John Henry

This was a fun scene to write, especially for Billy. I usually don't like what I write, but I did like the exchanges Billy had.

You'll just have to keep reading to find your good news....

Bryan kinda got himself into some of his own mess by hiding things from Diego and Kenny, but yeah, his life in that moment was pretty rough.

Yes, the things Diego heard from other people about Calvin would be hearsay, unless Charlie can find some of those people and get them to testify. But, more important, it gives Charlie a place to start and a look at Calvin's character, which can also be used to exploit his weaknesses. Then there are the things Diego mentioned that he can testify to. Family Court isn't as prohibitive when it comes to evidence as Criminal Court, so more evidence can be admitted, including hearsay within reason. Character assassination is still something lawyers try to avoid, since it leaves their clients open for such attacks, but in cases like these, it's pretty much all character assassination.

CPS is a State subagency usually part of a large Department of Health and Human Services. Their job here is to verify reports of child abuse and neglect. If a suspected family is part of the welfare programs and gets subsidized housing, then the Housing and Urban Development department, which is Federal is supposed to get involved (under Trump, they were massively defunded and Biden hasn't really fixed it). If the family isn't on welfare and is renting, CPS would leave it to the parents to file a complaint with the landlord and only hold the parents to task and accountability for things not getting fixed. If the parents are the home owners, CPS would harass them until everything was fix. In the end, if CPS doesn't get their way after a few "reminders"/threats, they'd put the kids in foster care until the issues have been handled or the kids turned 18. CPS usually targets low income families who can't afford lawyers to battle them, since those families are often on welfare with open files CPS can access whenever they want.

Backroom dealing is what District Attorneys in the US do all the time, so it isn't unusual, and unless Billy can prove the deal was shady, there's nothing that can be done about it. Thus far, Billy only has hearsay evidence at best, which isn't enough to get the case looked at again. Since the custody hearings are in Family Court, the District Attorney isn't likely to get involved. It's considered a civil matter that the State is not a party to, and will handled by Billy and Calvin's lawyer with a Family Court judge overseeing the whole case. There also isn't much need or use to bring up Amanda lying to the police unless it can discredit her character, which is rarely done, since it opens the other side to character assassination, as well. As for CPS, I don't know how it works in other countries outside of the US. Here, they're either neglectful to the point of letting children die or be murdered, or are so over zealous that they'll tear a family apart for little to no reason than to justify their existence. In this case, they're merely harassing Kenny's mom to justify their pay check. CPS will find the most trivial items to complain about and blow them out of proportion to scare people into compliance. It's pure power tripping. It can take a good year to get them off your back, and since they work for the government, there isn't much that can be done to stop them. As for as CPS getting an apartment in disrepair fix, they don't do that here. It's their job to point out the problems, but it isn't their job to fix them. As I mentioned in another comment, I'll be going into which anecdote was "fake" when I to the blog entry for this chapter; just know that all them are real, but that one was not done by the real Calvin, unlike all the others.

Sociopaths have no conscience, thus they don't care what harm they cause others, and Calvin (real and fictional) is no exception. As for Calvin's motives in the scene, we'll just have to wait and see....

The real Calvin is much, much worse. Only one of those anecdotes about Calvin isn't real, and came from a different person entirely. I'll go into more detail and specifics in the blog post for this chapter, but yeah, you're getting the tame version.

The next few weeks seemed to return to normal. In fact, for the kids, it was as if Calvin had never come back to Washington. Caleb was struggling a little bit with his classwork, so Steve started tutoring him after school. Things for Bryan and Kenny were rather pleasant. They were no longer being escorted between classes, and Kenny was finding it easier to show affection for his boyfriend in public, going so far as to hold Bryan's hand occasionally. Steve started his new job at the high sch

Thanks. This is still in the slow part of the story, as you know, so I'm hoping to do less rambling in the future posts.

