Adam Phillips

I should say a word or two thousand about my first story at Gay Authors. Crosscurrents has a long history. As is often the case for first novels, it has an autobiographical element to it. The degree to which it is autobiographical I'll leave an open question at this point, although a number of my long-time readers are probably aware of what's what. In any case, many years ago I read a based-on-true-life story at Nifty about a guy's experiences in his college fraternity. I was especially taken by his portrait of his relationship with his Fraternity Big Brother: the deep friendship that developed between them; the growing recognition on his part that he was sexually attracted to him, even though he hadn't thought of himself as gay before; the need to hide these deep feelings coupled with the longing to share them. I could relate. I emailed the author telling him how much I liked his story and we struck up an e-friendship. At some point, he asked me to tell him the story of my first time with a guy. I wrote him a 3-email reply telling the story. Some time after that, I was moving into my final months of college and was headed toward grad school and my life was going to change, and the prospect of transition got me wistful and nostalgic, and thinking about my past. The story of my first time with a guy was inextricably woven into my ongoing life experiences...and now things were changing. I felt like talking to someone, but although in college I didn't really hide the fact that I had at least an honorary membership on that other team, most of my friends were straight, and I knew they wouldn't be able to relate to some of the things I was feeling. I remembered thinking how much the fraternity story on Nifty had touched me, and I was feeling the need to, you know, Say It regarding my own past and my own experiences with a close friend, especially because it looked like that friendship was destined to fade out gradually, as they often do when lives go in different directions. I thought it might be nice to share that 3-part story of my First Time With A Guy on Nifty. I thought maybe I might touch some reader out there as the frat story had touched me. I thought it might be kind of therapeutic to me if I could tell my story to an audience that would understand. Problem was, I hadn't kept the original emails. I emailed the author of the frat story, but he'd only kept the third part. So I realized that if I were going to submit my story to Nifty, I'd have to start over. But that was actually an advantage, I decided: I could tell more of the story. You know, give the history of the relationship. Make it more about the relationship rather than about one night. So I started over. The result was Crosscurrents. After five chapters were posted at Nifty, I got an email from Nick Archer inviting me to let him host Crosscurrents at Archerland. Once I'd had him explain what was up--I wasn't at all familiar with erotic narrative websites--I agreed. I loved being hosted at Archerland. The stories there were all really good, and the emails I got from readers were among the most thoughtful of the emails I got. Between Nifty and Archerland, the email I got about Crosscurrents was beyond anything I could have possibly hoped for. I couldn't believe how many people wrote me to say things like, "Your story could be mine, they're so much alike," or "I was in love with my best friend for years, and I never told him, and I've always regretted it." It seems I'd tapped into a reservoir of love and longing that so many gay and bi men could relate to personally. I was overwhelmed at the reader response, and humbled, and made many, many e-friends through my story. As time went on my life got really busy and new chapters came infrequently. Then a little over two years ago a good friend of mine who was writing his own story and posting it here in the eFiction section came down with terminal cancer. I put Crosscurrents on hold to help him finish it. But it has always been my intent to get the story told. No sooner had I finished working on my friend's story, It Started With Brian, than Nick Archer decided to shut down Archerland. That made me really sad, because of the four sites hosting Crosscurrents, Nick's was my favorite and he always got new chapters first. But after a query, Gay Authors graciously offered to host my story. I'm tremendously gratified that the powers-that-be liked the story enough to consent to be my host, and from here on out Gay Authors will get my new chapters first! I'll be posting Crosscurrents here one chapter at a time. New chapters will come out every Friday until the story is finished! There will be 33 or 34 chapters in all. If you have already read the extant chapters of my story, I'd love for you to start over with them here at Gay Authors. The version at this site is polished-up and improved; I got to make some minor changes I'd been wanting to make for years. And if you start now from the beginning you will have a new installment every week all the way to the end of the story! So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, I hope to use this particular thread for reader response to, and reader discussion of, Crosscurrents. --Adam P

I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to connect with new readers here at Gay Authors. I have several works in progress, but Crosscurrents will be the first story presented here. Before it's over, I'll probably also be posting a "short story" I'm writing called Brushfire. Thematically, I'm most interested in coming-of-age stories featuring young college men or late-high-school young men. As a bisexual man, those years were turbulent and confusing for me, and I didn't get a lot of help from the "conventional wisdom" out there, either in the straight or gay "communities." I was/am primarily attracted to women. But my attraction to men was/is real too. I didn't know what to make of it, and I didn't handle it very well. There's lots of narrative potential in that basic inner conflict, and for the time being a lot of my stories deal at least indirectly with that. I'm really looking forward to hearing from some of you. I hope you'll read my stuff and I hope you'll like it!

