It's getting hot in here for Part 2:

Title: Love of a Lifetime

Setting: Rural/College, Carterville North Carolina and Fictional Adam State University

Plot Overview: Andy Hatcher is a 26 year old banker, who just moved into Carterville, North Carolina after a messy divorce. He finds himself falling in love with 17 year old C.Z Johnstone, a 17 year old boy, who delivers his newspaper and has a really hard life. While Andy does not at first know he is gay, CZ had known for a long time, but he could never fully explore his sexuality due to his family obligations with his sick mother. The story follows Andy and CZ's love through encounter to break-up to reconciliation and beyond. CZ will eventually go onto college and he'll meet a bunch of friends and have a lot of new issues. Be warned, this story is my favorite of the 4, despite its controversial issues.

Character/relationships:
Andy Hatcher- he's like Doc (Dr. Griffith from "When Love Comes") in terms of character dimensions. He's young, professional, and talented, but unlike Doc, he lacks the acceptance or understanding of his sexuality. When he does go past his initial reluctance to form a relationship with a much younger CZ Johnstone, we get a very dynamic and evolving character. I like Andy a lot, because I can relate to him as a gay professional in finance and his need to "prove" himself. This quality about Andy would also lead to problems with his relationship later on with CZ, which rings extremely true for a lot of us gay guys who are career minded and sometimes we forget about our partners' needs too. Definitely a character that I remembered well.

CZ Johnstone- Damn it, I can't help but love this southern belle of a character He is Scarlet O'Hara with jeans and a nice bulge. While not an "abused kid" or one of the traditional kinds of partners that you will see in many modern gay fictions, he does have a rough past. When his mother was dying from Cancer, he worked three odd jobs and still grew Christmas Trees to maintain his family and pay his mother's medical bill (Okay, fine, Obamacare would help him if it existed in 2002, happy now guys, I concede that point ). I really love this characters' work ethic and personality. Also, when he gets into a relationship with Andy, he is extremely mature about Andy's work life and his needs versus just sex. Jeff scored a big breakout character for me, which I wish could have been repeated more often in Gay fiction afterward. When he goes to College, he doesn't just sit back and play the loyal boyfriend card, he explores and messes around with other guys. He's a human being with needs too and I just can't get over how much his character develops and becomes some one I wish I could even have 10% attributes.

GA writers take note, this is a character you need to know how to create, a full 4-D characters that is both strong willed and evolving over time. Even masterful storytellers don't make gay characters like him, nowadays.

Adam State Characters

Justin Barnes- Why must he be straight! Honestly, Jeff made a great character here, I appreciate the idea of creating a strong advocate for gays, who is not gay. Another reason why I like this story is that Justin, while he is straight, is not afraid of trying things with CZ up to a point. When writing heterosexual characters, Jeff included, there's a certain limit that must be held in interactions before you question their sexuality as well. Jeff nailed it here with Justin and gives readers a character worth investing time to know and even accept as a friend. Beyond that, you can really see the protective quality of this character during the college era of CZ Johnstone at Adam State. He will eventually become CZ's college roommate and introduce his gay and bisexual brothers, Brian and David Barnes who will play roles later on in smaller story arcs with Brian being a catalyst character for both "Finding Family" and "Three Voices".

Jason Sherman- CZ's first roommate and closeted gay character. Interesting and a bit derivative, but he did add to the over-arc of the 1st year in college for CZ and Justin's story. I distinctly remember his story had more meat at one point prior to the edits, but as it stands, he is good character for what he represents, a young man trying to become a gay man who falls at points but has redemptive qualities. He will be the roommate of the main antagonist of the story Brad Miller and I think Jeff consciously wanted him to serve the role of foil on how a closeted gay man versus an evolving gay man can turn out.

Brad Miller- Damn, his story arc is messed up on so many levels. At some points, I want to see him dead, at others, I want to see him gang raped in the worst possible way. Then at the end, I feel so bad for him that I just wish he finds peace wherever his soul ends up. Jeff did a great job on Brad, he represents the darkest realities that gay men can go down in the end of a long struggle. Think Dahmer and Gacey, while we can hate what he does in the story, we can't help but understand that his pain and rejection could happen to a lot of us. Jeff played with darkness and he made a good antagonist in this story.

Supporting Characters:
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Doc- Gary Griffith is now the old man on campus with his partner Matt, which is kind of cute in a respectable and linear way. He acts as guidance and level headed adviser to CZ and other characters in this story.

Matt Stevenson- He shows up on occasion as Doc's back up, but his story is mostly done and his brother Mark is only lightly mentioned as well. Still, he played a supporting role.

Kathy and Kevin Williams- The most open minded liberal couple in the south is back in this story I got to say, these people make me wish that the world really did work that way and there were good people like this everywhere, who were fair to everyone.