So, here we are in Chapter 8. It's another transitional scene that I wanted to show more of the bonds that hold the Padilla family together. Of course we start with the aftermath of Bryan and Kenny's conflict. Bryan is showing a rare moment of vulnerability, where his attachment issues get triggered. I find that it's key to keep bringing this up, because everyone's motivations and activities are dictated by how they handle trauma. Bryan doesn't grow close to most people because of the fear they'll leave him. For a lot of people in his situation, when moments of abandonment come about, they'll dig in deeper, closing more people out, even going as far as to end current friendships/relationships so there isn't that opportunity to get hurt again. A good, common phrase I've heard from these people is, "I'd rather hurt them first before they hurt me." Fortunately, Bryan isn't at that point yet or he has done work to get passed that (I honestly haven't decided at this point). Yes, Bryan pushes people away, which makes forming those bonds harder, but he is at least still open to making them and strengthening those bonds when he's ready. Luckily, Bryan has his dad and brother to fall back on. The two bonds he's had the longest and most consistent. Diego holding his son is what I would expect any normal parent to do. He doesn't care that Bryan is almost an adult. His son is obviously in pain and his instinct is to comfort him. I can say this now that real Calvin would've told him to get over it, since he feels actually feels that comforting your child is harmful to them because "real men" are "tough," despite his own admittance to not being a "real man." 🙄😑 (Thank the platform for emojis.) Anyway, this is also another situation that shows the bond between Bryan and Caleb. Just as Bryan helped Caleb after the bed wetting scene, Caleb it looking after his big brother. They have a bond that every parent should try to foster among their children, to be honest. The real life Bryan and Caleb have a similar bond for the moment, though I haven't seen them in almost year. Like their real life counterparts, Bryan and Caleb have only ever had each other, and they instinctively keep that bond strong. In the backstories that introduce Steve, I largely avoided place names. I'm horrible at coming up with them and often have to use random name generators. Since I live in the United States, however, I decided to use names of the Presidents and the US Founding Fathers. It's common that states, counties, cities and streets are named after them anyway, so it's not out of the ordinary here, though the amount to which I use them kind of is, but what can you do? (That's rhetorical, btw.) In that trilogy, Billy, Charlie, Ry and their dad, Rick, stop off at the same diner Diego, Steve and the boys stop at, though many years later. They're served by the same waitress, and Bryan and Diego's banter about coffee is the same Rick and Billy had. The waitress even makes the same remark to Bryan that she said to Billy. I thought it was a nice call back. The town of Hamilton is also home to a women's prison, which Billy and Charlie's mother served time in. I never bothered describing Hamilton in the other story, aside from it having a prison and a hotel. Even in that story, I never based any of these locations on a specific state, though Washington is somewhere in the American Great Planes near the Rockies but within driving distance of Nebraska. In my mind's eye, I assumed it was at the foot of the Rockies in or near Colorado near the Nebraska border, and Washington is supposed to be the side of Portland, Oregon, with Franklin being about the size of Springfield, Oregon (the real life inspiration for home town of the Simpsons). The value of Google Maps and Wikipedia, am I right? When Caleb asked when Steve and Diego were going to get married, I think I was channeling the readers or at least giving them voice. I've presented them as a good couple who love and support each other, though I hadn't really gone too far into their relationship at that point. As I've discussed before, Caleb doesn't have the hang ups Bryan does, because he doesn't remember Calvin. Diego is the only father he's ever known, and despite all of Diego's exes, Caleb likes Steve the most. It just seemed natural that Caleb would want Steve as a stepdad and wants his own father to be with someone who makes him happy. I also wanted to give more context to the relationship between Steve and Diego. This was a difficult scene to write, because I wanted to show restraint with the adults and compassion towards the boys. I can't even imagine how I would've handled that situation in real life, but I would hope I had presence of mind to react the way Diego and Steve did. This situation with the innkeeper is something I probably would've handled differently. I don't care for bigots and have a hard time keeping to myself, but thankfully, Steve isn't me. I do think we need to be more open about ourselves in public to help normalize queer culture, so long as it isn't offensive or dangerous to do so. Making out with your boyfriend at an armed neo-Nazi rally might not be the smartest idea, unless you out gun them. the infamous phrases like "How bad can it be?" are great for foreshadowing. They're cliches for a reason, and anyone who has dared use them in real life already knows that irony and bad luck can go hand-in-hand. By this point, everyone was guessing what was coming, anyway. Cliffhangers and foreshadowing are great ways to keep people coming back. It's a good tool for those who run table top roleplaying games, like Dungeons and Dragons, and it works in literature, as well. TV shows (soap operas in particular) and movies use this to bring audiences back for the next installment, and even though some people get don't like the anxiety such endings cause, most will tune in for more. Every author should use foreshadowing in very subtle ways. Most foreshadowing is best used in small ways. A quick reference to something that seems insignificant in the moment that will have major impact later on (a snippet of conversation about a petty criminal going to jail in the first chapter or two, who will escape later and take the family hostage) is a good start. It can also be a big tip of the hate with a What else could go wrong? phrase, like I used at the end of this chapter. As long as the characters remain in the dark or ignorant to future events/outcomes, you can give a little taste to the audience to make them want to see what happens. Cliffhangers are best when the scene abruptly ends in moments of heightened tension. The protagonist runs for their life from the killer and only stops when they think they're in the clear, only to have the killer step out of the shadows, and have the story change focus to another character to just ends till the next chapter/installment. An effective cliffhanger puts something of value on the line and makes the audience wait for the result. You can even prolong this tension with chapter that has nothing to do with the hanging tension, but that can piss off your audience. Matt Stone and Trey Parker found that out in the first season of South Park. At the time, South Park was released once a month. In one of the first episodes, they did a two part storyline about who Eric Cartman's father really was. The first episode dealt with all the possible suspects and the cliffhanger was supposed to resolve that story line in the next episode. However, the second part was supposed to be released on April Fools Day, so they decided to prank the audience and pushed the second part to May, airing a different episode entirely. Needless to say, they got a lot of hate mail for it, but those same people tuned in the following month for the story's conclusion. And on that note, I'll see you in the next one....

