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And here's part 3, the last of what's written. Past the end of this (and yeah, it ends in the middle of a scene) there are some sketched out bits, including my first shot at a tender sex scene which really didn't work, but that's about it. It does kinda peter out and not wrap up properly. I've always had a problem with endings... And yeah, I'm still arguing with the rich text editor. Strangest Places <h1 style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: 0in;">Scene: Back to school</h1> [Justin] This was the moment that I was dreading. I'd gotten a few days off from school, and Tristan had stayed with me the whole time, but that couldn't last forever. I was basically OK, at least enough to head back to class. And today was the day. At least it was a Thursday, so things couldn't be too bad for too long. What made it worse was that the whole school knew what had happened to me, or so Scotty said. That was the one downside to what Mr. C had done, though he probably saved my life. Now everyone knew I was gay. Tristan, though, was his usual cheerful self, and that did help a lot. Tristan stuck his head in the doorway for a moment. "'Kay, Justin, time to get going!" "Almost ready!" I had started getting dressed the way I always did for school, but I stopped myself. I'd changed, and I didn't need to hide behind the clothes. Or so I hoped, at least. I had on a grey pocket T-shirt, a pair of cargo pants, and white leather tennis shoes. And I was wearing the bracelet that Tris had picked out for me on my good wrist. The cast was still on, of course, but it was thin enough that it wasn't really getting in the way. I still felt almost naked without my boots, jeans, or leather jacket. "You look nice," said Tristan, with a kiss, when I walked into the kitchen. "Thanks," I said, kissing him back. They were just little kisses, but they made me feel better somehow, knowing that Tristan loved me. Tristan grabbed both our books and we drove off to school in silence. Once we got in we took our time, which was OK with me. My arm was still pretty sore, and I didn't really relish the thought of pushing through the hordes to get to class. "You look nervous," said Tristan, as we walked. "Yeah, some," I replied. "Scotty said that everyone knew what happened. It ain't gonna be pretty at times, I think." "Why?" asked Tris. He sounded puzzled. "Geez, Tris, you're dense sometimes. Everyone in school knows that my dad beat the shit out of me because I'm gay. Which means that everyone knows that I'm gay. I'm not one of the popular crowd anyway, and there's not going to be a damn thing stopping anyone from f**king around with me. The world's not all that gay-friendly if you hadn't noticed." "I think maybe you're overreacting. Besides, you've got me." "You can't be around every minute, though. Sooner or later someone's gonna take a shot just because they can. I mean, look at how you reacted when I kissed you in the park, and you love me. What do you think everyone else is going to do?" Tristan looked like I slapped him with that last remark, but it was true. He was the nicest guy in school and he still pulled back. "Just remember your center," said Tristan. "If you can keep that, everything'll work out." Tris was silent the rest of the way to class, looking like he was deep in thought. Which he probably was, though who knows over what.. "Well, here we are," I said as we approached the classroom. The door was open, and I could hear Mrs. Finney taking roll. We were a minute or so late, but I didn't really care. I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. A little serenity before it all hit the fan wouldn't be a bad thing. "Tris, my books," I said softly as we stood in front of the door. The whole class could see us, though Finney couldn't. Not that it'd matter much, as she'd give me hell anyway. I think she liked being miserable to me, and my better grades had just pissed her off. "Uh, Tris?" He was looking at me with this funny expression. While I was expecting several things, including a period of harassment, what I wasn't expecting was what Tristan did. He grabbed me, and kissed me. Passionately. A full-body contact kiss, the kind people do just before they start ripping each other's clothes off. I melted into it and kissed back with vigor. I'd wanted our first real kiss to be special and, damn me if it wasn't. Can't get more special than having the captain of the swim team kiss you full in front of a classful of stunned folks. I could hear the gasps from the room, but I didn't care right then. Tris broke the kiss, a dopey grin on his face. "See you after class," he said. He tucked a photo in my t-shirt pocket, then turned and loped down the hall. I just watched him go. The lovable doofus. "If you'd care to join us, Mr. Wright?" The class' reaction must've made Finney notice I was there. "Oh, right. Sure," I said. I practically floated into the room. Damn that man could kiss. The room was buzzing softly with hushed conversation, but I just didn't care. I'd found my center, and Tristan was it. I went through class in a lucid daze. I felt like it was all a strange, sorta surreal dream, but I was in control, or at least moving the right ways. Finney tried to trip me up a half-dozen times, but it didn't matter