Thanks for the welcome, everybody! I'm happy to be here! Special thanks to Steph for setting up my pages and for translating my poorly-worded wishes for what the site should look like into a place that looks just like I wanted it to! And thanks to Sharon for all the support, and for having my back, and for her incredible taste in music...but wow, what a dark musical welcome. And just what are you trying to say about me? You'd probably be right, but let's not poison the well from the very beginning Anyway, thanks, everybody. I'm looking forward to hanging out with you!

To be fair, I have to add to this discussion the following: A few years back I asked the archivist to pull a story of mine because of some personal stuff I had going on. And it wasn't any serious crisis-laden thing, but he pulled it for me anyway without a quibble. Several months later, I had a change of heart and I was really reluctant to ask him to re-post it, but I grabbed my package and did, and once again, I didn't get a word of complaint from him. He reposted it. So, while I agree that an author should have the right to call a story what he or she wants, I wanted to make sure I shared this experience in the discussion here in the interest of fairness. --Adam Phillips

You know what makes me laugh about this? It's the presence of all those totally-awful examples of writing all over Nifty. Stories written by people who seem not even to know the alphabet, much less anything about strong writing; and beyond that, the dreadful stories themselves... And he wants to quibble over a title? Hilarious. --Adam P

The administator at Nifty is widely known among writers of gay narrative for his quirkiness. He's going to do what he's going to do. You need to recognize this and balance out your desire to have your title exactly the way you want it against the advantage of having a huge pool of readers--probably more than Gayauthors gets. I post new chapters to Nifty last. New chapters go to my other host sites first. (We won't talk about the last time I posted a new chapter; that's another subject entirely). But I get more reader email from Nifty than I do from the other two sites that host my story. I'll continue to submit my stuff to Nifty. But I don't consider it my "primary" host. Actually Archerland was my primary host, and now that it's gone I've acquired a new one. Almost anybody can post to Nifty. That's why it's so easy to find dreck there. But you get a lot of readers there, and isn't that what we writers are all after? You can post it as you want it at a host site that lets you do it your way, and only you can decide whether telling the Nifty archivist to take a flying leap is justified in your mind. Personally, I like having that pool of readers. --Adam P

I screwed around a lot for about six years, from the time I was fourteen through about the time I was about 21. Mostly with women, although I had my fair share of men too. I'm 30 now and I've been binogamous since 21. I guess I got my wild oats sown early. I didn't do it because I felt a void, though. I did it because I was horny and because I could. I discovered as time went on that I wanted to focus. I guess that's the only way I can put it. I wanted to concentrate on being with a person, or a couple of persons, and going deeper and seeing what long-haul stuff felt like. I felt like I wanted that in my life. And I knew who I wanted it with. I think everybody's mileage varies. My "external life" is very conventional. My intimate life is somewhat unconventional in terms of arithmetic and gender, but not really all that unconventional. I like where I am and have no desire to do any more sexual exploring. My life is occupied with other things. Spouse, kid, job, hobbies, side-job, side-relationship. But I have no regrets, no guilt or shame over the period where I was boning everything that was young, looked pretty, moved, and belonged to homo sapiens (not much anyway...I did use a couple of women, and I regret that somewhat), and don't believe that people who are hooking up a lot are compensating for some kind of deep existential void. Personally, I think there's a Darwinian explanation for men's desires to spread the seed around. And if there is, it's off-base to try to dig for some deep "itch" in the soul to account for male promiscuity. I think we're wired for it. --Adam

This discussion is also taking place at Mark's forum-- https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/topic/27187-on-the-mark/ --Adam P

