You're Lucky I'm Drunk: Coop's Corner

I needed a break from the Power Plays/Stay Away from Her mental load, so here's what I've been working on as the follow up to You're Lucky I'm Drunk.  It's told from Cooper's perspective a couple years after the first drunken hookup.

—

It was stupid to get so excited. It wasn't like he was going to want to repeat the experience from last time. We hadn't talked about it since, not on the phone, not when we were texting, not anyhow. A pandemic had put a damper on my sex life, even if it had meant regular Friday night chats with Marshall. Plus, this time he would be here on business, not to mention that I had my kid for the week. I thought about getting a sitter, but that's not an easy thing to explain to a four-year-old. “Daddy’s friend is coming to town and Daddy has a lot of confusing feelings he wants to work out with alcohol and special hugs.”

Not that Marshall and I could do anything with her around, not really. Sierra was more visibly excited than I that Uncle Marshall was going to stay a whole weekend with us. They had only met once in person, but she had decided that Marshall was her “favorite boy,” except of course for me and whichever boyfriend she had that week in preschool. He’d started reading books over video for Sierra if she was with me when he called, and fuck me if that wasn’t the goddam sweetest thing ever.

“Is he going to sleep in my room?” Sierra asked from the backseat.

Power Plays: The Todd Perspective 3

 Listen, y'all. I've written threesomes before. I've even written threesomes in which the reader is supposed to kind hate one of the participants. This one has been a doozy. After a couple of downer chapters I'm pressuring myself to make the November section a barnburner. For the people. Because erotica. Said people have been very opinionated, which made me want to take the parts I'd already written and tweak them. The trajectory it was on didn't connect to the material I had for the aftermath. What could happen during an event, that Jesse was desperate to go well, that would make Chrisette upset? Poor woman. My apologies to womankind stand.

Note to Self: in the future, just make a super long chapter with the sexy stuff as a palate cleanser for the depression, lest the shorter installments be absolutely hammered in the comments.

August

I’m on a job site in Providence, talking to the foreman, when I get a call. He takes a peek at the scene before I silence it.
“How old’s your son?”
“He just turned one,” I say, and because I know Jesse would blow a gasket if I ever claimed Seth as my own, I clarify. “He’s actually my, uh, my girlfriend’s kid, but he’s the absolute best.”

“Cute,” the foreman says. “Mine all hit a switch right around that time. They were all about mom right until around ten, eleven months maybe? And then suddenly my wife was chopped liver and I was the favorite.”
I laugh. “Seth’s probably in that camp. He says ‘Da da da da’ a lot, and you can’t tell me that’s the best a one-year-old could do with my name. Sorry to his dad, who’s a good guy.”

September

“Todd.”

I straighten up from where I’ve been leaning on the shopping cart, letting Seth pull on my hair.

“Sasha. You’re looking well.”

It’s true, she’s as sleek and gorgeous as ever. Her sharp gaze lands on Seth.

“Is this Chrissy’s kid?”

“Da! Da! Da da da da!” Seth babbles. He does love a pretty lady.

“Yeah, this is Seth.”

She nods with a downturned smile that I know means she’s judging me pretty harshly. “Wow.”

“Oh, it gets worse,” I chuckle. It’s a relief to be able to say it out loud. “I live with them. We sleep like the grandparents in Willy Wonka.”

Sasha’s thick red hair cascades behind her when she throws her head back to laugh. “Are you fucking kidding?”

“Nope. I’d love to pretend like you should have regrets, but no. You were right about everything.”

“Including Jesse?”

“Hah. Well. That one’s maybe worse than either of us thought.”

Her eyes go wide. “Oh shit. You like him.”

“Oh, hi!” Seth says, so I don’t have to reply.

Power Plays: The Todd Perspective 2

I'm getting yelled at in the comments of recent installments (not here, obviously. No one reads this) and rightfully so. I apologize to women. I apologize to people with mental health issues, myself included. I apologize to happy throuples and the polyamorous community. I apologize to therapists, mine included. I apologize to the people who wanted to read a little gay porn for a nice fun time and got trapped in a psychodrama.

