PrivateTim

Great, a 13 year old houseboy ha ha.

John Paul and Stefan would be nightmares for HR departments in 2023. I wonder if CAP will ever get there?

Even in 1973 the cost of living in the Midwest was considerably cheaper than living in California, especially the Bay Area. The same thing goes for Seattle and the other western cities that Crampton Construction had opened offices in. If Jim were to stick to his original plan, he would not just lose Isidore, but all of his western branch managers and they would take a lot of the office employees and contractors with them. But I get how tough it must have been to live in a dying city like Claremont. Jim cannot accept that the Midwest's time of driving the economy is over, and the South and West are rising.

Not just French youth, but in a city of 9,000,000, they keep meeting relatives....

Roger was still amazing in bed, and he still showed absolutely no signs of talking about his sexuality. That frustrated me, Why? Why are people so hung on labels? What business is it of Stef's or anyone else how Roger identifies? It is possible to be straight and love a gay man and want to be with him. Isn't that what happened with Andre? JP and Isidore need to fly to Claremont and meet with Jim, face to face.

Fame didn't turn Peter into a wuss, he was always a wuss. That is how he got into trouble in Princeton with what's his face.

Stef disappoints me that he leaves a 10 year old alone in an NYC museum just so he can have sex. Is there a single male in the CAP series who doesn't think with his dick? I'd send Nick to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys and Bitty to Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy & Comvent.

Ah, the billion dollar blow job. Without the loans Stefan may not have been able to carry out all his plans. The other side of the coin is, if you were a large land/property owner in Silicon Valley as it took off it was hard to not get rich; throw in the venture capital and bank rolling projects out of Stanford and you have an unbeatable path to fortune. As to Sam. What an ass JP is. So what if he got a girl pregnant, so what if he married her. JP is married for gawd's sake and that doesn't slow him down. If you want someone to behave like an adult and not a stupid college kid, date adults and not a stupid college kids. Stop screwing bellhops in hotels because you can and it is fun and focus on looking for meaningful relationships.

This is why John Paul should be dating peers, not youngsters, but he is too insecure to date an equal, it has to be someone he can control, either financially or professionally. It is a pattern that repeats over and over in his life so far.

It is three years still until Stag's Leap Wine Cellars rocks the wine world by beating Château Mouton-Rothschild, Château Montrose, Château Leoville Las Cases and Château Haut-Brion in a blind wine tasting in Paris to win the gold medal. The California wine scene and business exploded after that and the boom has never really stopped. Keeping the winery/vineyard makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons; Stef is French so he appreciates wine, building homes intertwined with the vineyard will make them more valuable and Roger is hot 😁

Obviously JP has kept in touch with his Chicago "friends".

I made a comment to that effect in the last chapter of 1968.

It is funny that Ace was a pretty big minor character in the last book, and this one and maybe Be Rad and then he sort of disappears. We see him at Sunday dinner sometimes and the holidays, but other than that, Andre Charles disappears.

Crosscurrents was the only AP story I read, but talked a lot back in the "old days". I was in his Yahoo Group too.

I am with Adam. I think JP was awful from early in CAP, all the way through this story and Sam is worse, as we shall see again one day. I've never liked the Hayes boys very much (Jeff, Robbie, Matt & Zach), but a lot of what Jeff became was JP's fault. JP controlled and manipulated Jeff and used him for his own purposes under the guise of love.

Only 13 states held primaries in 1968, the majority of the delegates were not awarded through primaries. If McCarthy had won the nomination, he would have been slaughter by Nixon worse than McGovern was in 1972.

JP killed Jeff as surely as if he'd held a gun against his head and pulled the trigger.

This chapter makes JP's $100,000 donation to Exode seem rather foolish.

Columbia was heavily infiltrated by Soviet Communists and so were all the activist groups, including the SAS and SDS. Much of the student agitation in the 1960s and 70s had COMINTERN fingerprints all over them as we now know after the fall of the Soviet government. There were always the dupes and useful idiots, and many remain to this day.

"If anything, I'm more in love with you than ever. " Well that declaration and 25¢ will get you a cup of coffee. "Sam asked me to be his partner, to stay with him forever. I really love this man, and I accepted. So now I have a wife, and a partner." You HAD a partner. Four months us hardly enough to decide you've met the love of your life, now and forever, especially for a poor college student from the wrong side of St. Louis. A mature adult would recognize that and not be a giddy school girl and foresee the issues ahead. “And you know I can't do that, even if I wanted to. I gave my word.” You gave your word to Jeff and we've seen what that is worth.

It seemed that my entire relationship with him, from the time we met until now, had been one screaming roller coaster ride. Well yeah, he was a 17 year old high school student from a poor family in an abusive family and he'd never been outside of the state of Ohio before. He was vulnerable, unsophisticated and impressionable. No, I was in a stable mode, he wasn't. Yeah, stable. Sex with Sam, Isidore, Peter, Deke, Stef and who knows who else. There is nothing stable about that. I closed the door and locked it, not exactly in his face, but almost. Oh yeah, that is the stable behavior of a 32 year old adult, college professor. I kissed them both on the lips and headed out to my car, feeling pretty proud of myself for being so restrained. Restraint? You are playing passive aggressive mind games instead of addressing things as an adult. Jeff is out and now Sam is being set up as your next victim. “That's bullshit. Which one of us do you love the most? You told me it was me..." Now Stef sounds like a whiny high school girl. What is up with these people? They all have these completely screwed up relationships and commitments, or lack thereof, and yet they demand attention and some weird kind of fealty. “He's not my boyfriend anymore," But he's been functioning as a father to the three children... and I guess then it will be Sam as the next father, and then another, and another..... and people wonder why Brad is screwed up? It might be a rollercoaster but JP is the one engineering the rides.

JP has himself to blame for how these things with Jeff have progressed. He set up the circumstances with his inability to curb his libido. It has been toxic for so many people in his life.

JP is always trying to make JP happy. Polygamy doesn't work well.

It is unsettling how quickly JP throws away Jeff. JP is butt hurt because Jeff feels he needs more time apart so JP drops Jeff in the dustbin for his new boy toy. What Jeff has become is in large part to how JB has treated him since high school. JP abandons Jeff and the die is cast.

Jeff was never right for JP. They've had an unequal relationship from Day 1. JP appears to have a problem dating peers. He always has to date someone younger and in a dependent state. I have a friend just like that with a trail of unsuccessful relationships and he can't figure out why.