PrivateTim

I think Will and Noah will get back to a good place because Will will understand that Noah was a victim here and he won't be willing to victimize him twice. Cam seems nice, I hope Will can have a nice, normal relationship with him. I do hope that even in 2001 Will remains sensitive to the fact that not everyone can be out and that people come to the place of telling the world they are gay/bi in their own time and comfort level and that in a lot of cases it is one step at a time, first a few friends, then a few more, then immediate family, extended family and the rest of the world and it never really does stop, Sometimes the more people are against you (Darius, JJ, JP, Robbie, etc) instead of moving you off your position, it actually entrenches you that much more. I think Brad is in that place right now and the emotion driven Stef is along for the ride. I do get that we are going to lose some people that maybe we wish we didn't lose, but for the remaining people, family and friends, I think it will refocus people on what is important in life. The one thing I remember post 9-11 is how everyone seemed to get along for a while. There was a sense of unity and people treated each other a little nicer. I don't remember how long that lasted, a few weeks, a couple of months, but it is the one thing that sticks with me after the shock of the friends and acquaintances I lost.

Wow, the most reviews in a long time..... wonder why everyone is paying so much attention lately. I think I've figured out Noah.... Marie told Noah the only reason she turned him down for the dance was Will asked her to because he wanted Noah for himself. It is about the only thing that makes sense on how a sweet kid goes 180 the other direction. Man it is going to be awkward tomorrow when Will and hunky football player bump into Tony.... what's he doing in NYC?

Lovely piece of writing. As much as I enjoy Will as a narrator it is so nice to have JPs POV back in the story and I suspect that POV will be critically important in the days ahead. Be interesting to see how the Menlo School handles Ferris and the situation with Will. I wonder if they would have had on campus cameras in 2001. Like H-W, they take the honor code, bullying and harassment very seriously.

IKEA, are you kidding? They have slings in three different colors and one that only uses green energy and vegan lube..

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Attributed to Mark Twain Oh you are so wrong here. Rape is a crime of power and control only in some cases does it involve violence. A rape victim does not say "no" sometimes because they can not out of fear of violence, fear of reprisal or the lack of mental capacity to say no. Mere lack of a "no" and a claim of "expressive consent" (I knew she wanted it too) is a very weak defense in rape cases. The notion of "I knew he/she wanted it too, but I had to take control" is a 1970's attitude that if a defendant said that on the stand it would take everything his lawyer had not to reach out and not choke him right there. Juries don't like that attitude. The fraternity house that I advise at USC we bring in an ADA every fall to speak to the pledge class on what constitutes rape and especially the idea of "date rape" and by the time he is done he has scared the 18 year olds into at least two weeks of celibacy, maybe longer. As to Will & Brad, it is very hard to have a calm, polite conversation with someone that won't talk to you. I can only imagine the pent up anxiety of the father of a 14 year old who has their own bar, is buying pot and has a sex room and won't take his phone calls. It also takes two to have a shouting match just as it takes two to have a calm, polite conversation.

You mean John who is grounded right now?? The single best post on all 23 pages. The notion that we can see the mature side of Will (as well as the immature) is key. You are right that Brad only sees the one side.

Pot has been defacto legal to smoke in CA for many years, long before medical marijuana because the vogue. Possession of small amounts of marijuana was only a ticketable offense and many police stopped even doing that. They still went after traffickers, but the JPs of the world who were growing for home usage were pointedly ignored. As to sex, I do think you need to check the California Penal Code. CPC 261.5 a states, "Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the perpetrator, if the person is a minor." CPC 261.5 b states, "Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is not more than three years older or three years younger than the perpetrator, is guilty of a misdemeanor." So under CA law, even minors may not lawfully have sex with each other. I am not saying that prosecutors are standing in line to prosecute minors for having sex with each other, but they can and have. Not sure where murder came into the discussion. The discussion was about the difference between activities that are legal at one age, but not at another because the law recognizes that children do not have the proper judgement to engage in certain activities. A parent who drinks is not a hypocrite for telling their 14 year old not to drink. They are not even a hypocrite if they drank at 14. They are imparting their wisdom to the 14 year old on the topic through experience. Kitt, the point is not the law stops anyone from actually breaking the law, but that it is the law. It all stems from the many comments about Brad's hypocrisy because he drank and smoked in high school. it is okay to tell a 14 year old, 'yes I drink and you can too when you are 21'. There is nothing hypocritical in that. it is also okay to tell your kid, 'yes I drink when I was in high school and it was a mistake for the following reasons'. That is what parents are supposed to do, impart the wisdom of their experience to their children. In Brad's case his drinking and that of his peers led to the death of his brother and a lifelong wedge with his step mother. Seems to me he has pretty good reason to call his son on his drinking. As to pot smoking, you can not be arrested or imprisoned for possession of one ounce or less. It is a ticket with a fine of $100, if they bother to write you up.

