Former Member

The conversation between Stephan and his father sounded very realistic. You captured it well. I really enjoyed the awkward exchange when Stephan's dad asked him about "that young man." Though the boys are going through their own person trials, they seem to be bonding once more. Well done BDANR!

In the paragraph after Jacob talks about losing his mother and Janet, you typed ‘Janet’ when you meant Liz. ;-) As soon as you said that Jacob was ‘fluid,’ I knew just what was going to happen next… ;-)

Which is why I do not Tweet. ;-)

I'm with moggy, the ending is sad. But I give props to you dear author for writing your ending your way. Great story!

Thank you for including the Trevor Project and It Gets Better Project information and links! ;-) When Joey wrote his own obituary, he forgot to include a few people who we already know care about him: Ticker, Star, even the administrator at school who wants him to be Valedictorian, his social worker, and maybe Allen too! When you’re depressed, you forget or minimize all the good things and notice only on the bad things that are happening. It sounds like they need to back off on the psych meds they’re giving Joey, but they want to make sure he doesn’t make another attempt – his uncooperativeness makes them much more wary of his intentions.

Marcus is really an awesome guy.

Yeah. Happened a few times that I had to delete it, and post again with the corrections...

Chrome's ad blockers usually have the option to "white list" individual sites. If not, then you can always get a new one from chrome's store.

I think the topic about the fantasy and sci-fi story "rules" is still online, I've replied. If it's a link to another site... Then I don't know if it's broken...or still working. And yes there were dead links... But that's just the interwebs.... Some pages/sites/content just come and go.

People do see me as quiet and my upbringing as an assimilated suburban kid means I was taught to be polite to everyone (my job in retail only reinforced that). When I was homeless, I was suddenly living with a bunch of very urban African-Americans who did everything larger and louder. I found out it’s part of a continuum where the calling out in the middle of church, very loud music blaring from cars, and shouting at each other was all just part of the same phenomenon. To them, by contrast, I was almost silent. I wasn’t trying shout down everyone else. I wasn’t trying to be the first in line to get free stuff (or trying to sneak back to get more free stuff). They really had a difficult time trying to understand me. At least it only took a few refusals for the few who were relying on (weird) stereotypes to realize I wasn’t going to fix their cell phones for them. Apparently, some thought that knowing how to reset buggy cell phone software is genetic. They all had much fancier smart phones than the really basic pay-per-minute dumb phone that I had at the time.

I think I would have loved to be there selecting the clothes and logo placement. I designed a couple t-shirts when I was volunteering for the AIDS Project in the very late ‘80s. They were all hand-drawn (with rub-off lettering) since I only had a dot-matrix printer and an Apple IIe at the time. One featured a stylized drawing of the Bay Area with all the cities in the county listed – I had people put a stick-on dot next to their city when we marched in the SF Pride Parade that year! For another year, they told me they were going to use v-neck soccer-style shirts, so I modified the logo and lettering to resemble the outline fonts used for college teams – and then they used a regular t-shirt instead. But I had lots of fun coming up with the ideas! I think I should buy a couple of those print-your-own-design iron-on kits since I have more experience and a much better computer & printer setup these days! I’d have to buy an iron or borrow one from a neighbor. (I hate ironing and would rather wear wrinkled clothes – I had to do ironing when I was temporary Visual Merchandise Coordinator [ie Display Person] and hated it! ;-)

Kids don’t always hear things the way that we do. It can be entertaining to hear how they’ve interpreted what they think they’ve heard. It’s amazing how our brains can decipher meaning from the sounds we send each other! ;-) And “Hawaiian patois” is called Pidgin. It’s mostly a basic version of English with some non-English words and somewhat simpler pronunciation and sentence structure. It’s the result of throwing a bunch of people together who spoke mutually unintelligible languages (Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Hawaiian, Spanish, etc) on plantations run by Americans. Unlike what TV and movies show, Hawaiians do not drop Hawaiian words in every few sentences. Schools teach standard English and, historically, the Hawaiian language was suppressed – exactly the way Native American languages were suppressed.

When I read the first two lines, I wasn’t thinking clearly. My brain tricked me into thinking I was reading @Mikiesboy’s Changes! (Probably because I’d just read his comment about the next chapter.) Boy would that be a shock to Miriam! ;-)

I can identify with Geoff. Some people see me as passive – especially if they only see me as a stereotype. But my problem is more not being able to express my feelings. And there are certain issues (like being Gay) where I can and will stand up for myself – and even get in people’s face about it. But when someone tries to control me, I get very passive-aggressive. I made life very miserable for many managers over the years. A few realized that they could successfully guide me subtly or by treating me more as an equal. The worst would attempt to tell me how to do my job when I had significantly more experience than they did. Disability relieves potential managers from having to deal with this nightmare employee! ;-)

If you think that’s a long time, you should read Parker Owens's A to Z! Sixty-seven chapters and I think we found out somewhere around ⅔ or ¾ of the way through the story. There was never a revelation within the story, but we readers eventually figured it out and it then was obvious why the title had been chosen.