Yep, more of the story I'm not gonna finish (I think). Again, more viewpoint shifts and missing sections, so it's mildly but not entirely comprehensible. And I still seem to be freaking the rich text editor widget out. Strangest Places <h1>Scene: The kiss in public</h1> [Justin] It was a nice day. Spring was coming, and the weather'd turned warm early. Tristan and I had met at the park by the library, and were just sort of hanging out. "So you planning on going to college?" "Me? Dunno. Never really thought about it before. Doubt it." "Why?" <h1>Scene: The beating</h1> [Justin] {Should this even be in the final version? Might have more impact if it isn't. Hard to say} <h1>Scene: Aftermath</h1> [Tristan] <Ring!> I jumped when the phone rang. I'd been dozing in my bedroom, US history putting me to sleep again. It'd been hours since I'd heard from Justin, and I was starting to get worried. I felt kinda bad, since I'd freaked him a little at the park. But we were supposed to be studying for a test next week. I reached over and snagged the phone before the second ring, in case Dad was in the middle of something. "Speak to me!" "T-tristan?" I could barely make out the voice on the other end. It was badly muffled and sounded like whoever it was had a mouthful of cotton. Sounded kinda familiar, though. "Yep, that's me." There wasn't any response, though I could hear what sounded like ragged breathing. "Hello? Who is this?" I was starting to wonder if this was one of Scotty's pranks. "t-t-tristan." The voice came again. It still sounded awful, and was really hard to make out. There was pain in it, though. "help?" I wracked my brain trying to figure out who it was. They sounded in a bad way, though. "Sure. Who is this?" A painful sob came from the other end. "n-n-never mind." That's when it hit me who it sounded like. "Justin? Is that you?" "y-yeah." "What happened, man?" Justin had to be in pretty bad shape if I couldn't even recognize his voice on the phone. "You in an accident?" I had a picture of him leaning up against a phone booth, all bloody from a car wreck or something. Smashed up because of me. "Dad. Hit me." I went cold then. I'd met Justin's dad a few times, and I didn't like him at all. He was a nasty bastard, and built like a brick. If he'd beaten Justin up he could be in real bad straits. "Where are you?" "h-h-home." I knew where Justin lived. It was on the other side of town, but it was late and I could get there in five minutes if I didn't hit traffic or get pulled over. "Will you be OK until I can get there? Should I call the cops?" "No!" I could hear the pain in his voice. "n-no cops. I'll be OK." Like hell, I thought, but I didn't say it. "Hold tight, then. I'll be right over." I hung up the phone, grabbed my jacket off the bed, and ran out of my room. I took the stairs in three steps, and almost skidded into the wall when I hit the throw rug at the bottom. "Dad! Gotta go! I'll be back in a bit!" I yelled as I careened through the living room and hall towards the garage. "Hey, hey!" Dad popped his head out of the kitchen. "Slow down, you'll get hurt that way!" "No time, Dad. Gotta go." I ran past him, but he grabbed my shoulder as I went past. Once he's got a grip on something it won't move unless he wants it to, and I wasn't any exception to that rule. "Tris! Stop. What's going on?" He looked worried

Yep, another partially finished draft that I think will go nowhere. This was the first real gay romance I wrote, done over the course of a month when I was coming out to myself and really working things out in my head. It was therapy of a sort, though it's always a tossup how well that worked. It's got all sorts of problems, the biggest being it switches first-person viewpoints and even throws itself into third person occasionally. Hey, what can I say, I was reading a good chunk of Nifty at the time and thought it was OK. I know better now. There are a lot of themes running through this that come out in a lot of the other stuff I've poked around at, including the martial arts competency of two of the characters. Yeah, yeah, I know, but I'm of the opinion that, while violence is usually the wrong answer, if you're in a situation where asses are being kicked you should be in a position to make sure that at least some of those asses aren't yours. The entire draft's almost 20K words, but that's too big according to the blog software, so here's part one of possibly no more. (Which, if so, would be a mild pity. I've always wanted to see "Why, feeling insecure in your homosexuality" in print...) The formatting is a little odd. I think I've confused the rich text editor. Sorry 'bout that. Strangest Places "So she just up and dumped me!" "Really? What'd you do, Tris?" "Nothing, that's what she said was the problem. She said I wasn't paying enough attention to her." "Well, you didn't notice the day she had her hair cut." "Yeah, well, it was only a haircut." "Dude, she'd cut it short, spiked it, and bleached it blond. You'd have to be blind to miss it." Scotty eyed his friend for a moment. "Or stupid, I suppose." "Thanks," replied Tristan sarcastically. "I knew I could count on you. Tell me again, why are we best friends?" "Because without me you'd have an ego the size of Montana. There's only room in this school for one ego that big, and I don't want any competition." Scotty gave his friend a playful punch in the shoulder. "Now, where did you say you parked again?" Tristan looked around the school parking lot for a minute. "Dunno. Around here somewhere." The lot was about half full of cars, with mounds of snow and bare trees scattered through it. There were a few other kids around, and a knot of leather-clad guys milling around the motorcycles. "Geez, how can you lose your own car in a half-empty parking lot? I was wrong, you are blind." "Well, there's all this snow. Maybe they buried it when they plowed the lot." "Your car's not that small. Well," said Scotty, "maybe it is. But still... Whuf!" Whatever he was going to say was thumped out of him as a leather-clad shape darted out from between two cars and ran right into him. They both fell to the pavement, backpacks and books flying everywhere. "Ow! Hey," said Scotty, "watch where you're going!" "Sorry," mumbled the stranger as he scrabbled around, gathering scattered magazines and books and shoving them into his backpack. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, torn jeans, and a pair of work boots. He looked sixteenish, about the same age as Scotty and Tristan. "Here," said Tristan helpfully, handing a few books over. The stranger snatched them from him, stuffed them in his pack, and ran off across the lot. "What was that all about?" asked Scotty as he grabbed the last of his stuff off the ground, brushing the damp sand off the book covers. "Beats me," replied Tristan. "Hey, look, there's my car!" "Hey, you!" A shout came from the next row over. The biker horde had made their way over. "You see a punk go by here?" "Yeah," said Tristan. "He went that way." He pointed down the row cars, the opposite way that the kid had run. [Tristan] It was four o'clock by the time I got out of school. I'd run late tutoring, so I was late to swim practice, which meant an extra twenty laps around the pool, so now I was really late. And it was pouring rain on top of it. It was cold and wet and nasty, like you'd expect from a January downpour. At least it'd melt some of the snow, though we'd end up with ice in trade. I stood by the parking lot exit under the canopy, looking out at the lot. The rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind was kicking up a storm too. We had a real nor'easter going, though luckily for me the entrance faced away from the wind. At least it was keeping things a little dry. I had an umbrella, but I knew the wind would rip it to shreds if I tried to use it. There was another kid waiting under the canopy, smoking a cigarette. He looked kinda familiar, though I couldn't place him. He was looking at me looking at him, which was fair enough. "Hey," I said. "Hey," he said back. The voice sounded real familiar. That's when I realized who he was

Well, OK, there's a remote possibility this one'll get touched, but I'm not betting on it. Again, it's got characters and a setting, but no plot. Pesky things, plots -- they go missing when you need them most. (Maybe I should check between the couch cushions) The substitute I know it's pretty normal for kids to have imaginary friends when they're little. Someone to play with and talk to when things get really bad, someone to confide those secrets that you just can't tell anyone else, someone to share your pain when something horrible happens and you just need someone who knows how to deal with it. I found mine the summer I was six, when my mother was dying of cancer. Our back yard ran up into a state forest. It wasn't big, but it was craggy and overgrown, and only took a few minutes of walking before you lost all signs of civilization. When things got really bad with mom I used to go wander through it, pretending it was the forest primeval, someplace deep and brooding where nothing bad happened and nobody ever died. Yeah, I know, looking back on it there's no way a six year old kid should be doing that, but Dad was so wrapped up in Mom's dying that nobody paid me any attention. I made sure to always take a compass and pocket knife with me so I could find my way home if I needed to. This made sense to a six-year-old. Probably would've been OK too, if the compass actually worked and the knife wasn't broken. It was the symbolism that was important, though. It didn't matter that they didn't work, I had a Knife and a Compass, so I would be fine. That's where I met him

I dunno about anyone else who writes, but I find that ideas tend to hit me as scenes entire scenes or chapters. Not necessarily complete ones -- they're often incomplete, with bits and pieces missing -- but scenes or chapters. When that happens I open up a new doc in the word processor, bang out as much of the thing as I can before I lose it, and save the thing. If I have some clue as to what's going on I'll have a separate file with notes, character sketches, plot points, and suchlike things, as much of the story as I can think of so I don't lose it. Unfortunately this leaves me with a bunch of partially done things that I may never get to, or that aren't even really stories. (Since a story needs characters, settings, and plot, as well as a beginning, middle, and end) Some of them may become stories some day, but a lot of them probably won't. Orphaned little things, forever destined to languish on my hard drive unseen. (Not that this is always a bad idea) Also unfortunately, since I don't do this for a living I've far more of these partial stories than I'll ever have time to finish. Writing a full story takes a lot of work, and I'm not the fastest writer on the planet even at the best of times. That means that even if I keep banging away at Word, these things accumulate faster than they get depleted, and always will. Anyway, with Yankee coming to an end I went and trolled through my scrap folder, and came across this thing. It was inspired by Kit's "Tapping", which I rather liked, but like a lot of the things that're half-started it came from me reading the story and going "Oh, yeah? What if he said 'I don't think so?'" It's not the same story as Tapping, nor even the same start going in a different direction, but that's the inspiration. If someone wants to adopt