As a Californian you should know that pot smoking, alcohol drinking and multiple sex partners are all legal activities for someone over 18 years of age and illegal for someone 14 years of age.

Oh man my head is spinning, I hardly know where to start..... a lot of inaccuracies and mis-remembering I think. 1) In no way would Brad win a court battle to revoke Will's emancipation unless Will was in a coma from a heroin overdose at the end of a long string of arrests and failures. Brad's time to protest the emancipation was before it was granted. He made the correct call in not fighting it, but supporting it.... which is why the current Brad's behavior is incongruous with the Brad who made that decision. I will chalk it up to "author's prerogative" in order to bring about a situation he can resolve in later chapters. 2) It is ironic that everyone who wants Marie broken, knuckled under, house arrested, shipped off to boarding/military school decried such actions for the much more out of control Will less than a year ago. 3) You can not use Mr. Martin as a justification for anything since before Will knew he was going to be abusive, he'd already taken steps to run away and drug Mr. Martin. 4) I am not sure where people see all this growth and maturity in Will. Refusing to take his father's phone calls or other wise speak with him is the ultimate immaturity. People who are adults talk over situations. Irrespective of how Brad acts, Will, if he were the wise, mature person he is supposed to be wouldn't fly off the handle and runaway every time he is mad at his father. The advice Darius gave him for school would work doubly well on Brad. Nothing would get under Brad's skin more than a calm Will (whether or not he felt calm on the inside) and give blase answers to Brad's threats ("yeah, yeah take me back to court, can someone pass the green beans") 5) Why does everyone assume that an adult who doesn't think their 14 year old should be getting drunk, smoking pot and having sex with 30+ partners has forgotten their youthful exploits? How about an adult who has grown up and looking back realizes that all those exploits were not necessarily the healthiest things for them and they are trying to use the benefit of their experience to help their kids avoid the same? 6) I think Will is being a complete asshole to his father. Why does Will expect that treating his father the way he does will produce positive results? If he would take Brad's calls, had taken them in Hawaii and talked to his father he might have been able to diffuse the situation, but he chooses instead to not take because he knows it pushes Brad's buttons. (*note to dear readers, don't bluster back about Brad's behavior, because Brad's bad behaviors do not justify Will's bad behavior. A mature person would call Brad on his behavior in a calm manner, a rational manner and would make the efforts to hold a civil conversation. If Brad doesn't react in a civilized manner then Will can call him on it, not get his panties in a wad and runaway again.) 7) Will has defacto thrown Brad out of Escorial. His passive aggressive behavior has placed JP in the situation of making his son not welcome in his house or his unstable grandson, who less than a year ago ran away after drugging his father and Martin and wracking utter destruction on his parents possessions. It is wrong (immature) of Will to place JP in that position, but is typical of an immature teen who places their self at the center of the universe. 8) Brad does not talk at Will given how few opportunities Will gives him to talk to him at all. Will managed to contribute to his mother's instability by treating her like hired help and not his mother (but Brad had his hand in contributing to that by not backing up Jeannine in her discipline of Will and not co-parenting). 9) You can not simultaneously praise Will for his maturity while excusing his bad behavior as the mistakes of youth. Lastly, I don't see any double standard in the sexploits of Darius vs Will since I couldn't begin to guess how many sexual encounters Darius has had since we've only seen him with a couple of partners. 85% of teens 12th grade and under have had fewer than four sex partners through high school and 15.9 was the average age for a teen boy to lose his virginity. If Darius had more than 4 when he graduated from HS, that would put him in the minority with Will who has already blown the doors off the averages not just for high school students, but for men in general since only 29% of men, under the age of 59 have had 15 or more partners.

