B1ue

Sorry, but I have not the slightest idea. I didn't even know what it was, although it's vaguely how I get my own hair cut. So, um, 2006 or so? Probably earlier, but that's when I started, and I started based on a look I saw in a barbershop. It stood out, because it is one of the few styles that compliments hair as thick as mine. I'm actually due for a hair cut, so if I remember I'll post a pic later this week with it.

Same for me, except it was other kids in my case. Of course, being me, I learned to switch handedness in the middle of a meal simply to drive everyone else crazy, but I used both hands politely.

This is why we do not mess around with little old ladies. They have seen things and done things and have no time for your nonsense.

Hmm. I thought JJ's original request was for Will to not sleep with anyone there, and they bargained down to Evan was off limits, and no more than 1 per day. I'll reread it when I have time, I suppose. They were interesting chapters anyways.

I thought your entire post was well reasoned, but there is one difference between the situations that I wanted to bring up. Specially, that Kyle isn't family, and so in a great many ways, his pain doesn't count. Intellectually, it should, but I have to admit that my own clannish mindset goes to a place that what you pull against a family member is wholly different from what you can pull on someone who is merely a friend. Which frightening whenever I pause to think about it, because my family has pulled knives on each other. I think we've seen enough evidence to believe Will and, indeed, most of the cast, work in the same way. A better comparison might be how Will refused to honor JJ's request to not sleep with his fellow competitors at Norway, which we've already discussed, but let me explain fully. Lined up with this incident, it's a pretty clear double standard, and the mindset that allows Will to make it is troubling. He makes his demand to Matt, because he takes himself seriously and it is set into his bones now that everyone in the family will take him and his desires just as seriously. Which, fair enough, he's in several ways no longer a child. But he was not completely willing to accede to JJ's quite similar in spirit demand, because he didn't consider JJ's reasons important. Now, I would have pulled that against my cousins and siblings when I was thirteen, but I was not a paragon of maturity, even if I'd seen and done, and survived, actions at that age many my current age have not seen and done (it frightens me how soft so many of my peers are, even the gay ones). I don't think I would have looked for ways to evade such a stricture now. Edit: I also have to add a great big "whatever" to not becoming the other woman. When it comes to Kyle, I actually agreed with Will's initial reasoning. Wasn't his job to keep Eric honest, no matter to what conclusion he eventually came. In the case Mark proposed, it wouldn't have been Darius's job to keep John's girlfriend from cheating on him; he'd have not fucked her because he owed John that consideration, not her.

So, when I was 18, I bought the QaF soundtrack from Walmart, because I did indeed like several of the songs, including "Dive in the Pool." I also bought a trance CD, and an Anne Rice novel. My friend with me at the time later asked, "You know, I wonder what the cashier made of those purchases." I laughed. "I don't wonder at all. You didn't notice her glaring at you?" "Me?" "Well, if she assumed I was gay, and you were standing next to me, what do you think she thought you were?" "!!"

And that was the most competent one. Will was basically in awe, wondering, "What is this witchcraft?"

No, you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm saying that I thought Gathan's enmity towards Zach, especially, made them think that Zach used his body to get things from Will. To a lesser extent, I figured Brad felt the same way. It would have more readily explained to me why they were so opposed to Zach getting close to Will in the first place, they were afraid he was going to use him, and possibly already had. Which is a way of looking at what happened, not that Will would see it that way. Bigger question to me would have been how Zach saw it, because as I stated earlier it's perfectly possible to have and express genuine feelings for a mark, and still see them as a mark, but your confusion pretty much answers that point.

Something ate my first draft of this post. I wonder if Will ever stopped to think that "turning a trick" is exactly what Gathan and, to a lesser extent (in that he'd have less of a problem with it) Brad, assumed already happened with him?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1VinBlssgg "Beautiful Goodbye" by Amanda Marshall. Listed by a website I follow as one of the "Lost Hits of the 90s", but more accurately a list of songs that weren't chart toppers but in the opinion of the compiler, should have been. This one I agree with. Ostensibly, it's about a woman that doesn't quite regret a breakup, but exists in that twilight state of "I think I should be happy, but how can I be happy," that I'm sure many of us can remember at one point or another, with a huge heap of guilt thrown in. I find it applicable to, oh, any number of relationships in 9-11, as missed opportunities seems to be a theme for this book. I like to think of it as Elizabeth Danfield's though. I know not many agree with my reading of her character, but I think she really did love her husband and family, to the extent that she was able. Her methods of expressing that love were just so terrible. I wonder if, after the will reading, she went home thinking over every step she took that led her to being so alone in a room of those that knew her best, and wondering how she got there when she did only what she thought she had to. Edit: my favorite bit is the chorus. The entire song, I can easily imagine her singing to her ex-husband's casket, but the chorus tells the story. "When I see you now, I wonder how/ I could have watched you walk away. If I let you down, please forgive me now/ for that beautiful goodbye."

