Adam Phillips

Yeah, I'm wondering if that whole ratings thing doesn't create more mischief than it's worth. For my part, I've decided I'm only rating a post when I want to give it a "positive." Part of my new resolution not to dwell on negativity. Wish me luck. It would maybe be a more useful feature if you had to put your screen name with your rating.

I've been given to understand that Sharon and I don't feel the same about Sam. Ah, well. Apparently we didn't feel the same way about Jeff either. I gotta say that following 1968 JP was in the doghouse with me, bigtime. I even went to Mark's Yahoo group and opined that I hoped JP died a painful death from AIDS. And man. You'd have thought I shot somebody. I was told what a slime of a human being I was for wishing death on a fictional character. JP, over the long haul, has vindicated himself somewhat as he's aged. The vapid solipsist of the early years really seemed to develop some character. And some of it was pretty freakin' hard-won, which I felt was only right.

With all due respect, I don't think Brokeback Mountain qualifies as a guy movie. I mean, I love the movie. But it doesn't have the kind of elements that typically characterize a guy movie as a guy movie. It's a love story. And almost by definition, love stories can't be guy movies.

Now what did you wanna go and do that for? Do you read the last page of novels ahead of time too?

The Pretenders do it better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-0xAHipuiE

Well, I don't want to leave the impression that that never happens in Texas. And there's plenty of ways to get into trouble in the Dallas suburbs. Generally speaking, though, white-collar families in that period before cell phones were in every middle school kid's backpack, and prior to the explosive growth of the Internet, generally channeled their kids' extracurricular time, for as many years as they could, into all kinds of pursuits designed to make them into "well-rounded individuals." So they had their time accounted for and there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity to sneak off and do your stuff under the radar, not at 12 and 13. The other thing parents do in the Dallas suburbs is push their kids to excel. That's certainly not unique to Dallas, but it's Dallas that I have personal experience of. And this push to excel wasn't a push for each kid to do his personal best. It was about being better than the rest. And of course that's impossible for all but a small few. But for their kids to achieve that level of distinction, for as long as they can, parents schedule pretty tightly what a kid is doing with his time. This drive to excel is pretty ruthless sometimes. There was a period of time about twenty years ago when Plano, a small-city-become-Dallas-satellite, was the nation's teen suicide capital. The two things go hand in hand, I think. Parents programming out kids' lives and pressuring them into looking at life as a constant competition where they're required to come out on top. It was about clothes, it was about grades, it was about peer leadership, it was about looks, it was about sports...it was about just about everything. It's a pressure-cooker, and not a few kids can't cut it, and many go over the edge in one way or another. As a way of pushing back, when high school comes along and kids could cut loose, the collective id (the Freudian one, not the "identification" one) often goes nuts here. But not at 12 and 13.

1. Pulp Fiction. I have yet to meet a woman who has any use for this movie, and it's at the top of all my lists, best guy movie included. 2. The Godfather. Marlon Brando. Nuff said. 3. Die Hard. Yippie kai yay, motherf--ker. 4. Fight Club. Most viewers don't register the rich layers of subtext, but it's an adrenaline rush anyway, and a brain-warper at the same time. Also, written by a gay guy. So there. 5. Braveheart. Mel Gibson kicks ass and creates mayhem for family and country.

I go running. Or play some basketball or racquetball or do some boxing or hit the weights. Or I have sex. Or I read. Or I play a little music. Best when I can jam with a buddy. Usually I yell at people, but I've found that that doesn't always relieve stress. :wacko:

Good point. And that's what I meant in suggesting that a wave of good will hasn't swept across the whole land, equal-like. There are pockets. And you're right: the metropolitan areas, I'll bet, are more accepting than the smaller towns. I'm always about as calm and reasonable as Mark.

Chapter 5 of Crosscurrents has just been posted. Andy and Matt, already good friends for years, get to know each other a little better in this chapter, in a couple of different ways.

Uhh...it's utterly beyond me why someone would give your above-quoted post a "negative." People astound me sometimes.

I don't even partake often anymore, and a buddy and I snuck off and had a little down-time in a manner befitting the date.

I don't know; I find it difficult to relate to the question. I don't think of my sexual identity as sufficiently defined by a specific practice to make a noun out of it and call myself that. I've done both of those things, and I like them both in their own way. And I've done other things too that have nothing to do with topping or bottoming. Those things seem just as significant to me and as definitive of my sexual self as topping or bottoming. Also, being on top and being on bottom are different experiences and I sure wouldn't want only one of those. It would feel incomplete or something. Still, I recognize that others' mileage may vary.

Yeah. I was actually trying to keep from tossing out a spoiler there for nightsky...

You will love Robbie, and much later, Matt. Mark manages to make some amends for 1968 farther down the line.

Indeed. And welcome to the Dark Side. Oh, and don't forget to bear a grudge or two hundred against Sam, the would-be murderer who chose to sit there and watch Jeff commit suicide. I was tempted to jump into the story, sorta like in that Stephen King short story (hell, I forget the title), and tell him, "What goes around comes around, bud," but not being the author I don't guess I'd be able to assure him of that.

