PrivateTim

Hurrumph....... took your own damn sweet time posting this last chapter Arbour! I spent the whole weekend staring at my tablet waiting for an update to pop up.... didn't eat.... didn't sleep.... didn't shower lest I miss it! But lucky for you it was worth the wait! Great chapter, but I will admit I kept getting confused between Brad thoughts and Will dialogue.... interesting that all that back story was going on, but it does bring out a point I've discussed before and that is that we see very little of the actual lives of the character, just minutes here and there and there are whole sale parts of their lives we never see. I get the device of the teacher, but at a school like Menlo, it is not only unlikely that any teacher would be unaware of what happened with one of their students, but that the school would have actually spoken with Will's teacher before school and other kids at Menlo who might have been effected. But it was a nice way for Will to get his story out publicly, all at once and the story should spread like wildfire throughout the school. Maybe philosophy teacher/ water polo coach Jack Bowen can be the teacher on campus who hunts Will down and talk to him.

We will default to Clintonian Rule of Celibacy: If you are not lying down, it is not sex.

It is amazing how sometimes your ardor for someone can cool after you've had sex with them the first time. I remember a girl I wanted so badly my junior year of high school that when we finally had "real sex" for the first time, I was pretty much over her and spent the next two months trying to figure out how to dump her. Nice to see Cody taking an interest in Maddy, not surprised to see Frank not wanting to raise a one year old and I am looking forward to Will's going back to school.

Oh man straight sex and no warnings....... you're gonna have some unhappy gaysters Interesting twist. I had sex with my straight guy cousins, but would have been grossed out with sex with my girl cousins.... can't say why other than Will's explanation. It was recreation with my guy cousins.... girls don't see sex the same way... Looking forward to school Monday

Older guys in clubs in LA got major Shi-ite if they tried to dress like they were in a club in Paris, New York, or London. LA is still LA and a laid back scene, the guys wearing Versace were mocked. Assuming they were not into fetish scenes (daddy, leather, emo, goth, etc) the guys Brad age dressed pretty normal, Polo knit shits, t-shirts if they were built, nice jeans (CK, Armani, etc, maybe even Levi's in a really low key bar). But I don't think Brad would suddenly turn into a club type guy, house parties were more the norm and at Brad's level he'd be going to parties thrown by David Geffen, Garth Ancier, Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin, Bryan Singer and a few other agent/lawyer types less known to the public and in turn, Brad would host parties at Malibu, especially the Sunday afternoon ones that were such fun.

I think that it was Bill Cosby who spoke extensively about "anyone can be a father, it takes someone special to be a parent", or words to that effect. So far Cody is just Maddy's father, not a parent. He hasn't lived with her and his mother as a nuclear family unit. When you live with your child, your baby, and you just look at it, you look at its tiny, perfect hands, its tiny feet and chubby legs, when your hear the sounds and can start to recognize and distinguish the happy gurgles from mere gas, and so much more, yes it is mystical, magic, life altering transformation that nothing else can equal. Of course there are people who are not effected by their baby in transformative ways, but I think they are the exception, not the norm. It is likely that there was some kind of agreement between Jeanine and Cody, but if Cody decides he wants custody of Maddy the agreement is probably not worth the paper it is written on. That doesn't mean he would get custody, it just means the court would throw out the agreement and start from scratch as to what was in the best interest of the child. Even if Cody were not awarded sole custody, it would be likely that he would get visitation..... but that part is all idle speculation on "what ifs". I think Cody and the family will work out on their own what is best for Maddy and that Cody will turn out to be a good, even if absentee, father.

For what age? Uber-trendy for Brad won't be the same as Darius and Bay Area will differ from Los Angeles.

I can totally see Darius as a Beta; amiable guy, money, classy. SAE's at UCLA do well in sports and throw good parties, but kind of arrogant. Sigma Chi, on and off probation so they've had a tough time staying consistent. Here is the Beta House: Here is the SAE House:

He wants to pork freshman chicks before the "freshman 15", duh...... No, fraternity life is the best place for building college friendships. I can see Darius pledging because it was a great way to meet the chickadees. As Mark points out, Darius is going home. He'd have lots of friends in Malibu and the surrounding areas for friendships. I am going to assume he chose to return back to So Cal because UCLA is a better school than Santa Clara and because he only went there because of Ella to begin with. And graduate dorms are very different from undergraduate dorms. I don't get that it is far fetched that men cheat on their partners regardless of the partners gender. Men are dogs, plain and simple. I know a lot of relationships and even marriages where the ditzy wife (regardless of gender) assumes they are in a monogamous relationship where the SOB husband is screwing anything they can on the QT. Even in some of the gay couples I know who are essentially monogamous have rules about how they can sleep with someone else who catches their eye. There are certain rules and guidelines they have agreed to, but they are really not monogamous. I can count the truly monogamous couples on one hand and even then, it is an assumption that they are monogamous because I've never seen or heard anything to the contrary. While I have said it would be nice to see gay couples portrayed in a less slutty way, that actually would be the fiction not the norm.

What will the next CAP be? My Three Sons or The Schluter Bunch? un hunh..... "uncle" Charlie lives with them?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwikvo6EZiQ I think we all know what Mile was doing when Carol wasn't around..... you all thought it was plans in those tubes he had...