David Barnes- Interesting to find a bisexual character in a story, who is trying to figure himself out and I can feel his plight when measuring himself against his heterosexual and homosexual brothers. It's interesting to wonder who you belong with, if you can play an entire field that neither side completely understands you. CZ will mess around with him in the story and help him figure out his bisexual leanings.

Brian Barnes- Small, but sexy role in the story as both a sexual partner for a bunch of people. He is the slutty character that you just can't hate, because let's be honest we all want to be like Brian: young, libido driven, and uninhibited.

Greg Hatcher and Gary Williams- That little baby boy in "When Love Comes" has grown up into a little 9 year old, who basically grows an attachment to his friend Greg Hatcher, Andy's son from his failed marriage. Be on the watch guys, if Jeff ever comes back to this series, I would think these two little boys would probably be featured as the main protagonists, dealing with modern issues of gay life like their parents and friends a decade before. We have new challenges and kids growing up in the 2000's are going to need a new reflection.

There's a lot of one off characters: who play minor roles as romantic partners, as well

Themes

Character Evolution- Andy and CZ will remain my favorite developed characters, they're complex, but in many ways, it just boils down to love for them. Brad Miller is another character, who evolves before our eyes in a much more negative fashion, which Jeff does extremely well. If you want to see Character development from both a positive approach and negative, I highly recommend this story to everyone.

Maturity and Sex- Oh boy, legally, Jeff 's character were probably in deep shit, but on a more aesthetic level, I actually approve of this kind of relationship. If this was just a 26 year old guy perving on a 17 year old boy, I'd cry foul, but it wasn't. CZ Johnstone was in love with Andy and Andy loved CZ, both were mature enough to make that choice. Jeff took a page out of QAF (Queer as folk), which I tend to agree with. America tends to be far less tolerant of age of consent below 18 for sexual activity, especially against gay males, but European age range is usually 16 or in some nations 14. It's highly debatable, but I think as the story evolved, CZ showed us he was fully committed to Andy just as Andy was to him.

Also, both were mature enough to know that they should also be outside their relationship and test out their feelings for other people. What I loved about this story is that neither character cheated on each other, but they both did slept around with their partners' acknowledgment as a way to have sexual release when they were apart. That part of the story makes this more controversial as well, because we've been taught as gay men to restrict our partners after the breakout of AIDS. Jeff took a huge step forward and raised tough questions about partners and relationships, both for the age aspect and the sexual partners.

Family- This theme will be featured really prominently in my next review, but it starts here. Even if the story doesn't use the most natural rescue themes, it does have one other tenet of Gay fiction in the 2000's, a strong unified family. When I say family, I don't mean the American "nuclear" family, I mean a group of characters/people who we surround ourselves with and who loves us unconditionally.

Story Review:

This story is my favorite, so I am bias on it. I remember an old friend on GA a long time ago telling me, "Jeff Allen had a really good story, up until he started writing like NAMBLA". Was he right? No, but I can see why he thought that way and I also can see problems with how far Jeff was stretching things into his next story "Finding Family", which most readers at that time actually loved more than this story.

The story touches on love without boundaries or restraint, which I think is what Gay fiction should be about. We forget that only a few decades ago, stuff like this was considered illegal to read. Hell, half of GA's own author's would be indictable for graphic storytelling. I don't approve of pedophilia, but I am not so conservative as a storyteller to believe in a set age where things happen. It doesn't in real life and it doesn't in fiction, we only set up laws like that because we need boundaries to regulate behavior for the majority, but in minority cases, it is permissible and right..That's my interpretation of Justice and law, I will let that point rest until we get into "Finding Family" where it becomes more problematic.

Beyond that point, CZ Johnstone as I said up at the top is one of the most dynamic gay characters in written online literature and no one really pays him much respect. He is strong willed, independent, and an evolving character that faced major issues, but survived and thrived. However, he doesn't have the background of abuse, homophobia, or other negative character backstories that you might expect from gay writers. When thinking of characters that resemble him, I can't find any that has his multi-faceted nature. There are a lot of close ones, but they only have one part of his character and fall through with negative background propelling them forward. I make the same mistakes too, I use negative backgrounds on my gay characters to give them drive, but I feel like that part of me has to end as we enter a new era of gay fiction.
Finally, Character development was top notch in this story. From Andy and CZ's relationship to Justin Barnes' friendship to the destructive Brad Miller, we saw a gamut of real life expressions. A gay fiction story that has that kind of characterization and a lot of good hot sex is hard to come by.

I would argue that thematically and plot-wise, Jeff hit his greatest storytelling peak here. He did everything right on the characters, he included development of complex issues, mastered a balance of Heterosexual representation with Homosexual affiliation, and he displayed a lot of common issues gay college kids faced if they were openly gay.

I give this story:

10/10

Perfection is hard to improve on

(PS: Next part will be Finding Family and a lot less rosy from me)

Story Link:
http://www.crvboy.org/stories/jeffallen/s002/c01.html