PrivateTim

Oh gawd no, here is JJ. And with Will, you don't have to care about popularity to be popular or leadership to be a leader. It just happens.

What a d*ck Arbour! I fricking missed New Year's last night because you had to go and post a new chapter at 11:42 PM! Everyone else was in the house kissing and toasting and I'm out on a freezing deck reading Chapter 9 on my iPhone! Way to go buddy! Actually that is a lie. BUT I so WOULD have gone out on that freezing deck to read Chapter 9 and miss the kissing and toasting if I had known it was posted. I was made to leave the iPhone in the car. Someone thinks I am on it obsessively. Loved the chapter. You packed so much into a tiny chapter. You captured perfectly a typical encounter of the vacuous gay Hollywood/West Hollywood scene. I can't ever see Brad going to jail over a simple murder or two, billionaires only go to jail for real crimes like stock fraud. No one cares if the rich and famous kill the odd person or two, but don't you dare cheat on your taxes or shareholders! I don't get why the gang is "bussing" to Paly instead of flying. If it the newborn, certainly the pilots could go out to sea and do a very low level flight to Paly. I also hope we get to see a reemergence of Isidore and Claire who we have scantily seen these past few chapters. I get how hard it is juggling so many characters, but I miss them and Ace and John and Jack too. Hopefully as the story shifts more to Paly when school starts we'll see some of the old faves. And two complete side issues. One, I was rereading Be Rad a bit and maybe it is just because the subject matter is slightly different, but I think your writing of late has been brilliant. Be Rad was good, but the writing these past two books been just great, very tight and well paced. Kudos for that. Two, it is scary how real these characters become to me, not just the major characters, but the small recurring ones as well. I always wonder about JP's cook/housekeeper and her husband the keeper of the grounds/cars and horses. Given how JP and Isidore are, these people would be as much family as they are employees and I know that JP and Isidore would have been involved with their kids, making sure they got good educations, etc. and given how responsibilities grew at Escorial, I would expect the cook/housekeeper (whose name escapes me) to have staff under her by now. Ditto for Robbie and Brad's cook/housekeeper. I think we saw one of her kids in one chapter. I also wonder what became of her. Anyway, thanks for the new Chapter this morning. I had them move the Rose Parade to tomorrow just so I could read it

You forget we are seeing Will in is first month of high school and he isn't even on the "big" campus yet. We saw Brad and Matt well into high school, Matt was a senior and I think Brad was a junior when we saw him in Be Rad. We have a saying in wrestling when coaches are arguing about why their boy ought to the #4 seed instead of #6 or #6 instead of #11, "the cream will rise to the top", meaning it doesn't really matter what your seed is, if you are the best, you'll win and being #6 instead of #4 doesn't really matter. To me Will is the ultimate Schluter. He will never know the economic deprivation of Stef nor the insecurities and pitfalls of being an out gay student in high school in 1980 that Brad might have had to face, plus he lives in about the gay friendliest place in CA and his father (Robbie) works in the gay friendliest industry this side of the personal lubrication industry. To me it is inconceivable that Will will not be a major BMOC at H-W and a leader whether or not he actually is in a formal leadership role. He is magnetic and charismatic and teens gravitate to kids like that. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if we see the first glimpse of that on the rafting trip.

Cool chapter, lots to chew on.... but c'mon Mark, no one says "playboy" anymore and not in the gay community, "player" is the common word or "play-uh" if yo got hizzle in yo shizzle.

Now for me it was the exact opposite in high school. I was a well known athlete and student leader. The straight-ish boys I had sex with, usually under cover of enough alcohol so we could both claim impaired judgment should the need arise, were positively amnesiac about the encounters we had. I am sure it is partly due to the fact that everyone assumed I was completely straight since I had a Darius-like reputation with the ladies and I had had a couple well known conquests (interesting stories in themselves). Any of the straight-ish boys that tried to "turn" on me would have risked their reputation more than mine. To this day, most of those guys are still good friends, even if I don't see them that often and no one has ever mentioned our encounters despite the fact everyone now knows I am on the gay side of bi.

Cool chapter, very fun. Ironically I was at the world premiere for Remember the Titans, which was held in the Rose Bowl with a bunch of high school football players and their coaches mixing with the stars. I feel for Ryan. Like a lot of guys his age, he is horny, insecure about a lot of things, not just his sexuality, his parents are a mess, things with the chick (whose name escapes me) didn't go well and he has been conditioned by influences around him to be less than okay about gay stuff, not anti-gay, but you certainly didn't talk about your open minded attitude about guys having sex with each other in 9th grade even when you had questions yourself.

Thank you for the Christmas present Mark, it was a pleasant thing to find under the tree this morning. Love a little Hollywood drama.... it is even more fun at the gay mafia parties. Looking forward to developments with Ben and with Ryan.

