Charles26

Well; that's dramatic! An alliance is being formed if not yet a friendship (and more?)

Another impressive chapter. The more we learn about Oliver, the less I feel I really understand him. His problems run both broad and deep. Very deep. One of the most remarkable things in his history is not that he is divorced but that he ever had a husband. Daniel must be an astonishingly tolerate and forgiving man. As he walks, Oliver is changing - perhaps healing, perhaps growing. His soul or spirit or whatever you like to call his inner self is starting to make emotional and intimate contact with the world, with people (including, to some extent and rather late, Daniel) and even his own body. How did he come to be so cut off from everything that matters? Was he born that way, raised that way or forced that way by some traumatic incident? His growth or healing is wonderful to observe. This walk will surely be the saving of him - and when he does meet someone he should be human enough to respond to that man's - and his own - gifts and needs. I look forward to future developments in future chapters. Beautifully written, of course!

I neglected say that I particularly like: "It was a man handing over the brake and keeping the wheel, and doing it in one sentence, on a public footpath, without breaking stride." Very effective. An interesting metaphor that tells us a great deal about where this may be heading... Of course, apart from the impact it has in the context of the nascent relationship, I am also (facetiously) reminded of my driving lessons where I had the wheel and the driving instructor had the (dual-control) brake. But that wasn't a metaphor and our relationship was entirely and strictly limited to my learning to drive🙄.

Very much a tale of two parts. The learner's permit and driving lesson are good fun and it's always a delight to see Matt and Levi bonding. So, great. And then Casey. Levi has been warned - repeatedly - but as Matt told him when he first went to T'ville, he is being given reasonable freedom of action in the expectation that he will grow, but part of that growth will come from making and dealing with mistakes. The attraction is clearly compelling and few people think clearly in such cases, especially when they have no prior experience (and I don't think Levi has any relevant prior experience!). We don't really know about Casey yet. At least he is honest about his reputation; but you have to be pretty stupid to lie about something which everybody knows. His come on to Levi was far from subtle. Blatant, in fact. I don't trust him; I think he's trouble waiting to happen - but I have to admit I don't know. I'm quite sure we (and Levi) will find out a chapter or ten down the line. Thanks for another good chapter.

Sheer physical exhaustion. Exquisitely described - I hurt all over through empathy. Oliver's rigid control is cracking, which can only be good since it's doing him more harm than good. I do understand his arithmetic, calculating approach to things since I have the reflex of counting and working out updated percentages at frequent intervals with far too much of daily life. If we had any doubt, we are now told unambiguously just how much Oliver has been keeping body and soul in separate compartments. "... and it wasn’t a system. It was just attention. Attention to a body he had spent thirty-six years piloting and was only now, lying in the dark in a stone building in the mountains, beginning to inhabit." Very nicely expressed.

That's really something. Evan and Cian. Instant desire. Erotic tension. Serious arousal. And a wait from Wednesday to Saturday for - perhaps - some kind of consummation. A decidedly intense chapter and, again, well written. If this is anything to go by the next chapter should be worth waiting for🥵. Not too long, I hope.

It's getting there - but Mannly really will have to talk!

And so not, perhaps, a pilgrimage. Pilgrims usually have a clear destination in mind, even if it doesn't prove to be what they hoped for when they get there. It would be difficult to show that Oliver has any sort of destination at all, poor guy.

Of course Mark has to be a signature author. How not? Well done, in any case😀

The emotional wall he has built around himself; the defences against any sort of feelings - they are just maybe beginning to crack in the different world in which he has put himself. I hope things go well, even with the blistered feet. Beautifully written. An elegant, cutting style. Good job.

"As I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish that man would go away." It's only tangentially relevant, but there is at least one person that I've particularly liked since he first was introduced in A Good Place. I've been watching out for him and he hasn't been mentioned at all, even though Tony and Aaron are at the birthday party. What has happened to Zack??

Oh, lovely. What a wonderful chapter - what a wonderful moment in Levi's life. Just for now no anxieties, no worries, no griefs. Just the love of family and friends. Something to make life truly worth living and a memory to cherish: "I will not lose it before I lose the light of my days." (Anne McCaffrey The Skies of Pern.)

I think that Oliver is not a happy man - but that his distress is so total it numbs him beyond any sensation. This promises to be an interesting story.

