methodwriter85

Well, the Eagles are dead and gone for '12, but it's nice to know that my secondary team the Ravens still got a chance.

And that is exactly what I'm trying to say here, but somehow failed to convey. Would I like it if this story depicted teen sex lives as awkward and sloppy as they can actually be? Yes, I actually would. And I know that Mark is capable of doing that, because anyone who's read Mark's semi-autobiographical story On the Mark would know that he can write that. But the simple truth is, he doesn't want to write CAP like that. CAP is and has been, from day one, a well-written gay erotic story with soap opera plotlines, not a realistic coming of age story about young gay guys fumbling with the awkwardness of coming out. If you want that, go read DomLuka, because this is not the place for that.

Because Will looks like a green-eyed version of this?

And that won't happen either, because again, this is a gay erotic wish fufillment fantasy. We're supposed to live vicariously through Will's sexual exploits, like we were supposed to live through JP's sexual exploits or Matt Carrsworld's sexual exploits.There is no such thing as unrequited lust in CAP-world. I'm sure if Brad would have hit on Jack back in 1980, he would have gone for it, too. I think the only reason that didn't happen was that Brad was afraid that Claire would castrate him if he did.

And you're missing my point- that in CAP world, it's not immoral or wrong to have sex with a minor, like it's not immoral or wrong for a 17-year old guy to have sex with a man in his 50's. Therefore, you're not going to have Will get turned down by someone because of his age, because in CAP World and according to the rules that Mark set up for his characters, it's okay for 14-year olds to have sex with grown men as long as it's consenting. You get the vibe that even Wade, who Mark is setting up as the moral voice for his generation, seems to have suggested that if he didn't see Will as a brother, he'd have sex with him, too. Because again, pesky little things like statutory rape laws don't really apply in CAP world, and the characters simply don't think it's wrong. No one is going to have the moral fiber to say no, because no one thinks that it's immoral to have sex with a minor.

It's not, but the bulk of the over-18 guys he's hooked up with don't actually know his real age, other than Tony, Gathan, and Jeff. And like I said, this is Mark's gay erotic fantasy story. Saying "no" to the hot jailbait because you're afraid of landing your ass on the Megan's Law List isn't really part of the whole "gay erotic fantasy vicarious thrills"aspect of this story. If you wanted a realistic look at sex offender law, . Mark is never going to have Gathan, Tony, or Jeff get jailed for having partaken in statutory rape, because according to the CAP World moral code, there's nothing wrong with having sex with someone's who under the age of 18 as long as they consent to it. That goes all the way back to when 26-year old JP had sex with a 17-year old Jeff and 16-year old Stefan, in the very first CAP story.

No one says no to Will because CAP is first and foremost a gay erotic fantasy written by Mark, and Mark doesn't really want to delve into the reality of a post-Megan's Law world? I think it's also different because Will really does look like he's 17/18, so in some ways that makes it "okay" in the mind of the people that are hooking up with him. It's like Brooke Shields back in Mark's day... , and what made it "okay" was that she looked like a 22-year old woman, not a 15-year old girl.

Here's this adorable Folgers coffee ad about a young girl who's excited that her big brother has come home for Christmas. Just too cute. I wonder if that's what it was like for Adam Phillips and his own baby sister when he'd come home from college. (I don't know what it's like to have a younger sister.)

Happy Christmas, Mark. This song kind of reminds me of you...

And my comment was meant to convey that as I read your post, I realized that Ace and Darius are superficially similiar, but when you get beyond that in terms of their actual personality, Darius and Ace are actually pretty different. And it kind of feels like the bond that Darius and Will are developing is actually more similiar to what Brad has with Jack, because it kind of seemed that the older Ace got, the more apparent it was how shallow a person he is. Ace didn't turn out to be someone that you'd turn to in rougher times, the way that I believe Jack can be for Brad, and for the way that Darius can be for Will.

