Merkin

Eyes a bit weary, backside a bit sore, but I've just spent the bulk of my day reading through this wonderful collection of unique takes on Coming Out. Not a single one of them was predictable, and all are memorable. Thanks, guys. James

Did you mention the dancing? And the chasing around a tree. Plus some rolling about. Happy Valentine's Day!

What a long haul for Bradley but well worth the wait it appears. A lovely concept, Gee! You've captured each age and stage perfectly. James

Learning how you 'should be' is at the very heart of the concept of society. For a social order to work its members must share values and beliefs. Whether those values and beliefs are admirable, just, and good is often of little importance to a society's need for order, required for any society to function smoothly. Consequently each person must become individually responsible to develop the ability to question those values and beliefs in order to achieve enlightened self-fulfillment. However, this critical task must not be left to the whims of fourteen-, fifteen-, or sixteen-year old emotions and mental processes without the guidance of mentors and teachers whose concern is only for the well-being of their charges and the development of youth's reckless abilities into mature adult tools for achieving self-awareness. That this is not happening in this society is as obvious as it is tragic. James

I too despair that there is no clear way out of this tragic situation. Part of the problem is that teachers and staff in public education are increasingly prevented from any kind of significant intervention. In my region the news has been filled recently with the case of a classroom teacher who, trying to prevent a loudmouthed, disruptive student from entering his classroom, reached out and stopped the boy by grabbing his shoulder. The parents sued, the teacher, found guilty of 'touching' lost the case and his job (mandatory removal from classroom teaching under this school's regulations). Chaos reigns. James

I've brought this back from the AD Flash Vault in honor of Valentine's Day. I figure the newer readers won't have seen it and, of course, our older readers will have no memory of it. James Special Delivery by Merkin Jesse was getting more than bored waiting for his mother to finish her shopping. If only he didn't have to depend on his parents for transportation! Being thirteen really sucked big time. He sighed and turned to look over the rack of Valentine cards. He couldn't believe the prices for these fancy cards. Luckily he could still get away with making the only card he'd need, the one for his mom, out of construction paper at home. Plus these store cards were all disgustingly mushy. In fact, he'd better not even be seen looking at them. He turned his attention to nearby shelves filled with vitamins and tonics. Where was his mother? Finally Jesse saw her moving into the checkout. He walked quickly toward the front of the store so he could meet her at the exit without having to stand with her in line. He was so engrossed in avoiding his mother that he walked right into the customer who was leaving the other checkout. "Oof! Sorry!" Jesse looked down with dismay at the Valentine card fluttering out of the customer's bag and landing onto the floor. He couldn't stop his right foot from treading firmly on part of the big red envelope. "Ohmigod! Really sorry!" His sneaker had left a slight mark. "I'll buy you another one!" He looked up to see a vaguely familiar high school boy grinning at him. "You're an even bigger klutz than I was at your age. Forget it. I can clean that up." "Th-thanks," Jesse stammered. "Ya know, those big ones take more than one stamp or they won't deliver it." Jeez! Had he really said that? "I'll worry about the stamps. You'd better practice steering those feet of yours." With another grin, the older boy scooped up the card and envelope and turned away. Jesse's relief was short-lived as he heard his mother behind him. "Jesse, don't dawdle. We're late as it is." "Right, Mom," he said with a sigh. Thirteen was the pits. * * * "Did you get any Valentines?" Jesse's best friend Artie had met him as usual as school let out and they were pushing through the crowd of students toward their bus. Since the upper school students had already boarded, the remaining seats were all in the front unless they hurried to claim a space further back. "Are you kidding, Artie? We're in eighth grade. Nobody gives out Valentines." "I got one. From Judy." "Well, you've practically been married since first grade." They pushed up onto the steps of the bus and Jesse stumbled into the student who was boarding ahead of him. He looked down as he caught himself and saw a familiar red envelope fall to the floor. In fact, it still had a faint footprint on one corner. He grabbed it and stood up. "You dropped this," he said to the retreating form wearing the varsity jacket. Keith Eliot, star forward for the high school basketball team, looked back, scowled, and grabbed the envelope from Jesse. "That's mine, kid." Ohmigod! Jesse's thoughts churned as he stumbled down the aisle. "Ooh Keith," one of the girls said, "who'ja get a Valentine from?" The rest of the crowd was in full throat as they oohd and aahd. Keith grimaced and quickly shoved the envelope inside his jacket. As Jesse turned to look for Artie his eyes caught those of a student in another seat. It was the boy from the drugstore. He was staring intently at Jesse. Jesse hesitated, gave a jerky shrug, then continued his turn as the boy looked at him and smiled slightly. "What was that all about?" Artie had saved him a seat. "Nothing," Jesse sat down heavily and dropped his backpack onto the floor. "Just a little special delivery." ______

