Jimmy is a luscious fourteen-year-old boy who lives across the hall with his mother, who has boyfriends who like to play with Jimmy, from Raymond, a twenty-five-year old computer animated cartoon programmer. Raymond wants to cover Jimmy too. Jimmy likes cartoons with werewolves and centaurs. Raymond creates a cartoon in which a character looking like Jimmy goes under werewolves and centaurs. Will that help Raymond get in Jimmy's pants?
German industrialist Heinrich Holtzman takes the fourteen-year-old boy, Lyo, he is trying to groom to be his lover on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in northern Spain to try to bond with the boy. Lyo is having trouble going all the way with Heinrich. When they observe a hunky young Spanish farmer having his way with a boy Lyo's age, though, and Lyo sprains his ankle, Heinrich sees a way to get his way.
The Gathering is continued in a second volume, Book II. Part of the Hartstein universe
John Franck, 41, a sex addict, thus far has hidden it from his wife, but his shrink encourages him to make a recording of some of his conquests and Argie, his wife happens on it. What happens after this is the main story of the gathering in Houston.