Altimexis

Great selection! You have excellent taste.

Well, there's a third possibility - that the boys were adopted. The thing that makes the most sense to me, though, is that since the story's about a journal of sorts, we're now reading it some twenty years after it was written.

It was bad enough for J.J., aka Simon, aka Adam, growing up a smart kid with an abusive father in a rural backwater, but things became intolerable when his 5th grade teacher tricked him into taking the 8th grade achievement test. Going to high school with a bunch of troglodytes at the age of eleven was intolerable. An incident on his thirteenth birthday forced him to begin an epic journey in which he faced love and tragedy, and ended up traveling all over the world during a global pandemic. Returning to begin his real journey with the boy who'd been there all along, his inventions sparked a revolution that propelled him to the top echelon of corporate America, only to find himself ignored. Fortunately for J.J., failure was never an option.

Cole, that's what I do! As you probably noticed, I sweat the details. I obsess over the sandwich my character orders at an obscure restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Someday, one of my readers is going to comment that they've been to the Kettle Kitchen in Gnome, Alaska (totally made up example) and that the Gnome Gnoulash was discontinued five years ago. Seriously, as much as I loved Chris James' writing, it drove me crazy when he lost entire years from his characters' lives. Some readers take everything in stride as it comes, regardless of whether or not it fits with the rest of the story. Like the main character in the story I'm about to start posting, I remember nearly everything and little inconsistencies are like that person who's leaning on their horn, making it hard to concentrate on anything else. (After all, that never happens here in NYC.) In my defense, I've read that writers who actually get paid for writing have to put up with fans writing them about every little inconsistency in anything they write. Not that any of us are in danger of having that kind of fan base.

Just wanted to add that I had to grab some tissues too. What a wonderful short story.

Good start on the story, but already I'm confused! Is this a story that takes place in the past - perhaps twenty years ago - or is Artie's dad really old? Artie's dad supposedly worked for NASA in the Apollo program, but the last moon landing was in December, 1972. Artie speaks of the moon landings as ancient history to him. I was sixteen in 1972 and I certainly can't imagine having a teenage son at my age. For the sake of argument, if Artie's dad was in his mid-twenties at the time of the last moon landing, he'd be in his mid-seventies now. Sure, it's possible. Artie's mom could have been in her early forties when he was born, and his dad could've been sixty. That's definitely within the realm of possibility, and I did get the impression the story was written in the present day. However, that meant that Artie's dad married someone twenty years his junior and became a new father at an age when most men are at most sending their kids off to college, or playing with their grandkids or great grandkids. I'm sure Cole will be filling in the details, but which is it? Is this a story that takes place in the 1990's or 2000's, or one about late-life fatherhood? That's a great photo - I take it that's Artie and his twin brother?

I liked them all, but Recovery for sure. It has my vote.

Agreed, a nice little story with familiar themes, updated for the 21st century. The description of working at a gas station in the mid-twentieth century was particularly nicely done. That actually was a bit before my time, but I’m old enough to remember full-service and 30 cent/gallon regular leaded gas. By the way, New Jersey doesn’t let you pump your own gas either.

I was left scratching my head. Rutabaga was left scratching his head. How many others with itchy heads are out there? Okay, I’ll get down from my soapbox now.

Cole, it’s your story and I’m not going to tell you what to do. However, it’s highly likely that there are readers who will never read chapter thirteen and won’t understand what happened, because thirteen was pivotal to the story. I know from past discussions that you don’t like to make changes once a story has been posted. However, this wasn’t your fault. If it were me, I’d add an asterisk to the chapter list and a note at the bottom to alert readers that there was a missing chapter. The effort to do that would be trivial. You can always remove the note in a couple of weeks. I think that it’s unacceptable for even one reader to miss a chapter through no fault of their own. Here’s a real-world analogy. Over the course of several years, I replaced several oxygen sensors in my car because a firmware bug triggered the check engine light. I spent hundreds of dollars before realizing there was no way sensors should wear out so quickly. Finally, I asked my mechanic if the problem could be a bug in the car’s computer it turned out that it was and Honda had fixed it, but it was deemed non-critical and affected only a handful of cars, so a recall was never issued. To add insult to injury, I had to pay hundreds of dollars to have the firmware updated. I was steamed. Honda lost at least one customer for life. I’m not suggesting you’re in danger of losing readers because they think your story didn’t make sense, but what’s wrong with letting the readers know there was a firmware bug that was fixed?

That’s my point exactly. For every reader who checks this forum, there must be at least ten who don’t. That’s why there’s a need for a note similar to the one in my post. It’s great that the error has been fixed but there are undoubtedly still some readers who haven’t read this post and are still scratching their heads, having missed reading chapter 13. I can make the suggestion to Mike, but it would be better coming from the author, I think.