The geography is such an apt metaphor for the distance one inevitably travels from once-upon-a-time. I particularly liked We kept the cake, eating it, too, sating the wolf’s hunger. Lovely bittersweet poem. James

Camy, you're a safe lad, you are.

Ha ha. I think 'loose nut behind the wheel' says it all. Remember all the "Miracle Gas-Saver" bolt-ons they used to advertise in the back pages of Popular Mechanics? James

"Did you see what Norway has come up with this time?" "I'll get to it. I'm a week behind in my reading." "Don't bother. I'll tell you. It's a new Challenge." "Oh, fer chri--listen, I don't have time for another one of those quickie story shakedowns." "No, listen: this one requires a story written all in dialogue." "You mean like a bloody stageplay?" "Well, sorta. But just lines, no stage directions." "That's insane. Who could make sense of it?" "There's an example, by Chris James. It's a flash fiction piece. It's not bad." "Well, I suppose if it's real short it might make work." "Shall we give it a try? It's for AwesomeDude." "Oh, well, in that case I'm in."

Brilliant! What we need are more visionaries. Too much of our thinking is about 'business as usual.'

A heroic job by Jason, laying out these classic issues in this sparse vignette. Both of these lovers--for they still are in love--are so overwhelmed each by his own convictions that each can no longer see, and know, the other. James

I cannot see, in the arguments so far reported, where what is best for the child is the central concern. Each of the three adult individuals involved appear to be viewing the situation and the child from an "ownership" point-of-view. The principal danger to children throughout history has stemmed from being viewed as someone's property.

Congratulations to our six nominees, already feted and esteemed here. James

Lordy, Camy, look what you've gone and started here, just because you don't like soccer...

Far be it for me to critique another person's poem, particularly one as sublime as this one, but since you've asked I'd have to say I think the second question throws the reader off by introducing a puzzlement that he then stops to think about, thus losing his place in the flow of the poem. Without those two lines the poem scans beautifully and is quite wonderful. James

Des, I quite understand that you are an individual who cannot bring himself to sublimate your personality and actions to the control of some overseer who coordinates the work of a group whose members must agree to submit individuality to team effort. But surely you must acknowlege and respect the purpose of such efforts as well as their outcomes, whether they be team sports played well or the building of a skyscraper. There are so many human projects that could never succeed without the team mentality, and there are countless individuals whose greatest achievement, in their own eyes, was their ability to function as part of a team.

I see that Stacy Camfield is perfectly willing to take rent money from his gay tenants. I wonder what the clauses in his leases look like?

'It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.' -William Carlos Williams

Given our track record with separate and unequal sports organizations ( think Negro league baseball and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League), I would expect any coming out announcements by professional football players to result in a separate league but with cute uniforms.

Gong the new rich prince? New Years' Honours, perhaps? Happy new year!

Richard Nixon was a Quaker. Sorry, Anthony.

The tutors at my college called it "The Great Conversation" and helped us to understand that culture as we know it is the result of creative interactions, where successive waves of artists and writers took inspiration from the works of those who had gone before, and thus drove ideas forward through their answers to previous work as well as initiating and discovering new paths to explore. This phenomenon is not exclusive to the arts, for we can attribute the development of philosophy and all of the humanities as well as the sciences to the ability of their practitioners to build on what has gone before. James

How can you convey dreadful information about personal culpability to an innocent? A dilemma made all the more intense when that innocent is someone whose expectations are based on ideals you have provided and emphasized and embraced. The terrible truth of this raw piece of flash fiction is that it foreshadows an even longer, even more difficult narrative whose outcome can only chronicle a relationship that is changed forever. Scary stuff. James

Be careful of what you wish for, Des. I am flashing on the late unlamented hippy communities that dotted the landscape of backwoods Vermont, British Columbia, and elsewhere on this continent during the 'sixties. They produced few actual contributions to the culture besides tie-dye and some awesome song lyrics.