Adam Phillips

Okay. Chapter 1 has been posted! I'll post a chapter a week. I have it all written except for the final chapter or chapters. There'll only be five or six; it's not War and Peace. Also, I think Jeremy's a little off-base with the tune. Brushfire isn't a merry gay romp in the sunshine, but it's not an emo wallow, either. That's all I'll say at this point.

The thing you gotta understand is, I was gunnin' for trouble. I mean, c'mon. I never colored outside the lines before: Always did my homework. Played the right sport (Football. This is Texas, okay?). Picked the right major. Married the high school sweetheart, found a good-paying white-collar job, and started the family. Good ol' reliable Jeff. What a family man. What a stand-up guy. You can always count on him. The classic southern-boy-betters-himself-and-does-right-by-everyone. How long c

Jeff, a young married university professor in San Antonio, sips a beer at a bar and runs into Fitz, an airman from Lackland Air Force Base. He doesn't know it, but his life is about to burn out of control.

Hey, guys. Just wanted to let you know that this week I'll be starting another story at Gay Authors. I have about 10 story ideas I'd like to develop as stories in 2014, and this is the first, because it's one of the shortest and most close to completion. It's called Brushfire, and it's only going to be about 5 chapters long. It's a story about a young married university prof who runs into an airman (from the Air Force...duh) at a bar in San Antonio, Texas. It's a little bit of a period piece, as it's set in 2007, the year that the San Antonio Spurs met the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA championship. I actually started it then and let it sit on the shelf for a few years. I was going to update it for its debut on Gay Authors, but an astute reader who'd read through these chapters pointed out to me that the military had changed enough in the ensuing years--with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell-- to make the basic conflict of the story somewhat obsolete. So I winced and concluded he was right. Still, I think the story's worth finishing, and worth having the readers at Gay Authors give it a look. I'll have the first chapter posted some time between tomorrow and Friday.

As I said in my email to you, the story is narrated by a young adult. You wouldn't expect him to narrate his childhood from the point of view of a child. And as for ADD and how it manifests, it appears to me you don't have a lot of personal familiarity with ADD. I do...about as much as a person can get, if you get my drift. And trust me; there are a lot of high-intellect achievers out there who have ADD. Having it doesn't mean you're not capable of focusing, and it doesn't mean you do poorly in school. It does, however, mean you can't ever find your keys. ;-)

I hear what you're saying...but one of the main threads running through the story is that Andy has a couple of demons. Matt does too. Figuratively speaking, of course. And when those are at the helm, all bets are off in terms of what people would "ordinarily" do. In fact, it seems to me very much the case that "what friends would ordinarily do" is something of an abstraction and that real, individual cases invariably deviate from that "ordinarily." I know guys who are friends and who have behaved in exactly the way I narrated. ;-) It's maddening, and it makes life frustrating, but if friends always behaved the way you say they always do, it would be a very different world. And many of us wouldn't have anything to write about. :-)

You should be aware that this study was done by J Michael Bailey, former chair of the psychology department at Northwestern University who was ultimately forced to give up his post because of ethical problems associated with the making of his book about transsexuals, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender Bending and Transsexualism. In this book, Bailey espouses that postoperative transsexual women are either (i) effeminate gay men who underwent "sex changes" in order to have sex with lots of men, or else they are (ii) sexual paraphilic males who "changed sex" for bizarre autosexual reasons. The book especially defames trans women who are attracted to men, calling them "homosexual transsexuals" as if they were men themselves. There were numerous complaints from interview subjects in the book, complaining of deceptive practices used by Bailey in the interviews. The science of the book has also been called into serious question. Bailey also did a study on bisexuality in which he concluded that there are no "real" bisexuals. There are gay people and straight people, and gay people who claim to be bisexual but whose sexual responses are either strictly heterosexual or strictly homosexual. This study and its methodology have also been widely disputed. Bailey is also convinced that homosexuality is primarily genetic, and he has proposed that once a test has been developed that will allow you to determine if your unborn child is gay, couples who don't want a gay child should have the option to abort the gay fetus. He has been associated with advocates for eugenics and has associated himself with professionals who have clear ideological axes to grind. His theses tend to run along consistently social-conservative, gay-unfriendly lines. He claims that he's fine with gay people; it's his research, he claims, that demonstrates problems with homosexuality. He is a strong believer that gay men are effeminate, that bisexuals are deceiving themselves, and that transsexuals have serious gender dysphoria that are really ultimately about their homosexuality which drive them to the drastic solution of gender reassignment surgery in a desperate attempt to cure their neuroses. He is regarded in the field as well-credentialed, but his studies are often assessed as seriously flawed and ideologically compromised. It doesn't surprise me that he'd put another study out there that concluded that gay men had stereotypical gay childhoods as regards the type of sports gay kids participate in. He may be an intelligent man, but he seems to have a passion for "finding" in his research that gay people conform to the most common stereotypes the culture has of them. And while there are a number of peers who respect his work, there appear to be an equal number who have serious questions about the legitimacy of his research.

