Gene Splicer PHD

Yeah, to a degree, but always protecting ourselves first. I "pass" really easily for straight, so I never got any questions or rumors about me (that I know of). But there were people that knew I were gay, just as I knew they were gay, because we did talk among each other about other guys that were "friendly". But, some had reputations or had people talking about them in pretty rough/obvious ways. Sailors like to gossip, and "who was that way" was a topic, even (especially) among the rest of the crew. Anytime it was talked about, it was with a sly look and nothing was ever discussed in front of senior crew, like officers or chiefs (because they would have had to do something about it). But make no mistake - if some officer or division head or superior officer/enlisted got wind that I was "associating" with someone in a "detrimental" way, I'd have thrown them under the bus without a thought. And the others would have done the same to me. Truthfully, I don't think anyone one really cared enough to do anything about the "gay menace", because at the end of the day, you don't care who's doing who, you care about how well your shipmates know how to put out a fire or make the ship stop sinking, or who can stage the cargo for the next unrep without screwing it up and making more work for everyone else. But you still had to be really careful about who knew, and what you did, because it was against regulations and you could go to jail or get kicked out. So, if I were to go out on liberty or spend a lot of time with anyone that other people knew about, that could be a problem, so we'd meet off the ship rather than leave together, that sort of thing, and we'd help with cover stories and cover for each other ("I saw Anthony with a really hot chick at Mariposa's. Hey Anthony, did you get any? Har har") . But generally, we just didn't associate with each other very much, it was too risky. We were all very much in the closet until the time and place was absolutely safe. Some were better at this than others, obviously. This is pretty easy aboard ship and underway, because while you'd run into each other on the mess decks or elsewhere, there wasn't a whole lot of downtime to spend with other people. It was a working ship and we worked 16 hour days, we were always getting prepared for the next underway replenishment or organizing cargo, cleaning, etc. - there weren't many opportunities to socialize all that often. And when you did, you made sure your cover stories were tight and in place. Off the ship, it was easier but could still be dicey. We went to the Philippines quite a bit so we knew the bars there, and places to go where we could meet up without a lot of questions. We always met at places where we knew other sailors didn't hang out, and you never needed an ID to get a room, so that made things easier. And there's that "don't shit where you eat" rule that we followed - it just wasn't a good idea for shipmates to get together (for sex) because...what if one of us gossiped or we got found out or one cheated on the other or...? And you're getting underway tomorrow and not hitting a port for three weeks, so you can't get away from each other...that could be a big issue. We do like our drama. Also, my shipmates weren't sexy, really, especially ones that you worked with. You saw them all the time: At work, after work, getting ready for work, eating, being assholes to each other. There were 65 men in our berthing area (where we slept), and that's a lot of farting (I mean it. We ate well) and yelling and giving each other shit. But it wasn't sexy. Also, the environment aboard wasn't sexy. A ship is a machine, and it looks like one, inside and out. Piping and wiring everywhere, chipped up paint, worn out floor tile or a metal deck. It was clean (because we cleaned a lot), but it's a machine and it looks and acts like one. It's metal beams and walls, noisy as hell with all the fans and machines around you. And it's rocking around and bouncing and vibrating. And the smells. Everything from oil and fuel to footlockers and the deck cleaning solutions (like pine sol only stronger) and the tile wax. So, not that it stopped us when we really wanted to get together, but there's no romance in it. There's a longstanding tradition among military members - especially enlisted shipmates - that unless you actually need to report or do something about a situation in an official way, you just don't see some stuff. You look the other way. Some are more understanding of this than others, though, so we'd have "allies". As I said, many of the crew just didn't care as much as the media would like you to think. Once, when I was really new on the ship, I was on liberty in the Philippines, and I found a couple of guys from my ship's department at a bar who'd obviously been there longer than I had. At the end of the night, we three headed back to the ship. These two guys were really close friends (although I had no clue how close, apparently). When we got to the top of the brow (where you actually step onto the ship's quarterdeck), you have to show your ID to the officer of the deck, usually a junior officer or somewhat senior enlisted man. There are other crewmembers on duty on the quarterdeck and the group is called the "quarterdeck watch". These two were hanging on each other, like drunks do. One of them pulls his ID out of a front pocket in his jeans, and it's not his ID, it's his buddy's. So the other guy hunts around a little and gets his ID out, and it turns out that earlier in the night they'd had a little free time and hey, he's got the wrong ID, too. Then they had to make a little show of trading them ("hey bud, I musta grabbed your ID at the bar, blah blah blah"), and one of them was really red faced. It was pretty obvious that they hadn't swapped IDs, they were at some point both not wearing pants, and grabbed the wrong ones when they got dressed. At least one of the sailors on duty knew what was up, and I got a raised eyebrow (more like a big wink) because I was "with them". When I stayed clueless (because I was), he just snickered and waved us onto the ship. If any of the other quarterdeck watch were to get "official" about the situation, he'd have been obligated to find out why these two had the wrong IDs - it's technically an infraction to be without your proper ID at all times - or ask a lot of questions about their sobriety and their activities ashore, or even give them shit about being "out of uniform". But usually, it's a lot easier to just not notice some things. Which is why the rest of the watch found something to do - the runner went for coffee, the officer of the deck suddenly found the quarterdeck log to be very interesting, etc. So the culture is "if it's not hurting anyone or impacting the ship, well..." So, yes, you circled the wagons if you needed to, but generally, everyone kept a low profile and it wasn't that big of a deal for the most part.

