PrivateTim

Or not 🤔😏🧐 Seriously? Stef & JP fucked their grandson, Brad is fucking his son's first boyfriend, Matt & Wade make babies at will in threeways... go back and read the genealogy that Jeremy did... Mary Ellen making a baby with Alex would be par for the CAP course. No you don't. The arrogant douche deserves whatever he gets. And a win win. Alex needs a legit heir, his family is cash poor and the CAP/Bridgemont DNA can wrap around each other in joy.

Wally and Clara are simple people, with simple values, where kids do what their parents tell them and parents try and do their best for their kids. As messed up as it is, Wally thinks he is doing good for Zach, but suggesting things to improve on. He doesn't understand he is not helping and he is crushing his son. But before people are too hard on them, me included, remember that Wally & Clara took in Gathan and Ella, and raised them as their own. Remember that they allowed Zach to go to Don Bosco last year and DLS this year. Not many parents let their kids move out of state just to follow their dream. I would be surprised if Frank does not already have a guardianship for Zach already. He needs to have legal way he can consent for Zach to get medical treatment, to enroll in school, a dozen other things. Yes, there are many area where respect is automatic, and expected. You may lose respect for someone in those areas where it is automatic, but in many cases you still have to follow protocols of respect anyway, like in court; on the floor of the Senate or House, etc and there are prices to pay when you do not keep the veneer of respect. Zach will figure out how to get around Wally. He is already more sophisticated than him.

“You forgot to tell him that the strippers thought you were so hot, they blew you on the ride there,” Will said. How can anyone doubt that Will is a complete ass after this? It was absolutely NOT his place to say that in front of Cam, a guy Brad is really into. Will would go ape shit and slash some tires and and cut up some John Lobb shoes if someone did that to him.

I've decided the gay hockey league isn't good for Matt or Wade. Make them stop 😋 Something in my memory says there were issues in Australia. Matt needs something to do, whether that means taking classes at MIT or BU, or volunteering in an entity like the Mission in LA. He needs a healthy outlet for his energy. Ice hockey clearly ain't it. For Wade, Paper Chase, is still the reality at Harvard Law in 2002, not Legally Blonde. He doesn't have time for frivolity. Lastly, Alta Vista? On his Netscape browser?

This time reading through the story, I couldn't help but wonder, when did Brad become the driving force for intervening with Jeremy and Alex? How does he even know about Alex and JJ? “Will called me last night and read me the riot act again, telling me to butt out of JJ’s life,” I said Will is the one who doesn't like it when others tell him what to do and not do, so how is it okay for him to tell Brad what to do? If Will is being consistent, should he just focus on his own life?

I didn't remember if I wrote a review on this chapter or originally or not, but as I re-read this chapter the first thing that sprang into my head was. "Brad isn't this stupid". As far as I remember, Brad wasn't in the loop with Wade, Matt and Stef on what was going on with JJ and Alex. Will specifically said "don't tell my father", which again is against his "transparency is best" standard.... for everyone but him. As far as could tell, Brad hasn't done anything. It was Wade, Matt, Will and Stef who were talking about Jeremy's involvement with Alex. JJ jumped to the conclusion it was Brad who prompted Matt to talk to him, but I don't see that in the story. All Matt did was tell JJ about Alex's apparent complex. No one (until this chapter) suggested they should break up JJ and Alex, what little there is to break up, just warn him. If JJ hadn't jumped down Matt's throat, he might have paused to process what his physical interactions with Alex have like so far, and how he has been left sexually frustrated. Not rehash everything I've said above, but.... I don't think Brad was the driving force behind Matt talking to JJ and Will was part of a plan to do exactly what Matt did. I think Matt acted when he did because things were accelerating with Alex. It was great Will wanted to think, as Mark put it, but you can't have paralysis by analysis when events are overtaking the timeline. As to "an isolation that he has always felt... a loneliness..", has JJ always felt isolated? He got along with his adoptive mother better than his adoptive father, but did that make him isolated? He liked different things than Will, Brad and Darius, but it didn't feel like he was excluded. And when JJ had his 14th birthday, just before Will went into meltdown mode, it was Will who was feeling isolated and lonely. JJ had a big party with a bunch of his school friends from H-W so we know he had them.

I wish we'd seen more of the Schluter family in Hawaii. I wanted to hear about the Vera Wang Suite ay Halekulani 😄 Zach really needs to up his game when it comes to a ripping contest. He did get the jerk coach fired, but the players are the ones who can make your life miserable on the team and in school.