And to a certain extent, he's even correct to feel that way. When I said they don't have the same morality as Will, that wasn't a slam on either party. Will, and now Zach, lives in a completely different world than they, of course he thinks differently. I should also clarify that I have no actual objections to his actions, but the manner in which he did them. And in fairness, that may be due to my own basic personality. Specifically, I always seek to compromise, because I know I have no control over anyone else's actions, and that I can't get rid or overpower everyone that annoys me. Will actually can safely ignore everyone with basically no consequences, so he does so. Usually, I have a pretty good bead on Will. "What would I do in this situation?" has been a fairly accurate way to guess which way he'd jump. Not this time. Because I would, in Will's status as an semi-adult, have encouraged Zach to confront his parents directly. I'd have had JP or Claire moderate (as much to keep my temper under control as to be on my side), but I'd have specicifally excluded Brad and Gathan, and made it all about Zach and his parents. And I'd have let Zach do the majority of the talking, letting him explain his reasons, and hoping that my presence and my specific promise to him that I had his back would allow him to make his arguments rationally. And it's quite possible that if he'd told them about the great hardship he was putting his host family under by having them cart him hither and yon, and combined it with a plea that while he appreciated their charity, he didn't really want to depend on it (specifically invoking the word "charity" is important), they might have caved. Or possibly compromised by giving him an advance on his inheritance, but telling him they were taking the money for the car out of his monthly allowance. And both Claire and JP are experienced enough at parenting to have offered that compromise if it hadn't occurred to any of the Hayes on their own. Gathan wouldn't have compromised or caved under any circumstances, which is why he'd have waited outside. And, in the end, if they still refused to even listen to Zach, then I'd have bought him the car. Because he'd have at least given them the chance to discuss it, and prove they could be rational even outside their own worldview. And who knows? Maybe Zach would have been the one to back down, once he realized that they were serious about him and his siblings not growing up to believe money solved all issues, and that charity was something to be depended on. To be fair, I do get Will's motives. Even if you had not articulated them so clearly, Mark, the story itself makes them quite clear. If I have not been clear on this point, from my view it's a perfectly logical extension of how Will has been developed, right down to his basic distrust (and thus unwillingness to seek compromise) of any and all over age 20. To be even more clear, he's earned that distrust, as Claire, Isiodore, Stef, Brad, Robbie, and Jeanine have all to his eyes proven themselves unreliable. I just want to see the fallout, and I also wanted to articulate my interest in this development, and where I saw it going.

It's relevant when discussing a larger character trait. The issue I take with it (beyond my involuntary eye-roll when the word "need" gets thrown around) is that Will didn't really seem to do this because he thought so highly of Zach. He did it, seemingly, to screw with Gathan and, to a lesser extent, Brad. He also blatantly disrespected Wally and Clara in the matter of raising their own kid, which is a pretty big deal in my world-view, short of child abuse, which denial of car privileges doesn't really qualify as. I will agree that they were probably in the wrong on this call, but that doesn't mean Will had the right or duty to interfere without consequences. He also made it clear that no one but him would be allowed to have controlling influence over Zach's life (we can see in his mind that he didn't actually mean it, but it's still what he said). This is important because, when placed alongside how he's developed as a character up to this point, he seems even more like a loose cannon. It was one thing when he was taking control over his own life. Even at his young age, I can't exactly fault him for that, provided he's up to handling that responsibility. But now he's bucking authority for other people, whether those people asked him to step in or not. I don't find it surprising, but I am interested to see how it further plays out. Starting with the first, he ran a real risk of pissing Gathan off for life, and he may yet have done so. I'm guessing he did not, since Gathan recognized that he himself would not be a good custodian over Zach because of this incident, but that doesn't mean he's going to be a fan of Will rubbing his face into it in that way. Further, Wally and Clara would be well within their rights to ask that Will not ever step foot in their house again, because they can't trust him to not interfere with the relationship they have with the rest of their children. They may not take it that far (I doubt they will, really), but I wouldn't find it surprising if they're never comfortable dealing with Will ever again. And why should they be? He just proved that not only does he have a different value system form their own, but that he doesn't much respect theirs. I've seem branches of family split up for decades over slights like that. Getting back to Will's character, what's going to happen the next time he's put in a situation where he witnesses someone make a wrong choice that has no impact on his life? Given the frequent invocations of Tonto, and this, it seems like the answer will be, "Fix it, whether anyone wants me to or not." Except, unlike Tonto, he's not going to confront the issue directly. He's going to do an end-run around any opposition, do whatever he pleases without regard to consequences for himself or anyone else, and not even try to convince others that his point of view is correct. It makes sense for his character that he trusts no adults to be amendable to reason, but acting like this isn't going to help. If anything, it's going to prove to everyone that they are justified in their distrust of Will.

