Blackouts opens with nene driving across the desert to visit his dying friend Juan, whom he has not seen in eighteen years, at a crumbling, charity-run housing complex called the Palace. Juan and nene met years before at a psychiatric hospital, and Juan took nene under his wing, telling him about queer life. After nene overdosed and went to the hospital, and was forced back into the institution for a while longer, he spent years of his life doing odd jobs and traveling the country. He forgot about Juan until he blacked out one night and left his faucet on, causing the apartment complex to flood. He remembers Juan all at once and sets off for the Palace.
Juan seems to have known that nene was coming. Before he dies, he needs nene to promise that he will finish the project he has started on Jan Gay. Jan Gay was a lesbian anthropologist who was among the first in the queer community to write openly about same-sex marriage and relationships. Because she could not get published without a male doctor signing onto the book, her research was ultimately co-opted and used for the purposes of eugenics, to sort out the homosexual gene. While nene studies the Sex Variants book, he discovers several pages are blank or blacked out. Juan tells the narrator the blacked-out pages are illuminative poems and photographs that talk about individual testimonies of the queer participants.
The novel is comprised of long conversations between Juan and nene in which they discuss nene's relationship history, a bit about Juan's life, and the life and work of Jan Gay. Juan sees all three of these strands as important parts of the final project. nene remains with Juan until he dies and then he starts to write about him. He leaves the desert and heads to LA. Years later, he finishes the book, which is presumably the very book the reader is holding.
