Adam Phillips

I've revised this one a little, and with a few changes of phrase, changed the story somewhat. It's still complete in itself, although it's more a snapshot than a story...and it sure feels as though there's a longer story it's part of. But I won't be getting to that story for a while. People are about ready to shoot me if I don't hurry up and finish Crosscurrents. lol

I PROMISE it's not permanent. And it's not really a block; I just haven't had been in a place where I've felt like writing on this story. I write for a living these days--not narrative stuff, but still--and that makes the thought of sitting down with Crosscurrents feel like work. But it's weighing on me. I've written one-third of the next chapter. I'll get to the rest of it eventually. After that, there's one final chapter plus an epilogue, then the story's finished.

Thanks, everybody. It was a good day. I still don't feel much older than 20...even with my sons being the age they are. In appreciation of your birthday wishes, I'll try to have the next chapter of CC out by the end of the month.

Thanks for the review, HP, and I'm glad you can resonate with the setting. I always find it makes the story that much more engaging if I'm personally familiar with the places the author's talking about. Regarding the condo...uhh, picture in your head Port Royal. With that big-ass football-sized swimming pool. :-)

Thanks for your kind words, Lisa. As for why the two guys don't just set up house together, I'm trying to write it so that the reader infers that for both Andy and for Matt, women feel like a more complete "fit" emotionally, psychically, and sexually. The difficulty this creates for both of them is that none of that takes away from what they feel for each other. There's a real sense in which Andy and Matt both "need" a woman as a life partner...but they need each other as well. That's the dilemma Andy began the narrative with. As for the "why" of it all, you might as well ask why the stars have been put in the sky the way they are. :-) Some things are just what they are.

"Don't try to get up; let us lift you." "Fuck that. Leave me alone, I'm just f...aaaahhhh!" Pain flared up from my ankle and convulsed my whole body. I collapsed back to the ground. It was the third game of the season. We were playing our conference rival, and it was a tight game. When it happened, the scoreboard showed 3-3 and time was almost gone. I'd seen a hole open up: A fake from one of our backfielders had shifted their defenders away from me. When they committed to the wrong directio

I like stubble on a good-looking, masculine face. A minimalist goatee works for me, sometimes. Beyond that, probably not.

My original response to this piece was mean-spirited, as clumber notes below. The idea of taking shots at a hard-working author from behind the wall of anonymity galled me so much, I went after the reviewer, when all along it's been made clear that the reviewer wasn't the one who made the decision to hide. I'll continue to maintain, though, that in a review of a piece of writing, the reviewer's own writing needs to be beyond reproach.

I understand what you're saying, ghostboy, and if a person falls into groupthink because of fear of rejection, that is a bad thing, for the individual and for the culture at large. Along with that, I have to add that most people who know me will tell you that I'm very much an individual. Most of them would probably say they haven't met anyone quite like me. And most of them would add, "Thank God." My take on the "herd" thing is somewhat different than yours, though. Not that I don't have a misanthropic streak--it comes out in the winter, especially, lol--but in my view, it's not always the case that people cluster in "herds" so as to be mindless followers. Some of the herding behaviors you see in human beings are simply expressions of the fact that we're social animals. And I think that's okay. Is there a dark side to herd mentality? Oh, absolutely. Think Third Reich Germany...or comic book conventions. And it's not my intent to speak ill of "lone wolves." But when people choose to bunch together, it's not inevitably a bad thing, and can in fact be a force for good, both for group itself and for those outside the group, depending on the thing that brings the group together.

Right, YB. That's pretty much been my experience, and I've gotten with more than one straight guy. In my case, though, it was with friends, most of them teammates. There were a few who came back for seconds, but it was primarily for the physical sensation of it. There wasn't ever any sense of any emotional investment except with one. Right...but since you used the word, I'd just like to add that there are other kinds of "real" besides that. What you have in your mouth after the deed is done is pretty real.

I think you're right. At the same time, many if not most of us hang out with people who share our interests. For example: From about the age of 10 through age 22 or so, I hung out with athletes, primarily because much of my time was spent playing sports. When I thought about myself, I thought about myself as a "jock," and everybody else thought about me that way too. But not exclusively. I also hung out with music types, because I did a little music myself. But mainly just rock band types...I studied so-called "classical" music as well, and didn't hang out with any "group" doing that. In college, in addition to my athlete buds, I also hung out with both the philosophy nerds and the math geeks. There was also a set of us oddballs who spent a lot of time on philosophy of mathetmatics...that was the nerdiest of both of those nerdy worlds. I'm also a liberal Democrat, and while a couple of my best online and offline friends are conservative, or Republican, or conservative Republicans (hi Scott!), I probably wouldn't frequent one of their Gay Republican bars and go drinking with them, because my head would explode. If I hang out in political mode, I'll probably hang out with liberals. There's no "reading" herd for me to run with, or if there is, chances are it's too niched to fit me comfortably. I read widely and voraciously, but I pretty much do that all on my own. My point is that you're not necessarily limiting yourself when you label yourself. I'm not sure if it's a universal, but it sure seems like we're herd animals. The labels help us identify people with similar interests. I tend to roam from herd to herd, though, so as to avoid the limitations of one. I'll slap on the label where it helps someone else from the same tribe (to switch metaphors) find me. When I grew up (okay, you people who know me better keep your dang mouths shut) and got real work and married a real wife and had real kids, that pretty much put a whole new set of labels on me which more or less muted the others...but you can still find me in the gym playing pick-up basketball, or participating in an old guys' soccer league. My days of American football are over, though...I'm too old for that bloodsport.

