Adam Phillips

It'll be here Thursday night or Friday, I promise.

34 or 35, depending on a couple of variables. They will eventually make their way to the other couple of places where CC is posted, but not immediately.

Yeah, so you could procrastinate on what?

Wow. Give 'em an inch... Can't happen. Not even possible. Sorry.

Late this week you'll get my first new chapter of Crosscurrents in over two years. It will be posted late Thursday night or Friday morning. I hope y'all don't have your hopes up too high. It's very much a transitional chapter, and kind of silly. I know some of you may say, "I waited two years for that??" but I needed to tell this part. There's a couple of things happening in it that have some importance, at least for characterization purposes if not storyline. And also, this is a segment that some of my longtime e-friends have heard me talk about for years, and I wanted it in there if only to fill those guys in. Which, of course, is basically a concession that this incident actually happened in my real life. But we won't go there. In any case, I plan on keeping my promise that there will be new installments weekly until I'm finished. And the storyline will get more substantial.

Sorry; you're not gonna get that. If it's any consolation, however, I have a 10-chapter-or-so sequel to Crosscurrents in the works that will be told in the first person by Matt. But I'd expect you're mostly right about Matt being away from Andy. Mostly. Stay tuned.

Thanks.

Thanks, guys, for the birthday wishes. I'm having a great weekend. I got kidnapped to the beach for one final summer romp in the surf. Beach trip or no, I still promise to have the first new chapter of Crosscurrents in over two years posted by Friday.

I'm pretty much myself online and have been getting more myself all the time, to the extent that I'll actually talk on the phone occasionally to online friends. I've even chatted on cam with one of them, and I gotta tell you that when I first started doing this online stuff years ago I swore I would never ever get that "real" with an online acquaintance. My last name online is a pseudonym. I don't hide my online activities from the people in my offline world who are closest to me. They also know pretty much everything there is to know about me. On the other hand, while I don't know that I hide my real self from my other "realworld" friends and acquaintances--that is, if someone were ever to ask me if I were bisexual I wouldn't deny it--my lifestyle choices run pretty conventional "young-married-suburban-professional," so it never really comes up. I've been in a profession where I wouldn't really want people who know me reading my online stories, but these days I'm more or less self-employed in a line of work where my clients wouldn't give a shit because the work I do for them is essentially anonymous. That's made me feel so gutsy I recently actually put up a borderline racy PG-13 picture of myself--though I cropped out the upper half of my face and all of the interesting portion of below-the-waist --for my online friends for a while, then thought better of it and took it down. In gay/bi venues online, I'm more likely to be open and upfront about dimensions of myself that are generally known offline only by the people who are closest to me in life: my wife, my parents, my siblings, my bff. It's one of the reasons I participate online: To be with a community of people who "get it," but whom I don't have to look in the eye at work. Personality-wise, what you see here is pretty much what you get in real life. Kind of hyper, pretty gregarious, a little passionate, and frequently in-your-face and regretting it later. (Cf. "Evolution" thread )

Chapter 22 of Crosscurrents has been posted. In this chapter, Andy takes things a little farther in his experience with guys.

Steph has just posted Chapter 21 of Crosscurrents for me. In this chapter, Andy finally decides it's time explore the other side of his sexuality a little more. With a straight guy again. What's up with that?

There's no such thing as "behind" here at GA...there are just "chapters you haven't read yet." And I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Chapter 20 of Crosscurrents has been posted. Andy's new conviction to stand up for himself and others gets put to a quick test.

Chapter 19 of Crosscurrents has just been posted. Andy's off in college, where he's looking for a new start, a new opportunity to take a stand for himself; his whole self, attraction to guys and all. But his first test comes a lot quicker, and a lot closer, than he'd anticipated...

John has posted a couple of times at the It Started With Brian forum. His screen name is "johnwut" and his last post is on the following page: ISWB Forum There are other posts on that page too, of course. Adam

You just been hittin' on the wrong straight guys.

Thanks, Bubba. Yeah, it's a painful set of chapters. I'll agree with you there. I'm glad you're liking the writing, though.

We have miles to go before we sleep.

Chapter 18 has just been posted. Again, not much I can say about it. The boys have been walking some hard trail and this last mile has been pretty damn devastating.

Andy was never a saint. And he was in pain. He was blind, but he was in pain. He didn't set out to be an asshole. Have you never made some bad mistakes when you were in pain?

Thanks. And, yes, it is brutal. The next chapter is the worst, I think. It gets somewhat better after that, and won't get this bad again. For what it's worth--and I might have already said this--I wrote Chapters 16, 17, and 18 in one sitting. I knew I'd have to if I were to have any hope of getting through them. When I was finished, I was completely drained and numb. I had no idea if they were any good; I just knew I couldn't spend any more time on them. But the reader response I got to these three chapters was unprecedented. The chapters really seemed to do business with people, and even though they're dark, I didn't get many emails at all telling me what a jerk I was for writing them. Everybody seemed to understand, and everybody seemed to be crying along with Matt and Andy, and everybody told me that these chapters were the most intense so far. For what it's worth, I think they'll end up being the most intense of the entire story, although there are some intense moments ahead.

The chapters are coming out weekly--and will be until the story's finished--so just chill! I had to leave off somewhere, didn't I? Yeah. You're right. I'm trying to make it clear that he's scared to death Matt is going to push him away, eventually, out of disgust for what he let Andy do. He's afraid that he might literally not be able to go on after experiencing that kind of pain. But it's also clear that Andy's doing a number on himself inside his head. He's a little ashamed of loving Matt like that. And he projects that feeling onto Matt. Andy has some growing up to do, and he's going to have to get comfortable with himself. Unless he does, that unresolved stuff in his head has the potential to hurt the people closest to him. Me too. As for Andy's family and gf, they've tried, and now the rest is up to Andy. They've all had years of experiencing that Andy tends to dig his heels in when he's confronted. His gf realizes it's a touchy subject, and for the sake of her relationship with Andy, she probably shouldn't push it. And his parents? Well, Matt didn't just vanish during this period. The seriousness of what was going on didn't really register with his parents. Matt was still around once in a while for studying, shooting hoops, stuff like that. And Andy was a master at playing things down. If his dad ever re-visited the issue with him, Andy probably told him that everything was cool. Anyway, thanks for your comments! I'm glad you're (still) enjoying Crosscurrents.

Chapter 17 of Crosscurrents has been posted. I don't really know what to say about this chapter. It was draining to write, and it's draining to talk about, I guess. It's sad when things go wrong between two people. Even if there's someone to blame, you just hate to see it for either of them.

Chapter 16 of Crosscurrents has been posted. Poor Andy. Poor Matt. You saw it coming, though, right?

Thanks for the nice words about the chapter, lin...but...uhh...I don't see anybody in the story named Adam! Just some "Andy" guy.