Well said, Mark. It's struck me as the years have gone by: Back in the days of On the Mark there were three of us who were doing roughly the same thing--telling a story that was essentially autobiographical. Of those three, I'm the only one who has stayed with it. The other guy working on his ultimately abandoned it, for reasons that are almost identical to Mark's. As for me, I've walked away from my story twice. One of those two times, I actually had it removed from the places that were hosting it. And as it stands, it's been three years since I've added a chapter. That's all going to change this year. You'll be able to find my story here, and I'll finish it this year. It's hard, is all I'm saying, when you commit to writing your story. And there are certain places that get really tough to get through. You go back and you have to face your demons. The only reason I didn't totally cave is that my past wasn't quite as traumatic as either Arbour's or Walsh's were to them. I can go back there without feeling like I'm crawling naked across a room full of broken glass. I've harassed Mark to finish this story a couple of times. I harass him a lot about things. Like killing off Jeff, LOL. But I love him crazy mad, and I totally get why he can't finish, and I totally got his back on that. And one more thing: People need to tend to their own shit. How other people play out the hand that is dealt to them, sexually, is their own business. And if the religious, self-righteous types need a biblical reference for inspiration, here it is: "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. 2For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. 3Why do you see the speck in your neighbor

Okay, I'm done with all this. Sorry for the distraction, ladies and gents. I love Mark madly and at this point I'm just yankin his chain. I said my piece and I'm ready to get on to the next story in the set. I figure I'll be current by the middle of next month. --Adam

Yeah, but when your creator is effing determined to kill you off, little things like realism don't matter. It's a hard Calvinist universe in here, Jeremy, and the God of Cramptonworld elected that Jeff Should Die. You and I, we gotta get with the program and eat the troubling details.

I started this whole damn thread, or rather a thread I started at my Yahoo group started this. I hadn't intended to belabor the issue. I already bashed Mark enough for it the first time I'd read through the story and he and I have been e-buds for years. I was just trying to get current on his writing because his output is so hard for me to keep up with, and I realized that to have any sense of what was going on in future stories I'd have to start from the beginning of the Cramptonworld series. I knew 1968 would be tough on me, but I was already hard enough on Mark about it the first time around. I figured I'd just bear up, grit my teeth, and get through it and on to the next "novel" in the series. But it effed me up (it's so ridiculous that we have to censor ourselves at this place) again, as badly as it did the first time, and quite frankly I was mystified about why my reaction was so strong, and so strongly negative. I'll concede that I have no experience of dealing with people who are decades-long addicts, and I "hear" and register the words some of you write about the toll that addiction takes on non-addicts in the family. I hardly think that makes JP a much more redeeming character, and personally I think Sam's intent to go murder Jeff, and his decision to let a deranged person make a life-and-death decision, and to sit idly by while his life slips away, doing nothing, is reprehensible, if not criminal. However, as I was forced to concede by a near-lifelong friend at my own group (damn his sorry ass!), the extremes of my reaction come from some of my own personal history with a personal friend, who experienced nothing like what Jeff experienced, but who was a football player himself and who had a horrible childhood trauma. I hadn't even considered the relevance of all that to my reaction to Jeff's pitiful end. It's not only Jeff I'm seeing there circling the drain and finally slipping through, and that's why it's especially horrifying to me. Anyway, it's time for me to get on to The Land Whore if I have any hope of getting current with his stuff any time soon. Sorry to have distracted the lot of you. I know that for you the story's over and done. And it really was my personal hangup much more than Mark's viciousness as an author. Nevertheless, I still wish he would have had Sam raped with a broken baseball bat and given JP AIDS and had him die a miserable, excruciatingly painful death. Alone. I would have enjoyed every grisly scene. --Adam P

Lord. Why bring up facts at a time like this? I'll deal with you later. Once I've made it to the chapter in question and managed to figure out how to hold JP responsible.

I've just read Chapter 9; I didn't really remember this chapter and its relevance to the whole story. Jeff's emotional indiscretion with Stefan is certainly a complicating factor, and it's difficult to fault JP for feeling emotionally betrayed. I'm not sure that you as an author have me convinced, Mark, that Jeff would have actually been torn emotionally between JP and Stefan. That strains credulity just a bit, given that there hasn't been much of an indication that anyone but JP is Jeff's emotional anchor. To me, the fact that Jeff didn't want to see JP while he was in treatment but was willing to see Stefan was testimony to how important the relationship with JP was to him...he wanted to get it right on his own so he could be worthy of JP and strong enough to stand with him. However, if I'm going to buy into your premise, I'll go ahead and pull back from my conviction that JP is totally at fault here. As for what ultimately happens, well, I don't think there's anything that can redeem that scene for me, but I suppose JP's reaction to Jeff's emotional indecisiveness at this point is natural and understandable enough. I still don't like Sam, though. --Adam

