Cane23

My favorite GA tandem, bravo guys! 👏

Ah, I see - like in Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, Dennis’ fears are multidimensional. He’s afraid of being authentic, loving freely, being loved in return, and growing emotionally. His fear of flying is just the external manifestation of these internal struggles.

Hint - Cane shares a name with a character from one of @Laura S. Fox's stories. 😉

This chapter happens in October of junior year (ch. 34) - exactly one year before Lyn moved in with Brad, and Alexander started ghosting him (ch. 46/48), which we now understand the reason for. At that time, Lyn's mother was still alive. * Ah, I see now… you mean something like this would be completely out of the question after the deal he made with his family! 👍

Well… should I turn this into a quiz, or stop torturing you? 😁 BTW, for the curious: C is pronounced ‘tz’ - like in tzar, not ‘kay’. 😉

Oh, I know this story - I absolutely love it! So great to see you here @Boy Mercury X!

There’s a sequel set in Florida, but I’ll save that one for summer - a special gift for the @kbois 😄

Just wanted to share a classic Balkan joke we’ve had for years - a diary of an immigrant trying to survive life in Canada 😄 All in good fun - no hard feelings. A Bosnian in Canada – FULL VERSION August 12 We moved into our new house in Canada. I’m so excited. It’s so beautiful here. The mountains are breathtaking. I can’t wait to see them covered in snow. October 14 Canada. It’s the most beautiful country in the world. The leaves have turned all those wonderful shades of yellow and orange. I drove through nature and saw a couple of deer. They are so graceful. The most beautiful animals in the world. This must be paradise. I love Canada. November 11 Remembrance Day (Canadian national holiday). Deer hunting season will start soon. I can’t imagine how anyone could kill such a beautiful animal. I hope it snows soon. It’s so lovely. December 2 It snowed for the first time last night. I woke up and saw everything covered in a white blanket. It looks like the most beautiful postcard. We went outside, cleaned the steps and the driveway, and then had a snowball fight (I won). When the snowplow passed, we had to clean the entrance again. What a wonderful country. I love Canada. December 12 It snowed again last night. The snowplow came again and buried the entrance. It’s beautiful here. December 19 It snowed again last night. I couldn’t take the car to work. It really is wonderful here, I’m just a bit tired of shoveling. That fuc*ing snowplow again. December 22 This white s*it kept falling all night again. I got blisters from shoveling and my back hurts. That monkey in the snowplow seems to hide around the corner and waits for me to clean the entrance before dumping everything back. A***ole. December 25 Merry fing sty Christmas. More fing snow. If I ever get my hands on the guy driving the snowplow, I’ll kill him. F their mothers for not spreading more salt on the roads so this stuff would melt faster. December 27 Snow again last night. I haven’t left the house for three days except to shovel every time the snowplow passes. I can’t go anywhere, the car is stuck on the hill, snow in front of the entrance, and it’s freezing. They say another 30 cm of this sh*t will fall tonight. December 28 The forecast was wrong. Half a meter fell. If this keeps up, it won’t melt until summer. The snowplow got stuck and that aole came to my place asking for a shovel. I told him I already broke six shovels clearing the s he dumped in front of my gate, and I almost broke one over his head. January 4 Finally got out of the house. Went to the store to buy some food and on the way back hit a deer with the car. $3000 damage. Those f***ing beasts should all be killed. They’re everywhere. Why didn’t the hunters kill them all in the fall… May 3 Took the car to the mechanic. Unbelievable how rusted it is from the f***ing salt they spread everywhere. May 10 I’m moving to Florida. I can’t imagine how any normal person can live in this f***ing Canada.

He gave him a home when his mother died. Things are not always black and white. Brad has many flaws, but he is not guilty of failing to be who Lyn thought he was.

Mine died at 57 from the same cause. I’m not really a gym person - swimming is my poison. By the way, what about diet - do you follow any strict rules when it comes to food?

An amazing, eye-opening speech! A tough leader for a tough time - you’ve chosen well, dear Canadians.

