademark gay-bashing was obviously in progress and I had to help, so I opened the door to my stall.

Timothy had a man twice his size in a headlock, and Reggie was extracting something from an inside pocket of the man’s suit jacket. Another thug, with a shaved head bearing a scorpion tattoo, entered, and as he raised an arm to stab Reggie with a sizeable hunting knife, Mikaela appeared behind him, grabbed the knife, and swiftly sank it into the thug’s neck. Then the guy Timothy was holding broke free, elbowing Timothy in the gut, causing Reggie to deftly remove a pistol with an attached silencer from the guy’s shoulder holster, before Mikaela slammed the guy into the row of sinks. As he reared back up and grabbed Mikaela by her elegantly conditioned and highlighted ponytail, Reggie shot him in the chest, and he slumped to the floor. Reggie, Mikaela, and Timothy exchanged barely perceptible glances as they straightened their clothing. Timothy disinfected his hands with antibacterial sanitizer from a wall dispenser, and the three of them left.

I wasn’t sure if I’d been spotted, since I’d only managed to open my stall door a few inches. There were two dead bodies in the room, and I thought: I can call 911, or alert the maître d’, or finish peeing and then step gingerly over these corpses, return to my table, and either try to forget what I’d seen forever, or find out what was going on. I was too stunned to be as frightened as I might have been, or should have been. And in some demented way I was thinking, New York City.