After Louie explores the contradictions of modern gay life and history through Sam, a man desperate to understand how he and his community got to where they are today. As an AIDS activist and member of ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s, Sam witnessed the deaths of too many friends and lovers. Battlewounded and struggling with survivor's guilt, Sam now resents the complacency of his former comrades and derides what he sees as the younger generation's indifference to the politics of sex, and of death. An unexpected intimacy with a much younger man challenges Sam's understanding of contemporary gay life. Through this unconventional romance, he is forced to deal with the trauma that so informs his past, their present, and an unknown future.