PrivateTim

Yes. Absolutely.

Matt is a dipshit (like Will) who doesn't understand what he has because he can't see beyond the end of his dick.

By the way, is there an updated dramatis personae? I was away a couple of years so I just finished the last few chapters of Black Widow and it's been 10 years since I read some of the stories, so I forget how Cody figured into the story (I don't recall him being a blood relative) and Kevin, and some of Will's hook-ups like Colin (a Carmichael I believe) and despite Will being all into Colin (and then Conway), he is all but forgotten.

Frankly I thought Casey was too direct and was directing Will's thought process rather than being Socratic. Has the Gap "Year" actually started? My impression was Will graduated mid-year. He is the same grade as Travis and Crawford.

Well you needn't have worried, the little shit, like a bad penny, keeps turning up. Oh man did this guy Tim have great insight! 🤣

Damn was I smart in 2011! It is okay that Robbie came in with an alternative view, but I think he was too forceful and I think Will was getting a healthy dose of reality, which he needs more of, not less. Not almost cringe, completely cringe.

Hunh I looked in the thesaurus and didn't see 'asshole' as a synonym for 'high-spirited' 😁 He is not alone in the CAP series. Sorry, but that completely pisses me off. Tony might or might not be gay. The freaking gay community can be so judgmental when no one in the gay community wants to be judged themselves. Just because you fuck a guy and like it, or a guy fucks you and you like it, does not mean you are gay. Sexual orientation and sexuality are much more complex than that.

That was one thing about this place I didn’t like. It looked there would be a lot of fucking work. I’d plowed through it pretty easily last night; it had only taken me an hour and a half. Still, that was just our first day, so I was pretty sure it would get a lot tougher. Not sure what Will expected in going to one of the highest rated, most exclusive private schools in the nation. Most of the kids at H-W are there because they want to be and they want to get into Stanfurd, Princeton, Harvard, etc. To do that, to do what JP and Brad and Robbie did isn't easy. If it was anyone could go. Yes you can go to Malibu High and get into an elite school, but it is so much harder on so many levels. If you slack in a public high school you are lucky if one or two teachers notice and kick your butt. At H-W every teacher will notice and kick your butt, even the janitor might make a comment or two. The school is dedicated to the success of its students.

From the comments I get it was a long time between chapters. I am digging this thing where you can reread a book and all the chapters are there. Thanks Mark for taking time away from your family and job to write these wonderful stories.

Wow, what great insights from this reader! (well someone has to say it) Of the approximately 7 guys I exchanged blow jobs with in high school, all 7, involved large amounts of alcohol. I would nurse one beer, pretending I'd had many more. 5 of the 7 were one time things. None of my friends and I EVER discussed what happened directly. Someone would usually make a 'wow I was so drunk last night I don't remember anything' and that was the end of it. I assume all the guys were straight and the assumed I was too and I was officially at that time. I didn't get that liking to suck might mean I wasn't straight, because the thought of anal sex at that time just grossed me and I didn't even learn about rimming until my junior year in college and thought THAT was the really grossest thing ever. But as you mature, which is I think another word for 'having experiences' and growing from them. Maturing also happens when the chemicals in your body that are turning you from a boy to a man, slow down their assault on you. Will might be able to hang with 17 year olds physically, but his emotions and maturity are not there yet. He is still a 13 year old boy. This was one of my favorite chapters because everything rang so true to me based on my experience and as I remember, Mark's experiences too. Gathan is a teen, even though he's been written as an adult to a large extent, he is still an immature teen as we've seen in many instances in this book. The highs and lows of teen emotions are very real and not necessarily their fault, they are partly chemical in nature too. But I have known two teen boys who committed suicide over high school break-ups. One of the two was the night of his going away party to college, where he was off to Texas on a baseball scholarship. Teen angst is real.

“Let’s go see some fish,” I said after we’d done a couple of hits, and led him off to the aquarium. We ended up having a really good time. I love the ocean, and I love marine life, so I pretty much showed him around the place. This is why Will needs to be at UCSD or USC to study Marine Biology. He could do Great White research in the Farallon Islands.

Will goes all psycho when people pry into his business, but he thinks he can butt into everyone else's. CU-SeeMe was around in 2000.