I think it'd be hard for someone with Darius's life to be completely vapid- he was 3 years old when his mother dumped him and his little newborn brother off on Brad so she could go be a crackhead. His father was never seen, and at 13 he had to re-live all that trauma again when his mother came back to try and take custody of him and JJ. He's also someone of Middle Eastern descent who grew up in a lily-white family and community. I think that adds layers to him aside from being just the fun-loving Mr. Popular Guy. Here's something I'm curious about- does Malibu have a reputation for being racist like Newport Beach and the lily white communites in Orange County do? It's made up of liberal people, apparently, but it's also over 90 percent white, which makes me wonder if Darius growing up had to deal with the same thing I did of having people questioning constantly my race. I doubt there's open racism, but there could be some subtle racism there. This is probably for the Cali culture thread, but I did remember when the O.C. premiered back in 2003, people complained about how there weren't any black characters. And that's when I read that Newport Beach is over 90 percent white, and that they're not exactly considered a bastion of tolerance and diversity. I'd never experienced living in an area like that until I moved to the Pittsburgh area for grad school, in an area that was really white. I actually had a grown person make Korean jokes about me(which I'm not), and I was told once that people were going to play guessing games about what my race is but I spoiled the fun by revealing what it is.

See, I generally agreed with most of what you wrote in that post, but I'm not entirely sure I'd call Darius the new "Ace". He's Ace in a superficial way in terms of being the future frat boy ladies man, but once you get past those layers, Ace and Darius are actually pretty different. Ace wasn't about honor or responsibility. He's someone that's easy to get along with as long as things are okay and fun, but Ace never really came off as someone that you could confide in when things were going rough. Ace was also depicted as being pretty judgemental, stubborn, and temperamental, while Darius really isn't. This might just be more of a consequence of the fact that Mark does try to develop his characters more deeply than he did during the first couple of CAP stories, and the fact that we're not zipping through years anymore we get to know more about a character as they are at a particular age rather than getting quick glimpses of them at 17 and then again at 21. Mark has done a hell of a lot of character development for Will's generation, more than he did with Brad's generation with them as teenagers. So I suppose that's one brightside to the fact that Mark's kept CAP World in 2000 for three long stories. He has created a pretty interesting "new" generation with lots of issues to capitalize on as they grow up and reach into their 20's against the back drop of the Dubya adminstration, which has been called one of the worst presidencies this country has ever had.

I'll leave that up to you.

I'm going to reiterate All-American Guy model Phil Fusco for Tony. He's just that classic good-looking Italian American guy- not a pretty boy, but handsome in a really masculine way. It's just a shame male models are generally discouraged from having chest hair- I bet his would would have looked hot.

Yeah, like I said, on an intellectual level I get it. But I don't understand it emotionally, because I've never been at that place. It's not that I don't feel bad for Tony, but a part of me thinks that he shouldn't be taking that long, and a part of me really takes Tim's viewpoint on this. I get that I shouldn't find Tony's journey annoying, but...I don't know. The classic tortured closet case angst story has been done sooooo many times, and I'm just more interested in Will's journey as the new vanguard of that first generation of gay guys who really could say they were never in a closet, because I relate to that more. I've been out since I was 14, I've only lost a friend or two for being gay, and the general reaction I've gotten from people for being gay is "It's whatever". I'm not saying that Tony's story isn't important and I get why it's there, but I'm just not particularly enamored by yet another tale of the tortured closet case who sleeps with men on the side while maintaining a straight facade to people. That was edgy and groundbreaking on Melrose Place back in 1994; not quite so much anymore. At the same time, I think it's good for Mark to explore such a storyline, as I'm sure there are people who can relate to it.

Happy 44th birthday, Greg! If I were just 15 years older...