Hank and Jake seem to have guessed at least some of the significance of Mannly's mood change -and the incident may well be, dare I say it?, another breakthrough... but why is Mannly trying to pretend nothing much happened? Surely he trusts Jake and the others enough by now to know they will want to help and protect him?

1 Kings 19:11-13 (if you want to be fussy) - the still, small voice of calm. Even the Old Testament has some decent stuff in it, I think, though there is no doubt at all that it also has a great deal that is really unpleasant. I could easily argue, for example, that the taking of Jericho and what followed is a good an example of a war crime as you could hope to find anywhere. However... No crises in this chapter but a fair amount of growth and development. There does seem to be something odd going on between Jimmy and Dan and I'm sure we'll learn more about that in due course. The strengthening bond between Levi and Matt is heart-warming but perhaps what hits me hardest in this chapter is the new information on just how very bleak Levi's life was with his Maternal grandfather (get it right this time!) and his mother. Bacon and eggs for breakfast as his birthday treat?! We don't know how much of it was poverty in the dollars and cents sense and how much it was emotional and spiritual asceticism gone mad but it is just so hard. I don't think anyone in these stories other than Tony Scott has much money but I'm pretty sure that Matt and Luke and Levi's new extended family more generally will make a real effort to ensure that Levi's sixteenth birthday is something special.

Well written - well done. Encouraging too. It seems that Levi is beginning to find his feet, and that can only be good. Not that I imagine things will go smoothly all the way from here😉. Levi's relationship with Tim and Guy is interesting. It's good, of course, that they too are beginning to feel like family. That may even help with the underlying problem if my guess is right. Levi has accepted Matt and Luke as his parents and I suspect that somewhere in his subconscious that means he has stopped thinking of them as sexual beings. They're just dad and dad-2. Tim and Guy are another matter entirely. They are older than he is, obviously, and I don't suppose he feels any sexual desire for them any more than they do for him. (All cool there.) But they are young enough and fit enough and openly loving enough that they are very clearly two people with an active loving, sexual relationship. And that, I suspect, registers with him in a big way; it's something that he wants for himself very badly but at the same time rejects as contrary to the "moral values" he has been taught. It's not that they are doing anything wrong; it's just that what they do stirs up the conflict in his own emotional and sexual turmoil.

It's true that we don't know much about what motivated Levi's paternal grandfather. It's also true that he did provide at least a home for his errant daughter and her fatherless son, though only from the time when Levi was already five years old. It's not nothing. But we do have some idea of the requirements and restrictions imposed on Levi first by "pop" and then by his mother. I think Levi has done amazingly well to have emerged from that environment as whole and as caring as he is. Obviously he did love his mother - caring for her much have been terrible near the end. But whatever upbringing he had it certainly didn't provide him or his mother with any real friends. Just some people they more-or-less knew at school or at their church. And I can't help feeling that his grandfather set the tone from start to finish.

All the way through to his second day at his new school and Levi is already entangled in a pretty extensive and sticky web. On the one hand, whatever colour of sheep Casey may be, and Levi has been comprehensively warned about the family (at least), the erotic attraction is there, potent and undeniable. We've been told that Levi has hit full-on puberty late (and his emotional asphyxiation by his "Pop" and his mother may be responsible for the delayed onset) but his new, emotionally healthier environment seems to have turned the process on full blast. Not the easiest context in which to deal with a first object of desire. And of course, while Matt and Luke and the others are not trying to "convert" Levi to homosexuality - a stupid idea promoted by the ignorant and prejudiced - what they are doing is normalising it and showing it as just another, admittedly minority, way for people to live and love. On the other hand there are Jimmy and Dan. Two very decent guys and probably good people to have as friends but since Jimmy has already said that he doesn't really have any other mates at school they are clearly not a pass to general popularity. And they are obviously close - are they a couple? Close enough in any case that Dan is becoming jealous on the first day he meets Levi. Has Levi noticed and has he picked up on the need for care? But yes, the final scene where Levi actually calls Matt "Dad" for the first time, and the resulting hugs - that was lovely.

