BigBen

Amen to that!

The trope of falling in love with the obnoxious boor is a common one in fics, but I do hope Blaine is going to be taking Levi to task for his extremely discourteous behavior at the campsite. It should be Levi doing the apologizing, not Blaine. It would be great to have a scene where Blaine confronts Levi with his rudeness, similar to the one in Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth tells Darcy where to get off. Once Levi straightens up and flies right, then Blaine can fall in love with him! 😀

Those were certainly different times, lol! 😁

"I hated it when kids called me Mr., but that's what most of them seemed to prefer, " Hoo boy! If I'd tried addressing my friends' parents as anything but Mr. or Mrs. Soandso, I'd have gotten a paddling. But that was a generation or two before this story, of course. Dan is definitely a God-fearing Christian, just not a bigot or an idiot. A lot of what passes for "Christian" theology is neither Christian nor theology. As Christ himself said, "The Devil can quote Scripture for his purposes." Again, Dan's reasonableness is an example of true love and concern.

I can well identify. My mother mentioned once how she had to learn to say "creek" instead of "crick," "wash" instead of "warsh," "iron" instead of "arn," and such-like. As for the contents of the chapter, I guess I was too intimidated to try to kiss any of the guys I fooled around with, and poor Jason's and Alex's reaction to the kiss tells me that was wise. Besides, my dad was a New England Yankee, and one didn't express affection—not verbally, and certainly not physically. But again, Dan's persistent reasonableness carries the day! (Although, I do remember being horny enough to find kissing girls reasonably enjoyable, back then. These days, I shudder at the thought, lol!)

I was a kid back then, too. Although I knew to keep my attraction to men a secret, even at age four, it was easier in some ways, because even when people saw indications, their minds didn't always go right there. For example, in the early sixties, the YMCA in Buffalo, New York, was still requiring swimmers to be naked in the pool, on the grounds that the filter couldn't handle the fibers shed by the woolen swimsuits still common back then. Naturally, the sexes were segregated, but none of us guys were embarrassed to be naked in front of one another (and I presume the same went for the women). These days, it seems the increased awareness of gay people has, ironically, worked to make people more uncomfortable with exposing themselves in front of others of the same sex. That's why Dan's entirely reasonable attitude seems so striking, lol!

Nor should you. This story is, among many other things, a reminder that most Christians are actually decent, loving people. It is truly unfortunate that the bigoted zealots are the ones that get all the attention. Though seriously damaged by a Baptist upbringing, I eventually returned to faith and found a warm welcome in another denomination. One of the things I enjoy in this chapter is Dan's care to love the boys equally, though as he has to learn, it means treating them somewhat differently. There's a spiritual metaphor, for you!

I am glad to see this story here on GA. It's on my list of favorites that I revisit from time to time. One of the things I like is the narrator's tone of voice. The expression of his love for the kids is palpable.

Just came across this.

Really? I thought I'd read The Wish on GA. Oh, well! My favorites are the short stories Out of My League and Northern Lights, and the novella Exothermic Reaction. I don't believe I mentioned the author who goes variously by Sinbad and Bruin Fisher, who is also well worth reading. I'm particularly fond of his novella Winter Holiday.

"Three weeks earlier he had walked away from the man who still meant everything to him." It's a terrible thing when the best you can do for the one you love is to stay away. And it is certainly possible for a relationship to die, even though both people still care for each other

Some of my favorite authors are Chris James (not to be confused with the C James who's already been mentioned), Mihangel (whose Indelicate Frivolities series is bawdy, erudite, and lots of fun), Bi Janus, Dave Preecher, Gee Whillickers, J Donley, Sequoyah Pendor, Art West, Mark Peters, Boudreaux, and David Lee. Most of them are available on more than one site, and sometimes the story lists differ from site to site, so it's worth looking for them in each site.

Just reread an old story by David Brin, "Thor Meets Captain America." Before anyone gets too excited, it's got nothing to do with any movie characters you may have in mind. Instead, it deals with a suicide mission to blow up Valhalla, in an alternate universe in which World War II is still being fought in 1962, because the Nazis formed an alliance with the Norse gods. Without giving too much of the plot away, let me just say that the story is a meditation on the old-fashioned ideal of the U.S. as the fortress of democracy and our human duty to confront evil, regardless of the cost. Like the Greek gods, the Norse pantheon is not a very likeable group, so the idea of their allying with the Nazis is scarily plausible. Well worth a read, if you can find it.

It takes not only a sublime piece of music, but also an inspired performance, to bring about that pause before the applause begins. It's not going to happen every night, nor should it be expected. However, Uta Hagen writes about this hush in Respect for Acting: there is a profound difference between the sort of bravura performance that brings an audience instantly to its feet, and a performance that reaches from the depths of the actor's soul into the audience's. That, she says, is the performance that creates the hush before the audience bursts into applause, and we should always be striving for that level of performance, no matter that we are inevitably going to fall short on many nights. I am old enough to remember when the Metropolitan Opera began to ask the audience not to applaud after every aria, on the grounds that it hindered the singers from sustaining the dramatic flow of the opera. It may be true for more modern works, but Baroque operas were written to be interrupted. I do, however, appreciate being able to listen in silence while the music is actually occurring, though I figure that if you need to cough, you need to cough. Rattling your program, however, is under your control, so watch it, buster! 😁 In general, though, I favor a sincere reaction from the audience over rigid etiquette, so I'm not going to shush anyone who wants to applaud after the first movement. But I'm not in favor of the compulsory standing ovation and wild cries that are apparently de rigueur these days. Much as we wish they could all be, most performances aren't that wonderful!

It's worth mentioning that UNESCO once rated English the second most difficult language to learn as a second tongue. (The most difficult is, of course, Chinese.)