Well if you don't know, who does? 🤣🏄‍♂️ I know what Lark would do, he is a complete perv and will be until the day he dies. The question is, what would Will do? He seems to no moral compass on sexual matters and a convenient one in other matters. I know it appears a quaint, antiquated notion to many but I think this general lack of morality is why we have four teens trying to rob a young woman so they can have a barbeque.

I don't think he could be in Palo Alto and not be part of the Crampton - Schluter scene. His character may not appear, but given JP's being a stickler on manners good manners alone would dictate a level of engagement. We shall see what the Master decides....

And it only gets worse from here on out... Bradley needs to learn to choose his words more carefully; not get backed into a "I'll tell you someday" moment. You can easily go through $100k on a few days in Vegas and not realize it. Brad needs to be an adult and decide what he should and should not talk about in front of/with Will. Brad had no business revealing anything about Scott Slater to anyone, Robbie included. This family talks way too much.... and needs to learn to lock their bedroom doors too, while we are on it.

Well as I said, Gap Year is only 4 years later (in 12 years of real time) and Gathan would just now be getting ready to graduate from Stanford, assuming he stayed.

I had to quote Matt to fix his tiny font and to say, I think at 44 he knows even less today then when he was 30. It is a amazing to get older and realize how much you don't know. One thing I've learned about politics is you are better off being a Big Fish in a Small Pond. In a small town in a smaller state you can win statewide office or a mayorship easier. Pete Buttigieg is graduating high school, just like Gathan and Darius, and in 12 years he'll be mayor in South Bend. That would never happen in CA. We now know how Will is three years from now. He stops falling for every guy he has sex with. Gawd I hope Travis sticks around. Is Gathan a narrator in any other story? By Gap Year Gathan should be a senior at Stanfurd. I would not call the charges "trumped up". He was naked in bed with a 17 year old. I don't know what the AOC was in Ohio in 2000, it is 16 currently. But again, a small town, a police chief, used to getting away with stuff, might have sent his officers to mess with Gathan and Kristin and could have found alternatives to stat rape. It is not like it was purely made up like oh...... Russian collusion....

It could be worse. They could have gone on to Fresno. Just as bad, but farther away. 😉 Given a choice between Bakersfield and Fresno, I'd take Fresno. I'd live in Clovis. Santa Clara is not a second tier school. Newsweek ranks it the #55 national university in the country. That makes it the #3 private university in CA behind Stanfurd and USC. On its campus is the Mission Santa Clara, founded in January, 1777. Santa Clara, the city, is next to San Jose on one side and Sunnyvale, Mountain View and Los Altos on the other, putting it in the heart of the Silicon Valley. It is also home to the NFL team, The Santa Clara Forty-Niners, who play in Levi's Stadium. I don't recall if we've seen Paul in subsequent chapters because he is still in college at this point, he is a senior at Annapolis by Gap Year.

No, I never went to a club as a high school teenager, let alone as a 13 year old. I didn't go to my first club until I was 19, a second semester freshman at Berkeley. It was an 18+ club in Concord, but the name escapes me.

He's a manipulator in training. He'll figure it out. That's when he'll really be dangerous. Far be it from this humble worm to question the Master, but why the fuck do you ever let Will fall for Zach? I'd forgotten how awful he is.

Thanks, I've decided I like the Hotel Hassler better anyway,

Are there really two people who have ever loved each other with the exact same intensity at the same exact time? It seems like one person is more into it than the other. I don't mean teens necessarily, who do everything to excess when it comes to love and emotions, but people in general.

What a trip down memory lane. Tommy is Thomas now (to business associates) and turned 30 this year. It suddenly occurs to me that we are in Paris, July 2020. We all should have seen what was coming next, given our dear author's penchant for drama.

“That would be an apt observation,” he said. “I hope you will learn to enjoy the time you are in. You are almost 14. It can be a fun age. Live that age, instead of trying to live as an 18-year-old.” Well Will completely ignored that sage advice from Stef. He skipped completely over the 'college years' of exploration and immediately jumped to the life of a 25 year old at 15. Ha ha OMG. Matt stopped signing in on his account because he got tired of getting crap for us having the same IP address. He does love Paris at 6AM and I love London at 6AM better, especially standing on Westminster Bridge. We both do love the George Sank though because it has one of the nicest pools in Paris. I think Hotel Le Bristol is the only other one we like as well. Unfortunately, our last few trips to Paris we have stayed in Disney hotels, but free is good.