The Limits of Pleasure follows Dave Miller, a forty-year-old bearish gay man, living in Boston in an escalating skirmish to reconcile his Jewish and gay identities. A year after the death of his Holocaust-surviving grandmother, Dave leaves Boston for Amsterdam, the home of Anne Frank, whom his Grandma revered. Dave, feeling undeserving to confront the suffering that Grandma endured in the concentration camps, cannot bring himself to visit Anne Frank's house. Angry at himself and the world, Dave repeatedly seeks out erotic encounters that mix sacred ritual with profane hedonism. Then he meets Alexander, a sexually reserved Dutchman of Indonesian heritage, who has identity conflicts of his own. The relationship shakes both men's lives to their core.