I appreciate it, but since this is Arbour's forum I think I've taken enough space here already. I'd love it if some of you'd read my story, check out my GA pages, and participate in my forum, but this here place is for Mark's readers. I'll do the same here at Mark's place once I get caught up with everything he's written. I have about 14 chapters to go on Bloodlines, and so of course haven't started The Box. Nor have a read any of the Bridgemont series. Once I'm up to speed, though, I'll hang out here and fuss at him when he kills off too many good characters. Anyway, thanks, Mark, for giving a piece of your forum over to welcoming me here. I'll be back here soon. And you'll regret it.

I'm fortunate to have an editor who does the kind of thing he does with me professionally, with TV/movie scripts. At first I brought him on just as a proofreader with strict instructions to him to keep his mouth shut about my content and style. He promptly and gleefully refused to abide by my wishes. I hated that, but almost always ended up acknowledging that his points were valid. He's helped me become a better writer. I can see the improvement in style as Crosscurrents, my first story, has gone on--and it's stayed with me through my other story starts--and I owe that to him.

Boy, howdy. Ain't that the truth. Well, maybe anti-evolutionist know-it-alls don't love ya, but I do, Tiger.

Yeah, that's the old saying. And trust me, in a real way, this story is writing what I know. It just has an element that I don't know. Anyway, that ol' saw only goes so far. If you don't expand on writing about what you know, then eventually you run out of stuff. And obviously, fantasy writers go outside the known all the time. Fortunately for them, you can often just make stuff up. But the real problem here is that I didn't do my research before I started. It has to do with where story ideas come from. Most of mine come in the same way that Stephen King says he gets his. Too back I'm not as good or as rich as he is, LOL. Anyway, he says he's tooling along and either something catches his notice, or an idea snags in his head, and he thinks to himself, "What would happen if..." and the next thing he knows, he's got a story. Well, that's how the Air Force story originated, sort of. "What if I were at a bar watching the NBA championships with a buddy, and this Air Force guy walks in..." Why Air Force? Hell, I dunno. Or maybe I do and I ain't tellin'. But anyway, I'm stuck with it-- I can't really, because the extant chapters have already been posted somewhere, and I don't really want to pull them down. Although I will say that the site effed the posting up so bad it might almost be better to have it pulled down. But in any case, I don't want to alter the basic premise of the story, and with just a little info I can probably get it done. It's not really about the Air Force anyway. It's about the two main characters. I just need a couple of pieces of information. I'm not throwing it away. In fact, I'm going to finish it this year. The thread was about what makes a writer put down the pen, and I was just talking about what made me put down the pen on this one.

No doubt. But lacrosse doesn't interest me, although I kept up with that story in the news from Duke a few years back.

From here on out, I'm going to refer everyone who's interested in Crosscurrents to the forum at my GA pages, now that CC is being hosted at Gay Authors. Here's the link: https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/forum/125-adam-phillips-forum/ See y'all there!

Chapter 4 of Crosscurrents has just been posted. In it, we get to see a little bit more about Andy and Matt as individuals and as a duo of best friends. There's a plot here, a story to be told, but at this point in the story what I'm mostly about is trying to bring Andy and Matt and their developing relationship into a fairly clear focus for the reader, because that relationship will be key to making sense of the story.

Hey, Mark. I didn't see this when you first posted it. I appreciate the plug, and thanks for the welcome! And this is probably the first non-smartass remark I've made to you in public in about five years. Mark and I go waaaaay back and I love his sorry ass, and it just doesn't feel right if I don't give him a hard time in public posts. I had to go on sabbatical from Mark's reading team when I got bogged down in finishing It Started With Brian, and at that time he sprinted ahead of me. I'm only now starting to get caught up with his writing. He's going to regret it, because I'm returning to his team to plague him just in case he decides to kill yet another of my favorite characters. Anyway, I'm in Bloodlines and I haven't read any of the Bloodlines posts in the forum, so this may have already been noticed, but I'm stunned at how good the writing is in Chapter 1. Mark has always told a good tale...but here the writing is taut and possessed of a deliberateness and sense of conviction he hasn't even hinted at before now. I was blown away, and I ask his fans, is that opening paragraph not effing superb from a writing standpoint? The first sentence sucks you right in, and the remaining sentences in the paragraph are perfect, in my opinion. Anyway, thanks again, Mark, and I'd be more than pleased to have some of your readers stop by and check out Crosscurrents. Steph just posted Chapter 4 for me and there will be a new chapter up each Thursday night or Friday morning until the whole thing's finished, some 30 weeks down the road.

That's too bad. I had some tense experiences in college when my team found out I played for both teams, LOL, but that was only off the field, and only in the short run. Pretty soon the team esprit de corps reasserted itself and held and I'm friends with almost every single one of those guys to this day. It's too bad it's not always like that. I'm sorry to hear that it soured you on sports in general.