PrivateTim

I don't recall talking about Matt a lot in the last three stories, maybe not since Matt was a narrator, because at this point I regard him as a pretty minor character, ditto with Gathan, despite the fact that both were once narrators. Which question did I ignore? This? "If you were on the outs with someone in your family and they showed up without any warning would you be comfortable with it?" I would be curious what evidence you have that Zach is "on the outs" with someone in his family, especially his parents? It seems I answered that, even indirectly, with the quote. "I like it when they come to my games." As to Mendoza, I think you are acting as if it is a 50/50 on would someone hit on someone who'd lost their partner just six weeks ago. I have to believe that it is more like 90/10 or higher.

First the tiptoeing, the text of the story: Brad was tiptoeing to not piss off Will. All Brad did initially was offer to go a long and provide a ride. To answer Mark, the analogy is you are 15 and don't drive so you are riding your bike to a party and someone comes along and offers you a ride in their limo. And why was Will being totally selfish? Again, the text of the story: Why was Will disappointed? Because he thought the parents being along would cut into his fuck time with Zach. It is pretty clear where Will's head was. And again, you can not fall back on the "he is only 15" argument because the whole point of Will's emancipation is supposedly his maturity beyond his years. We won't even discuss the Mann Act implications of WIll's visit. Lastly Mendoza. He certainly would have known that Brad & Robbie were partners because that would have been big news both nationally and even more so locally even if there were not textual evidence that he did know. From the text of the story it seems pretty clear that he most definitely did know.

From my review of the Christmas chapter I am at a loss though as to why anyone thinks Will is "maturing" based on this chapter? He still threatened to torch Matt's car, he has his father tiptoeing around about whom he can invite on his plane and why would Will have any say on Wally & Clara visiting their son to begin with? Zach called it, partly Will was worried about whether or not he'd be able to get his noodle wet with his new best bud Zach if Wally & Clara were along. Instead of being happy for Wally & Clara getting to see their son play, Will is thinking about Will. Also, what up with Mendoza making a pass at a guy who lost his life partner in a horrible tragedy just 5 weeks ago?

Thanks Mark for the Christmas gift! I am at a loss though as to why anyone thinks Will is "maturing" based on this chapter? He still threatened to torch Matt's car, he has his father tiptoeing around about whom he can invite on his plane and why would Will have any say on Wally & Clara visiting their son to begin with? Zach called it, partly Will was worried about whether or not he'd be able to get his noodle wet with his new best bud Zach if Wally & Clara were along. Instead of being happy for Wally & Clara getting to see their son play, Will is thinking about Will. Also, what up with Mendoza making a pass at a guy who lost his life partner in a horrible tragedy just 5 weeks ago?

I was hoping to hear from Westie on the automatic respect shown to Nana by Ethan and Joe, and why that is, and why the other commenters here seemed to accept and approve of that respect given to her from someone she has never met before. As I said in my review, I am wondering where the great compassion of Will is towards Ethan? Everyone cited what a compassionate person Will was in buying Zach a car because he understood or empathized with Zach? Freakin' holy A what about Ethan who has never had a family or a father!? Will spent one third of one book wallowing in self pity that no one in his family loved him, despite all the evidence to the contrary and did far more than pound his fists on a soccer field in his frustration and a lot of people here were perfectly fine with his outsized actions before he ran away. I don't think Will's restraint in not telling Ethan off because he is bugging him is an equivalent show of compassion as buying someone, an asshat to boot, a car. Then, Will doesn't want Matt to do Tony in some territorial BS, but what about Will with Joe? What kind of host does a guest's guest? Will has no idea if Ethan and Joe are an item or even if they are not an item, if Ethan has feelings for Joe? It is typical of Will in his self indulgent, "I want what I want, but you can't want what you want" arrogance that he doesn't even THINK about Ethan and Joe that way. I do love Will and his narrations, but I wish more people would call him out on his bullshit rather than excuse it or rationalize it.