I too was 'confuzzed' when I read chapter 13 as posted on Wednesday. Things were referenced that I couldn't recall happening. I had to go back and read the two previous chapters, just to figure out who Foster was, but why was he so important as to be invited for Thanksgiving? Then I started to read chapter 14 and my first though was, 'Haven't I read this before?' So I went back and reread chapter 13 and it was totally new, and it explained the things that hadn't made sense. It's obvious that chapter 14 was posted by mistake in place of chapter 13, and then later the correct chapter 13 was posted, with chapter 14 in its proper place. I'm not sure if it was Cole that submitted the wrong chapter, or Mike who posted the wrong one on Wednesday, or maybe it was John. It's not important. People make mistakes. However, only Donald Trump can get away with pretending the mistakes never occurred in the first place. Had I not gone back to reread it, I could have easily missed reading chapter 13 entirely. So I have a request - more like a plea. When a mistake is made in posting the wrong chapter, even if only for a few hours, the person responsible needs to post a correction on the story homepage (would it be too much to ask for an apology too?). For example, the following note, posted on the homepage and at the top of chapter 14 would have been immensely helpful: Never assume that a post wasn't up long enough for someone to have read it. I start checking for new posts at around 11 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday and Friday nights.

I enjoy everything Alan writes, and this is very timely. I just hope everything works out.

I just caught this misnomer. A U.S. cup is eight fluid ounces. A fluid ounce is the volume occupied by an amount of water weighing an ounce, much as the original definition of a gram was based on the mass of one ml of water. As such, the actual weight of a fluid ounce depends on the density of what is being measured, which for powders may be affected by settling. It’s much better to measure by weight in the first place. Although we have very precise definitions of all S.I. units, the original definition of the metre in 1789, at the time of the French Revolution, was one ten-millionth the distance from the North Pole to the equator as measured along a circumferential line passing through Paris, assuming earth’s flattening to be 1/334. It didn’t take long into the nineteenth century to realize that the definition was influenced by earth’s wobble. Later, it was found that many things influence the original definition of the meter, including the distance of the moon from earth, which is increasing by 3.8 cm per year, the changing speed of earth’s rotation, which is slowing by 1.7 ms per century, and of course continental drift - not that all of those were known until the late 20th century. The current definition of the meter is based on the speed of light, which we believe is constant, my story, CWM not withstanding. That is in and of itself dependent on a precise measurement of time. Of course the definition of the kilogram as the mass of a liter of water is influenced by its density, which changes with temperature and pressure. The S.I. unit definition of the kilogram is based on Plank’s constant, which the reader is welcome to look up if interested. I somehow doubt most recipes require such a degree of precision, however.

Great-Uncle Alexander is another wonderful 4-hanky story from Alan Dwight.

The New York Stories series continues to deal with the massive social and political upheaval facing all New Yorkers, Americans and citizens of the World. Shelter in Place is story of how five families have dealt with the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic and the lock-down order imposed on all of New York. Some of the primary characters will be directly affected when close personal relatives become symptomatic for the virus… and worse. The three-part story has just been submitted for editing and should be posted soon. In the meantime, two of my existing stories, Inside Information and Valenterrible Day, have been updated to make them consistent with events related to the pandemic. Please be on the lookout for my next major project, Excessive Force, which is my take on New York's response to the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020. It should appear before Labor Day. For what it's worth, I never intended my story series to become so political, but events in the world around us have made it difficult to avoid the controversy. I didn't intend to address particular politicians other than obliquely, but the pandemic has pretty much nailed down that the President, the Governor of NY and the Mayor of NYC in my stories are in fact the current occupants of those offices. I would like to remind the readers that these stories are fiction, and that the opinions expressed here are those of the characters in my stories and not necessarily my own or those of this site.

Or you could read Robin Cook’s 1977 book, Coma, his first successful novel. That’s Robin Cook, the American physician turned novelist, not Robin Cook, the British politician. The story and subsequent movie, which starred a young Michael Douglas, involved a ruthless chief of surgery who deliberately put patients into a coma and sold their organs. He did it using carbon monoxide, unwittingly administered by the anesthesiologist during surgery, because it left the tissues looking a super-healthy red. The surgeon who did the actual surgery thus never suspected a thing.

Baranaby is a story with an interesting plot twist. Initially I felt certain that Barnaby was an imaginary friend. I won’t spoil the fun by saying who he is, but the ending is certainly different. I’m sorry to bring it up, but carbon monoxide is a poison and not an asphyxiant. It doesn’t kill by displacing oxygen, but rather by binding to hemoglobin irreversibly. Carbon monoxy-hemoglobin is brilliant red in color - even redder than oxy-hemoglobin; hence a victim’s lips are redder than normal and not blue. Lipstick-red lips are a bad sign. The other thing is that victims won’t recover if you simply remove them from the carbon monoxide. You have to replace the poisoned hemoglobin and that can only be done by transfusion. If you ever find someone who’s suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, by all means, get them to fresh air first, but then call 911 or the equivalent.