That's because in general I'm not a grammar Nazi and care little about such things in casual conversations, lol, and I wasn't so much correcting him as highlighting differences in usage just for the fun of it, given that we'd been talking singluars and plurals. I have a good friend from Australia who calls it "maths" as well, and as a guy who loves words, I've always been intrigued by that one.

I didn't like it. The acting was flat and emotionless. And I thought most of the singing was bad. Especially the choral music.

Dang. I'm late to the party. Typical. Did I miss the cupcakes and beer?

You're worthless. But Happy Birthday anyway.

Speaking of singular and plural...you're aware that in the US, we call it "math" and not "maths," right? Not calling you out. Just saying. Actually the British term is probably righter, if you think about it. After all, we don't call it "mathematic."

Don't be talking seductive like that unless you're intending to bring it. I do have a daddy thing.

They support his findings in the sense that they acknowledge that sexuality is not a binary, or even "trinary," ;-) thing. But rather than characterize that subsequent work as "supporting" or "confirming," I'd be more likely to characterize subsequent researchers' work as "buidling upon" Kinsey's. Some of their work takes issue with some of the implications of the Kinsey scale, for example. But not in the way of denying his basic insight that there's complexity to sexual orientation. The other thing worth bringing up is that Kinsey's scale was a distillation of reports of sexual behavior and not of sexual feelings, wasn't it?