Whether I agree with you or not depends on what you mean by "real."

As a guy whose writing here resembles that remark, I thought I'd speak up. I make my living by writing these days, but not by writing narrative. I'm strictly an amateur in that arena. My work at this site displays many of the characteristics that provoked the original post in this thread, and I'm pretty much unapologetic about that. The supposed clichéd conventions being discussed here are chronically interesting to me, regardless of the many other kinds of reading I do, for reasons that have to do with my own life experience. I look for stories here that trade in the themes that tire the original poster of this thread, and I have a suspicion that a lot of readers at GA do too. Not every reader and not ever writer here is interested in treading that ground over and over, but I'll bet a lot of them are. And what's wrong with that? To name two stories I have some intimate familiarity with as examples, my own Crosscurrents and Dan Kincaid's It Started With Brian are cut from the same dang well-worn cloth; there is a sameness to them. There's a reason for that, and the reason is not our lack of ability--though we may both lack ability--but that's a topic for another post. And there are plenty of other stories like those two here, but even so, within that sameness, there's also some pleasing distinctiveness from story to story. For me as a reader, anyway. I don't read voraciously here, but I have my favorite GA authors, and I keep coming back...and I generally look for stories that deal with those themes. It seemed pretty clear to me from the first time I stopped by that while there's diversity here, there are some common narrative interests shared by the people who write and read here. We're not all in lockstep, as a number of respondents in this thread have noted, but the original post was correct in observing that there are many authors here working with the same themes, and it's possible to overdose on those as a reader. Still, as one of those readers, I was never concerned with the preponderance of those themes. It's fine with me. This is not the only place I encounter narrative. It's not even the only place I encounter "gay-themed" narrative. So it never occurred to me that either the site hosts or the amateur authors contributing here should have to apologize for not meeting enough of my literary needs or for not having a broad-enough literary range. Those of you who tried to remind us that this is a genre fiction site are on the money. Genre fiction doesn't have to be dreadfully repetitive, you may protest...but I wonder. One guy's "dreadfully" is another guy's "comfortingly," I'll bet. And why not? No need to knock the authors or the readers who enjoy that. Vive la différence, right? It's like the blues. The musical blues, I mean. Yeah, there are variations to the template; and those can be fun. But there are innumerable examples of blues tunes which knock out those same 12 bars, harmonically...over and over and over and over and over. As a guy who likes blues tunes, I'm fine with it. Bring it. That's not all I listen to, but them 12 bars are almost endlessly welcome to me. It does stuff to me I like to have done. We don't generally knock blues tunes for sounding "clichéd." We expect it. Look for it, even. If we want something else, we go look for something else. How absurd would it be to roll your eyes on the three millionth hearing of those twelve bars of harmonic changes and to say, "Can't these guys come up with something else? How lame." In my opinion, it's the same thing with the repetitive conventions we see here that make a couple of you so unhappy. They're there for the people who like 'em. You're free to not like 'em. Or to vary your diet if the sameness gets to be too much. There's a lifetime of other places to go for superb reads. But what's the point of getting nasty? That's going to get you what you want? My grandfather used to read Louis L'Amour books. My grandmother used to read Emilie Loring romances. By my lights, if you've read one book in those genres, you've read them all. Talk about cliché and convention! But hosts of contented readers would disagree. I understand the motivation and the frustrations of the original poster. I just can't relate to them. The site is what it is. There's some very, very nice writing here. But it doesn't keep me from pursuing my reading of the great books of Western civilization, or of American classics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or of everything that hack Stephen King ever writes, or of talented popular writers, or of random authors whose stuff I pull off the library bookshelves, or even of self-published stuff available on my Kindle. If I want something I'm not getting here, I go somewhere else. That doesn't mean I abandon the place. It just means that I realize I'm more likely get what I want by looking somewhere else than I am by trying to get the authors here to change their ways in order to satisfy my wish for greater literary diversity. Likewise, if I'm looking for more polish and more consistent quality, for an escape from "clichéd convention" I'll probably head to the library. I hear that some of those authors were actually paid for their stories. Who knew? The authors here are all doing their own things as amateurs. Some of them will find specific constructive criticism helpful and will appreciate it, but it's probably unrealistic to think that a general (and more than somewhat catty) indictment of tired conventions you encounter here will make the site's authors feel all warm and fuzzy and inspired to please you by working harder at their craft. I'm not telling anybody to take a hike. Far from it. Read here, and when you get tired of reading here, read somewhere else. That's what I do.