Yeah. Even though Tony blames his dad being gay for his death from AIDS, it's 2000 and he should realize by this point that being gay doesn't automatically equal AIDS. Sam's family seemed remarkably progressive for an Italian-Catholic family in the 1960's and 1970's(he still had a relationship with them rather than being cut-off), and the interaction with Tony's mother basically suggests that Tony's mother hasn't raised Tony with a homophobic attitude. St. Louis isn't exactly Mayberry, so it's not like Tony grew up in some narrow-minded small town like Claremont, either. So it's all because of Tony's outdated view of the AIDS epidemic that's causing all this internalized homophobia. I can understand being closeted in a place like an all-boys Catholic school like Tony seemed to go to, but the fact that he's got almost an entire semester of college down where there's no doubt he's met openly gay people and he's still in deep denial is pretty annoying. I wouldn't have patience for that, and I have such a hard time understanding why someone would try so hard to be straight when they're not, to the point where they're hurting people. Well, techically, if JJ continues in this vein, he'll be a lonely never-was, because he'll never win an Olympic medal. There's a trainwreck aspect in watching someone basically sacrifice everything for something you know will never work out. I do like the idea that Robbie's attaching himself to JJ because in the back of his mind, he's remembering Billy. It's going to be an interesting conflict for JJ growing up- how does he maintain a Disney-fied, wholesome image considering the kind of family he comes from? I mean, the dude won't even be able to smoke pot with Brad when he's 17 like Brad did with Darius. JJ's going to be subjected to random drug testing, which means that the only kind of drugs he'd experiment with are likely the ones that race through your body quick, like amphetamines. Pot takes too long to clear out, so I can't see JJ ever touching it.

Every year, there's an alumni luncheon at my old high school. It was fun as it always is- I get free Bobbie subs from Capriotti's and such. One thing that was absolutely hysterical was this holiday show performance called the "12 Joys of Cab", which makes fun of the teachers at the school. This year, one guy was singled out as the hot young teacher that girls won't stop drooling over- I mean, they absolutely ripped into him. The funny thing was that this guy was none other than "Dave K", a guy who was two years ahead of me and graduated in 2003. He was what amounted to the high school alpha male jock at my school, only he was the leader of the popular punk artist straight-edge crowd. Dave K was in high school, as he apparently is again, the "hot guy" that everyone was drooling over, and as a consequence he was really egotistical and full of himself. First week of freshman year, he and his crowd decided to target me, and I was mocked pretty mercilessly by them as being fat, ugly, and annoying. Dave got the ball rolling, and his cronies JT and Dan ran with it. It was really bad freshman year, and their teasing didn't end until they finally graduated when I was a sophomore. People joined in because he was what amounted to the alpha male jock, and upperclassmen didn't even know what my actual name was because they called me by the "clever" mean nickname that he came up with for me. It wasn't until I was a junior and they were gone that high school really started becoming fun for me, and I finally felt free of that baggage. My last two years of high school, despite some angst, were so much better and those were the years when I finally started developing some self-worth about myself. And I realized that the more self-worth I had, the less it mattered what the conceited assholes thought about me. By my last semester in high school, *I* was the one comforting a freshman boy who was getting picked on by an upperclassmen with an overblown ego, and it was full circle moment. It was funny to see this guy back at Cab as this high school teacher- a hot teacher apparently that jailbait is jumping on- but just a regular adult regardless instead of the "star" who could do no wrong that he was back then. Your bullies in middle and high school can seem larger than life because of the power they held over you, and then when you're no longer in the middle of that- you see how really ordinary and insignficiant they are. In the ten years since those days, I've made some great relationships, graduated from college and grad school, and have partaken in some pretty great memories. I'm a far cry from the 9th grader who used to cry in the bathroom at lunch because of the bullying. So you see, kids, things really do get better. Seeing one of my old high school bullies really reminded me of that.

See though, I just don't think JJ is enough of a schemer to even think of doing that. It would be funny, but I can't see it being likely. Because if JJ's brother got arrested for having minor sex, wouldn't that reflect badly on him? You gotta remember that JJ needs to maintain a Disney-friendly image at all times to stay in the good graces of the USAFSA, and accusng his brother of being a sex offender and trying to turn it into big hullaboo just doesn't fit into that.

