Just by Looking at Him

Just by Looking at Him is a novel by Ryan O'Connell, published in 2022.

Elliott's life looks like the one he set out to have. He writes for television, he has a boyfriend who dotes on him, and the version of it that other people see has been carefully arranged. What is actually happening is an alcohol problem that keeps getting worse, a habit of paying for sex behind his partner's back, and a set of feelings about his cerebral palsy that he cannot discuss without anger. He spends a stretch of time going further into the sex, the drinking and the backbiting of the industry he works in before deciding that he wants to be better.

The book is told as Elliott's own account of himself, and it is set in the parts of Los Angeles where television gets made.