This whole thread simultaneously amuses and annoys me...and wow, do some people take themselves with utmost sanctimonious seriousness! But in any case, seems like it's worth noting, before we even talk about a gay guy trying to attract a straight guy, that you can't make anyone be attracted to anyone. Attraction is ultimately something of a mysterious thing, and it's definitely not something that can be forced. You can set out to get to know someone better, to spend more time with them, be closer friends, etc., etc., but you can't make attraction happen. I'm not going to give any opinion about making moves on a straight guy, because all the gay guys in this thread are quite certain that a straight guy would never do anything sexual with a guy, and who am I to dispute that? In any case, there really are a lot of great gay guys around (depending on where you live, I guess; probably more of a challenge in more sparsely-populated areas); why set yourself up for heartache and heartbreak? The respondents who said "put him out of your head and move on" are pretty much on the money. Be satisfied with your friendship with him.

There are a lot of bad gay movies out there. I thought Brokeback Mountain was first-rate, probably the best of the lot. But I also enjoyed Sommersturm a great deal, as well as Get Real and Shelter. I liked Latter Days, although some aspects of the plot are a little pedestrian--still, you gotta love Steve Sandvoss. I guess I gotta go with Arbour and a number of the rest of you and pick Beautiful Thing as my favorite. Not necessarily the best gay-themed movie I've seen; just my favorite. The plot is entertaining; the soundtrack is great; the boys are charming; and the story grabs you.

The Knack, "My Sharona" Kick-ass song, btw

I've read twenty of them. I'm always reading, all the time--usually on multiple books--and appreciate others' lists of books (or music, for that matter) that they recommend highly, so thanks. I read indiscriminately. I don't like sticking with types of books that I think I'll like. If I did that, I'd miss all the really fine stuff out there that I wouldn't ordinarily go to. Sometimes I go to the fiction shelf in the library and close my eyes and grab. I've discovered some really good stuff that way. Some really awful stuff too, but hey, nothing ventured, etc. Right now I'm on a Hemingway binge. People go on about The Sun Also Rises and some of the other novels, and for good reason, but the short stories are compelling. I'll also give an enthusiastic thumbs-up with you regarding The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Thanks, Lisa. Sorry I've been away so long guys...but this story WILL be finished very soon. I've started on the new chapter. In the meantime, I've created a Yahoo! group to talk about Crosscurrents with you, to tell you what's coming up, to talk about some other stories I'll be writing, and just to talk random with you if you'd like. It's called Adamstories and here's the URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adamstories2/Please join me there!

Duh. I should have checked stuff out before I griped. Thanks.

The controversy, and the discussion of it, demonstrate that increasing recognition and respect for diversity of all kinds leads to some cultural questions that are not always easy to answer when we consider how, at a cultural level, to put that recognition and respect into practice.

1. Obviously, alphabetically-advantaged authors get placed at the head of the "authors" listing at G.A. Stories, and there's nothing inherently fair about that. But it really annoys me to see authors who begin their screen names with punctuation marks just to get to the top of the list. Why not just create a nom de plume that starts with an "a" if you're so all-fired bound and determined to be at the top? 2. In a perfect world, I'd have separate alphabetical listings for Hosted Authors, Promising Authors, Authors, Poets, Validateds, and Newbies. But nobody asked me. So I'll just shut up now and continue on with my snail-like production schedule.

Studying sucks. And not in the good way like you do hahahaha. So I'm taking a break to send you this.How's the week, soccerboy? Sorry I didn't get down there Friday but the weekend of cramming paid off. I kicked major ass on the eco exam. I saw from the website you got three goals though. Impressive. I got a reward for you the next time I see you. lolSpeaking of that call me tonight okay? Wanna know if I should come down Fri. or wait till Sat. Just thinking about getting with you has me wound a

It's partially written. 2011 has been a weird year and it's thrown me a little off-track re: Crosscurrents, but I'm ready to get back to it. I'll get serious about it over the weekend, and maybe by next weekend I can have it posted. --Adam

Well, as the author tells the story, Andy over-analyzes because since his early childhood he's always experienced the world as a threatening, dangerous place, and he tries to scope out potential threats wherever possible so he can neutralize them. That kind of approach to life can really wear down a person after a while, but if you see the world as threatening and believe you're the only one who can look after yourself, that's what you do, isn't it?

"Damn, I hate this frozen Yankee hell-hole," I said to myself, maybe even out loud. "Fuckin' cold wind in the fuckin' winter." A girl, all bundled up and on her way to her car, turned and looked at me funny, so I must have said it out loud. This was crazy. What the fuck was I doing here? You know damn well what you're doing here, the Voice inside said. You know the Voice; the one inside that always busts your balls when you've been a prick. You can only hope and pray that you didn't drive all