Well, they would've started kindergarten in 1991, which is long before any of that became common. I had an online friend who was born, I believe, around November 1985. She started her school years in California, with the class of 2003. In third grade, her parents moved to Michigan, and the Michigan public school system tried to place her in second grade because of her age, despite the fact that she had already gone through second grade in California. Her parents won, of course, but the fact that they had to fight at all was pretty ridiculous. It's funny when you think though that in most other states, JJ would be in the class of 2004 and Will would be in the class of 2005, but the Cali school system made it so that they had to be in the same grade. Which seems to be part of what's causing all of the tension between them. I think if they hadn't been in the same grade there'd be less tension and less of JJ feeling like Will steals the spotlight wherever he goes. Anyway, I liked how that scene played out, with Will realizing on some level that Alistair just isn't ready to go all the way yet. I remember that age- you did have guys like Ryan and Will who were totally sexually experienced, but that was often because they were physically mature. Guys who aren't physically mature, like Alistair and JJ, still giggled at holding the hand of their significant other. Not every 14-year old was having sex in high school, and it was nice to be reminded of that. In the 8th through 10th grade era, sooooo much of what happens to you is based on how mature you are, both physically and socially. There were kids like Ryan and Will that could easily hang(and nail) older people in late high school or college, and then there were the kids like Alistair and JJ, who were too immature to do that. The differences don't really level out until 11th grade/12th grade, when the late bloomers finally start to catch up.

<p> Hey, I really hope you don't give up the sport. If you want to change schools and play ball somewhere else that's one thing, but you should never let people deter you from playing a sport you love.</p> <p> </p> <p> Honestly, I'd just ride it out. Football season is over, and I'm sure your 15 minutes of fame is over in that regard as well.</p> <p> </p> <p> Here's <a href=" ">a pretty cool video with Brian Sims</a>. He was a football player who was openly gay with his college football team in Pennsylvania back in the early 2000's.</p><p> </p> <p> I also think you should consider reading Cross-Currents, by Adam Phillips. It's a semi-autobiographical story about a young soccer player who struggles with his emerging bisexual identity against his identity as an alpha male jock.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p>

You're telling a Californian attorney about CA statutory rape laws. Tread carefully there. I know our Private Tim's just a sweetheart, but even puppies can have some major bite behind the bark. Although seriously, some of these laws are just crazy. Something needs to be changed if you can put a 17-year old girl on a sex offender list for sexting pictures of her breasts to her boyfriend. Situations like that are clearly not what the laws set up protecting kids fom child pedators were made for.

Things I don't regret... 1. Having sex with a stranger in the bathroom stall of a library during winter finals 2006. He was tall, slender, dark-haired, blue-eyed...just cute as hell. Sure I could've gone for the true love waits route, but that was hot as hell. I was 21 and allowed to be stupid then. 2. The night that myself and a friend found a baggie of sage and decided to smoke it in a bowl. I'm not sure if we got high, but damned that was a fun night. 3. My 21st birthday. I passsed on the bathroom floor of a bar, then continued on to another for my night cap after passing out. 4. Walking around a neighborhood late at night while smoking a joint with my friend, Stoner Steve. Yeah, I wouldn't do it now, but at 23 it was a nice way to spend a night and bond with my friend.

Yeah, I like that Will is allowed to be different and not a total rehash of Brad's old storylines with a younger model. I absolutely detest it when t.v. shows rip off old plotlines and rehash them with younger models. Glee this season basically has set up a re-hash of Rachel, Puck, and Finn with their new characters, and it's really obvious and tacky. As for the openly gay thing...I started coming out when I was 14. By 15, I had made my gay friends. I'm able to relate to the idea of not announcing to everyone in the room that you're gay, but I can't relate to self-denial. I never had a period in my life where I tried dating girls to prove to myself that I'm not gay, because on some level I liked being gay. I liked being gay because it made me different, and I grew up in an environment that encouraged everyone to stand out and be different. As for Westie's bit...I don't know. See, wouldn't it be kind of easy for Mark to kill off the character that no one really cares about and isn't all that closely tied to the family canvas? What made Jeff's death in 1968 so stong and powerful was because of the fact that so many people cared about and loved him...Mark STILL gets hate mail over that. If you kill someone like JJ off, wouldn't that be kind of a shrug moment? It'd be more shocking and important to kill off a character who doesn't seem like they're primed for an exit, because they'e well-loved and cared for.