So, when I was Will's age, I had a fair bit of gay sex, because for whatever reason, the neighborhood where I grew up had some pretty open minded guys. Had I been "hotter", or more social, I'm sure I would have had quite a few different partners. As it was, I had a couple/three friends who liked to play, although we were pretty bad at it. "Practicing", and all that. So since I had some FWBs, I got some fairly regularly. Looking at the number of times that Will's gotten some and comparing it to my own history at the time, I'd say Will's had more sex, but not much more. We were pretty busy. I guess what I'm saying is that while Will's had more partners, it's not a given that he's having more sex than others in his age group.

I know your story is focused on the AF, but I was in the enlisted Navy, stationed on a supply ship that operated in the West Pacific in the early/mid 80's, and we had an "incident" that led to some of the questions you're asking. It's a little long-winded, sorry. Here's some background you can skip if you want, but it plays into "the incident" and some stupid gay sailors getting better treatment from the Navy than (I think) they deserved. My issue with their treatment has nothing to do with being gay - it's about being really stupid. We typically deployed with a battle group - an aircraft carrier and its various escorts, for around 4 months at at time. We made frequent port visits to purchase fresh produce to distribute to the battle group. And FYI, it was an all male crew, we didn't have any females on-board (which changed after I left). Back then, supply ships often got captains or command staff that were "phoning it in" with regard to ship's discipline. They were this way because they often came from air wing/carrier detachments and were, career-wise, on track to captain a carrier. Carrier captains usually start out as pilots, then move up through running the various air divisions, and on up to commanding the air group (which is just a little bit below commanding the carrier). At some point in there, they need to get qualified to command a ship instead of some airplanes, so they go off the carrier and leave the air group to command a couple of support ships or subs for short tours. But the upshot is that these captains aren't so interested in how the ship is actually run, their focus is different. First, the ships themselves were older, and usually didn't have all the fancy paint or armor or cool guns, so awards,like the "Battle E" (for efficiency in battle) was great for a destroyer crew, it didn't mean so much for us box kickers. We concentrated on getting the "Supply E" or whatever, but the captain could really give a rip about our awards unless it directly affected his ability to get back to the carrier. Second, these captains spent a lot of time impressing the carrier with response to their needs. So, we always made sure that the needs of the carrier/air wings were met, because these were his pals and future commanders. And finally, they didn't see these as important commands to have. It was kind of a "party" because of all the trips to cool ports (like Australia, or the Philippines, or wherever we were sent to get stuff). Often, on the way back to port after a deployment, we'd visit several ports along the way. Many ports can't support a carrier in port - 5,000 people in town at once, where to put the thing, etc.- so these supply ships would detach from the battle group, and are "fun" for the crew because they can go where a carrier can't. At anchor or in port, a ship is put on "inport" or "anchor" watch rotations - basically every division/department is manned (after working hours or on weekends) by a skeleton crew while the rest of the sailors go on liberty. When you're on liberty, you're not expected to be aboard - it's a day off, or it's after working hours. Some departments rotated watchstanders every other day, others rotated every three or four days, whatever. But essentially, every x number of days you'd have to stay aboard for a "duty day". This is to explain why our participants in "the incident" were on board, and not out in town. Our captain at the time of the "incident" was nick-named (not by us) "Captain Candy", and was a really laid back guy. It wasn't uncommon for us to have a "party on the patio (pier)" when we were in port where going on liberty wasn't an option - like Oman, where we weren't allowed in town, or were in a hurry to get back to the battle group. We'd load all the produce/supplies, and then we'd put out grills, and pallets and pallets of beer, and the crew (except for watchstanders) would be a little tired the next day. If we were on liberty, it wasn't uncommon to find the captain in a bar somewhere, and if you knew him a bit, he'd buy rounds for all his sailors, that kind of thing. So he was not necessarily the most discipline-focused guy. So, what happened: We were anchored in Singapore for a week, on liberty. No other ships in port, it was a very routine port visit. The ship had a chapel, which was a small space used for church services. One night, six crewmembers (I was not one of them but I was on-board so I heard about it first hand) were caught having a nice little orgy in the chapel. There was a lieutenant and an ensign, and the rest were enlisted petty officers (e-4 and above) and seamen (e-3 and below) in the group. No chiefs. Basically, middle to lower management types. All of them were gay. I knew two of them fairly well, and you couldn't have found two more obviously gay men, they made no attempts to hide their interests (which actually was kind of annoying and concerning for the rest of us gay sailors - I knew of at least 10 other guys that were into guys). They'd been caught mid-act, and I guess there was a lot of panic and yelling and so it got a little more attention than just some minor "drinking on the ship" or fighting or whatever would have gotten. The 4 enlisted crew spent the night in the brig, and were given "administrative" discharges. An admin discharge is neither honorable nor dishonorable, but "according to the needs of the navy". Administrative discharges are usually appealed to "honorable" after the fact. But the idea behind them is to get the sailor out of the service as soon as possible without a lot of paperwork. The two officers had letters of reprimand put in their files and were "asked" to resign their commissions. Letters of reprimand are almost always a big hit to an officer's career, and depending on what's in the letter, can severely impact their ability to get promoted. For these guys, the reprimands ended their careers, albeit "voluntarily". All of them were off the ship that day, flown back to the states for processing out. There were no witch-hunts. There were no other attempts to purge the ship of "the gay", because it wouldn't have been prudent of the captain to report these incidents as anything other than an administrative problem. That would have affected his career path and caused a shit-storm of an investigation - Navy Intelligence would have gotten involved, and there would be audits and investigations and other questions raised about the way the ship was run. I'm pretty sure the battle group commander blessed the effort to broom the whole thing under the rug. Because we were a supply ship and this was a "party cruise" for the captain, it wasn't seen as important as an accident on board or a fighter crash or whatever. So that's why the ship's command staff took the actions they did. It was just a low priority deal. These were some pretty stupid crewmembers. First, who has sex on the ship while in port (at sea is different )? That's just dumb. You wait for liberty, and then you go do that in town.That's what cheap hotels are for. Even worse for the officers, who, being officers, should have known/dealt with the impact their actions could have had - were they pressuring the enlisted types? Who would know? Would the enlisted men talk about that in an investigation? It could have been a real "a few good men" situation there. And of course, there's the "don't shit where you eat" rule - why were these guys screwing each other instead of finding some locals? It was just really kind of embarrassing for everyone involved. And regarding being gay on board: Yes we got together, but we did it in port/away from the ship or, when at sea, we'd find spaces in the ship that were unmanned or under our control. I was a storekeeper, and my watch consisted of patrolling the various holds and checking for "bad guys" or damage or if we were sinking or strange situations. Anyway, I had access to most of the holds while on watch (and had a key to my assigned hold any other time), so we'd just use a hold in the middle of the night or whatever. You never messed around with an officer, even if he invited it. In fact, even people of higher or lower rank were kind of "off limits" without some serious conversation. So that's the story of the gay sailors in the chapel, and of a slacker captain and his political motiviations, and why, even before DADT, you could either be really smart or really dumb about seamen. Edits: corrected some typos, rearranged some paragraphs)

