First - Stories

A response to Prompt #68:

Imagine where your character leads a pretty decent single life. Then there is a phone call and that life is turned upside down as they find out, they have just become a parent—to a teenager. Is this a cousin that has been left with no other family members? A god child? A niece or nephew? What is this first meeting between them going to be like?

The circumstances whereby Manny obtains guardianship are a little strange, to say the least. Not to mention what happens afterward.

I had had many chances to hook-up, but I wasn’t built that way. Of course, there was the obvious fumbling with others growing up, nothing more serious than a couple of hand jobs after high school which left me unfulfilled. Anita Bryant, Jerry Fallwell, Newt Gingrich along with the not so moral majority, with their contract on America was unsettling to say the least. Gay boys and men were dying, and no one knew why, and much less interested in finding out why. To the best of my understanding, it was virtually impossible to catch AIDS or venereal diseases from your hand, warts maybe, eyeglasses were a risk I’d take. Then Mikey entered my life…

At fifteen, CJ moved to the District of Columbia when his step-father discovered the teen was gay and banished him from their Miami home.

In Washington, living with his biological father and his partner, CJ blossoms thanks in part to the guidance provided by his father’s gay friends.

Zak is a shy quiet 15 year old whose mother gets him a summer job at a local ranch. Zak's sure it's going to be the summer from Hell until he meets 16 year-old ranch hand, Dusty.

After his mother’s death, sixteen-year-old Rory is sent to Arizona to live with the father he’s never known. Angry, grieving, and completely out of place, he expects nothing from the desert except heat and disappointment. Instead, he finds family, truth, and the possibility of first love. But learning to belong means facing the past—and risking his heart.