Pablito > Recent Status Updates

How sad is it that the only person in the world I feel even remotely safe around right now is someone who is an objectively dangerous person? Why the hell am I hoping my stalker is real and that he’ll protect me like some sort of antihero instead of being freaked out by the fact that I might have a stalker in the first place?

“There are a lot of things to admire about me,” he said, his tone so smarmy it tickled another laugh out of me. 

“Such as?”

“My big…” His pause was entirely for effect. “Collection of solo socks. No idea how they all keep losing their partners.”

“They’re strong, independent socks that need no other sock to feel good about themselves,” I supplied. 

- Our Radiant Embers

"Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares 'em."

We aren’t wine and cheese or peanut butter and banana. We’re more like the egg white and the yolk: we belong in the same shell but are made up of completely different compositions. He’s the yolk.

Night, Nordika. "Sober Dope & Sundays"

Finally, a book I cannot put down.

. . . Beauty in unexpected places . . .

A college football player or a psych textbook?

“But in turn, we’d grown very codependent on each other—to the point of it being toxic to both of us. He’d always been the protector . . . but it turned him into my crutch which led to me eventually feeling like he was being overbearing. . . And the lie just ended up being a by-product of him finally choosing to put himself first.”

My lips part in a silent gasp when his teeth graze my skin, sharp but gentle. Like the start of our story.

- Gonzalez Rose, Elle. Caught in a Bad Fauxmance (p. 243). Kindle Edition.

"People who don't read have no advantage over those who cannot read."

--Ryan Holiday

So one of my reading strategies (when I've hit a dry stretch) is to scour the backlist of my go-to authors to see if I've overlooked a title.

And Lo and Behold! Ben Monopoli, who has never let me down, has me riveted with the sweet realism of these linked stories about growing into gay-selfhood in "The Youth and Young Loves of Oliver Wade."

What a find! What an achingly moveable feast!

I'd think back to the lake, the tent --- compulsively, like the birth of something I could not yet imagine. I found my place on your sandstone body --- between your thighs and the mounds of your nipples, in the cave of your armpits. The geography of you was suddenly as clear as that of the city . . . .

I suppose the scariest thing was the lack of certainty. The fifties were over, and people no longer disappeared for speaking out. But in the sixties --- and even later --- things were more arbitrary.Almost anything was possible, depending upon who happened to denounce you and what they thought they could get from you.

I understood enough for anger to collect at the bottom of my stomach. The fact that I couldn't tell anyone made it all worse. I'd been handed a poisoned gift, powerful truths I could never admit to knowing.

That year, Mother said, there had been unrest, student strikes all across the country. So the Party had turned on the Jews. They had called them traitors, dismissed them from their jobs. This was why Beniak's family had left. Once they were gone, no one ever spoke about them again. One day your country is yours, and the next it isn't.

This had to be it, I thought. I shut the catalogue, tried to forget about it. But the title [Giovanni's Room] wouldn't leave me in peace, tantalizing like a loose tooth.

The law of gravity applies to memories too. And one day. as I sat in the library trying to work, to clear my mind, I remembered the book. I found his name in the card catalogue of the foreign literature department. Baldwin, James. There was a list of his works, and only one of them had no official translation: Giovanni's Room.

"Do you have any sins to confess?"
Icarus pressed his forehead to the floor.
"Lust, Anger . . . Greed."
The silence lasted long enough for Icarus's heart to slow. Angus sighed and put a hand on the back of Icarus's neck.
"Your sins are yours to decide. But love is never a sin, and the rules of men who don't understand that don't matter," he said gently.

Each place has a different smell, but the base notes are the same," Icarus went on. "Steel, piss, hot concrete, sweat, and skin. If you're near a body of water you can mix that in too" . . . .
"And eventually the entire city begins to make an impression, like a Rothko. Just a haze of layers and sensations in color."
. . . ."And the memory of all the sensations sort of settles in your chest, as an ache with a name."

The Storeroom?

Ah, to be intimate AND anonymous!

Who remembers Bertolluci's Last Tango in Paris?

In the case of The Anonymous Hookup, the allure outweighs the risk for two high school males who want to explore their sexuality without coming out to the entire school . . . or even to each other.

(Coincidentally, they're reading Will S's Twelfth Night in English class.)

Gotta luv it!

How can I ever feel comfortable being me when I'm the thing my parents hate the most?

-Gabi

This feeling is not like love, I realize; it is love. My heart would not be breaking this way if it were not.

(Romeo speaking not of Juliet but of his Valentine)

There was only fifteen minutes left of lunch, not that I could face sitting at an empty table in the cafeteria, being stared at like a book everybody had read but nobody understood.

So I left.

(Snow Boys)

. . . he kissed me. He pulled me into him and pressed his face against mine, his tongue easing between my lips as my pulse took the bullet train through Tokyo Station at rush hour, frantic yet perfect in its intensity.

That was my Holy Night.

- Simon Doyle. "Snow Boys"

I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around Marty’s neck, exploring the inside of his mouth with the tip of my tongue and soaking up the flavor of him.

It turned out that chaos tasted a lot like coffee.


-Henry, Lisa; Honey, Sarah. The Amazing Alpha Tau Self-Improvement Project

. . . I found myself staring, wondering what it would feel like to drag my tongue across those pecs and what Marty tasted like. Did chaos have a taste?

Tequila, probably.


-Henry, Lisa; Honey, Sarah. The Amazing Alpha Tau Self-Improvement Project

In the year we had spent together, he had proved again and again that topping and bottoming had nothing to do with the balance of power. Beckett loved to kneel before me, look up eagerly, and receive a slap that made his face redden, just as much as I loved his tongue on my rim and fingers around my throat. And in that, we had the power, but we were evenly matched.

Hall, Hayden. Big Stick Energy

It was a tickle deep in my stomach. And when it flared through me, it was so much more than mere annoyance. It had always been more, but I finally knew what it was. Even when I hated him the most, he was the object of my desire, not just fascination. And now, when I couldn’t bring myself to hate him, he was nothing other than the embodiment of all I wanted.

Hall, Hayden. Big Stick Energy

“Just out of curiosity, do you have a personal vendetta against time? Is that why you refuse to use a watch?” he asks, tone deceptively mild. Like if a tiger stops next to you and bumps his head against you . . . .

“Clocks are for people who are so boring they only get asked to go places because they’re guaranteed to arrive on time. Filler bodies until the interesting guests arrive. Thank you for your service.”

"I was still weirded out that I’d missed something so big about myself. It felt as though there were certain fundamental pieces of self-awareness that should have been set by the time I’d reached my twenties. Like being left-handed or right-handed. Realizing I was bi was like suddenly discovering I was ambidextrous."

-Henry, Lisa; Honey, Sarah.

"She kept doing that hair flick thing that girls do, which I once heard Scout describe as like horses swishing their tails to get flies off their asses. It had kind of ruined it for me."

Henry, Lisa; Honey, Sarah. The Amazing Alpha Tau Boyfriend Project

“If you’re not gonna give me what I want willingly,” he whispers, deft fingers working open my belt with ease, “then I’m gonna have to be forced to take it.”

Meet two of the most despicable leads in M/M fiction:: One who won't accept NO, and the other so weak he betrays his best friend with a future domestic terrorist.

Ricci, CE. Caught Stealing (Leighton U Book 2)