PrivateTim

I came to GA because I discovered Dom Luka. I knew of Mark Arbour from having read On the Mark someplace else (still my all time favorite MA story), but avoided CAP because I was put off by the title "academic predator" because it made me think the story was going to be about something else other than what it turned out to be. I actually started reading the Odyssey series first until I finally gave CAP a try and then I started at Book 1 and read through chronologically. I actually put Odyssey aside while I read CAP because I had a hard time remembering which characters were which stories. I have no idea how Mr. Arbour keeps them straight in his own head.

It is usually required in high school to take foreign language, but the country is so big compared to countries in Europe the need to use other languages is minimal so you lose whatever language skills you had if you don't get a chance to use them. For example, driving 1300km, from say Amsterdam to Milan could take you through 5 countries and at least 5, maybe 6 different languages so it becomes more important to know another language. English became somewhat the defacto common language of Europe. Some countries in Europe even have multiple official languages. That doesn't mean a lot of Americans are not multilingual. In CA for example where the CAP families live the official ballots for elections come in seven different languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese) and in neighborhoods of So Cal you can go places where you can hear Russian, Armenian, Thai, Hindi, Arabic and more languages spoken as the common daily language. Those people typically all speak English as well, but among their friends and families they revert to their native language, even generations later sometimes. Then their are pockets in the U.S. where a language like Creole or Cajun French has been spoken for hundreds of years and still remain and of course the myriad of Native American languages, so it is actually rather complicated.

Reminds me of the blonde haired, blue eyed swimmer I dated early in college, who looked liked he belonged on a Joseph Goebbels' recruiting poster, but in fact had two parents who were Cuban born refugees. He spoke Spanish like a native of Cuba despite being U.S. born and would shock the crap out of Mexican bus boys and waiters when we ate out. Don't these people watch Univision?

Man it bugs me you can't like reviews because that is pretty much how I feel about the Will/Zach and Will/Family thing. As I said in my review, Zach has gone from trouble maker extraordinaire, to super supportive non-boyfriend boyfriend extraordinaire pretty quickly. Which Zach will appear when his "friendship" with Will threatens his football future?

Hunh..... you'd have thought there would be a lot more sex in a chapter numbered "69" Zach has gone from trouble maker extraordinaire, to super supportive non-boyfriend boyfriend extraordinaire pretty quickly. Which Zach will appear when his "friendship" with Will threatens his football future?

Ummm, you mean like BART and Muni??? As to expression, unless it is tied to a money (show me the money) I never remember when they start or stop, I just don't pay enough attention. My grandmother remembers Beverly Park and Ponyland well. She also remembers when Rodeo Drive had a green grocer and hardware store on it.

Right. But it was named "Frisco" because it had a spur of the St. Louis - San Francisco Railroad there and it was named to honor San Fran SF was called "Frisco" a lot in the old days and you can find it in lots of literature and old movies (can anyone say The Frisco Kid? And please, James Cagney version only). Getting uptight about Frisco is how phony transplants and the affected try to establish their SF bona fides. It wasn't until Sacramento transplant Herb Caen wrote Don't Call It Frisco that people had permission to get snobby about the name. Fornicate Frisco-ites if they can't take it

I think it goes well beyond safety in team sports, it is more fundamental. Team sport coaches hate individualism, they do all they can to build a team mentality not unlike what happens in the military. They don't want guys "doing their own thing", I've seen stars sat down for being too much about themselves. On the practical side a coach wants to know his star quarterback is on the bus and not rely on him to show up on his own. In cross country, if your #1 runner gets lost looking for the meet, it doesn't destroy a weeks worth of planning a game plan and prep, you just move the #1 JV or Frosh Soph kid up to the #7 varsity spot. Can't speak to NJ, but in CA a football (water polo, etc) coach would never release a kid to drive his own car after a game if the kid came on the team bus for liability reasons. He would only release a kid to his parents and then only for a very, very good reason (i.e., college recruiting trip and need to catch a plane). Again, they discourage individualism at every turn.