Maybe you don't understand the context. Garden Grove and Westminster are cities populated by Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans. 1 of every 5 persons of Vietnamese descent in the U.S. lives in Orange County, 1 in every 2.5 lives in California. These people well understand what they were fighting for. The consequences of losing were exactly as predicted, mass slaughters and re-education camps. Ho Chi Minh wasn't a liberator, he was just another Marxist mass murderer.

Jeremy is going to be hurt by Alex, but he was going to be hurt by his first boyfriend ever, regardless of who it was. That is life. It is how we grow and mature. As to the comment the guy made to Zach, that is meaningless. Athletes say that stuff to each other all the time. You come back with, "boyfriend? I don't have a boyfriend, I'm dating your Mom" or something else similarly snarky. As to the game, you can watch the complete game on YouTube and they talk about "Zach's" (MJD) ankle injury. It is a pretty entertaining game.

I'd have preferred if Matt and/or Wade talked to the coach privately and remained anonymous in underwriting the trip. I also might not have underwritten the whole thing. I think the players needed some buy-in and responsibility. If I didn't underwrite the whole thing, I'd tell the coach I'd sponsor scholarships for guys who really couldn't afford it, again, anonymously.

Maybe grandma in your part of the country, but my grandparents and great grandparents went to fully integrated schools in CA. Come on out to California and I'll introduce you to a bunch of older people in Garden Grove and Westminster that would happily explain why exactly they were fighting, and the U.S. was helping, to prevent the Communist takeover and what happened to those that could not get out.

De La Salle and Mater Dei are more like college programs than high school ones. Once the x-rays were negative the team docs/trainers would go to work on Zach's ankle. There is no "ice it and take two aspirin", they'd have DMSO to remove the swelling then start ultrasound and other NMES treatment, a taping tighter than a cast and an anesthetic corticosteroid shot on game day if needed. He'd be ready by the following Saturday.

Thank god for #MeToo..... that got me a new Maybach 😲😁

Oh please, no one has a more sanitized vision of themselves than the British, followed by all the other European colonizers France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal; and don't even get me started on the Japanese. The U.S. is a rank amateur compared to these. We already know that Alex is going to have to marry a woman so she can give him a legitimate heir. Alex is hardly a "Euro-Giglio", he is already a Peer of the Realm and will be a Duke one day. It is Jeremy who has been maneuvering to get Alex into a position for "things to happen". He doesn't know exactly how to close the deal, but he's been the one moving to get Alex close to him. The U.S. more readily admits its mistakes than most countries, especially England. I think we flagellate ourselves too much sometimes. “Thanks,” I said, smiling at him. I’d been there less than fifteen minutes. I am confused. Why do you have to go to a car dealer to get a car? When I buy a new one, the salesman delivers it to my house, I sign some papers and he gets a ride back to wherever the car came from 😋

I think you miss the point of people who are not Will fans. The Will fans talk about how wise he is and mature beyond his years and so much smarter about what is good for him than Brad is.... and then when Will melts down, fucks up, throws a hissy fit like the spoiled, clueless ass he is the Will fans go "OMG he is young.... blah blah blah". Will might be young, but he is also emancipated. That means no adult can put the brakes on his behavior when it is destructive or dangerous. You can't have it both ways. Brad does have no game. He's been out of the scene too long, especially when he is trying to date someone his son's age.

I'll be 97 years old by the time CAP gets to 2018. 😆

“He has a job, and they’re relying on him to be there,” I said coldly, irritated that Will had no concept of the responsibility that came with working for a business. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he said. “That came out wrong. Cam didn’t seem all that into his job, and I’d hate for him to miss out on some cool experiences because he’s worried about where he works.” This is an example of why I have a problem with Will the Wise that everyone else seems to love. Will has no clue that there are people who have to work to live, to pay rent, buy food, etc, whether or not they are 'into their jobs'. He has no concept of what it means to not only have your family drop all financial support of you at 18 years old, but to completely eject you from their lives, leaving you alone and poor. Despite his time at the Mission, he does not seem to be aware at all.