Thanks for the frenetic pace of writing Mark it is such a pleasure to wake up to a new Chapter of CAP. Actually, I think Grienne is pretty right on in her evaluation and I might go even further, I think Will is being a complete asshole to his father. Why does Will expect that treating his father the way he does will produce positive results? If he would take Brad's calls, had taken them in Hawaii and talked to his father he might have been able to diffuse the situation, but he chooses instead to not take because he knows it pushes Brad's buttons. I agree that Will has defacto thrown Brad out of Escorial. His passive aggressive behavior has placed JP in a difficult situation. The rest I'll save for the forums. Thanks again Mark.

I feel badly they don't have the reviews and votes they deserve, but I think in the multiple times that GA has shifted the software either caused them to be lost or you couldn't do reviews.... or maybe reviews weren't a thing yet.

Not strange at all, especially given the circumstances. At one time I had emails from Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL starting back to when I was 14 (1991 and on) saved in files, but given that I've been through at least 6 storage media era (5 1/4 floppy, 3.5 floppy, ZipDisk, R/W CD, thumb drive and now Google Drive) and untold number of personal computers, I have no idea what happened to those files. I'd love to read some of them now. I had a really tight group of friends on the gay teen Prodigy boards and then a much wider, but less tight group of friends from AOL, or Gay-O-L as we called it. We used to have beach parties at Huntington Beach State Beach where over 200 guys from our AOL chat circle would show up. So yeah..... I wish I could find some of those old emails and chats.

Naw, I know an awesome school for her in Greece.

Robbie Rogers was talked about in a very minor way in another topic, but with him being an OC surf boy and now being on the LA Galaxy with another OC surf boy (Jack McBean) I thought it worth talking about his "Letter to my 14 year old self". It is very moving and maybe if you've never been a 14 year old gay athlete at a Catholic school it is hard to relate to, but I think the words he's said and the ease with which the LA Galaxy players have publicly accepted him made him worthy of his own topic. Letter to my 14 year old self

Horse properties are hard to come by. In LA County they are in Malibu, Calabasas and Agoura, maybe a few in Burbank. Burbank has the LA Equestrian Center where they held the '84 Olympic events, Griffith Park has stables and there is a private stable in the Hollywood Hills, but boarding a horse isn't the same as having them stabled at home. I can't see Wade being overly worried about horses and babies in law school. He and Matt have plenty of time to buy the big house someplace, but The Wilshire, or a place like it, is more likely where two grad students are going to land. An interesting thought...... Wade could go the John Kennedy route of working in the public defenders office. A nice touch for someone with aspirations to higher office who doesn't give a carp (sic) he is being grossly underpaid. It could also bring in story lines for Father Tim and the mission.

He'd be a scary ass boyfriend

I am thinking Tonto was more like this.... all dolled up to go out at De Angelo's Family Restaurant and Pizzeria in downtown Claremont.

Very cool chapter..... poor Marie, she is so out of her depth trying mess with Will and she just keeps digging her own grave deeper and deeper. The binoculars. I am guessing Be Rad had them placed there.

It is funny to think how many of the listed "who should" list aren't very relevant to the story anymore.

Matt & Wade aren't going to live in Bel Air, no one under 50 wants to live in Bel Air. They'll get a condo on Wilshire Blvd. And Silver Lake is the La Brea Tar Pits of the gay community, it is where old gay go to die. There maybe have been a hipster subculture move in, but it wasn't gay hipsters and no one going to UCLA would ever live in Silver Lake. Even WeHo is too far. UCLA students live in Westwood, the Wilshire corridor, the Brentwood corridor and maybe a few in Santa Monica who are hard core beach people. And no one with a half an ounce of self respect would ever be a hipster.

Agree with all that, especially the anger part on Will's part. He can easily forgive the guy who broke his nose and almost ruined his summer, but gets bitchy with two of the people who love him the most? I am sure Marie will be spreading the STD rumor around school with the help of Ferret and we'll see how Will is able to handle that pressure. I don't think his temperament is geared to let that slide off his back. I also agree that Marie's character seems to have shifted radically from the NYE party to the time of the Bastille Day party. Stef is a gossip, why is that so surprising? What Stef has said is that he'll keep confidences confidential, but that everything else was fair game. Did Will tell his contractor not to tell Stef about the sex room? I mean the contractor was working with Stef on the house why wouldn't he have told or asked for some direction? When Stef told Brad it was more gossip than some sort or tattletale situation. Brad handled the situation badly, but you certainly think he would have learned by now how to approach Will to get the results he is looking for. As to Noah, do we know if Will has talked to Noah since the Bastille Day party? Did Noah go to the party? Will has been gone all summer, how do we know what Marie has been filling Noah's head with? (like how Will is just being nice because he wants to get on him) We've seen Noah as a pretty nice, straight forward (read gullible) guy. Those kind of guys don't understand people who are devious and two faced.