Hmm. I gotta say, I never expected to have my s**t transformed into short-term memes and postered and real-or-fake Tweeted, but as long as it's all out there like that, I'll say some things. None of this is necessarily a direct response to anything said here about either Tom D or Crosscurrents. It's more a set of general thoughts and feelings about having my name taken in vain in the context of a discussion about a public figure lol. Here's what I think. There are some things we can say about sexuality with some definitiveness...but not as many things as people think. That's all I'm willing to say I know for sure anymore, and it strikes me that the people who speak the loudest and most vociferously about what certainly is and isn't, what's possible and what's not, are people who often appear to have vested interests, and who are "quite sure" about things that nobody is quite sure about. Not pointing fingers; just saying. Crosscurrents was never shared with the reading public as an autobiography. My intent in sharing the story with a large audience--when I finally got around to it--was to entertain. And maybe, in a sense, to reach out through the story to guys who might be wired like me. I'd never met anybody quite like me in terms of wiring, and the email I got in response to Crosscurrents helped me come to understand that I'm not quite the oddball, sexually, that I thought I might be. Apart from any autobiographical dimension, the basic plot elements of the story elicited email responses from sooooo many guys who'd been-there-done-that, it was gratifying to me. Inevitably the question came up about whether or not it's a real-life story. When I posted CC I didn't begin--or end--by saying, "This is a true story." But when people asked, I owned up to the fact that it was essentially autobiographical. I didn't see the point in not owning up to it. There's a smaller group of readers and e-friends who know a great deal about my life now, because we share a lot of stuff...much more than just stuff about sexuality...in a social-media-kind of forum. But as for the story itself, it's not thrown down as a "true story." It's thrown down as a piece of narrative writing that I hope will entertain and touch. Crosscurrents also makes no claims about anybody's sexuality beyond "things are more complex than they seem at first glance." It's not a story about sexual orientation. It's a story about love. I notice that Dan Kincaid's It Started With Brian also came up in this thread. I think if there's anything that can be taken from that story, it's the same thing. I'm efriends with the "Brian" of that story. We've talked a lot. Compared notes. We each, at a point in our lives, were on sports teams where a surprising number of guys fooled around sexually with each other. In that respect, whether or not the theme/meme of gay guys getting straight guys is a gay jerkoff fantasy, CC and ISWB incorporated real experiences Brian, Dan, and I had all had on that front. Dan didn't report all of Brian's stuff with guys because it wasn't relevant to his story. I've only become aware of those in my subsequent friendship with Brian, but they are mentioned at least in passing here and there in ISWB. I have no clue as to what my experiences, or Brian's, or Dan's, say about sexual orientation in general, or, more specifically, about numbers, percentages, or tendencies. And I'm not impressed by people's declarations that "everybody knows that in real life..." etc., etc. I know what I've experienced, and I don't care to defend it with explanations or believe-me-on-this-one defenses. That's not why I wrote CC, and in retrospect, I regret saying anything in public about its autobiographical nature. At the time, it seemed like something I ought to do once I was asked. But the question of "whether such a thing can actually be the case" has taken on a life of its own in a way that gives me a headache and puts me in the position--at least implicitly--of trying to defend my life and life experiences to guys out there who'd assure me--based on...what???? Their own experiences, which somehow negate mine???--that what happened to me never happened. During my student years, my experiences helped me, because they helped me see that whatever kind of freak I was, sexually, I wasn't in some complete other solar system from the rest of the population. I learned that there were other guys who could, and would, under certain circumstances, "go there." For people whose sexuality is somewhat diffuse, self-understanding is difficult. You know you're not gay; your dick's response to women informs you of that. But what are you? And what does it mean for how you live and love? Crosscurrents is a story of a guy's attempt to live out a satisfactory answer to those questions. It's not a thesis on sexual orientation. I never concluded from my dalliances with straight guys that everybody was like me. Quite the contrary, and I don't think the narrative of CC suggests that everybody is bi. It's merely a narrative reflection of the fact that when I saw that some straight guys would go there under certain circumstances, that helped me in my quest for self-understanding during my late teens and early twenties. The original core that served as the starting point for CC was intended for only one set of eyes and was a response to a specific question I'd been asked privately. But in that response I noticed that it scratched an itch in me. So it began to morph into a "book," and shortly thereafter--during the first five chapters of Crosscurrents--I began to see it as a vehicle for saying some things to "Matt"--and Matt alone--that I hadn't ever said to him quite so nakedly and directly. It wasn't long into that idea, though, before I got it into my head to let other people read it. The overwhelmingly positive response I got to it--especially from guys who've told me their own agonized--or once in a great while, joyful--versions of the same story kept me going. Well, sort of, because it took ten years. You're welcome to believe what