I have no idea on the legal ramification, but I wasn't really talking about those. I mean, if Gathan wanted to spend the rest of his life trying to exert control over Zach, he's free to do so until someone stops him. But in this case, he stopped himself, which is growth for him that I liked to see.

interesting chapter. I 'm glad Gathan was allowed to realize it was in no one's best interest for him to retain any control over Zach. I'm not sure putting Will in charge would be a better idea if this were real, but Brad was also correct that Will was assuming the role anyways. May as well make it official and give it restrictions, as well as throw Will into adulthood to see if he can handle it. One thing though. When Will fired at JP: I wanted JP to answer back "And I was mistaken in that case." Would have taken a lot of the wind out of Will's sails, but perhaps that's for the best. Gathan or Brad would have gone on the offensive at that point, and no one was in a state to think of all this rationally. On that note, Will seems to be developing a tactic. He seems to be getting really good at firing everyone up so that no reasonable discourse can occur, which forces JP to shut everyone down for losing their crap. It doesn't seem like he's noticed that he's doing that, but I wonder if anyone else, like Isiodore or JJ, has.

I definitely got the sense that Brad had control issues, even back in Be Rad. I think he's protective because he has control issues, not the other way around, but that's just my reading. As to Zach's inheritance, 20k was more than was taken home in a year by quite a few people I knew in 2001, including each of my parents individually. Looking at average wages for waste management employees in Ohio in 2001 (isn't the internet wonderful?), that would be about half of Wally's annual gross income pre-Robbie. So, to them, that probably did look like a fair bit of money, especially since Zach wouldn't have a lot of expenses as a scholarship kid. Would the restriction to only drive past 17 apply to Zach? He's not a resident of New Jersey, no matter where he goes to school. As far as I know, going to school is specifically one way in which you cannot establish residency. I could understand him not being able to get a NJ license, but wouldn't they recognize his Ohio one?

Sure. And since it's you saying this, it carries more weight than most. But as a reader, without this statement from you, I wondered if a reasonable explanation already had been given, and that explanation was, "We think you're crazy." Knowing what we know of Hayes in general, Zach's past in particular, and how both of those mesh with the values Wally and Clara tried to instill in their children (whether that was the correct tact to take with children that would be coming into a lot of money is another discussion, but one Brad, Stef, and JP should have had with Wally, Clara, and Gathan), "We don't trust you," seems perfectly reasonable to me. But I can imagine that not seeming reasonable to Zach. People coming from different value systems, as Zach clearly has from his parents, like most teenagers I've met, often have trouble reaching "reasonable" compromises.

Why would you need a car? I can understand wanting one, but Don Brosco is serviced by the local municipal bus system and train system, via a school bus [x]. He's not in the same situation I was when I lived in a rural area, and the only local public transportation was school busses. Besides going to school, what exactly does a high school kid really need to do? He doesn't need to work, and there's pretty good arguments why an athlete trying to get grades good enough for a top school shouldn't add employment to his plate.

I thought Zach was their son, not their nephew. It'd be tough to remove just him from their home, and not lose custody of all of their kids, unless he was criminally dangerous. Actually, now that I think about it, one way to do that would be to find someone, like, say, Robbie, willing to pull strings to get him admitted to a school a great distance away from his younger brothers. Edit: Yep, he's Wally and Clara's son. https://www.gayauthors.org/story/mark-arbour/millennium/55

Except that when I questioned Mark on why JJ was so rude to Zach, Zach being less advantaged than the rest of the group was one of the reasons given. He flat out stated JJ is a snob when it comes to income. That's actually what prompted my original comment that he'd be a jerk; I meant he'd be a jerk to Kai, who is not very well off due to the amount of care his father requires. But, since it's been brought up, I think it's reasonable to assume his distaste for the less advantaged in one aspect of life would continue to others, until the story proves otherwise of course. He might not be a jerk to anyone who can't perform a triple lutz, but I do think he needs some kind of achievement before he'll start respecting that person, like how he likes Alastair for his confidence. Unlike Will, who does regularly challenge himself by interacting with people of all ability levels (as long as they are also hot guys), JJ seems to mostly keep to himself and those, like his brothers, who are all over extremely capable people. Plus, for JJ, there's possibly an element of fear involved in seeing someone that is restricted to a wheel-chair. Perhaps you don't react that way, but *I* get edgy when I see someone that cannot run or see. Not, mind, someone that is simply not good at it, or even requires hefty aids, but is functionally unable. I've learned to squelch that reaction, but as a teenager I hadn't yet figured that out, and I never had so much of my self-image wrapped up into my body that JJ does. It is possible he's worse, as well as possible it doesn't bother him at all.

Well, I had meant Zach, as JJ would not be as entertaining. He'd make an ass out of himself within thirty seconds of meeting Kai.