I am guessing that Kyle got the warts from Ferris, which is how he got pulled into Marie's little drama. I still think Will's fuse is way to short, especially when it comes to Brad, He is willing to fuck and fall for a guy who broke his nose and all but accused him of giving him an STD, but won't cut his father a break and was even bitchy with Stef who has done as much or more. Will needs a little anger management or something.

Did Will approach it maturely or like a horny teen? I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and call it mature. Me too on the anticipation and dread, we've been building to this point for a while. I was thinking Noah worked in a restaurant/fast food place for some reason. I think Marie is doing it just to spite Will. I am not talking about teen drama, I am talking about life drama. In the last two years Brad has been kidnapped and slotted for death and had an assassination attempt on him. Everybody in his family is high profile so they would be trying to keep a low profile and I think that would have been discussed. As hard as this is to believe, because it feels like they've been with us forever, we are still in a pre-MySpace, Facebook even Friendster era, there are no camera phones yet and texting isn't a thing yet so those parts of "be careful where you are and what you do" aren't with us yet, but even so I think that there would have been conversations on safety and image. I can't imagine Claire not knowing who Marie was dating, especially if it was common knowledge amongst the peers.

I just called missing persons and reported Mark Arbour is missing! Consequences from sex? Sure doesn't sound like any author I know! Where is Mark Arbour and what have you done with him!? What are your demands?! Very interesting chapter and mostly interesting because it opens so many new avenues. If we didn't have the variable of the author's choice to make Marie's actions about what ever he chooses I'd say it is pretty obvious and transparent. Marie has been hanging with/dating Noah because it is about the only way to get to/get back at Will. Ruin his best friendship in Menlo. If Mari had had an epiphany about what a little bitch she has been, she would have already apologized to Will, told him she was dating Noah and life would be hunky dory, but hello, this is CAP! So no, Marie is using the relationship with Noah to get to Will and will only hurt both of them. Poor Noah is just going to be collateral damage. Whether it damages his friendship with Will long term remains to be seen. The question I want to know about is what does Claire think? She isn't stupid, surely she must be wondering why Marie is suddenly dating the guy who "creeped her out" and set off a bomb in the family because he was removed from the guest list. She knows he is Will's friend and knows what Marie had said. So what is she saying/doing? One interesting aspect of this chapter is the observations of Eric, both in how clueless Will is about the bubble he lives in and the scrutiny that comes with it. Surely you would have thought that Brad and Robbie would have had this discussion with the boys long before this especially since Robbie is in the movie business and they live in Malibu. That would be enough to trigger interest in their lives in Los Angeles. People in the "outside" world might not know the Irwin Winkler and Wendy Finerman of the business, but in small world of "The Industry" they are well known. In any case it gives me hope that the CAP series will survive the next two weeks Thanks for enough storylines to see 9-11 through a lot more chapters!

Hunh.... I wonder who wrote this chapter??? Consequences from sex? Sure doesn't sound like any author I know! Where is Mark Arbour and what have you done with him!? Very interesting chapter and mostly interesting because it opens so many new avenues. If we didn't have the variable of the author's choice to make Marie's action about what ever he chooses I'd say it is pretty obvious and transparent. Marie has been hanging with/dating Noah because it is about the only way to get to/get back at Will. Ruin his best friendship in Menlo. If Mari had had an epiphany about what a little bitch she has been, she would have already apologized to Will, told him she was dating Noah and life would be hunky dory, but hello, this is CAP! So no, Marie is using the relationship with Noah to get to Will and will only hurt both of them. One interesting aspect is the observations of Eric, both in how clueless Will is about the bubble he lives in and the scrutiny that comes with it. Surely you would have thought that Brad and Robbie would have had this discussion with the boys long before this especially since Robbie is in the movie business and they live in Malibu. That would be enough to trigger interest in their lives in Los Angeles. People in the "outside" world might not know the Irwin Winkler and Wendy Finerman of the business, but in small world of "The Industry" they are well known. In any case it gives me hope that the CAP series will survive the next two weeks Thanks for enough storylines to see 9-11 through a lot more chapters!