you want about it. Anything I've said in public about it being autogiography has been in response to questions about whether or not it's based on real life. Is it 100% autobiography? Of course not. That being said, regarding the question of whether straight guys will do gay sex, I've had sex--I'm counting oral as "sex" too--with a surprising number of "straight" teammates. A couple more, actually, than Andy encounters in Crosscurrents. I didn't include them all because I thought the reader, uhh, got the point, and Andy was already enough of a slut in the narrative as things were. It never occurred to me that people would consider the number of straight encounters I'd had not-believable. I had them, so it never occurred to me to second-guess it in the writing, except to ratchet it back some, for the aforementioned reasons. So yeah...I'm not impressed by claims that Andy's "sample group" includes too large a number of straight guys to be real. Of course, I've also been rebuffed by an unsurprising number of straight guys. In other words, a lot. More than the number who'd said yes. "Why so many attempts, slut-boy?", you may ask. Well, see, after I'd had some initial successes, I was in a mode of saying "nothing ventured, nothing gained," so I made some advances I wouldn't recommend that gay or bi guys generally make. The worst I ever got was a putdown, never a fist to my mouth. Somebody else's mileage might vary tragically. I don't generally give off vibes that you can do violence to me without violent consequence. I'm sure that didn't hurt. And also, I never hit on anybody I didn't know. That may have also helped. Regardless of all that, though, in none of my narrative about all that do I intend to make any claims about men's sexual fluidity or nonfluidity or anything else. Shit happened to me; what it all means I leave to the experts. It just irritates me when people say "that shit can't happen." Tell that to Brian. Tell that to the many people who've written me telling me about their wonderful--or excruciatingly painful--experiences with the same thing. At this point in my life, I refuse to draw any conclusions about people's sexual wiring. I certainly don't think we're all fluid. I've kept track of many of the guys I hooked up with over the years, and almost all of them are married, or married-and-divorced, or married-and-divorced-and-remarried, and most of them have kids, and I know they don't go fucking around with guys. I don't think trying-it-a-couple-of-times in college reveals anybody as bi, or reveals that "we're all bi." I seriously doubt that many of the guys I fooled around with back in the day gave their sexual dalliances with me more than a brief play. Most of them were one-off kinds of things. A couple were more significant. I don't know if any of them ever got with any other guys after college days. I kind of doubt it. I learned something about myself sexually during college. They may have learned something about themselves too...but I doubt that they learned they were all "sexually fluid." What does any of that have to do with Tom Daley, you may ask? Nothing, maybe. And lots. He's seeing a guy. An older guy. Anything beyond that is conjecture. Maybe he doesn't even know quite how he's wired. Why would any of us presume to know more about him than he knows about himself? Yeah, we're at a watershed place in the culture, a place where gay and lesbian, and, I guess, bisexual people can help move acceptance of gay sexuality along by being open about their sexuality. But if you ask me, nobody owes the culture at large a particular way of doing their sexuality, or thinking about their sexuality, or a particular degree of public visibility about their sexuality. And nobody's talk about their own sexuality tells us anything more about them except what the words themselves suggest. Whether Tom's into daddies, and whether he's into daddies if he is because he has father issues or not, whether he's straight, whether he's gay...all that's ultimately known are the public facts. All the rest is inference and conjecture, and not unoccasionally, borderline slander. Cheap talk, in other words, and in my opinion it's about as tiresome as the question of whether straight guys ever hook up with gay guys. I celebrate Tom's having found someone he loves, but I don't really know the guy, and I have no idea what it means about his life or anybody's. And on the question of whether guys who like guys also like girls, I'd think the answer is obvious: "sometimes." And on the question of whether guys who like guys ever hook up with guys who like girls, I'd think the answer is also obvious: "Sometimes." Probably not usually, in either case. Does it matter? Yeah, I guess it does. Does it mean that everyone who has a definite, conclusive opinion on the matter is right? Rarely. I've seen that firsthand. What counts in the final analysis for me is how a person handles his/her sexuality, including everything he/she says and does about it, in the larger context of his/her life. What counts for me in the final analysis is the integrity he/she brings to that larger context. At the end of the day, at least in my book, what counts for any of us is whether--and how well--we've loved and cared for our loved ones and for the larger human community. I prefer to leave the gossip and the speculation and the judgment-casting and the definitives about "what is and what isn't" regarding people's wiring to those who seem to need that sort of thing. All that being said, if this post has inspired you to check out Crosscurrents, I sure as hell wouldn't mind! There are aspects of the writing that make me wince a little--I've become a better writer over the years, and I may at some point clean up the things that really bother me in the story, from a writing standpoint--but generally speaking, I'm happy with how it turned out. Sorry to have intruded here. This thread wasn't about me. But c'mon, when people start throwing your stuff around in these crazy ways, you gotta step up and say something!

