Physical Education by kayden

[Guest kayden]

I've now begun posting my first story for GA, entitled "Physical Education". It's posted under the genre "Romance", but only because there was no "Drama" genre. The story is about a 14 year old boy who is confused about his attraction to both boys and girls, but that is only a small part of the story. His name is Oliver and his family is Mormon, which causes some friction from the start when Oliver joins the swim team, (his father thinks the uniform is immodest and is concerned about Oliver having practice and swim meets on the Sabbath). This friction is a small taste of what is to come when Oliver and his Mormon beliefs clash horns on a much larger scale. Additionally, I have some extremely interesting plot twists planned, and I can only speak from experience here: be prepared to laugh at some parts, and be prepared to cry at others.

 

I hope readers will be enjoying reading my story as much as I've enjoyed writing it already.

 

I hope to receive some constructive criticism from readers in this thread, since this is the first story I've ever written and allowed people to read. Any and all comments - positive or negative - are welcome. I don't have an editor, (I read my stories over and over finding little grammatical errors and such on my own), so there may be some things you notice that you'd like to point out where I could make things better. Perhaps I don't specify which character is speaking in a certain part, or maybe there's too many things going on in a scene and you can't understand it, or perhaps I didn't describe the nature of the Mormon religion sufficiently and you can't understand what I mean when I say he had to "collect Fast Offerings" or something. Every little bit will help, I want to make this story as enjoyable to read as possible!

 

Anyway, at the moment I've only posted the Introduction and Chapters 1 & 2, but I should have Chapter 3 posted VERY soon, and it's starting to get VERY good. Here you go:

 

Physical Education

 

 

 

EDIT FOR GRAMMAR: Geez, I don't know why I go back and re-read every post I write a hundred times, but every time I do I find some stupid little grammatical error that I need to fix before I can rest again. I hope there's no grammatical errors in this sentence...

 

 

[Jons317]

Just finished reading the chapters. It's really a good start. Oliver makes me laugh. He has really great goofy thoughts. Eager to see how the story plays out. I'm not a writer so I don't have any feedback or hints, it's just a good story.

[Nephylim]

Well... as far as the explainations go I didn't have any trouble following them. I am very intersted to see where this goes with the religion clashing thing becuase it is something that I feel strongly about.

 

The characters are well drawn and the scene is well set. I haven't noticed anything glaring and it doesn't seem rushed or stilted. So all good so far.

 

I like particularly the way that you start a chapter lightly and it gets darker and heavier towards the end. We are left looking forward to the next chapter if only for light relief. It is already clear that Ollie is struggling with his beliefs and his nature and the scene is set for some major falls. I just hope that he gets stronger or it will all overwhelm him... and us.

 

As a first story this is really very good and I am looking forward to reading more.

 

I am glad you posted a discussion thread.

[Guest kayden]

Just finished reading the chapters. It's really a good start. Oliver makes me laugh. He has really great goofy thoughts. Eager to see how the story plays out. I'm not a writer so I don't have any feedback or hints, it's just a good story.

 

Awwww, isn't he sweet?

[wildone]

I just read all 3 chapters in a row, and I'm also in the boat of wanting some more .

 

I have always been interested in the Mormon religion and how it really is seen in the eyes of GBLT members that may have grown up in it. Having dated a ex Mormon, he was still close with his family but would talk very little of what growing up was like.

 

Looking for more, and if I can give any thoughts or advice, I'm sure I will .

 

Thanks for sharing,

 

Steve

[Guest kayden]

I just read all 3 chapters in a row, and I'm also in the boat of wanting some more .

 

Thanks for reading! Chapter 4 should be out later today. I hit a bit of writer's block last night because I'm tired of building up to the main events, I just want them to happen NOW! But once my creative juices start flowing again I'll finish Chapter 4, (working title: "Pushing the Envelope"), and post it in eFiction.