Oh this came so fast. I'm... Well, pass the lanolin...

Michigan.

I've known this story for a long time, too, and it's one of the classics. It was one of the first stories I read when I found online gay fiction some years ago. I also strongly recommend it.

Sure there are gay clubs where if you are older, you're a pariah. Which is, to my view, very high schoolish behavior, it's very juvenile to me. Very "cool kids". In my town - Detroit - I can count those kinds of clubs on one hand. But there are also bars where an older crowd, meaning adults who are there to socialize, meet friends with like interests and not worry so much about who's wearing what and all that, can go. It's not "banishment" as much as it is growing up, to me. And if I go to a dance club where people are looking down at me, I ignore them. I'm not there for them, and they're not there for me, so nothing of value is lost by not playing into their teenager games.

If you are over 30 and you want to continue dating under-30s, yes, you have to compensate. If, on the other hand, you want to date someone your age or a bit older, it's all good. When you're younger you see hitting 30 as "the wall". When you're older, you find it's not really important at all because, well, you're older.

I think it's fun to consider what would happen if Mark killed off a core, fundamental character. For example, Brad. I think of the impact killing him would have on the whole CAP universe, and I think that could make for a whole new interesting set of plot lines. There is the impact it would have on Robbie and on his children and family, the financial implications for his businesses- just how much of the family would unravel, and how much it would pull together, that kind of thing. Or killing Robbie for the same reasons, with the added spectacle of Brad using his defense industry experience and contacts to create a Blackwater/ze/academi business, hellbent on avenging him. Or, what about someone being gravely injured - Wade loses his arms or legs and everyone's reactions, how he recovers, etc. - Or a closed head injury with profound brain damage. How does the family react? Would Elizabeth come sharking around to reestablish her dominance over his fortune? Lots of possibilities... Also I note a distinct "kill the girls" trend in the voting. What's up with that?