Yep. "Kind of." So much to say here, and yet I won't. :-P

Sell it to yourself any way you can; it's a sad thing when the testosterone wanes and your balls shrink. Anyway, congratulations on your achievements here. There's lots to be proud of.

I've just posted Chapter 35 and the Epilogue of Croscurrents. Here's Chapter 35. Here's the Epilogue. I hope you enjoy the conclusion. Thanks to all of you who've followed this story and hung in even in spite of my glacial slowness.

I stared off into forever. The night was black. A full moon shone down upon the water. The tide called to me with its hypnotic, incessant song, as I watched it kiss the shore and fall back, over and over and over. "More Than Words" repeated itself endlessly on my boom box. Beth's boom box, actually. My sister's portable player was the only one I ever brought to this place. I thought about that first time and smiled. The fire I'd lit flickered in my peripheral vision, and if I'd had compa

I stared at Jared Cannon's ass while the water was cascading down his back, and my dick responded appreciatively. It was a new school year, the final one of my undergrad studies. Ryan Cannon's kid brother was a soccer player too, and now he was his brother's teammate and mine, a freshman, one of the New Guys on the team. We'd been the last two men off the field after practice, and the last--and only--two in the shower together. I'd taken the opportunity to gawk because he was rinsing his sha

Some time later tonight, or tomorrow at the latest, I'll post the conclusion to Crosscurrents. For some thoughts on that, check out my blog, here: https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/blog/205/entry-13744-putting-crosscurrents-to-bed/