I'm not certain about your interpretation of Zach. We've been inside the dark place that is Gathan's mind, and he genuinely believes the lines he was spouting. Also, I have to say, I disliked Zach's evaluation of his cousins and siblings. I'm sure it was honest, but it's not exactly the way a generous or kind person would think. I also keep in mind that Zach flat out stated he would try to seduce Robbie, although it seems he never followed through on it. Perhaps he set is sights on a more reasonable, longer term target? Of course, I took his comment with a grain of salt to begin with; it was precisely calculated to drive Gathan out of his gourd. However, it's as good an indication of how he thinks, if not necessarily what he has the wherewithal to actually pull off. Mind, that doesn't preclude him having an emotional bond with Will. It is perfectly possible for him to have genuine feelings for Will, and be attempting to make a mark out of the kid at the same time. Lord knows I've done the same. I hope he does go to Hawaii. think it'll be interesting to see how he handles Kai. I was surprised at JJ's dislike of Zach. I would have thought that anyone that disliked Gathan as much as Zach clearly does would be alright by JJ. But, then, anyone that wants to sleep with Will tends to annoy him, doesn't it? And John dislikes Zach, so he could have adopted the same stance in solidarity. In the same vein, I wonder what kept Darius quiet. I'm certain he had an opinion, but what was it? Perhaps to ship the entire Hayes family off to Ohio and require them to stay within that state's borders?

Random question, but what kind of law does Ace practice? In my mind, I imagine Robbie nagging him over some finer point on a contract that he doesn't 100% trust Greg's old lawyer on, and Ace exasperatingly telling him, "I specialize in tax law, Robbie. Go bug your husband for a lawyer." But I was wondering if it has ever come up what he actually does.

Which is a good point, as is Tim's that there wasn't a huge increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes. I will add that this isn't something that just happened to me, however. I did describe an incident that happened to my father, but there were a couple thrown my sister's way, and many of my cousins and acquaintances reported similar incidents. Not all; some of my family does strongly cue as Hispanic. I don't really think Darius will though. He's probably the correct color, but his facial structure, mannerisms, and cadence would be off. Hell, even his name would contribute to an overall assumption. The behavior and speaking parts can be picked up, relatively easily in his case since he speaks Spanish, and none of it individually would raise an eyebrow, but altogether, I don't think Hispanic or Filipino would be either of the first assumptions.

If it makes you feel better, I was going to. All five branches of the armed services, including the Coast Guard, participated in Iraq. I am less certain about Afghanistan, but based on each service's mission parameters, probably the same is true for that conflict. I suppose I could just look it up, but meh. My sister commented that the Air Force personnel were too pretty Darius lives in Malibu, right, not Los Angeles? in 2010, Malibu is the city with the single-highest White population density in LA county, and in 2000 the percentage was even higher. I am not sure what you're trying to say here. Just in case, I'll try to clarify what exactly I think he'll encounter. I doubt he'll get beaten up, nor do I think his intimates or acquaintances will become suddenly uncomfortable. Some did for me, but Darius would probably be luckier. I do think he'll get comments. I do think someone, quite possibly if he does seek a commission somewhere down the road, even more likely if someone at, say, the CIA, connects him with Brad's defense contract connections, will check to make sure he's had no contact with his biological father since conception. I don't think those questions will come directly to him, since even the most cursory check should give a satisfactory answer, but he may find out the check had been run. I do think that someone who doesn't know who Robbie was or what he looked like (less likely in UCLA than anywhere else, but still possible) will take Darius's face, combine it with the statement that his father died during the attack, and put two and two together to come up with seven. Which would be annoying.

I really, really don't want to redo this conversation over and over, because you are one that does not seem to be listening, but okay, one last time. Exactly how many Arabic cultural cues do you imagine I have? I am not half Persian. I am not Persian at all, not any Middle-Eastern nationality at all, in fact. And yet, that is what I consistently am seen as, by many people of different socioeconimc groups, for most of my life, in part because I am so white-washed that I project no cultural cues, which precludes me from being seen as Mexican. This interpretation really picked up in the aftermath of 9-11, although that's possibly because I only then started to see the effects of that interpretation. That's people started wondering *why* I didn't go to the local born-again church that most of my classmates attended. That's when my tips at work suddenly started vanishing, and when people started asking for a different server in the first place. That's when my uncle was asked how he could trust my "towelhead" father. That was when opposing teams started asked my teammates how they could stand to have me playing (and, mind, I had played against and with some of those kids for a seven years). Even now, I expect to be pulled out of line at airport security, because I fit the profile of young, brown, male, and traveling alone. It's certainly not the first time in my life I'd dealt with something like this, but before I had usually at least attributed it to my own race. This wasn't even my fight, but I was stuck in it anyways.