Jonathan E

I'm sorry I didn't respond to this earlier, but thank you! I dunno how to process a Shakespeare or Steinbeck comparison (though reacting like a giddy school girl feels entirely appropriate), but I love your connection to Steinbeck's paisanos! Malcolm's segregated, queer neighborhood is a main character, and it was delightful to answer the question: "What if Jay Gatsby's parties, but in drag?" Also, I'm glad you enjoyed Elliot's comeuppance; he was a bad prince and had it coming.😉

Dawson had a creek, but Elliot has a point, and he'll invoke his fifth amendment right to state the whole thing without interruption.

That's exactly what I meant: rigid mid-century social roles deserve a paddling or two 😉 And I'm glad you enjoyed Danny and Elliot's dynamics 😀

Friday, October 31, 1969 — 1124 Harper Avenue — 4:00 PM Danny had vacuumed at eleven. He had vacuumed at eleven and then he had stood in the middle of the living room for four minutes looking for something else to fix, and had found nothing, because there had been nothing wrong to begin with. The apartment was clean. The apartment had been clean since Wednesday. The apartment had been clean since Wednesday and Danny had cleaned it again this morning anyway, which Elliot had noticed and had

I guess to expand on that (and to risk falling into the trap of an author interpreting their own work, which is never relevant because the impact on a reader is what matters): my hot take is that dark humor works well right up until it starts punching down or becoming cruel (and the latter usually has the former's DNA). Basically, the mid-century heterosexual establishment should be roasted for suffering a total systems crash over the prospect of an unemployed partner who can't cook. The mid-century military should be roasted for fearing Malcolm Greer. Danny and Elliot are toxic on paper, but they are never malicious; and Elliot can put Danny in a headlock just as easily as Danny can manipulate Elliot into wearing a shock collar. The architecture of the thing matters, etc.

Thank you so much! Dark humor either lands or it doesn't, and I am very happy to hear that it's landing!

Monday, September 29 — Bradley & Associates, Fourteenth Floor — 10:00 AM There are months that happen to you, and there are months when you do things. September had happened to Danny Devlin. It had taken him by the collar and dragged him through a bar fight, a broken engagement, a spanking, a jury verdict of $8.2 million plus costs, a boat, two beautiful women kissing him, and a collar with three red buttons. By the end of it, he had stood in a landlord's garden in starred satin sh

Saturday, 10:00 AM — 1124 Harper Avenue Danny had made breakfast. Eggs over easy, because that was how Elliot ate them. Bacon, because it had been on sale. Toast, coffee, and a glass of orange juice he set down on Elliot's side of the table without comment. Elliot came down at ten in his swim trunks and a T-shirt. He sat down, read the sports page, and ate like a man who had never once in his life considered where a meal came from. Elliot asked the question: "So what are

Elliot is a one-man kinda man, and a multi-woman kinda man, and no, he is not taking questions

Friday, 11:20 AM — Malibu There was one thing in Elliot Crane's life that had never once let him down, and it was the water. Everything else moved. Coaches, schools, girls, the whole rotation of people who wanted something from him or got tired of him — it all shifted around. But the ocean was the same every time. Cold in the morning, warm by noon, four-foot sets rolling in off the point on a schedule that didn't care who you were. You paddled out. You waited. You caught one. There w

Friday, 11:20 AM — Department 22, Los Angeles County Superior Court Danny sat with his spine against the hard oak of the bench, his hands folded neatly on his legal pad. He did not move, because moving was what other people did. Beside him, Lorelei’s hands were still in her lap. Two rows up sat the client—a sixty-year-old rancher named Hartwell whose grandfather had bought three dry acres off Sunset in 1921, and whose father had watched the city down-zone it in 1967. At counsel table,

That is a great point. The psychological toll of war is worth considering, too. My great-grandmother was a nurse during WWII. She signed up for the Army Nurse Corps in December 1941, she wanted to be there... and yet, she could almost never talk about what she saw after being sent to Europe in 1944. It puts an unjust war like Vietnam into perspective, when even a just war like WW2 scars its heroes.

Bottoms: Be kind, mind your behind 😉

Friday Morning – 6:15 AM Consciousness returned to Danny Devlin like a tide rolling in over sand—slow, inevitable, and carrying with it the debris of the night before. He stirred beneath the pink satin canopy, his head throbbing with the residual effects of Mr. Bradley's Bordeaux and Craig's cheap Ripple, his mouth cotton-dry and tasting of something sharp and foreign. He tried to inhale deeply, to clear the fog, but something was wrong. Something pressed against his face, constricti

Los Angeles, California — September 1969 — Thursday Night – 9:00 PM The September night air clung to Danny's skin like wet silk as he stepped from the taxi at the corner of Harper Avenue, the Bordeaux from the Ambassador Room still humming a warm, smoky baritone in his veins. The Victorian loomed ahead, all gingerbread trim and fussy grandeur, a lavender-painted anomaly among the palms. Danny had intended to slip inside unnoticed, to mount the stairs with his darker resolutions intact—but M

In the Los Angeles summer of 1969, two straight men attempt to avoid Vietnam by deceiving the local draft board and pretending to be a gay couple. Their plans go about as smoothly as trying to keep peonies alive in Los Angeles.

Thursday Morning The yelling started before Danny's eyes even opened—a cacophony of profanity and outrage that cut through the morning haze like a knife. "—the FUCK—DANNY—you absolute MOTHERFUCKING—" Danny groaned, pulling the pillow over his head. "Shut up," he mumbled, his voice muffled by feathers and exhaustion. "It's too early." "TOO EARLY? TOO EARLY?" Elliot's voice hit a register that could probably shatter glass. "Untie me RIGHT NOW you fucking PSYCHO—" Danny sig

Los Angeles, California — June 1969 — Tuesday It was Tuesday. The Bradley & Associates law firm occupied the fourteenth floor of a glass tower on Wilshire Boulevard, all chrome and mahogany and the hushed reverence of serious men doing serious work. Danny Devlin had been hired as a paralegal at the beginning of the summer, three weeks after his nineteenth birthday, following an interview where he had worn his father's old black suit—taken in at the waist by his mother's careful hands to