 

 

 

I have always been interested in the Mormon religion and how it really is seen in the eyes of GBLT members that may have grown up in it. Having dated a ex Mormon, he was still close with his family but would talk very little of what growing up was like.

 

Although Oliver's story is fictional, I hope to be able to use this medium to portray not only the emotions of a questioning youth within a Mormon family, but also portray how religion can turn otherwise moral and accepting people into monsters towards people they don't understand. (I'll also be portraying how the opposite can also be true, though. Oh, I'm so excited for the chapters to come!) As if it's not bad enough that people like Oliver are made to feel guilty by default of these narrow-minded belief systems, the way some members of those belief systems treat people like Oliver is equally abhorrent and multiplies the pain a person like poor Ollie feels by ten. This story isn't based on actual events, (for the most part), but is instead based on an emotion. I'm going to attempt to make the Church members and his family react to the various events in what I consider a realistic way, but I hope nobody uses this story alone to form an opinion of members of the Mormon religion and then judge them by it. This is only a story, and despite my efforts to accurately portray how I think things would go based on what I know of the Mormon religion, I'd ask you to take it all with a large grain of salt.

 

 

That's odd, I seemed to get a little defensive towards religion just then... :wacko:

[Nephylim]

That's odd, I seemed to get a little defensive towards religion just then...

 

 

You want to watch that... it's like a rash... if you don't put ointment on it quickly it might spread... you had better go and write some more to get it out of your system

[Guest kayden]

You want to watch that... it's like a rash... if you don't put ointment on it quickly it might spread... you had better go and write some more to get it out of your system

 

I followed your advice and finished Chapter Four!

[Guest kayden]

Alright, I just need to get some things off my chest in reference to this story, so here goes, (takes a deep breath...).

 

I received a review for my story from somebody who was a Mormon themselves. Although this touched me in a personal way, it also concerned me for two reasons. The first reason is irrelevant, though, so I'll just go onto the second reason. It concerned me because I worried that there were inaccuracies in my story with regards to the life of a Mormon boy of fourteen. A non-Mormon would almost definitely not notice any inaccuracies in this regard, but a person who grew up in the Mormon Church most probably would. I suppose on the whole it's not necessarly that important, but I strived to make my story as accurate, realistic, and true to life as possible. In fact, I've sacrificed a great deal of literary liberties in the name of accuracy. However, I failed at this task, and would like to make it known to readers which aspects of Mormon life I neglected.

 

First of all, I neglected the weekly youth meetings almost all good teenage Mormons go to. I mentioned Boy Scouts in the story, (the normal activity Mormon teenage boys go to, headed by their Mormon leaders), but I only mentioned it out of guilt for neglecting it in the story. Normally, a fourteen year old Mormon boy would go either every Tuesday or every Wednesday night to boy scouts at their church. In this story, Oliver will not be doing that because there's already too much going on.

 

I was even more neglectful in the area of Seminary. Most good Mormon boys of fourteen would be going every morning before school to a spiritual class with other kids their age. (In Utah, sporting a population more than 75% Mormon, Seminary is a class you can take in school rather than early in the morning, but in other places it's done before school.) I completely forgot about this additional aspect of a young Mormon's life, and I apologize for this inaccurate depiction in my story.Oliver will not be attending Seminary in this story however, because as with the boy scouts thing, there's just too much going on already. Not to mention the fact that Oliver wouldn't be able to go to swim practice before school if he was having to go to Seminary, also.

 

The fact is that a Mormon youth's life is more complicated than most young people's lives. They have more responsibilites and more expectations from others and of themselves. As much as I would like to correct these inaccuracies, I think it would be boring for the reader to be exposed to so many aspects of the orthodox Mormon's life.

 

*sigh* I pity Mormon youth and all the pressure that is placed on them, not to mention the brainwashing.

 

The reader who reviewed my story and sparked this post is a Mormon himself, and I...well, I can't say I completely understand how he/she feels, because I abandoned the Church long before I was of age to serve a mission or anything, but I understand to some extent the torment he/she must feel, because I felt it in my own ways and I am still today recovering from the emotional torment, and still feeling the repercussions, not to mention still being greatly effected by it - what with having an entirely Mormon family.