Okay, Sharon, you know I love ya too, but I beg to differ. There's a point at which, in drug addiction, questions of volition and free will, in my opinion, are really irrelevant. Of course Jeff made those decisions himself. Nobody held a gun to his head and forced him into drugs. But the pernicious thing about drug addiction is that at a certain point it co-opts your will. And given Jeff's background, you know he's damaged goods already, just ripe for the pickings. That he was born into the family he was born into was not his fault. JP, the child of privilege, appears to be utterly unable to appreciate the gravity of Jeff's predicament except insofar as it inconveniences him. And as far as danger to the family, at what point has Jeff's presence with any of the family members ever stood as a threat? Best I can tell, when Jeff's at his worst, he stays away from the kids. And even he were a threat, does that justify seeking to exterminate him? And as for your "at what point"questions, I'll throw it right back at you: At what point do you decide it's okay to give up on someone you've committed to spend your life with? At what point do his personal problems become larger than your commitment to stand by him? I think that's not a question with an easy answer, and anybody who's ever had drug addiction problems in their family knows that it's an intensely personal question with answers that can't be set in stone ahead of time. But, well beyond Chapter 6, I think JP shows his true colors in this thing's ugly denouement. Surely you wouldn't commend that solution--which, as far as I'm concerned, is sociopathic, self-serving, and not even recognizably human--to family members as a Final Solution to the "inconvenience" of being saddled with a dangerous drug addict, would you? God help us all if that's what "family" is all about.

Just checking in as promised. I got an email Monday from the tech person who is working on getting my story up and running at the place where it's going to be. It read, Hi Adam, Your site is almost finished! I should be able to send you the link in a few days... So...shouldn't be too much longer now. I'll keep you posted. Adam

Naw, man, you got to keep the hate alive. Where's your humanity?

1968. Just gotta be.

I just got a note from Mark Arbour that said "the natives are restless" and linked me to this thread. Honestly, I keep forgetting there's a Crosscurrents thread here! Let me tell you what's up. I haven't abandoned Crosscurrents. Nick Archer did indeed shut down Archerland, and it was my "main host." In other words, new chapters went to Archerland before they went elsewhere. I'm hosted at a couple of other sites, but for a variety of reasons, I wanted a different "main host." So...update: (Sort of) Another site will now be my main host. It's a host you won't have to go very far to find. Not far at all. Not at all. Not at all. Crosscurrents will be showing up...uhhh...there...within a couple of weeks. Wearing some slightly new clothes. Just slightly, though, so don't panic. At this...uhh...new site, all 22 extant chapters won't be showing up at once. I've been given permission to post a chapter at a time. So I'm going to be posting a chapter a week. It's been over two years since I worked on Crosscurrents. Back then, when I stopped, my grandfather had just died, and he and I were close, and that really threw me for a loop. I don't know why that's relevant to the writing, but somehow it was. Not too long after that, I found out that my good e-friend Sam was terminally ill, and I volunteered to finish his story It Started With Brian for him. I finished that toward the beginning of this year, and I was ready to start working on Crosscurrents again. About that time Nick Archer closed down Archerland. But as I said, I found this...other place that graciously agreed to host me. In the intervening years I've had a chance to look over Crosscurrents. There have always been a couple of places that nagged at me. Having a new host gave me an opportunity to go back over those places and make them read more like I wanted them to. So when you read CC over...there, you'll be reading the version I'd most like readers to have. The changes will be minor. They're mostly literary and not at all about the story itself. You might not even notice them. Except for one. I'm changing the last name of the protagonist. Don't bother to ask why. The answer is long and convoluted and silly. Beyond that, there were a couple of mechanical/syntactical infelicities, one howler of an image that just had to go, and another one that was just too melodramatic and ridiculous to stay with. Other places that wanted rewriting just a bit. I'll be continuing to write on CC while the first 22 chapters are being released at the new site, and by the time Chapter 22 is posted, I'll be finished with the rest of the story (right now, it looks as though it will run 33 chapters total). If my Constant Readers will go back all the way to the Prologue once it's released on the new site, and read anew as the chapters are being posted, you'll be able to read a chapter a week all the way to the end! I will definitely be finished with Crosscurrents by the end of the year. Thanks for your ongoing interest, and I'll try to pop in here more often from now on. --Adam Phillips