Some think it weird to nit pick details in a fiction story full of outrageous scenarios, but it is the attention to the details away from the main characters that help make the story so real and believable. The 9-11 days were meticulous in their tracking to the actual events outside of the family and that is part of makes these stories so fantastic. So an off kilter detail jumps out at me. Zach wouldn't have driven to an away game, the team would all go on a bus. Brad would have had to drop Will off back at Don Bosco. Your editing team should have picked up that minor detail, but I don't think any of them are athletes. And the difference between Will and Matt and Zach and Gathan, is that Zach and Gathan lived together as brothers for quite some time. Matt and Will never did. Maybe Will would never knowingly sleep with someone JJ was interested in, but he had no problem creating all kinds of drama for JJ in Norway by sleeping around in the middle of his world on a trip focused on JJ.

It is an interesting thought...... but where is the evidence of Will holding back anything? He tells Zach things he doesn't tell anyone else, JP and Wade included, he barebacks with Zach, he flies clear across the country to see him taking time away from his friends in CA, he buys him a car, he bites off the head of anyone who questions his relationship with Zach, including Wade. Sure Will can say the words, "If Zach fucks me over, he fucks me over," but such bradvo is very different when you actually DO get fucked over by someone you think is into you. You say the words others want to hear so they climb off you, but you don't believe them half the time yourself. Time will tell..

Except that Will has never trusted or defended Matt. Tony was Will's error in judgment. He had several opportunities to recognize what Tony was like and kept turning a blind eye to it because to be frank, Tony could fuck him so well. He kept forgiving Tony because the sex was good (which sounds like a Dr. Phil show in the making). He never thought of, nor treated Matt as a brother or family, but wants to pull the brother/family card when he wants to make Tony off limits, but doesn't want to have to see Wally & Clara as family as well. It is Will's morals of convenience and family connections of convenience that bother me. Either you are willing to live up to a set of community standards for behavior or you are not. You don't get to choose which ones you want to reject because they are inconvenient to what you want to do. By the same token, when you have two parents they each come with their own family. You don't get to choose which members are family and which are not. You may not like them, but they are still family.

So everyone thinks that given Will's current mental make-up (not that he has ever been terribly stable) a potential betrayal by Zach would be okay as long as it feels good for awhile? Wouldn't that be the worst possible thing? (a betrayal by someone you've been defending and trusting) Who knows if Zach is sincere with Will or Brent? You don't the context in which Zach said it. It could be flippancy, a defense mechanism or the truth. But wouldn't it be fun if Will burned up the truck he bought?

Oh Arbour, no one can write an out of control teen scene like you! =) I actually like seeing Wade being a bit less reserved

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Telling the truth is way overrated. When the truth will only fuel more animosity and telling a half truth won't cause any harm, you choose the lesser of two weevils. It is not unreasonable to have different standards for siblings and cousins, but Matt was not raised with Will as a sibling and no matter how distant cousins the Hayes family are, they were important to Robbie and that should be enough for Will to treat the Hayes cousins better. Will has never treated Matt the way he does Darius and JJ, so this "Darius and JJ wouldn't do that" argument is specious. Even since Will started fucking dating Zach he hasn't had a civil word to say to Gathan, he is perpetually pissed off at him. Will did have longer than a day to forgive him, but hadn't. He was still cynical and suspicious of Zach the night of Robbie's memorial, but seven and a half inches later he had forgiven Zach and bought him a car. No, you miss the point that people with no moral standards can not impose on or expect moral standards of others The is no right or wrong when you do what ever you want because you have the money to make it so, there is only want.

If Matt is not Will's "brother" because there is no love there, then everyone should stop busting Matt's balls that Will gets to tell Matt who he can sleep with because they are "brothers". If Matt is Will's "brother" because Matt is Will's father's son, then the other Hayes are Will's family too. You can not have it both ways. The family did not meet Matt and decide to let him be a family member, he came into the family because he was Robbie's son and Wade came in because he was Matt's boyfriend. Ace and Billy were his son's because they were his wife's children and Brad he took in out of family obligation. Brad was not a stranger.

It is interesting to see JP's ire with Matt. I've never believed in open relationships because it is usually a one sided proposition that never works out well in the end.