Being a quarter school lots of students would have moved in weeks before, mostly because they are fall athletes, but for other reasons as well. The average freshman might have some "move-in weekend" experience, but that would not be the norm for transfer students and not a big deal like it might be as some ivy covered east coast school.

Great chapter..... funny I don't really remember Jeanine's parents being mentioned before. I am sure they were, they just never seem to have been a part of Will's life. While parents might have issues with their children, my experience is they could never be mad at the grandkids even if they were the product of a marriage or liaison they disapproved of. I know there are exceptions, I've just never seen it. Sweet to see John help Will out, Brad I am less sure about. I know there have been times when sex just didn't interest me, I think if I was Brad, this would have been one of them.

Okay wait...... I've gone with a lot of really unbelievable things in this story..... street urchins who turn into billionaires, people having sex who never lock their doors, Stanfurd as an acceptable place for a four year degree...... but now Arbour you've lost me..... no credibility.... a teen who who is pissed that his parents never pried enough into his sex life! Seriously??

I do believe that Elizabeth loved Jeff, that doesn't mean she isn't evil. Anyway, a good chapter to start healing and I hope people take all this stuff to heart and that it lasts longer than the post 9-11 bubble of good feelings, which I would say started to fade in early 2002 as people moved on from the collective grief. Interesting that this was a solo narrator chapter.

Because if someone on a Christian forum suggested taking a baseball bat to a gay's head The Gays would go nuts, it would make national news and Anderson Cooper would have Sanjay Gupta does a segment on why Christians want to be violent on gays.... goose, gander, sauce.

Hmmm. so the appropriate response to hate is more hate? And not just hate, but violence too?

Think of how empty the Malibu houses are going to be. A few stories ago it was Greg, Stef, Brad, Robbie, Jeanine, Tiffany, Darius, Will and JJ. Now the two houses are just Brad and JJ. Might this be a catalyst to move Will back to Malibu? Or Cody & Maddie? Jeff? 9-11 can change where everyone was going to go to school. Wade may feel an obligation to step in as Beau's surrogate father and move to VA to go to the University of Virginia Law School or Georgetown, or Yale or Harvard if that is where Beau is going to go to college, or maybe Beau will come west because Wade is at Stanford. Or maybe where Matt goes for graduate school, USC or UCLA for his MBA will effect Wade decision more, he winds up one of the So Cal law schools and that house in Malibu starts to fill again. In any case, I am not sure I see the two of them in Chicago. Matt might be comfortable back in the Midwest, but I think it would be awfully tough to move back to the Midwest once you've escaped. Wade is more a coastal guy so I see him left coast or right coast, but not in the middle. As to Obama the law lecturer, friends and colleagues who had him for a teacher called him pretty cold and distant. He wasn't Bill Clinton who made everyone his best friend in five minutes and didn't build a network like Clinton did, he had a small tight circle in Chicago.

OMG, I cried in that chapter more than all the others combined..... The aftermath was much harder to deal with than the initial shock. I think normally the service would have notified Wade personally, but there were just too many that day and it was still an ongoing attack as far as anyone knew at that time.

Remembering the way people felt after 9-11, how they treated each other a little nicer, drove a little bit less aggressive, were polite...... there may be an opportunity to figure out what is in Maddy's best interest amicably. The trouble with the sale of Goodwell not being final is that Beau, the sister and Wade are probably the main beneficiaries of the Senators estate so they share the property equally. Elizabeth will use her daughter to keep Goodwell out of Wade's possession. As to Beau, he must be 16 by now? Elizabeth can only mess with him for so long and if she pushes too hard, Wade has the lawyers to mess with her and tie her up until Beau hits his majority. And remember that the day of 9-11-01 was just the first of many shocks that reverberated for a while. The stock market went into free fall when it first opened after 9-11, there were companies that went bankrupt when liquidity dried up and many industries (insurance, banking, airlines, cruise lines and hospitality) that took big hits. Some companies (high tech & defense) went through the roof. Like I said..... I hope this book goes on for a bit, at least through Christmas... or that the next book doesn't skip too far ahead. There are too many characters from the last three books that I am emotionally invested in and want to see where their lives go and intersect.

True, but then he has never had to be responsible. Some people when they have responsibility thrust on them step up to the plate. Whether or not Cody chooses to raise Maddy, I don't see him abandoning her or forgetting about her.

Continuing the roiling of feelings. We are barely into the day and it grew stranger and stranger all day. Great chapter, nice to see Wade back. I do look forward to October and November, etc. I hope the story 9-11 takes us through Thanksgiving and Christmas and Will gets to keep his time with Cam, that Marie comes back to reality (has anyone called Claire by the way? She must be frantic) and that we get to see some of the storylines from the last book developed. The happy days of Maui were just a couple of weeks ago, but it feels like a lifetime.

You are god the creator of CAP who are we to judge or understand whom you smiteth? I liked Robbie, but like all your creations he serves at your pleasure and if his service will be better with him gone then so let it be done.

Shoulda been Tony........... I actually find JJ interesting especially from the complexity of his character.

Ooooo, Mark, did he get a lightening blot scar on his forehead???

I am going to wait until the next chapter to say my goodbyes to Robbie and the Senator since both could still be pulled from the rubble.....