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A principal decision that I face is how much to draw from the true story as represented in the newspaper articles, summarized in an earlier posting, that describe a boy’s turmoil and how much to draw solely from my imagination. There are many fascinating aspects about the newspaper articles, but this is not the story of the boy in the articles; it’s the story of Micah Kingman (tentative name) who will be a fictional and different person in the story Palouse. I stress the word fictional, tho
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Between 2002 and 2005, A Northwest newspaper ran a series of articles on a boy, an adopted, mixed-race teenage boy who was a cello prodigy. At age 13 in 1999, this boy was the youngest player to win a national contest for African American and Latino musicians. By age 16, he had met and had had private lessons with Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, was invited to play all around the country and was recognized as a prodigy. He played a solo piece at Isaac Stern’s 80th birthday celebra
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The Palouse Writing Project is intended to look at the nuts and bolts of writing a novel, Palouse, about the coming of age of and the coming of maturity to a young prodigy musician and the love that grows between him and a young musician. The project likely will extend over the next year. Those who follow the project will be able to see and can comment on the decisions that need to be made; will see portions of the novel as it is written and possibly changed from the initial stor
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The Palouse Writing Project is intended to look at the nuts and bolts of writing a novel, Palouse, about the coming of age of and the coming of maturity to a young prodigy musician and the love that grows between him and a young musician.
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Both Sides Now i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
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Fortune The trouble with leaving for a few days is that work keeps piling up. There is really no one at Molini who can do what I do. So my punishment for a vacation is a week or so of very long days. Those long days were on top of the normal long days at Molini. But I enjoyed my work, and though I got minimum wage, or so it seemed, in my paycheck, I was piling up a lot of probably worthless stock and stock options along with my hours. Drew called
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The Hike Supposing that I should have the courage To let a red sword of virtue Plunge into my heart, Letting to the weeds of the ground My sinful blood, What can you offer me? A gardened castle? A flowery kingdom? What? A hope? Then hence with your red sword of virtue. -- Stephen Crane My emotions tumbled through me as I climbed into Robbie’s van. I knew what a mess I had made with Robbie and Alec. The civility betw
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Vancouver Escape If I should cast off this tattered coat, And go free into the mighty sky; If I should find nothing there But a vast blue, Echoless, ignorant— What then? -- Stephen Crane It was a soft summer rain that fell against the window of the train to Vancouver. The raindrops became rivulets glistening down the flat of the car window, gathering in the corners then falling down the face of the train. Outside the window and beyond the narrow
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Learn to Live With the Rain! Learn to live with the rain! That was Robbie’s strong advice to me when I complained once again about the grayness that settled over Seattle as fall began. But Robbie made the learning easy. The rain acted as a signal for him, when we lay in bed, to pull me close. Light rain meant a soft arm across my chest and soft kisses and caresses that often turned into love-making—well, more than often. Heavy rain or a storm meant the full length of my body p
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Long Distance I dialed Robbie’s number the first evening I got home as soon as I could excuse myself from my mother’s dotage. I loved her but she doted on me--an undeserving me, I kept thinking. Robbie’s answering machine picked up. Where was he? Why wasn’t he waiting for my call? I dialed again fifteen minutes later. It finally dawned on me that while I knew there was a three-hour time-zone difference, I was adding three hours instead of subtracting them. I was calling him
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To Seattle I stepped off that flight from Boston shaking like a soldier ordered to go into battle for the first time. I wanted Robbie to be as he was the day I stepped back on the bus to Boston, as if time could be frozen and then started up again. I knew that wasn’t possible: everybody changes. If he was anything like he was in Mississippi, I’d convinced myself that I could make him my lover, and eventually my life partner. I had nearly completely accepted that I was gay. I
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Off the Bus I got off the bus in Mississippi with a chip still on my shoulder. When I had boarded the bus I was really pissed at the world—and at my dad. Really, just at my dad. He hadn’t argued with me about my decision to spend the summer in Mississippi tutoring black kids. He hadn’t shouted. He never did shout or even raise his voice much. Unlike me. I had argued loudly. I had shouted at him, and I had slammed the door to my room, cutting him off, leaving me feeling as i
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Prologue Robbie said I should write down my side of his story, which he called Jake’s Hand, as you probably know already.[1] He said my side shouldn’t be a prequel or a sequel, but sort of an e-quel. He said I could correct all the lies and exaggerations he managed to put into his tale. He said he probably had made me look worse in his story than I really was. But he hadn’t. My side of the story is far blacker than he let on, and I was really more of a shithead than he knew a
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Discovering the story One of the signs on the door said Molini Electronics and Software, but there were few other tenants. The building was old, but it had been refurbished recently. The first and second floors were vacant, but the third floor was rented to Molini. The elevator looked slow (why do some elevators look slow and some fast?) so I walked up the two flights of stairs and found myself outside a glass door that led to a small reception area. I opened the stairwell doo
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In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter -- bitter," he answered; "But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart." -- Stephen Crane Call from home I picked up the phone on the third ring. “Hello?” “Hello, Jakey?” “Dad?” There was a very long sil
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Letter from Robbie For months after leaving Mississippi, I kept seeing bits and pieces of Robbie in the crowds as I moved through the campus—glimpses and fragments of his features, of his voice. I saw his smile on one person, his hair on another, his body and his eyes on yet another. The flashes of Robbie, the sudden turns of my head as I spotted a memory of him in the crowd were like pieces in an unfinished mosaic, keeping him fresh in my mind. So it was a shock
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Jake’s Side is a continuation of Jake's Hand, which looks at the same story from Jake’s point of view.