I may very well be the most procrastinatin' slowpoke story-nonfinisher of a Hosted Author at this whole place. And I know I've driven a bunch of you crazy with my slow pace. Heck, I've probably driven some of you away with my slow pace. But I'm here to say that the conclusion to Crosscurrents will be posted some time tomorrow. You have no idea what a relief this is to me. Talk about your albatross. On the one hand, anyway. (See below.) Many if not most of you know that I've had the final chapter and epilogue of Crosscurrents written for months. But I didn't like what I had. I couldn't put my finger on what I didn't like; I just didn't like what I had. So I started all over on those last two segments, not even consulting the previous versions. Trying not to even think about them. And whaddya know? I got it told the way I want to tell it. Not saying it's a masterpiece. I'm just saying I'm good with letting the final chapter and epilogue stand as I've written them. They do what I want them to do. What I couldn't get the previous attempts to do. The epilogue in particular pleases me, because even in its conceptual stages--and all the way through the writing of the first version of it--I didn't like it. And that's bad. An epilogue has to be the capstone of the whole damn novel, right? And it just wasn't. It was going to piss off readers. It was going to leave them going, "Huh?" And going, "WTF?" And going, "Well, that sucks. Ten years I waited for that?" I may still get some of that. But at least when people say it, I won't agree. The story's going to end as it needs to. And I think as I've written it, it'll please many people who were not going to be pleased with the original epilogue. I've said that the conclusion to CC will be "inconclusive." It's still going to be inconclusive. It's still going to want a sequel, and it's still going to get a sequel. But it's the kind "inconclusive" that will allow the Faithful Reader to close the book--so to speak--satisfied. I've also told readers for years who were demanding surcease from Matt's drama and pain and a happy ending for him (they don't give a rip about Andy, and that's as it should be) that the ending wouldn't make them want to slit their wrists. That was the best I could do for them. I couldn't promise a happily-ever-after ending, because that's not how Crosscurrents ever imagined itself closing out. And anybody who took the Prologue seriously should never have even bothered to ask for a giddy-happy ending. The Prologue simply won't allow it. The Prologue, and the reality behind it, made that impossible. But. But, but, but. Everything lies in the freakin' delivery of the inconclusiveness. Not comparing myself to Margaret Mitchell or David O. Selznick, but that final scene in Gone With The Wind hasn't left decades of viewers grumbling about the ending. And it feels like the end of a movie. And It's damn inconclusive. And that's just fine. Day before yesterday it fell from the sky into my head how I needed to write the epilogue. After ten years of telling myself "I'll think about that tomorrow," and then refusing to think about it because I didn't know how to freakin' close the thing out in any way that was going to be remotely satisfying...it just came to me. And the weird thing is, it's not all that different from my previous thoughts and plans and attempts, all of which disgusted me. That tiny bit of difference, it turns out, makes all the difference in the world. Now that I've oversold and overhyped, you're going to read the Epilogue and go, "What's so great about that?" And the answer is, "Nothing." In the same way, when I first tasted my first cup of coffee made from the Geisha varietal--specifically the Hacienda la Esmeralda from Panama--It had been so overhyped, I went..."Well, yeah, it's very good, but...but...it's not the Second Coming. It's not God in a Cup." So in the same way, when you actually get to read the epilogue, you're likely to be underwhelmed because of my blather. I'm just warning you. What I'm saying is not that in writing the second version of the epilogue I became Steinbeck redivivus. I'm just saying that for years and years I couldn't get it like I wanted. For ten years, I couldn't even envision it like I wanted. And now it's come to me. Now it feels like the end of a book. Now it won't send readers screaming at me for an immediate sequel because Volume One was so unsatisfying. And that's good, because I'm not going to get to that sequel for a few books. Andy and Matt need a rest. Couple of other things. 1) I'm gonna have to bypass my three proofreaders this time. I want it posted as quickly as I can get it posted. That means I don't have time to run it by my three proofreaders. Sorry, proofreaders. Wish you were here, lol. But I'm not sending you stuff and then pressuring you to get the damn thing turned around in five hours. 2) The chances are good that I'm not going to make my self-imposed Sunday-right-before-midnight deadline. These last two segments need the vernix scraped off in the worst kind of way--they're not bathed and pretty-smelling and swaddled in a receiving blanket yet; they're straight from the matrix--and Sunday evening is family time. And that's sacrosanct. It's not impossible that I'll meet my deadline. But I'm more likely to get them posted Monday. Maybe Monday at 2 AM. Maybe Monday at 10 PM. But not later than Monday. I feel kinda weird. Talk about your long, strange trip. I'm not sure I'm ready to say goodbye to Crosscurrents. As I've more and more lately been willing to admit, CC is essentially autobiographical. In spite of the bi-jockboys-fall-in-love cliche. In spite of the people who say "No way bi guys ever get with all those straight guys like that." Look, how the hell was I to know I was a walking stereotype? I prefer to think of myself as exemplifying an archetype. But, you know, I don't care if you think my story is autobiographical, or if you think in real life I'm an obese woman living in a double-wide with two ducks. The story's the thing, and anyway, I've been pretty reticent about passing this thing off as anything but fiction until the last couple of years. But I digress. What I was gonna say is that Crosscurrents has been a part of my life since 2003. And now I'm bidding it farewell. I'm ambivalent about that. I'm not sure I like it. Still, 2013 is apparently my Year To Say Goodbye on a number of fronts. It sucks...but this goodbye, at least, doesn't suck so bad. I accomplished the goal I'd set of telling the story of my best friend and of my adolescent confusion. And that is immensely satisfying. I've made so many e-friends and acquaintances along the way. And, maybe more importantly, I've heard from so many people for whom Crosscurrents resonated deeply with their own experience. Over and over again, readers told me how deeply they've been touched by what I've written. What could possibly be more gratifying for a writer? Some of you know that I write for a living these days. One of several income streams. And I want to say that there's nothing in my career-writing that can remotely compare. That's just food on the table, a roof over my head. With Crosscurrents, I'm not even thinking about profit. It's one guy's heart touching other hearts. And apparently I've done that. Over and over and over again. Thanks for walking with me on the road, Faithful Readers. And if you're willing to keep walking, I think I have some new places for us to explore. I'm far from done.

I thought I had something to add, but I don't. Not really.

I would hesitate to make any inferences about Whole Foods from this poorly-written rant. It was childish and uninteresting. My little brother works at Whole Foods these days, and he has an entirely different story to tell. A story of geniune supervisor investment in the well-being of employees, a story of a store that rewards good workers and demonstrates loyalty to them, a story of a store that tries to live up to the corporate values that this clearly-butthurt former employee so viciously derides. Anecdotal evidence can't tell you anything. Gonna believe this juvenile malcontent or my brother? I think the truth might not lie with either of those two testimonies. But what intrigues me most is the willingness or unwillingness of various readers to take at face value everything this ex-employee says. I think we can learn a lot more about the people responding than about Whole Foods from this original letter and the responses all over the Internet.

By 12:01 am Monday morning, Crosscurrents will have its final two segments posted. And as for what I will or won't do with Andy and Matt...that's not entirely up to me. ;-)