Well written and convincing - no surprise there😉. Well done. I can't predict just how much grief Levi is going to get from the "arseholes". The support of Jimmy, and those like him, will be critical at school; the support of Matt and Luke and their friends at least as important at home. I hope that if there are real problems Levi will feel able to tell Matt and Luke, at least, what is going on and how bad it is. The image of children - especially adolescent males - varies hugely from place to place and time to time. Innocents, harmless until misled? (New Testament: "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.") Or uncivilised savages needing harsh discipline to civilise them? (Old Testament "Spare the rod and spoil the child".) Or just unformed and dangerous - The Lord of the Flies, anyone? But I think it is fair to say that they can be pretty brutal at school to anyone they see as different or vulnerable. And as Frank Herbert said in Dune, "beginnings are such delicate times." Still, I'm confident that Levi has the inner strength as well as the support he will need to settle in, make a place for himself and be happy. Good luck!

"Elite" is subjective, I think, and the associations it has depend on context. Not many people have a problem with the idea of elite sportspersons, for example 😀. And educated is not really a bad thing to be: it often helps in life! Apart from that... Yes, probably a breakthrough chapter. At the very least Jake and Mannly should understand and know each other better from now on and that should make life better for both of them. Meanwhile, I wonder what progress if any there has been in tracking down the men who attacked Mannly. No doubt we shall discover in due course. We can suppose that they were motivated by homophobia and it was a gay-bashing but we don't even know that for certain. Thanks for another enjoyable chapter.

So true. This is a very dangerous line of thought. A variant on survivor's guilt. Clearly, far from doing anything wrong he seems to have been a marvel; one of those undervalued, unpaid carers who get so little recognition. He needs to be reassured on this, as plainly, as often, as convincingly and with as much love as it takes.

Oh, wonderful! The Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey - and an allure both forbidden and entrancing. Worst, more probably best, of all there's a boy who has caught Levi's attention at first sight. Settling in is clearly going to be a challenge but equally clearly the biggest struggle will be within. I think and hope that in the end Levi will find himself, not oppressed by the ghosts of his grandfather or his grandfather's church but not overcome by a need to conform with his new environment and peer group: truly himself, decent and loving, whatever the details of faith and sexual orientation may prove to be. Thanks for an inspiring chapter!

As Churchill put it, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” And a very good end it is too. Looking for some appropriately biblical metaphor I find myself reaching for Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness for 40 years. Poor Levi. Poor Julie, come to that. Christians are supposed to hate the sin but to love the sinner. There doesn't seem to have been much of that love on display over the past ten years, though plenty of the hate (masquerading as morality). Over that time I suspect that both of them lived exemplary lives by small town moral standards; but was that enough? It seems not. No-one cared enough to attend the funeral. It's not said but I doubt that Levi got much help when caring for his mother as he watched her dying. Enough of that or I'll get altogether too angry. I just hope that Levi recovers from the stunting impact of that kind of treatment and blossoms into the best version of himself (as someone said!). So, a great chapter for which thanks and congratulations.

Disagreeable as "Pop" may have been it probably isn't fair to dump responsibility for everything on him. I'm quite sure he was, at the least, perfectly happy to keep Matt in the dark but Julie had had five years away from his immediate control and had said nothing to Matt in all that time. She could have done - she certainly knew where and how to contact Matt's parents even if she had no contact details for Matt himself. On a separate thought, it's painfully ironic that Levi and his parental grandparents were living in the same small town for ten years, all without having any idea. Of course, with his other grandparents so nearby they could have been a significant counter-weight to Pop and his teaching if they had known Levi. But then, I know at least one family (not my own!) where both parents lived in quite a small town by European standards (about 25,000 people) but the children had no contact with their father for decades after their parents' divorce. He certainly lived within walking distance. Family breakdown can be tragic outside stories as well as inside them.

They do say that the answer to a good question raises more good questions. There is an element of that here. Certainly Pop's reaction to Julie's pregnancy must have been pretty hostile. If I read it aright, he basically threw her out of the house and she fled to the big city for some years. Those were years in which she had a number of boyfriends and may well have been living a lifestyle of which her father would very much not have approved (though at least she avoided a second child!). And then it all became unmanageable and for want of any other option she went home and accepted her father's rules and requirements. I have the impression that this did not come easily to her. I wonder to what extent her failure to tell Matt was her own choice, and how much her father's. I think it is good that Matt should be able to tell Levi how much he (Levi) matters to him as well as to Luke and to his parents. Levi certainly needed to hear that. And I also think it is excellent that Levi should want, and feel able to ask for, a special place - or places - where he and Matt can talk openly on any concern's Levi may have. I guess that may have to go both ways in time. A very good chapter, so thanks.