Great chapter, loved the three way drama (Claremont, Wade & Will), but where is Will's vaunted compassion? Ethan has had life ten times worse than Zach. Is it because Ethan isn't a hottie he wants to fuck? I don't know how many chapters this book is planned for, but I hope it goes for awhile with the interesting story lines that are developing. This chapter was so good, I didn't think of awful ways for Tony to die once! (okay, well maybe once.... but for sure not twice!)

So doesn't all that affirm my point that there are, or ought to be, accepted societal norms (standards) for right and wrong behavior and that not everyone gets to create their own moral code (moral relativism)? My point with Will is he wants to use the moral code rule that says a family member shouldn't sleep with the boyfriend/love interest of another family member to his benefit, but not adhere to the moral code rule that says you don't sleep with someone in a "committed" relationship, or the moral code that when a family member asks you to back off in a situation, you do. Will may have come to the realization that he was wrong sleeping with Eric (or with Tony when he had a girlfriend, which I don't think he has acknowledged yet) late, but at the time he had no problem in justifying it. He hasn't yet seen anything wrong with going around Wally & Clara to buy Zach a car (and a lot of others here don't either) and he may never see that as a misstep. I hope I live long enough (and for Arbour to live long enough and want to write still) to see Will have children and see how he reacts when people get in between him and his kid, maybe it will happen with Maddie. I do get that Will is in the process of growing up and maturing, but one of the reasons everyone gave to justify Will's emancipation was his "maturity" beyond his years so it seems disingenuous to fall back on excusing his actions on "well he is young still."

The call to arms was the last paragraph of the paper. And since Dr. Lewis designed the regression analysis of the answers given by respondents in the GSS and given his standing as former Chair of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Political Science Caucus, American Political Science Association I am inclined to look askance at his objectivity, especially when he ends the paper the way he did.

The trouble with Lewis's paper is that it was already dated when he published it. Quoting sources and studies from the 1950's and 60's has no relevance to what the world was like by 2001, especially in states like CT that were early adopters of gay rights. Even studies that were done later that he cites were dated. The proper title should have been, A History of Barriers to Security Clearances for Homosexuals, since by 2001 those barriers were gone. What the bottom line was for Lewis's paper was it was a call to arms for his fellow academics out of fear that the new Bush administration was going to discriminate against gays in its administration, which didn't happen. And to me, it is part of the dichotomy that is Will and all who believe in moral relativism vs standards, whether they be universal or societal. He doesn't believe in right or wrong until he needs right or wrong to serve his purpose. In the same moral space where Will ignored JJ's request for sexual restraint in Norway, ignored the social norm that says you don't become "the other woman" in a relationship as he did with Kyle & Eric, now he wants Matt to practice restraint and he laid out boundaries for Tony, who he isn't even in a committed relationship with. Will chafes when people want to put constraints on him and maybe even pushes the envelope because of them. I hope he catches Tony in bed with Matt and puts a bullet between his (Tony's) eyes..... it would warm the cockles of my heart.

I am intrigued as to what is happening in the plants in TX & OH based on Jordan's comments. I always find it funny that Will thinks he can define for others (Matt) what their behavior should be, but he goes nuts when someone puts limits on him. He had no moral qualms about sleeping with Eric (or was it Kyle?) and said it wasn't business to police their relationship. I am a little disappointed that Cam has disappeared from the story, I thought he was a potential friend/hook up for Will and now we have Josh in that roll. I thought maybe Noah would be another one, even with his involvement with Marie, a lot of guys still have beards, but he is another character that floated in, looked like he could be significant, then faded. As to post 9-11 profiling, there was none, especially not with respect to gays, that I am aware of. I think that was more poetic license to move the story than anything. In fact, there were specific directives against profiling, even the very effective type of profiling that El Al does.

