Nah, Bro. I didn't take what you wrote as invalidation, and I actually think you made a very valid point about Ben and his experiences with Sex. I was just clarifying where I was coming from.
You point about his experiences with women actually supports my claims about his self-loathing. Especially with that bitch Christine. We don't know, or I missed it, who/what made Christine have an abortion, but Ben is carrying a lot of guilt there like's its a Sword of Damocles. He's feeling guilty that his child is dead. Christine throwing the abortion back into his face was a pivotal point in Ben's psyche and how he's seeing things with Travis. Or, again, that's my perspective of it.
Thanks, Mac. I completely agree about readers picking up on stuff that you may not have seen. AC in my O. Henry prompt piece, said he liked the theme of breaking the chain curse, and that I wrote it well. When I was writing the short story, I hadn't thought about that aspect, but I see it now.
I'm reminded of something said in the movie The Neverending Story 2, in which the bookstore owner told Bastion, "Stories change every time you re-read them." I can't tell you anything about the rest of the movie, but that scene is like burned into my mind. While the story itself doesn't change, your perspective of it does. You can read something one way, and then comeback to it and read it a different way.