 

ANYWAY, I would also like to give readers an idea of the actual scope of the story, because I feel that what little you've received from me so far is somewhat deceiving. Up until now, and for a little while longer, the story has been following Oliver on a daily, and in some cases on even shorter timeframes. The fact is that this story, when complete, will have covered his entire freshmen school year. I will NOT be writing a separate chapter for each and every individual day of his freshmen year. There will come a time, very soon, when the introductory aspects of the story will come to an end, and the story will focus solely on some major, epic, extremely dramatic events. It will still be very intimate and personal, but it will no longer be focusing on every detail of his everyday life. I just felt I needed to say that because I feel like everything I've written up to this point has given the impression that the entire story will take place in a matter of days and that each chapter will focus on a separate day or so, which is completely untrue. That being said, even with the fact that the story will eventually start ignoring the less eventful days in Oliver's freshmen year, the story will still end up being near-novel-length, if not more so. I'm guessing it will be around thirty chapters of similar length to the ones posted so far, but that's just a ballpark figure. It won't be anything short, though, because the coming events will be intense, varied, and there will be a lot of them.

 

And lastly, I'd like to say that although I've been writing a chapter a day or more so far, this trend will probably not continue for long. I'm unemployed and broke, and instead of spending my time trying to remedy my financial situation, I've been reading and writing for GA and other things. I'd like to spend all my time writing and reading, but I need to pay bills, so I probably won't be able to release a chapter a day for much longer, if at all anymore. I'll write them as quickly as possible, though.

 

Not sure if anyone read or cared about any of that, but I had to get it all off my chest.

[amBIguoustwo]

I'm enjoying the story very much. I have some Mormon friends, so I have some exposure to Oliver's life. As you noted, as a non-Mormon I didn't notice anything amiss.

 

Oliver is a great character and I'm looking forward to learning how he (and the story) develops.

[Guest kayden]

I'm enjoying the story very much. I have some Mormon friends, so I have some exposure to Oliver's life. As you noted, as a non-Mormon I didn't notice anything amiss.

 

Oliver is a great character and I'm looking forward to learning how he (and the story) develops.

 

 

 

I'm glad you're enjoying it and thanks for joining the discussion!

[Clovis]

I am delighted with the story. It is about something important -- religious brainwashing of children and the horrifying effects of that. I get tired of gay stories that are only about sex. Sex is the strongest of our urges, but too many detailed descriptions of sexual acts become boring. I like it if the author leaves something to my imagination. It isnt necessary to tell everything about being a Mormon; it is the effect on the lad that's interesting. The Fuss over speedoes and 'modesty' is bizarre in the extreme. I didn't even wear a swimsuit till I was about ten, and then it was just a sort of thong Mother made because the teacher complained during swimming lessons at school that I should cover my penis.

Religion is all about guilt, and you've captured that perfectly. Thanks. I look forward to reading more. and hope you find a job soon

[Guest kayden]

I am delighted with the story. It is about something important -- religious brainwashing of children and the horrifying effects of that. I get tired of gay stories that are only about sex. Sex is the strongest of our urges, but too many detailed descriptions of sexual acts become boring. I like it if the author leaves something to my imagination. It isnt necessary to tell everything about being a Mormon; it is the effect on the lad that's interesting. The Fuss over speedoes and 'modesty' is bizarre in the extreme. I didn't even wear a swimsuit till I was about ten, and then it was just a sort of thong Mother made because the teacher complained during swimming lessons at school that I should cover my penis.

Religion is all about guilt, and you've captured that perfectly. Thanks. I look forward to reading more. and ...

I'm glad you're enjoying it.

[Nephylim]

I'm glad things are cool and working out.... some shape. Was wondering where you'd got to. Looking forward to the next chapter... but I can be patient.