Hey, what happened to the story link on the AD home page? It disappeared with this week's update. I hope that wasn't intentional, as it's a wonderful story. It can't be reached from Alan's home page either, as that hasn't been updated in some time.

This is to let everyone know that I'm working on a very topical New York Story, titled Shelter in Place. I hope to post it by the end of May, if not sooner. In the meantime I've revised a couple of my earlier stories to make them consistent with New York's lock-down under the Covid-19 pandemic. A lot of authors would have left them as they were, but I like to see consistency across the stories in a series and have already revised the timeline in my latest stories to reflect the new global reality. The revisions in any case are minor, but check them out in Inside Information and Valenterrible Day.

I also loved this story. I too read it twice. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that when we were that age, the fear of being outed at summer camp was terrifying, and there would have been no reprieve either. Something like that happened to me when I was sixteen, four weeks into a six-week session at a summer science program at a Midwestern university. Of course I denied it, even to myself, but the last two weeks there were hell. I fear that a lot of summer camps in the U.S. and around the world would still be that way - especially those with certain church affiliations. It's fortunate for Wayne and Kyle in Alan's story that the camp in their story was in the Northeast. Times have changed, and I'd like to think that most are like the one in the story when it comes to the treatment of gay kids. The kids in Wayne's dorm cabin were mostly eleven, which means that most just finished the fifth grade and will start middle school in the fall. I feel for them. Wayne would like to become a late elementary school teacher, which brings up my own memories of my fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Genders, who was the first male teacher I ever had. He was the only male teacher in all seven grades, K-6, in our elementary school and none of my classmates in junior high had had a male teacher in the other elementary schools. How lonely it must be for a guy who likes teaching at that grade level. I remember Mr. Genders fondly as he was one of my favorite teachers in elementary school. In fact, he and my third-grade teachers were the only ones I remember fondly at all from that time in my life. Mr. Genders made learning fun, and I think he had a lot to do with my lifelong love of learning. Kids need male role models in their younger years - not that my father wasn't a great role model, but a good male elementary school teacher can do wonders for a boy's esteem. Here's to you, Mr. Genders. Here's to you, Wayne and Kyle. Here's to you, Alan.

Bishop, California? Do people actually live there? Talk about the middle of nowhere! Is that really considered northeastern California? To me it looks like it's pretty much in the middle of the state. In any case, for those who don't know California that well, Bishop is northeast of King's Canyon National Park, southeast of Yosemite National Park and northwest of Death Valley National Park. It's pretty close to the Nevada border and in satellite view, it appears as a green oasis in the midst of the desert. It appears to have water from runoff from the nearby Sierra Nevadas via a couple of rivers, but then so does Mono Lake, which has been shrinking for some time. I've probably driven through Bishop at some time in my life, as I've been to all of those famous places, but the town itself didn't leave an impression on me. The area around it does have spectacular scenery though, and if you love the mountains and the desert, it must be paradise… well, to visit anyway. I just can't imagine what it would be like to grow up there. Bishop has a population of 3,879 as of the last census. There are certainly much smaller towns than that, but compared to Bishop, the small town of Mellencamp's song, Seymour, Indiana (Pop. 17,503), is a thriving metropolis. Not only that, but there are small towns all around Seymour. Other than Big Pine (Pop. 1,756), fifteen miles to the south, there's nothing for miles around Bishop. Those kids must spend hours traveling to and from other small towns for their cross country meets. It's probably not the best place to grow up gay either, but then neither is Seymour.

Hi all, When I started to write a New York novella called Passover Pathos, it was intended to be a lighthearted look at celebrations of Passover and Easter, but that was before New York City became an epicenter of Covid-19. How could I write about large gatherings of kids and school and so on, in the face of a society in lock-down? Obviously, changes had to be made. The novella has been renamed Passover Panic and all three parts will be posted simultaneously rather than serially. There are new characters and new romances in addition to the old, all in the face of the emergence of a global pandemic. This is the first story I've written that deals with Covid-19, but it won't be the last. You can expect future stories that deal with finding romance online and losing a loved one. For better or worse, the future of my stories is being rewritten by the lives we are leading right now.

