PrivateTim

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.

Wow, what a trip down memory lane..... Sam. Does JP fuck all his TAs?

Brad made some mistakes with Will, but shitshow is Will's middle name, William Shitshow Schluter. He was out of control since Italy and the family indulged him instead of giving him the discipline and structure he needed.

I'm so glad you liked it! Stefan gets his first story with "The Land Whore." He's a fun narrator. JP is always looking for love. Sometimes he finds it. Sometimes it hurts. If JP had found the love he wound up with there would have been a very dull 16 more books of CAP. Thanks for sharing your thoughts! JP's not supposed to be really likable in this story, because he's a very stunted person (emotionally). He gets better as the stories unfold. Congratulations, he wasn't. 🤣 It is interesting reading through this story again, especially as a I have been rereading in a shotgun manner other books. I think this book was good, but like anything in life, the more you do it, the better you get. Your skills as a writer have gotten better and better as time has gone on. I can't think about GA without thing about Dom. It makes sad to think about him and where he might have gone with his skills had he pursued as diligently as you have. But then the next step is a deeper appreciation of Mark Arbour and your relentless dedication to your craft and to maintain that dedication through all of life's normal struggles of health, family, work. I know I tease and poke a lot, but underneath is a true affection for you and for the world you have created and that you take all of us along on the ride. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

"You're a fucking liar. A god damn fucking liar.” No JP, he is an 18 year old college freshman. You are the one who is fucked up for thinking a 17 year old/18 year old is going to have any notion of what love and commitment are when they haven't lived as much life as you have, especially given the background/home life of that particular 17 year old/18 year old. It is the very definition of unequally yoked. Again, why is JP a JFK fan. There were over 11,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam when Andre died and now JFK has pushed that number to over 16,000.

JP has only become a "very sexual being" in the last 18 months or so and he's allowed his dick to make LOTS of bad decisions for him. Somehow JP lived the first 25 years of his life with very limited sexual experiences and now they rule his life. Jeff is a huge mistake for JP and always has been. How did he think a relationship between a 17 year old high school student and college professor was going to turn out? The unequal status of JP and Jeff was always going to be a problem. Nine years isn't a huge difference between a 26 year old and 35 year old, but is a yawning gap between a 17 year old and 26 year old. Maybe if JP were a 26 year old mill worker who started in the mill after high school it would have worked easier. Jeff needs to be a college freshman and do college freshmen things. JP needed to be smart enough to see that. But again, like so many characters in CAP, JP is very selfish and self centered and the new JP (since the road trip to Delaware) needs to get his dick under control.

I think this is just a fucked up chapter. Not that it isn't well written, but JP seems to have made so many mistakes this chapter. As I said in the last chapter, Knowledge is Power. Being a "queer" was a big deal in 1963, but JP lets an ever expanding circle know his secrets and that isn't good. The whole Jason thing was very badly handled and will surface its ugly head again some day. JP never should have gotten so involved with Jason or the drama in his life.