PrivateTim

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.

I mean, if I was going to have to put up with their attitudes, why worry about grades? Why not roll on X with my friends? Why not drink like a fish? And yet, he gets emancipated at 14 and does roll on X with his friends and drinks like a fish anyway. “How would it be worse for me?” I asked. “You’d dictate what I did every minute of the day. I’d have no say in what I did, and I’d be treated like I was in second grade. That’s what you’re trying to do anyway. I might as well spend my afternoons doing Special K and hanging out down at the pier.” “It’s a lot easier to do what you want when you ask me instead of telling me. I know that doesn’t make much difference, since I’ll probably have to do it anyway, but I don’t like being ordered around. It bugs me.” Pretty sure this is the book and maybe the chapter where I really began disliking Will. What 8th grader dictates to his parents how life is going to be? There are some 8th grade kids who have terrible lives they'd like to (need to?) escape. That is not Will's situation. Yes at puberty things start changing and some parents try to hold on their prepubescent child who is gone and never coming back, but that gaining of independence is a gradual thing, not 'I get to decide for myself' at age 13. None of Will's parents are unreasonable, or at least not all the time. His mother was unreasonable with him not going to Palo Alto to be with John or John staying in Malibu, but that was more of a one off and had more to do with her issues in life. Other than that, Will has had remarkable autonomy, given his age.

Oh look, I did make comments in 2011. It just makes me sad that John and Will didn't work out as a couple, but at 12 and 13, love and affections are so different. A recent academic paper talked about how boys at 13 had close, affectionate friends and thought it was okay to say "I love you" to a friend, but by 17 almost none of them thought it was okay anymore. So Sad. Wow, I guess you could still say such things in 2013!

“Was Robbie the first guy you were with?” “No, it was this guy named Jake,” he said bitterly. “It started off so good, and then he turned into this total slut and it ruined everything.” Ha ha, OMG, who wrote those insightful words in April, 2011..... 😀 😀 😀 😀

So 'splain to me why Will hooks up with Zach, let alone falls for him? He saw how toxic and twisted he is. On a side note, did comments and likes go away when the old GA transitioned to this software? I can't believe I wouldn't have liked and commented back in the day.

“Especially since I’m leaving for Stanford in a couple of weeks.” I watched that burn into her psyche, the fact that this white trash boy was going to the best university in the country, while her daughter was going to Kent State. Why do people labor under this delusion that Stanfurd is the best university in the country when it isn't even the best university in California? Go Bears!

We teach science and deal with facts. The studies from sociology and psychology show the long term damage from excessive sexual activity. Au contraire mon ami, not even in marriage dissolution is money the chief cause. In relationships the leading causes are "bad behavior" and "cheating", in divorce it is marital infidelity and lack of intimacy (which is what happens when you are intimate with others). Marital infidelity gets me a new luxury automobile every two years 😀

Because with 58 sexual partners already at 17 he is way, way above the average LIFETIME total for most people, gay or straight. Sex as recreation cheapens the act and becoming unable to curb your libido costs relationships. It is the chief cause most relationships end.

You know that is nuts, right?

He could just enter the portal.... oh wait.... Can we please have a happy book? Travis doesn't die, get paralyzed or lose his trust.... Will puts aside cheap, meaningless sex for a relationship with a potential future... Mr. Buck is de-balled...