For this story to work, Todd has to learn and grow. Most folks I know, and Jesse especially, are slow to notice real change in the people around them, especially if their first impression is bad. Since we never leave Jesse's POV, I've been trying to figure out (for years; I cringe to see the publication date for the first Power Plays post) how to make change clear to the reader even if Jesse's can't see it.

In a story where no one is completely honest with themselves, Todd starts out close to Jesse—who does not allow himself much introspection—and lands closer to Chrisette by the end of chapter 6. By chapter 9 Todd will have the self-awareness on par with Sasha. She's my favorite, if it isn't clear from the way I treat her character.

March

Sasha spots Chrissy before I do and waves her to our table.

“How’s our girl?” she asks as Chrissy sits. I signal our server.

“Ya girl is so fucking pregnant.”

We make sympathetic noises. Chrissy looks healthier than ever, if anything, but I don’t know how pregnancy works. She makes it sound miserable.

“Do you know what you’re having yet?”

Chrisette grins. “Guess.”

“Girl,” I say. Sasha guesses the same.

“With all the girls in my family you’d think so, but nope. We’re gonna have a little boy running around.”

“A mini Jesse.”

Sasha and Chrissy both laugh like I’m being mean, but I didn’t intend it any particular way. He’ll probably be a decent dad, actually. He seems to be most comfortable when he’s needed. Chrisette…I can’t really picture her that way. She always bragged about how she could avoid being stuck with her nieces and nephews at family events.

Power Plays: The Todd Perspective 1

*Y'all, I feel like a real sicko every time I publish another section of this story. Folks really hate these characters! Or so I say to myself, full of vicious glee. However, there isn't much point in posting if nobody wants to follow the story; how unlikeable can Jesse, Chrisette, and Todd truly be before people stop clicking on Stay Away from Her altogether? I think I'm about to find out, because Jesse's going to be put through the wringer right when he thinks he won. Also there's barely any sex for at least a couple of chapters which again is not why anyone reads erotica. Trying to get your rocks off and instead you get a first-person description of a panic attack? No thanks. Down vote.

To make sense of Todd's arc, ever so often I'd write out a conversation that he'd have when Jesse wasn't around. He's somewhere between Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil, though I maintain that people (and therefore well-rounded characters) rarely think of themselves as bad people, even when they doing heinous things. Writing Todd's perspective has helped me refine the main story so that *you can pick up all the things Jesse misses.

There are spoilers in here if *you haven't read the 5th chapter yet, but I'm clearly not worried about anyone finding this blog. The Todd Perspective begins a month before the main story.

*Still nobody. I can see the blog data and it's very funny.

Watching Him Back Epilogue Bits and Bobs

The last official part of Watching Him Back is live, so technically I have done what I set out to do: finish the damn thing. But of course, back when Aaron and Crispin were the main characters on my mind, I wondered how they could end up together if they went to different colleges. There wasn't enough to make a full chapter about them. Too much to explain: how Aaron's parents reacted to his coming out, how he and Crispin broke up amicably, the other relationships they tried, how they each realized that their first loves were their only blah blah blah.

So, to get it out of my brain I'm releasing as much as I have. It might be hard to read; it's a lot of dialogue without the polish of filling in who is speaking. Because the whole thing is so scattered I've thrown some emoji between sections. Let me know if you can fill in those blanks.

Here it is in all its tangled glory:

Crispin and Aaron broke up after the summer because they’re in school on the opposite ends of the country. It’s harder on Aaron because of his parents’ reaction to his coming out; he practically lived with Crispin’s family for the three months after school. They’re both dating other people—Crispin is with a fellow freshman who won’t top, Aaron with an upperclassman who won’t bottom. Aaron worries that he peaked in high school, not just in achievements but in relationships. He has a friend though, a girl, who he can talk with honestly. (He has male friends, but they don’t talk about relationship stuff.) She advises him to be more vulnerable, and to actually tell Crispin how he feels instead of trying to keep up his cool kid persona.