Why are we all frustrated by Lyn in this chapter...well, following the tradition of our friend @Seraph28, let's rename the title of this chapter, at list the first part...this chapter is Lyn in the Wonderland. Until Brad’s message, Lyn is not moving through a coherent narrative space, he’s falling. The key is that logic still exists, but it no longer helps. Lyn can analyze, label, rationalize - and none of it produces orientation. That’s Wonderland - sense without direction. For the first time in the novel, Lyn’s usual mask does not function - competence fails (he makes mistakes), charm misfires (El sees through him), sexual confidence evaporates and emotional aloofness is read as heartbreak. What’s unsettling is not that the mask falls, but that there is nothing underneath yet - no new identity has formed, no clarity rushes in. Only fog. Of course, for all of us, that’s deeply uncomfortable to read because we want progress, insight...catharsis. The chapter refuses all three. Our irritation mirrors Lyn’s own internal deadlock. We want him to call Alexander, confront Brad...do something. But Lyn cannot act yet because action would imply knowing what he wants, and that is precisely what he has avoided for decades. So, the chapter forces us to sit in stalled meaning, emotional static and unresolved tension. That is honest psychology, growth does not begin with clarity - it begins with loss of orientation. This chapter is not about Lyn finding himself - it is about Lyn discovering that the tools he used to survive are now useless. Just to mention the brain turmoil about Alexander - Lyn’s spiral into repayment logic is tragic and revealing because money, house, future...they are all repayable. But then “What about the five years of loveless marriage imposed on Alexander?” This is where Lyn’s entire value system breaks. He only knows how to settle accounts. Love, sacrifice, waiting - these have no equivalent currency in his worldview. The question “What did he have of equal value?” is existential, and the answer terrifies him. Finally...Brad. For thousandth time, Brad is not the villain of the story, but he is the ignition. The first rupture, the insult in college - impulsive, cruel, identity-shaping. The second rupture, the wedding invitation - reckless, avoidant, destabilizing. Both moments share the same flaw - Brad acts without taking responsibility for consequence. So, the closure must come from the one who set the misalignment in motion, it's universally fair because it satisfies a deep moral logic - the hand that disrupts must be the hand that reaches back. Brad has never been this honest before. In his message he admits desire without demanding reciprocation, admits jealousy without blaming others, names cowardice without dressing it up as protection. Finally, he apologizes for the insult to Lyn’s mother - explicitly, without dilution. This is not confession for forgiveness; this is confession for truth’s sake. Brad’s use of the word misaligned is quietly brilliant because it shows growth (he learned the word) and humility (he admits he didn’t belong on that page). Most importantly, he doesn’t say - you chose Alexander over me... He says - you and Alexander were already aligned. That reframes the entire triangle without self-pity. Brad’s final act is not to reclaim Lyn - it is to stop distorting the geometry. Brad keeping glasses - this is the first time we see Brad loving quietly, without charm, without spectacle, without trying to be liked. Keeping the glasses is Brad’s way of saying - you were real to me. You were here. For a character often accused (rightly) of superficiality, this is profound. Giving glasses back - Brad gives Lyn possibility to start seeing! Not seeing clearly - seeing at all. For years, Lyn has had sharp intellect, strategic vision, emotional blindness. The glasses symbolize the permission to look again - at the past, at Brad, at Alexander, at himself...knowing the lens is damaged. Seeing through broken glass distorts, but it also reveals cracks you couldn’t see before.

Why do I have this feeling the next chapter is going to be the Table of Contents?! 😆

Brad is jealous, afraid of losing his anchor, and, most of all, afraid of being left alone. He is deeply inept at communication (as, in truth, all of them are), and he lacks the intellectual and emotional capacity for sustained self-reflection. So, when he is cornered, he lashes out, fighting with low blows - through cruelty. It’s astonishing how much they know about each other, and yet how little they truly understand one another. In Chapter 45, when Lyn confronts Brad, Brad dismisses the moment that broke them by saying, “But you had to make it into this big thing.” That line reveals his fundamental inability to grasp how immense that moment really was. For Lyn, it was not “a big thing” but a wound so deep it shattered the personality he had been presenting to the world. It was a total collapse. No wonder he needed separation - to regroup, gather the fragments, and assemble a self that could survive. That self was built on distortions and untruths, but it still kept him alive. At the same time, Lyn never truly knew Brad either (nor Alexander). Lyn insists on perfection. He places Brad on a pedestal he never belonged on, confusing idealization with love. And perhaps, on some subconscious level, Brad tried to destroy that illusion through cruelty - to say, “I am not the perfect person you imagine.” Why the desperate need to break it? Because only by shattering the ideal could he be seen as human. A human can be touched. Perfection, by contrast, is placed on a shelf - observed, admired, but never touched. And poor Lyn, faithful to the vow he made to himself when he learned who his father was, built walls around his heart. He arranged his friends like exhibits - close enough to see, but never to touch. Because if he never acts on his feelings, he believes he can never be hurt.

Back in Chapter 44, when Brad comes with his father to take Lyn to live with them, he witnesses the chauffeur rudely handing Lyn a check. “Lyn was still speechless but followed Brad up the stairs. His friend continued chatting happily as if he hadn’t just witnessed his best friend being treated like the son of a whore that he was.” At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I assumed Brad hadn’t heard everything or hadn’t fully connected the dots. But looking back now, it feels different. His mask was good - good enough to blind not only Lyn, but us as readers. And then, at the most vulnerable moment, that buried awareness surfaces - not as clumsy thoughtlessness, but as a dagger aimed straight at Lyn’s heart.

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf” - Aesop’s Fable that says: “Nobody believes a liar, even when he tells the truth.” The difference here is that Jake was never a liar-maybe a bit overdramatic, yes. But when it really mattered, when he wanted to be braver, he didn’t tell Vince and Theodor about the ghosts. So the blame isn’t only his. He may be the smallest, but he isn’t the weakest link, and they should have listened to him more.