And of course you miss the point and the connection. Everyone is saying, "how can Matt do that to his brother", but no one has any problem what Will is doing to his "aunt and uncle" (Wally and Clara) and "cousin" (Gathan). You can't get around the fact that they are all Hayes and Robbie's family. That is part of not being able to choose your family. If Will is Robbie's son, then the Hayes are his family. Will was actually closer to Gathan than Matt before he started playing hide the salami with Zach, but now he has no problem treating Gathan like dirt because there is tension between Zach and Gathan. He never treated Matt that well to begin with, but wants to pull the "family" card now? And no one seems to have an issue with how quickly Will forgave Zach for having sex with John and creating family problems between Brad and Claire. If family is that important you would think it would have taken more than a day or two to get over the issues with Zach and then suddenly believe every word from Zach's mouth as gospel. So far Will has a pretty poor track record at choosing potential boyfriends.

You can pick your nose. You can't pick your family.

So wait...... Will, who is supposed to care so much about family, prefers Wade, who isn't related to him, to Matt, who supposedly is? And Will has had no problems lobbing hand grenades into his Hayes family (Wally & Clara and Gathan, who saved his father's life) all because he likes getting banged by Zach, who also created rifts in the family by messing with John and causing problems with Claire and Brad? Why can't Will have simply said, "thank you for the apology, but I am going to need time to process it still." That is what a wise beyond his years person would have said while Wally & Clara await THEIR apology from Will.

I am not sure how you keep, consistently missing this. I DO very much believe in moral standards and codes, it is Will who only believes in them when they are convenient for him. I think Matt is wrong for sleeping around when he is in a relationship, either get in a relationship and commit to your partner or don't be in a relationship. If I was wade I would have dumped him long ago. I think Will is wrong for laying out rules for others that he doesn't want to obey himself. I think it is morally wrong to have sex with the guest of a guest, I think it is wrong to let your sex life interfere with someone else's space as Will did in Norway, I think it is wrong interfere with a parent - child relationship when the child is not in any danger, I think it is wrong to sleep with someone when you know they are in a committed relationship. There are many other moral foibles in the CAP series, but none of that is the point. The point is that if you want and expect "common decency" then you have to give it as well. You have to adhere to some norm of what that common decency is. The Golden Rule of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a pretty simple, religion neutral moral code to live by. I could go through Will, Matt, Tony and any number of people here and apply that standard and show how much less pain and suffering there would have been had they and others lived up to that one moral code.

The overarching theme has been "common decency" and Matt was "wrong", but in a world of moral relativism, no one gets to judge anyone else's actions. With Brad and Wade it is not that Matt gave his go ahead, but in what world is sleeping with the partner of your step son considered morally okay? If you are going to bust Matt's balls because he is Will's "brother", then that makes him your step son too. You can say "I wouldn't do that" and grab what you think is the moral high ground, but in a universe where everyone has their own definition of right and wrong there is no right and wrong. JJ didn't ask Will to not sleep with "anyone in Norway", he asked Will to not sleep with any of the people in his world, the skaters. Will had 100,000 Norwegian men and boys he could have slept with in Oslo, but Will was shitting in the middle JJ's party and didn't even understand why that was wrong or possibly hurtful to JJ and possibly damaging to the skaters he was involved with. I didn't argue that it was unfair of Will to tell Matt who he could and could net sleep with, but hypocritical because Will hates being told such things. The point with Joe, Ethan's friend, is not if Joe flirted with Will first or whether or not Will likes Ethan. I don't think Matt likes Will all that much, so is it therefore okay for Matt to sleep with Tony because he doesn't like Will? The point is I would not sleep with a house guest who was the guest of another guest, even if they hit on me because I would not step in the middle of their friendship, even if it was just a friendship. The point with Will is that he did not stop for one second and consider anyone else in the equation, he did what he wanted, when he wanted. That is not the attitude of someone mature, that is an ill mannered, inconsiderate lout. For Sammy, it is not a case of liking or disliking Will, but wanting Will to grow the fuck up and start caring about someone besides himself. REALLY caring, not caring about someone who is useful to him or a good fuck, but someone who can't do anything for him. Why no compassion for Ethan (that translates into action) who has had life 100x rougher than Zach? Because Ethan is fat and unattractive to Will?