I hadn’t really thought about it much, but now I know why this story has its title! I guess I’m kind of slow. Oh well, what else is new? ;-) Most Catholics in the US are cafeteria Catholics. A larger percentage of US Catholics have supported Same-Sex Marriage than most other major denominations. And unlike Jack’s family, most support Choice. ;-)

Fight it? No... I think that's a strong word, but no.... I wasn't really happy about it... The first experience was just before getting together with my boyfriend. Nothing special about it... I just observed the others around and noted to myself that a few of the boys are also way too...umm. cute. I didn't even think about what that means you know... It popped out of my head and it felt "okay". Then I've found myself in my private time thinking about some of the boys. Yeah. After that I thought it's probably some mental illness. Well as I defined it at the time "crazy" lol I wasn't sure if it's really normal or that it means I'm some sort of side product. I believe the worst thing about my sexual orientation was, and still is there's nobody to talk about it. Literally nobody except this place. At the time I thought about asking my parents, but that was never a good idea, no matter the topic, I was too shy to ask my grandparents or anyone else for that matter, so I shut it all inside, and lived on in uncertainty for long. Too long. Well until I saw my boyfriend. That day changed everything. No not immediately, but as I've managed to get closer to him, I was getting closer to losing my troubles. There was no debates in my head, I just did what I do to this day....Throw away the useless complications and get straight to the point without the shtload of headaches and heartbreaks. So...I like to think I was okay with the fact that I'm some sort of side product of the "normal" even though... nevermind. Yes, that's right. To this day I've never actually settled it inside my head, because there is nothing to settle, it's just plain ol' me, end of story.

I agree. Kay seems a little oblivious. Maybe kind of naïve too. And adorable. ;-)

The problem is that while there are people who genuinely care, there just isn’t enough money to fund the services needed to help someone like Joey – especially when they call in the middle of the night. You’d have to have a pretty big program to justify funding someone to answer the phone at all hours. Or some very dedicated volunteers. ;-) I know that when I stayed at shelters, they always had two people monitoring us overnight (too easy for a single person to fall asleep?). But if someone called for assistance, staff wouldn’t have been able to leave the shelter – besides they were always at capacity and couldn’t really take an emergency placement in any case. There aren’t enough beds for all the homeless people who want them (there are some who are afraid to stay in a shelter, some who don’t want to leave their pets behind to stay indoors, some who don’t like the inevitable rules involved with staying in a shelter, and some who need more assistance than shelters are designed for – shelter staff already struggles to deal with the serious mental health and addiction-related problems that they aren’t trained for). It all goes back to a lack of money…

Oops! You’re right! The Fairmont has that atrocious restaurant, the Tonga Room, with its very fake Polynesian theme and mediocre Chinese food. A coworker insisted that we all had to accompany her and her Marine fiancé – she knew two of us in the group didn’t like each other and yet we all had to eat together uncomfortably just so she could have her romantic fantasy. I’ve been trying to block it from my memory ever since! ;-)

Ah the joys of working with the public during the holidays! I spent most of my life in retail. In most of those jobs I was scheduled to work early on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving in the US), christmas eve until closing, early on the day after christmas (returns and massive sales to get rid of whatever didn’t sell earlier – we don’t have Boxing Day), and on New Year’s Day. Whenever it was busy, they’d make sure to schedule me! ;-) Before christmas, everyone is mad because we don’t have what they want to buy and clearly it’s the fault of the Sales Associate standing in front of them rather than waiting too long to shop. They’re also mad because they couldn’t find parking and had to wait in a long line to make their purchases – obviously the fault of the Sales Associate again! And after christmas, everybody trying to return gifts has no receipt, but thinks they should get credit for full price – or they’re mad because we won’t accept a return on something we never sold. ;-) The computer store wasn’t bad since most people don’t buy a lot of holiday gifts there, computers were too expensive for most people, but we did sell lots of games and accessories. Customers were generally calmer. And there were fewer returns too. ;-) It’s so nice not to be working in retail anymore. But there are plenty of problems with being on Disability too. At least I can stay up late reading instead of worrying about having to go to work in the morning… ;-)

I don’t know that I could ever get used to Davey’s lifestyle. But I wouldn’t mind a trial run with a gentle and considerate (but not hairy) guy similar to Davey! Whoever he might be would need to be extraordinarily tolerant and patient – I can be pretty high maintenance about some things too! ;-) And I love Cal’s sardonic descriptions of things! ;-)

There’s a Pet Shop Boys song about how British people have dreams where they are having tea with the Queen. It’s such a weird concept for those if us from the US. It must have been in the CD liner notes about the song otherwise I’d never have known what they were referring to (I read the explanation long before the internet became the source of all answers). ;-)

Oops! Wrong chapter…

I love how in just six months, Cal has gone from having no one care to all these people wanting to celebrate his birthday with cards and gifts! ;-)