The scene is a rundown bar on the Southern California coast, where a group of lonely and disparate individuals, rejected by "normal" society, come together in their need for human contact and understanding. One by one each tells his tale with poetic eloquence and force, revealing the desperate emptiness of his existence, and inspiring a moving compassion of rare dimension. In the final essence, the characters become embodiments of the fears that lurk in all of us, and the frailties that so often make us less than we would wish to be—both in our hearts and in the eyes of others.