Zach's isolation is self imposed. I was hooking up with guys in high school, despite being a varsity athlete in a high visibility program, a good Christian boy and a campus leader. The key was compartmentalization. Oh, and alcohol. Before high school I hooked up with neighborhood friends and we all just viewed it as middle school experimentation. No one thought it had anything to do with our orientation. In high school I added in some hunky guys, but in those cases it usually involved them being under the influence and me pretending I was. Since I was this totally straight Christian jock and many of my hook-ups were too, we pretended it was just hormones and alcohol not mixing well. It never effected our friendships, never came out (who was going to tell, they had as much to lose as I did) and none of us did a deep dive on our sexuality. I didn't even consider that I could be bi until after high school, even after my freshman year in college. I don't think Devon would care one way or the other. I know this was just the beginning of Wikipedia and many other tools, but there had to be biographies of Brad online that listed Will's age to anyone who was that curious. He smiled. “I don’t. I’m unique in the gay world. I pretty much have to get to know a guy before I fuck him.” This comment reminds me of how many of my friends would hook up in WeHo or The Castro and no know the guy's first name, let alone his last name. I have one good friend from my younger days who said he'd never hook-up with someone until he knew their last name. We finished our light Friday workout, then we hit the showers. I kept to myself even more in there, making sure not to look at anyone, and making really sure that I didn’t get hard. I started showering with other dudes at the YMCA starting at a very young age and continued for the next 15 years or more through my college days and not once did I or anyone else ever bone up in the locker room. This seems like one of the great myths or storylines in gay fiction about how a gay teen outs himself by popping wood in the showers. Never ever seen it. And for myself, trust me, I was looking. I could have identified half the athletes in my high school by a picture of their dicks alone. I can still visualize some of the most memorable ones thirty years later. 😄

Brad and Cam Heely? WTF is wrong with these people? It isn't the age thing, it is the "this is my son's friend/former lover" thing. As incredibly hot as my son's water polo and surfing buddies were, it would have been incredibly creepy to date (read 'fuck') any of them. Hot, but creepy. 😲

"Like a virgin, touched for the (almost) very first time..." I don't remember how Jeremy went from sweet kid to bitchy diva, maybe it was the skating, but it is nice to be inside his head. I remember this story far better than I did Flux, but I am still looking forward to the details I've forgotten. Those reading for the first time, buckle up and then do it again....

As I said in another book, seeing the world from the POV of the narrator, softens that character; makes them more human, more sympathetic and more understandable. As I have said before, I am not a fan of Hayes boys, Frank, Robbie, Matt, Gathan and Zach, in general. Brent is the only one I like, maybe Trent too, but we haven't seen much of him. But in the last book, Flux, Matt took a turn to the good and got to a decent place long before Robbie ever did. Zach as the narrator of the prologue appears more sympathetic, but I've already read this book and Gap Year so that clouds my ability to like Zach. To me he has never really changed from the guy who hurt Will through John, both of which are unforgivable to me. I remember the overarching storylines, but not the details and I am looking forward to reliving them.

OMG, my A1C just shot up to 15%, quick someone stick me with Trulicity!!🤣🤣😁 Seriously Mark, a really nice story that captured so much of that era and the angst as undergrad years come to an end and real life rears its ugly head. I think I appreciated the story much more this time through and 9 more years of maturity helps that too.

The curse of the gay male; the ability to never grow up. You can act like life is one big frat party.... until the twinks stop responding to you in the clubs and suddenly you've become that which you used to mock and deride with your friends, the older gay male desperately trying to hang on to youth and relevance. If you don't have Stefan Schluter or David Geffen money, you eventually cross the Rubicon. Gay men didn't use to have the normal markers of life; marriage, then kids, then teens, then college kids, then weddings, then grandkids, as so on as the cycle goes. That is changing and has been changing, but in 2002, that was not the norm. There were more party boys then not, even those in grad school, except the med school guys. I lost more friends to drugs, choking to death on their own vomit, than I did to AIDS. Matt at 22 is already a father and about to have his second child. He's finally come to the realization that it really is time to grow up. I think Cam will be an easy issue for Matt to handle. Tell him the truth. Matt does not know what his status or future is with Wade, but the epiphany he has had is about his children, his responsibility and the need to be in their life. Cam will understand and appreciate that. Pawk da caw, Matt is Boston bound.

I don't get why Matt goes along with Alex's shenanigans. Certainly Matt can get sex other places. If he allows Alex to play his Saint/Sinner scenario he is making Alex the Puppetmaster. Can I get a 'what what Homey don't play that' from the crowd? Even though Matt only went to a junior university (Leland Stanfurd Junior University) he is still pretty smart.

I don't get why everyone is shocked. One of Barry's strategies for keeping Zach 'undercover' was a religious bent to explain why he wasn't porking girls left and right. Perhaps he has implemented the strategy. He might NOT be doing that, but it was mentioned previously. You called it before they did. You nailed exactly what was in Alex's mind. Only a few chapters left, so I guess these storylines will carry over to the next story. I DO recall some of the intrigue there 😄