I'm leaving that for the readers to decide.

I don't know what you mean by a "Homer Special."

Someone's got to do it.

Yeah, Steve believes in the scientific method. #ForScience

Yeah, it took me a minute to thing of how to do deal with that given the guideline restrictions, which is why this chapter took so long and is so short.

Everyone was quiet on the ride home. Caleb fell asleep, while Bryan and Kenny silently held hands. Diego and Steve were a bit lost in their own worlds. The silence was broken when Diego asked if anyone was hungry, but nobody was. The boys had a bunch of the little cakes and snacks, while Steve wasn't in the mood for anything. “Chico, did you have a good time?” Bryan shrugged at first, then said, “I guess.” “Did the twins bully you?” Steve asked. “No. They didn't do anything.”

Comedy it the hardest aspect of writing, since humor is very subjective. What one person finds fun, another will find offensive. It's hard to come up with a prank that most might think is funny (you'll never please everyone) and then take that vision in your head and put to written word, while trying not to explain why it should be funny, which will always ruin it. All other mediums are easier to adapt comedy, because the audience can use their senses and get real time reactions from the person being pranked. In writing, you're having to rely on the audience understanding what you're trying to convey without them misinterpreting anything in the written text. The Coyote and Road Runner works because they're cartoons you can see, but those same jokes may not land in a novelization of those jokes.

How was Diego abusive?

I don't think Bryan needs to have a relationship with Calvin. They do need to have a conversation to settle things and get closure on some issues, but there doesn't need to be a relationship. The real "Calvin" is a sociopath, and I've tried representing his personality in this story, which is why he talks the way he does.

I can't abide by the pun, Good Sir.

Bet it was worth the Google search now instead of waiting, what, six weeks or so?

Yeah, Bryan certainly has issues to deal with.

Glad you found the story here. I lost access to my old email account, so I haven't been able to let those readers know that I have a new email address to contact me at.