C'mon W_L drop the PC crap, just call 'em COMIC books

Why do I suspect that Matt won't be smart enough to back off Carl to show Wade the sincerity of his contriteness? The danger for Matt is that THIS, not the moment in Muir Woods, is the one that will finish Matt & Wade. Wade, in the world he comes from, can deal with infidelity, you could not live in WDC if you couldn't, but a betrayal of loyalty (trust) is a different matter. That is a death sentence in the WDC world and gets you an office on the 4th floor of the Russell Senate Bldg next to the janitors closet. I haven't liked Matt the past couple of stories, he has gotten rather full of himself and I have to work to remember the kid I liked so well back when he discovered about his parentage and all the drama he went through. I have to keep that Matt in mind and remember I had my moments as an arrogant shithead in college too and hope that he figures it out before he throws away a great relationship. I do remember how hard it is to see the big picture when you are 20. I did love the buying the TV for Gathan and Flip (sp??). Sometimes being rich enough to spite people is just good fun. I had also completely forgotten about him getting a BJ from Brad. That was hot

Very nice Mark, some of your best work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OCSUfFStTQE#!

I used to like Matt, but he is becoming a bit of a shithead, but that isn't unique in the world of college boys. I hope Wade talks to Robbie or Matt talks to Robbie's shrink.

You know I really like this story, but I think you are painting Joey and Andy as a little too one dimensional. I can't imagine a sophomore in high school in an area not noted for its tolerance, risking a kiss or doing other behaviors that would give away his true feelings. All it can mean is three years of grief in high school. Even if everyone isn't a JT, neither are they a Roger. I think most of Andy's baseball teammates would react badly, because they are expected to react that way by their peers. Even in coastal CA that is pretty enlightened, there are not a lot of out athletes and not in sports like football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, water polo, soccer and the like. Yeah maybe in cross country, tennis and swimming, but for some reason team sports seems to be a different story. A lot of the gay teens I know have been able to put on different masks almost instantly and compartmentalize their feelings so as to not give themselves away. Being out in high school isn't a good thing in a lot of places, even in CA, OR, WA, etc there are a lot of schools and towns where it is still difficult to be gay.

Since the story (CAP) is shifting a bit back to Paly, will we see more of Claire & Jack? Wouldn't it be fun for John to show up a game with a girlfriend in tow, not knowing Will was going to be there? What is the level of relationship with Matt & Wade and Jack & Claire? It would have to be considerable I'd think since I'd imagine that even if Matt & Wade live in the dorms or an off campus apartment, they'd be at Escorial every Sunday for a Sunday supper.

Oh hell Canuck, you need to get out of Darwin and come study behavior of affluent teens in Malibu, Beverly Hills, Hillsborough, Burlingame, etc and how they treat their parents and siblings. Hell you should see the 8 and 10 years old!

Actually we, the nasty Republicans, ran a gay man for Senator and despite his predilections for twinks, no one cared.

Very cool chapter. I hope Will stays as a narrator in this story, because we need someone in the 'Bu to keep us up to date on the goings on down there. I hope we get to see the river trip.

The day I graduated from Berkeley (actual last final not the ceremony) my roommate and I went to Trader Vic's and ordered one of everything on the exotic drink menu and finished them all. I think we got 8 or 9 glasses in various shapes and bowl to keep. I would not recommend this. Trader Vic's Drink Menu

Scotty McHottie singing the First Noel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PDdMlGtA1A

Paul Rudick betrays his age, it should be Kristin Chenowith and Hugh Jackman, not Patty Lupone and Mandy Patinkin. Patty and Mandy were the original stars of Evita when it first opened on Broadway in the late 70's. Mandy is now the star of Homeland on TV and was one of the stars on Criminal Minds. Patty is still on Broadway and won her second Tony (Evita being the first) in 2008 for Gypsy. I am a 15 and if you don't have the Internet Broadway Database as a favorite on your browser, you can't be anything above a 19.

Oh please.... as if anyone at Stanford cares about the hockey team or playing it makes you a BMOC. Stanford's winning athletic programs are the water polo team, swim team, tennis and golf and even those guys don't get props for the national championships they win. Stanford is chock full of Olympians and they get scant attention. The best water polo player in the country was there, star of the US Men's National Team and hardly anyone knew who he was. Football is getting some attention now, but back in 2000-01 they were fair to middling. They'd have one good year followed by a mediocre year and there was as much anti-football sentiment among the undergrads as there was pro-football. Cal was the same way, it was cool to find football "brutal and bourgeois" . I know guys who are still "sowing wild oats" and my parents do too. The guys who never grew up and are now in the mid 50's and on wife #3 and family #2. By the time I was a junior I was ready to get out and as a senior, I couldn't imagine I had ever been as bad/immature as the freshmen and sophomores were. Matt comes from good stock though and I suspect he'll straighten out. Whether or not he does that in time to keep his relationship with Wade is a different topic. But remember the gay/bi community isn't the straight community. You don't have unlimited opportunities for relationships with quality, serious people. Finding that serious, committed guy is a lot harder and after you have dated a couple of schmucks, that "boring" ex starts to look pretty good.

There wasn't enough drama in that chapter. I'd have made Carl Haupt, Carl Hauptmann, great grandson of Bruno Hauptmann.

Ummm.... in the poll topic, "For the following choices, sex with a woman is defined as penile penetration of the vagina. Please choose the option that best describes you:"

Not really qualified to answer as I am not gay, but a lot of my gay friends have had sexual encounters with women. My older friends (45+ or so) did it for a variety of reasons, my younger friends (<25) seem to do it out of curiosity. I would say about 1/3 of my gay friends never have and can barely even say the word vagina.