Not to denigrate Alan's wonderful writing, but this is the kind of story that got me into writing gay-themed fiction in the first place. It was after perhaps reading the fifth story in which a paraplegic young man was portrayed as a helpless invalid that I wrote my first story, Love in a Chair. Now, I find that first effort so over-the-top and one-dimensional that it's embarrassing to even mention it, but at least it portrayed a paraplegic character accurately. At one time I was the medical director of a model system spinal cord rehab center, so I know something about what paraplegics and tetraplegics (the preferred term for quadriplegics) can and cannot do. Please feel free to contact me for advice if you ever write a story involving a character with a disability. Here are some common myths about spinal cord injury that I'd like to dispel right now: People with spinal cord injury need help - God No! Nearly all paraplegics and even tetraplegics with intact function in their elbow extensors (triceps) are capable of living independently. A person with full use of their upper limbs, as was the case with the main character in Alan's story, can bathe themselves, dress themselves, transfer in and out of a wheelchair without assistance and use an accessible toilet without any assistance whatsoever. Paraplegic children must be confined to a wheelchair - True only with what are referred to as lower motor neuron disorders such as spina bifida. Even then, many learn to stand and walk with braces. Children injured in early childhood and some injured in middle childhood commonly develop the strength and balance to stand unaided and some even are able to walk short distances with crutches. A person paralyzed as a result of a spinal cord injury will never walk again - Occasionally true, but often false. Although there are injuries so severe that there appears to be little hope of any recovery, I've seen even the hopeless walk out of rehab after a few months, and I've seen people regain function even more than a year after injury. I never would tell a patient they would never walk again, partly because it's demoralizing to someone who needs to put everything they have into their rehabilitation, but also because I've often been proven wrong. The only way to 'sever' the spinal cord is with a knife. Usually it's stretched, mashed or otherwise mutilated, and function often returns, at least in part, once the swelling has subsided. It is possible for one to retain bowel, bladder and sexual function, even though they have lost the use of their legs - Generally false. Yes, it's possible, but we're talking about a fraction of a percent in paraplegia. Bowel, bladder and sexual function is controlled in the very lowest portion of the spinal cord, a part called the conus medullaris, in the sacral section of the cord. The segments that control function in the legs occur above this, in the lumbar region. Think of a lizard, with a tail and the legs off to the side. That's the model from which we evolved. Embryonic legs begin as buds that grow out of the lower portion of the body at a time when there is still a tail, and the anus, the bladder and the penis all originate from the very lowest segments of the tail. Anything that disrupts control of the legs usually affects bowel, bladder and sexual function. The one exception is something called cauda equina syndrome, which is an injury of the 'horses tail' - the bundle of nerves emerging from the spinal cord. However, cauda equina syndrome has a good prognosis, because it's a peripheral nerve injury and peripheral nerve fibers can regenerate, so people can often walk within about a year after injury. I've never seen a pure cauda equina syndrome from a tumor, however. Sexual satisfaction requires a functioning penis - Are you serious? If that were the case, why look at porn? People with spinal cord injuries can and do find ways of achieving sexual satisfaction and for satisfying their partner. It's said that the primary sexual organ is the brain. The majority of partnered men who sustain a spinal cord injury lose their partners within the first year after injury - Sadly true. Divorce after SCI is usual, even though most paraplegics and a large number of tetraplegics are fully capable of independence. Ironically, partners of people sustaining severe traumatic brain injuries tend to stick it out, at least for the first year, in the hope there will be a meaningful recovery. Workplace discrimination is common and many employers will not hire someone with a spinal cord injury, even when minimal or no accommodation is required for a given job - Unfortunately true. The majority of paraplegics and the vast majority of tetraplegics are unemployed, even though they're perfectly capable of gainful employment and no less capable than their able-bodied colleagues. I loved Alan's story, but the reality is that his character would have had a much rougher time of it due to the lack of proper bowel and bladder management the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, if he'd been directed to one of the newer model systems spinal cord injury rehab centers that were just coming into existence then, he should have done well. By using intermittent catheterization, and a timed bowel program, he would have avoided urinary and fecal incontinence and these are things he would have been able to do on his own after training. He probably wouldn't have derived pleasure from masturbation but, having never been sexually active, he wouldn't have missed it either, and likely would have found sexual pleasure in other activities. He would have been able to stand unaided and to walk short distances with crutches, and he would have been fully independent in dressing, bathing, personal hygiene and wheelchair use, and in driving with hand controls. He might well have been demoralized regarding getting a college education, not because of concerns about personal hygiene but because of the limited job prospects after college. Again, please feel free to contact me if any of you decide to write a story with a disabled character.

Shall we assume the first internship scenario, the one in the doctor's office, was meant to be more of a fantasy than reality? Not even a medical student can document a physical exam any more. The attending physician must verify all findings and document them personally. That is because if a medical student misses something do to inexperience, the attending physician can be held financially liable. Besides which, Medicare and other 3rd parties won't pay for an exam done by a trainee. A high school intern would never be allowed to do a physical exam, and that last item would be good for criminal prosecution. It sounds like it was fun though. 😀