So, Chapter 7.... As with most of the chapters I write, I'm never certain where the story is going until it's done. I generally have clues as what each chapter should have in it, but often, turns are taken that I wasn't prepared for, and this chapter wasn't an exception. Up to this point, Bryan hasn't really been interested in Steve as a person. He hasn't been rude to the man, but given Bryan's issues with father figures and relationship issues, I was prepared for this to be another failed attempt by Steve to get Bryan to like him. As mentioned before, Steve is a character from another story I've written (and still working on completing), and I wasn't sure how much of his backstory to add, since Steve didn't have a big part in the other story. By this point, I was settled on making a shared universe out of several short stories and would-be novels I've written for another website. Which stories would be connected and how they'd be integrated were other problems as I tell Steve's story. It's still tricky now, since I want the connection without the reader having to read a bunch of stuff they'd problem not like, since the content is extremely adult, taboo and certainly not suited for this website. I'm also someone who likes inside jokes that most people wouldn't get. Those jokes don't need context, but if you're "in the know," they're that much funnier. Also, as I reading the chapter for this blog post, I noticed that the high school names I'm using changed. I originally wrote Wilson High in this chapter, but in later chapters, I called it Washington. My original idea was to write a series about the high school and slowly incorporate the queer kids from my other stories into one setting. I wanted to name the high school after US President Woodrow Wilson, who was a bigot worse than Trump and Nixon combined. He grew up in the Southern US during a period called Reconstruction, which took place after the Civil War of the 1860s. Reconstruction punished the South for trying to break away from the US threw economic means and reimbursements for the cost of the war. Wilson, whose family owned slaves before the war, still held the racist views of his ancestors prior to becoming US President. He even wrote books and articles glorifying the South's fight to keep slaves and also glorified the then defunct Ku Klux Klan so greatly, it caused the Klan to make a come back during the early 20th Century and they haven't gone away since. When Wilson became President, he segregated Washington, DC, which wasn't desegregated until segregation was made illegal in the 1960s. These are hardly the only horrible things Wilson did while President, either. During WWI, Britain and France initially carved up the Ottoman Empire between the two nations. However, Wilson didn't like this, and drew up his own map, which was essentially the same map that Britain and France came up with. This carving of the Middle East is why the current War in Gaza and every single problem the Middle East has suffered is occurring. I wish that here hyperbole, but it isn't. Had Teddy Roosevelt or Taft became President instead, there's good reason to believe that the Middle East wouldn't have been carved up the way it was. Wilson only wanted to make himself look good. The US polices the world because Woodrow Wilson thought we should. It's called the Wilson Doctrine. He mandated that the US should spread and secure Democracy by any means necessary. Our current economic problems also come from Wilson. He forced through the Federal Reserve Bank, thus privatizing our currency and failing to make sure that monopolies were better regulated. The Great Depression can be attributed to his policies. There's much more to Wilson as well, which I was going to make into a plot of the series that got the school's name changed. I still might do that, but right now, I've changed (and will continue to change) the name from Wilson to Washington whenever I come across it. Anyway.... As we know now, Bryan starts off not wanting to hear anything from Steve, but Steve is unwilling to give up. I wanted this to be a juxtaposition for Bryan's point of view. I think most of Diego's boyfriends didn't really care about the boys and only saw them as accessories or roadblocks to their relationships with Diego. Steve doesn't see them that way. He sees them as a family unit that he wants to be a part of, which means being accepted by all family members. He wants to care about the boys, but only on the level he's allowed. At this point, Bryan is being distant and aloof, and Steve wants to give Bryan an opportunity to change his mind. The line, "I'm actually bisexual," was taken from Heartstopper. If you haven't seen it. You must. The tale of Steve's personal discovery links two stories this Thicker Than Water. The first tells the story of a shy, nerdy and sexually repressed, gay, college student who has the hots for his seemingly straight of a jock dormmate. The jock pretends to be drunk to get the main character to help him into bed. Through some clever word play, the sober jock "drunkenly" confesses that he really likes his roommate. After they kiss, the jock admits he hasn't had anything to drink and it was a set up to get to the point that they were into each other. The part of Steve's background when he's talking about his black friend being bullied discusses a character named Trevor who is introduced in Chapter 26. Also, the boy's hand he held while crossing the street is Billy, Diego's lawyer, who is introduced in Chapter 23 or 24. I can't remember which. The hug between Bryan and Steve wasn't planned. It seemed something that needed to happen in the moment. While I was editing, I considered removing it several times, but the scene didn't feel right without it. So, whenever this happens, go with your gut. If it works, use it. If it doesn't, ditch it. If you're not sure, read it out loud and see how it feels, but always trust your instincts. The exchanged with Kenny, Bryan and Terra about the relationship, I feel, is pretty common, especially among insecure, young teens. The fear of the being outed it massive. I know it's pretty common today, but ask anyone born before 2000, and you'll get some horror stories for sure. It's good that we as a species are moving beyond our prejudices, especially racism, sexism and homophobia, but there's still too much work that needs to be done to make coming out a non-issue, and I wanted to express that through Kenny's feelings of embarrassment, fear and insecurity. Bryan has confidence because his dad is confident about who he is. Kenny doesn't have that, and I think a lot of younger people might not realize how hard coming out is. Just my opinion and take on the situation. And lastly, the events that lead up to Donna's funeral. The real life inspiration for Donna, to the best of my knowledge, is still alive and active in her addictions, which have cost her at least four children with two different men. I fictionalized her death for a couple of reasons. 1) I don't like her in the slightest in real life, so if she did die, I wouldn't be surprised and honestly, her children are better off without her. And 2) I didn't want the story to focus on her anymore than it had to. The story is about Diego and the boys remaining a family despite Calvin. I felt adding another antagonist was too much of a burden to the over all plot. This bit also give us more insight into who Calvin is as a person, mostly coming from the real Calvin. So, next is Chapter 7. Hopefully, it won't take that long to be released as this post did. My life is getting back on track, so hopefully, there will be fewer delays. Until next time....