After I finished working on It Started With Brian and announcing the last chapter here, I stayed away from this forum for a while. It's hard to explain, but writing the story in Sam's behalf was kinda tough on me and I didn't really want to participate in any discussion for a while. I just returned today and read the final posts, including John's. Thanks to all of you for your interest in Sam's story. And thanks, John, for those words about Sam. I want to say to this group of readers that I totally get why it "started with Brian" for Sam. John is a great guy and getting to know him has meant more to me than I can say. I was a little uncomfortable "talking" to John at first, because...well, because he reminds me a lot of someone in my own life, and I was having some "transference" issues, LOL. But as I began to chat with him more, I came to see firsthand the things about him that Sam used to always talk to me about. I would never have finished It Started With Brian without John. If he hadn't been supportive of the project, I wouldn't have gone on with it. As it was, I often worried that he'd feel as though I was invading some very private and very sacred places in his life and exposing them to the world. He assured me on a regular basis that he didn't feel that way and often expressed his thanks to me for finishing a project that had meant a good deal to Sam. For those of you who wonder about "Chris," he couldn't be in better hands. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to get to know Sam and John, and to partner with them on this project. It was an experience I wouldn't trade, even with the hard things about it. And I value John's ongoing friendship a great deal. I guess that's my final word on this project. If you're interested in my own writing--it was my story that actually got Sam thinking about reconnecting with "Brian," if you'll remember--I'll be a hosted author at Gayauthors quite soon. The folks here were familiar with my story from its appearance at the now-defunct Archerland, and offered to host me here. I'm hosted elsewhere, but I know you don't want to read my stuff at those places, LOL! My story has about ten chapters to go, and I have three other shorter ones in progress, ideas for a fourth and a fifth, and a completed one-chapter short-short story. They'll all turn up here over the next couple of months. I also have a blog here that I post to infrequently, although I'll be stepping it up once I get my pages here. I hope to "see" some of you at my new location here. Thanks for reading Sam's story. --Adam Phillips

The final chapter of It Started With Brian has now been posted: It Started With Brian, Chapter 34 There are a lot of things on my mind and heart as I finish this project, and most of them I can't put into words. But thanks to all of you for following Sam's story. It was an honor for me that he entrusted the completion of the story to me, and I love and miss him with all my heart. If you're interested in reading any of my own writing, I guess the first place I'd send you is Crosscurrents, a story that's still in progress, one which I put on hold to finish Sam's story. You can find it here. I appreciate the emails you've sent, and I guess I'll see you 'round. --Adam Phillips

Yeah, I know. ISWB was supposed to be finished by 2009. I ran into some snags with Chapter 33. It all had to do with the difficulty of transforming Sam's notes into a chapter this time. I finally fnished, though and the new chapter is posted: It Started With Brian, Chapter 33 Thanks for your patience. And thanks to Sam's man. For everything. --Adam

Well, the Christmas insanity is thoroughly messing with my life and family right now, but I've managed to complete Chapter 32 of Sam's story. Here's the link: It Started With Brian, Chapter 32 Thanks as usual to Sam's guy. I hope you all enjoy reading this chapter. There are two more chapters to go, and as I've already mentioned, Sam wrote the last one several months before he died, so I only have one more chapter to work on. The whole thing will be finished by the end of the year. Once you've finished reading It Started With Brian, I invite you all to read my own story, Crosscurrents, which has about ten chapters left to go. I'll have more to say about this story soon, but I'll tell you now that very shortly it should be much, much easier for you to find CC on the Internet. I hope everybody has a great holiday season. --Adam Phillips

I've just posted the next chapter: It Started With Brian, Chapter 31 --Adam Phillips

I've just posted Chapter 30 of It Started With Brian. It Started With Brian, Chapter 30 This one's long this time. It was kind of difficult to write, for technical reasons and for personal reasons. I'm glad to be finished with it. --Adam Phillips