Thank you for proving my point that you neither understand respect, nor the legal system. The respect for the office of the judge is automatic, it is completely automatic. No level of disrespect is allowed at all no matter how egregious a ruling might be. Any display that shows disrespect for the judge is dealt with swiftly and often harshly. And the judge doesn't have to do a single thing to earn the respect, he merely needs to BE the judge. Judges don't earn offices, they are given them. Some states elect lower level judges, but all federal judges are by appointment. It is part of the rules of society that it is this way. Here is some light reading for you. Courtroom Decorum - Rules of Practice Now to parental rights, they may not exist - in your mind - , but unfortunately they do exist. You might was well say the sun does not exist - in your mind - , but it is still going to rise tomorrow. As to rights in general, there are the rights given by government and the rights given by God (or Natural Rights if you prefer). The difference is that what government giveth, government can taketh away. It is to Natural Right that we owe our liberty since government has no right to take those rights they did not give. More light reading. Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government If the Urban Dictionary is an appropriate source to define respect, how much more appropriate is the incomparable Aretha Franklin's definition?

I hope you see the irony and incompatibility of those two statements.

In point 1 you have two different aspects of respect and it dovetails nice on the point of parents. You have to respect the office of the judge just like you have to respect the office of the parents. It is possible to not respect the officeholder, but that can't spill over on official duties. If you told the judge in the affluenza case (does anyone doubt Will is a sufferer?) in their court that the was the most idiotic thing you'd ever heard, at best you'd be pulling out the checkbook and at worst, cooling your heels in a holding cell. In point 2, I wish it were true that courts did not defer to parental rights when parents have been negligent or abusive, but you'd would be horrified at what it takes to get a child to be removed from an abuse or negligent household.

You're the kind of guy, I perceive, that is rather callow and doesn't understand respect. There are many forms of respect that don't need to be "developed" or earned. Respect for parental rights would be one form that doesn't need to be earned or developed. A spiteful Wally and Clara could remove the car from Zach and get a restraining order against Will without too much problem because the law still has respect for some relationships, even if individuals don't. Similarly when you are in court, the judge doesn't need to "earn" your respect, he has it automatically otherwise disrespect is dealt with swiftly and surely. Children have to respect their parents authority whether or not they respect the people and the law recognizes that as well. The reason that you respect your elders is that with age comes wisdom. And please spare me anecdotal stories about unwise older people. Society has accepted for millennia that age brings experience and experience wisdom.

I am really glad that you agree with me that it was a huge mistake for Will to buy Zach the car and he shouldn't have shown such disregard for Wally & Clara, Gathan and Brad. Ok that would be sarcasm (or is it irony?). Because I think you are among the crowd that thinks Will didn't make a mistake in how he handled buying Zach a car. All the people in the above situations came to realize they had made errors and had a level of contrition. Will has none. He, and half the people here (or more) think he did the right thing. That is the point. How can he learn from his "mistakes", if he doesn't see them as such?