this poor thing, have at it and good luck. As is my standard habit (as my editors occasionally find) there are extra blank lines scattered in this. Those are the spots where the story skips ahead a bit. There should be transition text, but there isn't, either because I don't know what it should be, or my brain's running ahead of my fingers enough that it's better to skip ahead than to lose the thread I'm following. Time to go "What are your plans for vacation?" This question caught me off-guard. Dad never talked about plans. Hell, since Mom died he rarely talked to me at all. "Um, we have a few practices scheduled next week, then the band's playing at Beth Tisdale's party Friday night." Beth's family always threw a big end-of-school bash with live music and everything. This year Bobby convinced her to let us play. "Oh." He sat and thought for a moment. "Well, they'll have to get along without you this time." "What? I play guitar and sing lead on half the stuff we do. I can't just skip it." "You're going to have to." No explanation, of course. "Why? We planned this out last month. I told you almost six weeks ago. I can't skip on it now, it's too late to get someone else." "Well, you're going to have to. We're going to Phoenix to go house-hunting." "We're going... where? Why?" "Phoenix. One of the jobs I interviewed for back in March has come through, so we're moving." "Wait, March? It's June." "These things take time. One of them was going to go through, I just wasn't sure which one." "Or when?" "No, this is the time. We were going somewhere right after school ended to house-hunt, I just didn't know where." Bastard. I glared at him. This was so like him -- just up and do something without so much as a by-your-leave or any notice. What's worse is that he knew -- he knew -- weeks before I told him about the gig that we were going and he didn't say anything. He hung me and my friends out to dry on purpose. Utter f**king bastard. "So you knew about this more than two months ago and you're only just telling me now?" "You have plenty of time to pack, we don't leave until next Thursday. I don't see the problem." That was the last straw. He's been doing this since mom died -- making decisions that affect me without asking me, consulting me, or even telling me he'd made the decision. Just dropping the f**king bomb. 'Oh, yeah, by the way, I decided to completely screw with your life and I let you think you could do stuff I knew you couldn't.' If I stayed any longer I was going to go ballistic, and there just wasn't any point. I don't see the problem. Total, utter, complete f**king bastard. Dad stuck his head into my room as he was getting set to go. "We're not leaving for a week," he said. I don't know if he meant it as an explanation or an apology, but it sucked either way. "You have time to get ready, I don't see what the problem is." I just looked at him. I was furious and he had no clue. "When you see the problem, we'll talk. Until then, go away." He handed me the airline ticket, and I looked at it. Nonrefundable paper ticket. How... luddite. "Do you see the problem?" I asked him. I'd only said these five words to him over the last week. He was obviously tired of them, and the irritation in his voice was shading over to anger. "This is a good move for my career. I've told you that. More responsibility, more money, more prestige. It will set us up..." I ignored him and walked out the front door. When I was outside I ripped the ticket into shreds and set the pieces on fire on the cement front step. Dad made it to the doorway just in time to see things catch properly. He was probably going to blow up, but I didn't care. I just walked away. Dad was furious. "Dammit, Oliver, it's time you grew up!" Grew up? f**K him grow up. I've known I was attracted to guys since I was thirteen. That scared the shit out of me, since I knew what happened to guys who liked guys. I hoped, desperately hoped, that liking girls would come, but it hasn't, and if it hasn't by now it isn't going to. I was never sure exactly how Dad'd react to it, and I never had any way to bring it up in conversation, so I did the only thing I could think of. I kept my mouth shut and made plans to leave in a hurry if I had to. Too many kids got beaten up and tossed out, left to fend or die. That could be me, and there was no way in hell I was going to just die. Dad had left the household finances to me since I was fourteen, and most of the household errands since I turned sixteen. I didn't even need his signature on things, what with electronic bill pay and debit cards and all. I've been sweeping money aside and saving most of what I was making from my job, and over the past three years I'd managed nearly eight thousand dollars. The bills and statements I didn't want him to know about went to a post office box he didn't know of, and my car was, while a total piece of crap, paid off and I had the title. I've been on my own since Mom died, and I'd done more growing up than I ever wanted to. I had cash. I had a car. I had a very good fake ID, good enough to get me work. I'd taken enough shop classes to give dad fits, and I'd helped out two neighbors when they put additions on their houses. I could fix a car, lay piping, string wiring, handle myself with woodshop and machine shop tools, and help put on a roof. I wasn't an expert, but I wasn't useless, and I could do more than most of the idiots I'd seen working construction. Time to grow up my ass. Wednesday was the last day of school, and I'd still not said anything but my five words to Dad. He'd replaced the plane ticket, but I didn