Stories

Life is full of random events; tragedy strikes where it will until random goodness displaces the ugliness. Neither event lasts, fades in our collective memories until the roulette wheel of life lands on the unlucky number of some town or city. We’ve become callused…numb…and disbelieving of events outside of our homes, neighborhood, and state. It simply happens somewhere else…until.

Two young men become casual acquaintances at a grocery store when Tyler bags Sean’s groceries and loads them in his car. Then Tyler quits his job.

The story begins during an unexpected meeting in the college library a year or so later. Sean is a third-year engineering student and Tyler a first-year business major. Tyler’s problem: he’s in a hopeless quandary over his required calculus course. Sean, being a third semester calculus student, offers to help him. Tyler accepts, and under Sean’s tutelage begins to understand what he can’t seem to fathom in the classroom. He also learns something about Sean’s hidden side.

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This is my second story. It is mostly nonfiction with a little fiction mixed in. It is based on an real-life experience of a close friend that I thought would make for a good short story. He provided the skeleton and I filled in the dialogue with his approval. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed hearing it recounted to me.

Andy and Donnie have been friends since the beginning, growing up in the same neighborhood, sharing the same friends, and now playing football on the same team in middle school. They’ve been inseparable throughout it all; but now a new line has been inserted in the equation that is their lives, one they have to learn to deal with, or face having their friendship perish:

Love.

Being the oldest and growing up in a large family can be hard, especially when you are gay and the family is extremely homophobic. You are constantly being compared to your deceased father. A man whose stature and deeds are always increasing, as time goes by, and are held up as your goals. Anytime you reach those goals, your mother moves the goalpost further away.

You never seem to measure up. You are always being told that you are worthless and will never amount to anything since you cannot measure up to your father. It never mattered that you were a straight "A" student and that you were an athlete.

As someone who doesn't get embarrassed easily I sure was in for a shocker of a first day of my last year of high school. Everything was going fine in my boring school, boring town and boring life until HE came along...

I just wanted to get through the end of school and move on to bigger and better things. Apparently, that was too much to ask for. I should have known that life is never that straight-forward for me. Let's put it this way, I'm going to be in for an interesting few years of friendships, and relationships? Wait no - that can't be right. Well I guess it is, so strap in and let's both hope that this doesn't end in disaster!

Charlie, Kip, Rick, Adrian, and Uncle Bob are invited by Frit and Pip to spend a different sort of Christmas Eve on the other side of the portal between worlds. And different is exactly what they get!

Andre and Chris is a sequel to my story, Beau.

After declaring their love for each other Andre and Chris hope to share their lives forever. They discover that for both of them their past has an influence on the present. How will they negotiate the ups and downs of their future?

A short story in four chapters set on the mountainous Italian coast. Seven years after ‘The Summer of the Firefly’, another teen struggles with his identity following a bust-up with his father and his best friend.

Logan's summer as Recreation Assistant with the Forest Service turns into more than just campground maintenance and public relations.