Here is my review of Chapter 57 and Mark's reply: still think Lark is full of crap. To me if Will was this great guy who really wanted to right injustice and help the oppressed he'd be helping the guys at Father Tim's Center who have really endured abuse and been rejected by their families. If not buying your son a car at his elite prep school is abuse, then they are going to need to jail a whole lot of people. That Will doesn't recognize Wally and Clara's right to parent their child as they see best is as I have said before, disturbing. It means he really does NOT understand right and wrong. He doesn't get that buying Zach a car was wrong, because it isn't his right to make that decision. It also speaks volumes about his maturity, or lack thereof, that he has so little respect for his elders. It is okay to be mad at Brad for supposed slights, but disrespecting others, maybe because of their education, values or net worth does not bode well for Will's future development. I post this because I want to be clear on what I mean and what I see as a huge flaw in Will right now, partly due to his immaturity and that self assured arrogance that they (teens) know best on pretty much everything. I do equate respect to morality (the right and wrong of things) and respect for parental authority, a parents right to raise their child as they see fit, is just one aspect of it. It is wrong (immoral) to not respect someone and treat them badly especially when they have never done anything wrong to you or to others. Will's disregard for Wally & Clara as people and then going behind their backs to give Zach a car is wrong. I don't car how you spin it or try to turn it into a positive for Will it isn't. This isn't Will seeing some great injustice and then righting it. It is Will wanting to stick a thumb in Wally & Clara's eye, but Gathan and his Father as well. The very impetuousness of the act shows Will's immaturity. Why can't Will, who ran away, felt unloved and abandoned by his parents, not empathize more with the young men at Father Tim's who truly are unloved and abandoned by their parents and do nice things for them? The money Will spent on a car for Zach would have done much more good spread over the 30 to 40 guys at Fr Tim's mission. That would have showed maturity to me and an understanding of what injustice looks like. Maybe I take it more to heart because I have to work with a good number of Wills and grew up with a good number of Wills, who have no concept of the world is supposed to work and no concept of reality. The last chapter, Will not understanding how to make breakfast brought it home even more. He is used to walking into a kitchen with servants who fix his meals and when they are at Escorial, having the meals served by more servants like it is early 20th century Britain. I am sure he treats them well, but he still thinks of them as inferiors. That isn't immaturity as it is arrogance and Will has arrogance in spades; slightly cocky can be cute, arrogance is ugly. His disregard for adults in general is another aspect of the arrogance. Switching off Will and onto Brad in this new chapter, I find it interesting that a company like Triton would a chief of security like they do. CT was one of the earlier states to pass gay rights protection in the early 90's. I am not sure that the Board is the proper venue to address the issues. I'd have the security chief in a conference room with the VP of HR, Director of HR, Jordan and Brad and start the tortuously long route that large corporations have to go to fire someone. Long gone are the days of summarily dismissing someone. It starts with a suspension pending investigation, an investigation not just of what the suspended party did, but how did you handle previous, similar violations of company policy and law and then pray the suspended party is not a protected class themselves. Of course I can't really complain, it is such situations that get lawyers their next new car or trip to Tahiti.

Fun chapter..... interesting new storyline with Brad and the business and even more interesting is Daddydavek turning Claire into a cougar and having hot steamy sex with Austin.... that would be a straight sex scene I could stand to hear... I'll have more thoughts in the forum.

I appreciated the quick turn, it was nice to see a "twin spin" I still think Lark is full of crap. To me if Will was this great guy who really wanted to right injustice and help the oppressed he'd be helping the guys at Father Tim's Center who have really endured abuse and been rejected by their families. If not buying your son a car at his elite prep school is abuse, then they are going to need to jail a whole lot of people. That Will doesn't recognize Wally and Clara's right to parent their child as they see best is as I have said before, disturbing. It means he really does NOT understand right and wrong. He doesn't get that buying Zach a car was wrong, because it isn't his right to make that decision. It also speaks volumes about his maturity, or lack thereof, that he has so little respect for his elders. It is okay to be mad at Brad for supposed slights, but disrespecting others, maybe because of their education, values or net worth does not bode well for Will's future development.

