PrivateTim

Yes of course Isidore deserves DEATH for defying the Golden Child! 🤣🤣🤣

Thank you Mark for this chapter. It was the final gift I unwrapped today! I appreciate all the hard work and dedication from your team. "that threw a massive 68-pound ball" I wonder what Granger would have made of the USS Iowa's armament that only had nine main guns, but could throw a 2,700 pound shell 20 miles. This chapter lays the ground work for a lot of directions down the pike. Glad it was a no chicks chapter, just manly men, being manly. "I'm a sailor boy, and I'm okay. I sleep all night. I work all day."

People are not making Mark into a "manipulative" person, he IS manipulative and it is MASTER manipulator if you please, but name a great author who didn't? Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, Steven King... the list is endless. If we were not built up to hope only to come crashing down by events, how dull would the stories be? This would Chronicles of the Berenstain Bears. not Chronicles Of An Academic Predator. It was nice to have a mild drama chapter as opposed to mega drama. I have no idea where the twists will come, I think Kendo has been broadly hinted at. He will not relent until he has bagged Travis and poor, sweet, naive Travis will think he is the one doing the bagging. What is Kendo's end game? Is he just looking for another notch, or does he want more from Travis? It cannot be a secret that Travis is very rich. Or is Kendo one who loves wrecking relatio0nships? Time will tell. I do hope that Paolo visits Escorial and hooks up with Stef, striking a blow for inter-generational sex. The gay community is so judgmental and hypocritical on inter-generational relationship, inter-racial relationships, body composition and more. I too confess that when I see my movie mogul neighbor with a cute twink, my mind immediately goes to, "I know what that is all about", but that moment passes very quickly to let my rational mind go to, "I hope they are happy". Thanks Mark for the Christmas present and all the hard work that goes in to it. It is not lost on me how time consuming and difficult what you do is. And let me next say screw you Arbour for what you are going to do to (fill-in name). Poor (fill-in name) doesn't deserve such pain. 🤣

I just KNEW Santa was coming tonight!

I'm a reader, and I just want to see more of what you are already doing. And no gay demons. No gay demons, no bisexual demons, no transsexual demons, and no straight demons, just no demons at all. Oh... and in 2026, track down Dom Luka and make him come back.

Great, let's raise the voting age and drinking age to 30 🤣

Will has a short fuse. That is a sign of immaturity to me. The problem isn't that Will is mature for a 19 year old, but that he often is held up by many as the most mature, sagacious person in the room, even more so than the adults, including Brad, Stefan and John Paul and has been since he was 15 or so.

Tax auditors?

Will has a higher emotional maturity than Travis, but who can jump higher, an elephant or a hippo? Higher is a relative term. 🤣

Which again would parallel Robbie and Brad's relationship. I don't think breaking up at the end of high school because you are going to different colleges is that unusual, nor is rekindling down the line. Heck, I know a couple who were high school sweethearts, went to different colleges, married other people and then married in their 60's when they re-met and were both widowed.

Oh hell no. If Will is as smart and mature are you say, he is moving forward, not back.

Even without kidnapping and mobsters, no romance is simple and drama free and as someone else observed, Will crates his own drama. I have a good friend, an actor, who is not happy unless he is miserable. When everything is going great for him, he just gas to do something to mess things up.

Paolo. Pablo would be from a country a couple of countries away from It-lee. 🤣

Oh please..... it is CAP 🤣🤣🤣 The Will I Liked best was the Will doing his innocent explorations with John. And then Zach fucked that up which why I want a building or a comet to fall on Zach. I'd love to have a shrink examine the extent to what damage that episode with Will, John and Zach did to Will.

Thank you Mark for the start of the Travisty-palooza that us coming. This chapter lays open why I don't like the Will character very much. He is such a freaking hypocrite. Now I fully recognize that hypocrisy lays in all of us, but for me, with Will, it is glaring. He goes bat shit crazy when anyone delves into his life and choices, but he thinks it is okay to insert himself into Fab's and Marie's, even to the point of staking out to confront Fab. Many people speak of Will's strong moral compass and sense of right and wrong, but I think it is wrong to hook=up with someone you know is in a committed relationship. No, it isn't the other person's issue if they choose to cheat, it is your problem too if you enable the cheating. Then there was this, “Paolo told you it was okay to have sex with other guys. You have his permission. His blessing. So you are putting roadblocks up where there aren’t any.” Will cannot even understand that there are people who are 'one at a time' committers. It is a foreign concept to him that even though someone has 'permission' to cheat, they might not want to because they take the commitment more seriously than their horn dog partner. I think Wade is as close as we've come to that in this series. Travis and co-star sounds like a rebirth of Robbie and Carson. I know assholes from West Hollywood who loved picking up, fucking and fucking over guys they knew were in committed relationships. It was a game with them, a mission even, because they didn't believe men could or should keep their commitments.

Ummm, pretty sure since this chapter posted in 2014.......

Ummm, guess you missed this? The Freshmen - 93. Final Chapter https://gayauthors.org/story/mark-arbour/the-freshmen/93

Yes, yes, let's get this Travesty done as quickly as possible and get Granger back to sea blowing things up 🤣 Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

A Tidewater family would likely send their boys to Andover (Philips Academy) because 8 of George Washington's nephews/grand-nephews went there and Washington himself visited as President. Any of the Big Nine would acceptable (to some people), but Andover is the oldest, most prestigious and has an endowment that most universities would envy.

Riley getting fucked at Andover (maybe Phillips-Exeter), like so many boys before him. 🤣

You think like an East Coaster. If they are still together and commit to marriage, it would be at Escorial, possibly Santa Cruz or Maui.

Thanks Mark for an on-time delivery of the next chapter, I know how busy this time of year is. My thoughts are all over the place. I don't remember how long in CAP time is has been since Travis and Will became committed. Gap Year ended less than a year ago in CAP time, and almost two years ago in real time. What I cannot wrap my head around is how Will can supposedly be head over heels about Travis but still fuck around as if Travis doesn't exist. Carlo sounds like a European version of Preston. What happened to baseball player roommate?

I was thinking what Chinese gay men do.

I would say that I am Ganymede to your Zeus This line makes me sad because so few schools teach classics any more, or Western Civ, as a core part of the curriculum. There was a time when there was general agreement on what an educated person ought to know.

Interesting start. Thanks Mark for not wasting any time in jumping into the new series.It should be an adventure. I wonder how old Travis' fellow cast members are. I always hated those "teen drama" where the principal actors are in their mid 20's. If Travis feels hetero pressure he can always let a co-star blow him. Blow jobs are pretty gender neutral.