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Epilogue It is now 20 years since Jake returned to my life. We celebrate each year the day we first made love, with a Chinese dinner—sort of like our Chinese New Year anniversary. But most of all we celebrate the anniversary of that mountain wedding—with Celly and Alec and, now, our grandchildren. Jake wanted me to manage “our” stock holdings, which now have grown considerably and have given us the freedom to do whatever we want, including retire. Of course, whe
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Seduction We arrived home the next afternoon after a long drive with Alec at the wheel, him unwilling to let either Jake or me spell him. Well, he’ll get tired of long drives when he gets older. Alec announced he was going to spend the night at his mother’s, I’m sure because he wanted to give Jake and me a night of privacy. I suppose I should have carried Jake over the threshold—or maybe he should have carried me—but we simply stood in the doorway and kissed pass
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Finally, Commitment It’s odd how good and bad things come in bunches. It was mid-September, and school had begun for Alec and Celly a couple of weeks before. Our trip to France was two weeks away, and we had all our passports and documents. I was sitting, watching the evening news, dinner on the stove in the kitchen, drinking a glass of chardonnay when I heard a key scraping in the door, followed by Alec’s smiling face. He had been out shooting basketballs, his
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Break in the Routine It had been just over two years since Jake had come out to Seattle permanently. As I was turning my key in the door to the condominium on an August day, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Jake was there at 5 in the afternoon on a weekday! He had been working such long hours for the past two years that he rarely got home before 9 pm unless he had planned on it ahead of time. Yet there he was when I walked in the door about 5. Was he sick? He hadn’t been sick
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Jake at His Craziest It was a March Friday in the second winter after Jake had moved in with me. The weather was dry and cool but gray with low-hanging clouds, a lull between storms according to the weather people. Anne had asked Jake and me to dinner. Jake not only had planned to get home early that day, but had managed to get a rare Saturday off. The dinner was wonderful. We were laughing and enjoying ourselves afterwards in Anne’s living room, Alec once
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Packing Out I woke when the tent became warm from the risen sun. It was still early, though, as I fished my watch from my jeans pocket and checked the time. I climbed out of my bag, grabbed my clothes, unzipped the tent and crawled out into the morning air. I took my boxers from the line and pulled them on. They were slightly damp, but I wouldn’t ever tell anyone, especially Alec. I pulled my pants and shirt on, donned my parka, walked off to take a leak and was getting ready
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Reconciliation The mountain was pink from the sun when I popped my head out of the tent early the next morning. It was cold enough to see my breath, but I was a morning person so I was ready to get up. I reached back into my sleeping bag and pulled on some warm clothes and my parka that I had put there just before getting up. I pulled my book out of an outside pocket of my pack and crawled out of the tent. My mind was on fresh coffee and the euphoria from the ni
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The Hike Jake stopped me as I started to pull out of the driveway with a car full of backpacking gear at 8 the next morning. “I forgot something,” he said and ran quickly back into the condo, then emerged about three minutes later. I drove to Anne’s place, and Alec loaded his stuff in the back before climbing into the back seat. It was obvious from his body language that Alec was still miffed about missing his baseball games and maybe about being fo