Some interesting things in the new chapter and I'll lay aside my "Tony must die" shtick for a few moments. I don't like Tony and think he is poisonous, just like some people think Zach is poisonous, but my desire for Skylab to fall on him is more just me having fun than anything. But on the serious side of the story I don't buy the "guys were just hook-ups" bit for Tony and that was why he treated Will like crap on the float trip and did his thing with Rick. If Tony hadn't treated Will the way he did in Rome, maybe I could have bought that line, but in Rome it would have been (and was) pretty obvious to anyone that Will and Tony were like a couple in love and in fact Tony did declare his love for Will. A guy just doing hook ups with guys doesn't act like Tony did in Rome. The funniest, most ironic part of the chapter was Will telling Tony who he could and could not sleep with. Can you imagine how Will would react to someone else, JJ for example, telling Will who he could and could not sleep with? Will would immediately go sleep with them just to spite the person, somewhat like Will did in Norway. Some here think I don't like Will and they couldn't be more wrong. If I didn't like Will I wouldn't hate Tony and call for his death at every opportunity. I wouldn't give a damn, I'd think the two little pricks deserved each other. But I don't think Will is prick, I do think he is far too young to be making a lot of the life decisions he does and his continuing disrespect and disregard for Wally & Clara and interfering with their rights to raise their minor son as they see best troubles me. Will might think they are wrong in how they are doing, but failing to recognize their right to do so speaks to his immaturity. It especially bothers me that there are the young men at Father Tim's ministry who truly have been abused and abandoned by parents who don't give a rip about them and Will wastes his money on someone in an elite prep school who has parents that love and care about his welfare and make what they think are the right decisions for him. I think Will has misdirected priorities. As I said in my review of this chapter, despite the fact that to us, the 9-11 "planes hit" chapter was almost three months ago (9-9-2013), in CAP time, it hasn't even been a month yet since Robbie died. Its just been 23 days since the towers fell so I wouldn't expect Brad, or anyone for that matter, to have moved on or been healed so quickly. At the three month mark, maybe you only think about it 5 or 6 times a day as opposed to every 5 or 6 minutes, but it really takes time for grief to be processed. I am not sure how much longer we have in 9-11, but I hope long enough to learn more about Wade's half brother, long enough to have some fun in Hawaii and long enough to see Tony die a slow, painful death (you didn't really think I was going to abandon the "Tony must die" theme so easily did you?)

It is easy to conflate time in the CAP world with time in the real world. Despite the fact that to us, the 9-11 "planes hit" chapter was almost three months ago (9-9-2013), in CAP time, it hasn't even been a month since Robbie died. Its just been 23 days since the towers fell so I wouldn't expect Brad, or anyone for that matter, to have moved on or been healed so quickly. At the three month mark, maybe you only think about it 5 or 6 times a day as opposed to every 5 or 6 minutes, but it really takes time for grief to be processed. Comments on "other" matters I'll make in the forums

How badly you interpret my words, which were pretty clear. No one can declare what anyone elses sexual orientation is. That is not new nor hipster. Crosscurrents and It Started With Brian are examples of someone who is straight can fall in love with someone of the same gender and still be straight. Tom Daley has not declared his orientation, nor should he ever have to. It is no ones damned business. But Mr. Daley was very clear that he likes "a guy". He didn't forget an "s", it wasn't a mistake, he doesn't like "guys", he likes one person, who happens to be a guy. People who do not know Mr. Daley, rushing to declare him one orientation or another is unseemly at best.

"Guys" is plural. As of right now, we knows he likes "a guy", that is singular. That would be the actual fact.

Why does everyone feel compelled to slap a label on someone. Tom Daley didn't "come out" and he doesn't "like guys too" as the title of this thread says. He likes a guy. In the future he may like other guys. Or not. But that doesn't make him gay or bi or anything other little box that people want to stuff him in. Sexual orientation is a self identification. Has no one here read Crosscurrents or It Started With Brian?

Don't you misquote Scripture to me, especially not Timothy It is the love of money that leads people down the wrong path, look at what happened to Gathan when he first got money. Wally & Clara are right to be suspicious of what happens to people when they come into money because it changes them. The examples of how the wealthy in Claremont behaved before JP got back involved probably influenced their opinions as well. The bitch about not trusting adults is sooner or later you become one. People who get things too easily do not appreciate them as much as people who work for them.

The car was NOT the fabulously, unbelievably wealthy boy's equivalent of helping his friend sneak out of the house past curfew, it was the fabulously, unbelievably wealthy boy's equivalent of walking in the front door and saying, "forget your curfew, what do they know, let's go." The whole point has been that as a 15 year old Will, or any 15 year old for that matter, does not have the maturity to make that decision. That is why we give them time to grow up. A new car probably costs as much as a house in Claremont, OH. The fact that he does not understand IS the point, it is that lack of maturity that is being discussed.