What we see now is that Lyn’s belief that “Brad rejected me because I’m gay” is a protective fiction. It is not the deepest wound; it is the bearable one. The “gay rejection” narrative is safer because being rejected for being gay is painful but impersonal, explainable within social norms and something Lyn can intellectualize, survive, and even morally transcend. It allows him to think that this wasn’t about him specifically - it was about limits, fear, society. That story preserves Brad as flawed but not monstrous, Lyn’s mother as untouched and Lyn’s own love as misplaced, not contaminated. The real wound is unspeakable - Brad’s insult does three unbearable things at once: it weaponizes Lyn’s family trauma, frames Lyn’s love as inherited moral rot and implies that intimacy with Lyn is transactional and shameful! That is not something Lyn can safely examine without risking rage, collapse and destruction of his self-image as “better than where I came from.” So, his psyche does something very clever and very sad - it re-labels the trauma as sexual rejection. Not because it’s accurate, but because it’s survivable. People do not omit minor injuries - they omit unspeakable ones. I think, we can speak about betrayal here... Rejection wounds the self; betrayal wounds the world. Being unwanted wounds the heart but discovering that love can be used to harm you threatens your entire understanding of human connection. That is what nearly destroys Lyn. Finally, Lyn doesn’t avoid love because he’s afraid of being unwanted - he avoids love because he learned 'closeness can turn me into prey.' Interesting thing...Brad did try to apologize - in his own mind. But what he wanted absolved was his temper, his drunkenness, his confusion... Not his cruelty. And because he never confronted that, he never earned forgiveness. Going back to chapter 45, we can read Brad's core maneuver - from perpetrator to abandoned child. Brad’s emotional position in this confrontation is not I hurt you, I crossed a line, I owe you something... Instead, it is You left me, You punished me, You denied me closure... That’s why his language is so telling “You ghosted me first”, “You wouldn’t even let me apologize”, “I decided it was okay not to give a damn”. This is injured entitlement, not accountability. Brad is narrating himself as a child who lashed out...immediately felt bad...tried to fix it...and was cruelly ignored. That story allows him to feel pain without guilt. Brad says he called “a thousand times.”, but notice what he never says, not once - what he was apologizing for, which words he regrets and what he understands now about the damage done! “I tried to apologize” functions here as a moral coupon - I attempted remorse; therefore, I am absolved, but remorse without specificity is not repentance - it’s self-soothing. Finally, Brad frames Lyn throwing the phone away as an offense against Brad, not as a trauma response -that alone tells us he still does not grasp the depth of what he did. What's an irony...Brad is half-right - and still wrong. He did experience shame from his parents, isolation, rejection, weeks of distress. That pain is real, but it does not cancel out the insult, even the physical violence. Brad’s mistake, then and now, is believing that suffering equals innocence. Well, it doesn’t! Suffering can coexist with having done harm and Brad cannot hold both truths at once. Finally, what can we say about a fatal chapter 56, the tragedy in it is not the fight - the tragedy is that each of them leaves the room believing a different lie, and all three lies are mutually reinforcing. That’s why eight years are possible - Lyn leaves believing both men betrayed him, Brad stays believing Lyn chose Alexander, Alexander remains believing truth spoken too late is worse than silence. No one has the full picture, no one is lying now, and no one can approach the others without reopening unbearable shame. This is not a misunderstanding that could be cleared up by a conversation, it required maturity, separate suffering, and the slow erosion of self-protective myths. Which is exactly what the novel has been doing.

Besides not taking the COVID pandemic seriously, these two really do seem made for each other - so much personal baggage, especially for two adults still lying about the most basic things. Costa Rica is going to be an adventure. 😁

Before I go any further… I need a moment. I can’t believe what Brad just said!!!!

Hm, Cane likes the bad boys! By the way, if I may ask, whose alter ego is Altair? Asking for a friend...

You really took “bittersweet” literally 😄 It’s a funny story, though I know how tough it is to give up your favorite food because of health issues.

Yay... the ginger Cane! You’ve got all my recommendations guys!

Yeah, we’re all like Alexander - “I needed to see how it would end.” 🙂

This story follows one single month in Joel’s life - but what a month it is. A life-changing turning point, it pushes him in a direction he never expected. Forced to confront a truth he has long hidden from himself, Joel must learn not only who he really is, but how to share that truth with people who may or may not, accept him. Standing on the threshold of adulthood, Joel is old enough to make his own choices, yet still young enough to need support. As he navigates a new school, new friends, and a first love, he begins to discover what real family truly means. Is Joel a traitor for refusing to play for a rival school - or is he the one betrayed by those who were supposed to stand by him? Where does he belong, and who is he meant to be? @Krista's magnificent story is an emotional and thought-provoking journey of identity, loyalty, and self-discovery. Read on to find out whether Joel finally finds himself.

Haha, I don’t think he’s going to run again. The poor guy just needs some time alone, even if it’s in an airport terminal...to digest everything. It was a lot to take in - he’s just realized he’s been building and believing in an alternative truth for at least a decade. 🙈