Yes, Matt only has Wade and his family back in Ohio, who can't help/support him in CA if Will wants to push a "choose him or me scenario" as is his wont. But of course the point would be that Tony is not Will's partner. In fact Will made it pretty clear that for the foreseeable future they were only FWBs. The trouble is, in this modern world of moral relativism, whose definition of common decency do we use? Yours or mine or someone elses? It slays me that people think Matt did something wrong by sleeping with Tony, who is not Will's boyfriend, but NO ONE had an issue with Brad sleeping with his step son's partner? That is okay in the world of common decency? Wait.... Will shouldn't have had to ask Matt to stay away from Tony, who isn't his boyfriend, while he is banging Zach, who screwed over him and his cousin and caused a big rift in the family with Brad and Claire and everyone else, but Matt DID have to tell his step father to not bang his partner? As to Ethan's friend........ common decency would say you don't suck off any house guest who is the guest of a guest, especially when you don't know the relationship between the two, ESPECIALLY when the guest is the brother of someone you consider a brother. But it is another case of Will wanting to do whatever Will wants with ZERO consideration of anyone else. In Norway he had no consideration of how his sexploits in the skating world would effect JJ, he had no consideration about Wally & Clara when he bought the truck, he had no consideration for Ethan when he hooked up with his friend. Will thinks there are no limits of any kind on him. Why is wrong to sleep with someone NOT in a relationship with anyone? Will certainly had no problem sleeping with Erik (or was it Kyle) knowing full well he was in a relationship. It is not that Will did not have any sort of a familial relationship with either, but that "common decency" says you do not sleep with someone in a committed relationship. I would also ask what textual evidence you can point to that says Ethan and his friend were just buddies? Did Will ask? Did Will even care? Would it have stopped him if he had known? As to Norway, JJ asked Will to not sleep with ANYONE. What was Will's response? He negotiated. How about a simple, "okay because you asked me JJ my brother, I'll keep my dick in my pants for THREE DAYS." Would that have been so hard for Will to do in consideration to JJ?

I don't think what Matt is doing is looking for sex, I think there is a much deeper pathology going on that he is not even aware of. A subconscious self destructive motivation that all Hayes seem to have. Looking at the Will/Matt comparisons people want to make in terms of maturity, people were okay with Will's destructive runaway episode because he felt unloved, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Yet Matt, who actually did have parents reject him, not once, but twice (being given up for adoption and the adoptive parents on finding out he was gay) isn't given the same latitude. Yes everyone is hurting, but Will, Brad and the rest have an entire family structure that they grew up in for support, Matt only has Wade and Wade hasn't stopped to really analyze Matt's behavior, he is just reacting to it. And when you really think about it, it is all Arbour's fault anyway. If he had just killed off Tony as I've sweetly and subtly suggested, it never would have happened at all. The difference is no one has said of Matt how mature he is, how wise beyond his years, how he will assume the mantle of leadership one day. Will is not just a 15 year old, he is an emancipated 15 year old who is an object of much praise for his decisions and the adults are criticized for questioning his judgment. If you want the responsibility of running your own life without question or interference, then you can't fall back on, "I'm just a kid." I think you understand that isn't what I was suggesting, but rather making a point. Will has a very strong sense of family, but yet it was Zach who fucked with his family (John) after Will had turned him down explaining that he and John were promised to each other. Zach slept with John deliberately to strike back at Will for not sleeping with him. But a few lays and a football jersey latter, Will is contemplating is he in love with that same guy. I am wondering where Will The Wise and Compassionate is? The Will who doesn't like being told what he can and can not do by people? If he stopped and contemplated his relationship with Matt and where Matt is in life right now I'd start to believe that Will is worthy of the praise he gets.

Apparently all Matt will need to do is screw Will, tell him a hard luck story about his parents not understanding him and everyone being mean to him. He will get a new truck as a bonus