Good for him. That's brave, and it shows his trust in his friends and family. I had a bit of a thing for Lil Scott too. Also Randolph Mantooth from Emergency. Which is now on netflix if anyone cares

I have a really wealthy client whose got a private jet. One of the pilots is a buddy, and I once asked about how they always seem to be ready to fly at really short notice. He said that they keep a couple of packed suitcases for the people that travel most, along with clothing that's just "part of the plane inventory" either on the plane, or pretty much ready to go at any given moment. Most of the time they only fly from house to house (or house and yacht, or the ranch, take your pick) so knowing what the family needs is pretty predictable. They don't need to take much along when they go, because they have stuff at all the houses. In fact, we replaced the client's laptop at one of the houses, and bought three more, making them all exactly the same so they could be sent to the other houses. He didn't want to have to remember to take it along. I envision he does the same thing with clothes and other stuff, just so he doesn't have to worry about stuff like that. One of the things Mark doesn't talk about much is the service staff at Escorial. I imagine there are a few house maids and assistants floating around, making sure this kind of stuff gets handled. And yeah travel is really routine and automatic - a business day for this guy can involve stops at three or four places between Florida and Northern Michigan. He lives full time on the yacht in the BVI, and he likes to be home by dinner, though.

Now that the story is done, I'll throw a review down: I'm sorry, you'll have to wait until after the epilogue for me to share my thoughts. I hate to keep you waiting, leave you hanging like that, but you'll just have to wait. Sorry.

Im not being negative, here. I'm being realistic, and keeping my expectations low. Big chapter, lots of beta reading, lots of work to do, and lots of "it's almost ready". It'll be here when it gets posted, and I don't think I can reliably expect CJ and the team to say when that will be, so I'm planning for it to be ready in a couple of weeks.

I personally don't expect to see the final chapter for another two weeks. At least.

I will never publicly admit that mmbop is on a playlist on my iPod. NEVER

She could be named after a relative or friend...

Oh, I don't know about splitting things up. Everything I listed in my earlier post applies to women, too. And I'll add a couple things every person should know: - How to drive a computer. By that, I mean: Install software, remove software, scan for viruses and spyware (and remove them when found), back up your files, set and change a password, change your browser home page, know when a web page is questionable and how to avoid them, update system software using Windows/Apple Software update, update Java, and recover from basic hardware problems - change a keyboard, replace a mouse, install a video display. - How to maintain a vehicle - things like checking tire pressures (as writeincode says), when to change oil, when a car needs maintenance. - How to talk to a doctor, and challenge them. So many people take what a doctor says as rote, and don't question a diagnosis or need for a test. - How to navigate and balance a checkbook/online bank account, and have a true understanding of where their money is and where it's going. - How to understand retirement options/basic investing. The future's a big question mark, and learning early how to independently plan for one's future (regardless of whether those options are based around employment or independent investing) is something everyone should do from an early age. Being 21 doesn't excuse a person from thinking about being 70. - Understand local politics and who your local politicians are. You never know when a local issue might involve you, or if you'll need government intervention on your or your family's behalf. Know who to talk to and how to contact them. - How to read a map without the use of a GPS. How to determine where you are and how to get somewhere else independently.

Oh, of course, whatever you say. I wouldn't dream of disagreeing

My additions: Learn how to read a contract. Learn basic sewing. Learn how to properly cook a steak. Learn to listen instead of hear. Learn dueling etiquette and how to defend your honor against vicious rogues and rapscallions.

This is very sad. My condolences to his family (and to all of us here too).

I know what some of these words mean

Simple, easy-peasy solution: put carrots out on life preservers, surrounding Atlantis on 3 sides get kangaroos put Lisa in the water tied to the bow lisa becomes motorboat and pulls Atlantis to shore

Asa Butterfield does an AMA on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1dxm81/i_am_asa_butterfield_star_of_films_such_as_hugo/ He shows up in the Enders Game movie trailer thread too: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1dvsdc/enders_game_trailer/ His name there is stimpers, not sure what he talks about, I didn't read the threads, I don't care enough, read at your own risk, etc * I spend too much time on reddit

I like to think that Marie is as strong-willed as Will, and makes a good "family adversary". In my version of the CAP universe, she's been moving and shaking to establish herself as a queen bee at the school, and sees Will as a threat. The fun part about it is that she's off-stage, maneuvering and plotting, and we won't know her moves until Will does. i am probably totally wrong about this, of course.

I ask you for some clear answers and you spam the thread with images? Never mind, dude, you make no sense. At all. You are totally incomprehensible, I recommend not drinking before you post. and... Do you even OWN a tablet? Ever used one?