summary: Bud doesn't know who he is anymore, and Foster just wants his music. Both are going home for the summer after two years at college. Neither knows if the home they've always known is still the home they've once known.


Read here.

Please leave a comment! I have a thick skin and invite all feedback.

Going back home is scary, not knowing if things are the same, parents will treat us like back then, will I still have friends etc. Like Tony. Bud seems like he never had an easy child hood. nice to see two sides as well.

Thanks for the reply & review, Drewbie! I can give you my brie if you like.

Yeah, the scary thing about going home after being away is not knowing whether it'll still feel like home. It's worse if you don't feel comfortble where you're at, far away from where you grew up.

........A well written story

Eileen & Bob Cruz elicit images of living mannequins, with lives so plastic they need their 'Harvard son' to prove to themselves that they are alive. I can envision a sterile home, a sitting room torn from the pages of Home & Garden, though rarely used. Of course they will have to accept their son's orientation, discreetly; to lose him will only compound their mundane existence. Besides their disdain was probably replaced when Eileen & Bob realized have a gay son could prove to be beneficial if not downright fashionable. Bud's dilemma reminds me of a line from a song …."Should I stay or should I go". leaving school for the summer to avoid a spoiled relationship, Bud sadly finds out that it's true what they say; you can never go home again, not that there was much of one anyway.

Foster's anticipated homecoming was anti-climatic for him as little remains the same, his parents trip down nostalgia for his homecoming only added to the awkwardness he felt, an outsider in his own home. Finding solace in his music and yesterdays.

I like the story a lot, but I felt like it was more of a glimpse than an actual story. You have drawn some great characters, and given us just the tiniest windows into their lives, making us want to learn more. But I sort of felt like this was a setup chapter - a lead-in to a longer story, rather than a self-standing piece. You have painted some great characters, but I think you need to throw some conflict at them and let them develop. Otherwise, they're just static, you know?

I hope you don't mind the critique. I think you're one of the most interesting writers here, and your characters are always colourful and vivid. I just want to learn more about them.

A good story that is made excellent by the delivery. I disagree with hotchikk; to extend this story would detract from the elegance of the plot and the enigma of the characters. Foster's story, in particular, was moving. There is no feeling quite like the one you get from feeling completely alone when surrounded by friends or family.

There's not a whole lot to say about it: it was short, to the point and effective in its aim. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Menzo

I've rarely seen the feeling of alienation made so tangible in a story.

In Bud's case even the place doesn't seem to accept him anymore, and of course, his parents seem to never have understood him in the first place, at least not his father. His mother is more vague, but at least she stands up for him in the end.

Tony's reaction made me quite frustrated -- he was pretty rude there, although I guess it was just that he didn't really know what to say, and had expected some (to him) much more exciting dark secret. Like having had sex with a (female) prostitute or something, harhar. That'd have been shocking in a socially semi-acceptable and cool way. I still think he was a jerk though.

I could write a few chapters about Bud's father as well, a stereotypical American-bovine guy, but I won't right now since my battery is dying.

Foster's family was absolutely lovely, but his alienation no less tangible. Nevertheless it felt like there'd be a more happy resolution for him in the end -- like his family would have a hard time with his being gay but would ultimately accept it and be supportive, even though the road there might be rough.

You're correct that there isn't much story-ness to this story. Not much happens, particularly in Foster's end; everything ends ambiguously; and I don't even provide justification for pinning Foster and Bud's stories together. On the other hand, I think that paradigm isn't applicable to this story. It's like comparing a mediaeval tapestry with Impressionism, Tennyson with Plath. The story (hopefully) sets up a mood and makes communications that happen in the gut, rather than the cerebral cortex.

Thanks for the comments. Worry not; nothing you said has impinged on my writinghood.



Hmm, yes. I think I agree with the points you made. Thanks for the comments, they're much appreciated.



What can I say -- I've got green antennae, after all.



Aww, but Tony was just a sleepy straight friend! My points in his defense: a) being gay should be a 'oh yeah? okay cool' sort of thing, so Tony did react 'appropriately'; b ) Tony covered all the important points in his convo; and c) Bud made it sound like it was an 'oh yeah, okay cool' sort of thing. I also think many gay people are just so relieved their friends didn't decide to lynch them that a reaction like Tony's would be considered saintly.

There is something about stories that only afford the reader s scant glimpse into the life of the subjects. As a reader they are some of my favorite, for they mimic what happens to all of us on a daily basis. We all interact with people and that interaction tells a story no matter how brief, or how poignant, or how much we want to move along with the subjects into the next scene. More often then not our own lives get in the way and we must stay where we are supposed to be.

As a writer I dread these types of stories and that be my own short comings, but I plain out invest too much time into the people I create, often forming vague-to-detailed images of their lives 20 or 30 years down the line and way after the segment of their life I am writing has passed.

That said, I don't know which of these lives is more tragic. Foster seems to have a very supportive family with maybe an overbearing but clearly proud mother. Yet he seems aloof to the fact for most of the tale.

bud on the other hand, someone described his family as plasticine. I'd have to agree, and I also would speculate on the real reason for the reactions of his parents. Where they indeed mourning the loss of a straight son, or was this night in June the moment when the inevitable caught up with them? It seems their family was strung together with the thinnest of string, and Bud's coming out was the strain that may have finally caused it to break.

At any rate I enjoyed the Tale Corvus, as with the majority of the stuff you have offered. Keep writing, and I'll keep reading.

Steve

I dont know why, but I had some difficulties to follow the rythm of your story. its always funny to read a story in a for me foreign language. Above the words themselves, you have to take care of the punctuation, the parting in paragraphs, the construction of the phrases. The difference between the words which are apparently only brought to fill hollows and the important moments of the story, the dramatic ones, is not so easy to find out.
After a second reading, everything became clear for me. The way you write is the best way to express sorrow and disillusion. The slowness, the dryness is a choice. if I imagine the scenes of your characters, it is as if I would see a film in a slackened tempo. I dont share the feelings of your characters, but I admire the way you brought it in your style.
And it is a really "short story", with a beginning and an end, but an end in a "no man's land", with no hope and no future.
I dont agree with a former opinion about a "glimpse". The story is a whole story. You have, during your reading, to ad a lot from your own. This story gave me a lot to think, about life, youth and faith. I'm sorry for the characters.
Work well done.
Old Bob
BTW, what I prefer in the story is its title. It does mean "nothing", but it resumes perfectly the story.

Let me say at the outset that I enjoyed your excellent story. It was well written, reasonably well edited (with only a few things falling through the cracks), and the characters were nicely drawn and perfect for a short story.

However, I found that either there should have been two short stories or that they should have been more artistically bound together--with more parallelism. There were two stories of the young men that seemed primarily linked by their connection at Harvard. I never felt that I was getting two views or perspectives on the same family events and relationships. I felt the story went from one well-written theme to another.

When I thought of the interweaving of themes, my mind turned to Alone/Together, in Chapter Nine (I had to look it up), in which two parallel events are tied together. This chapter, by the way, is one of the most beautifully written chapters in the gay genre and fares well in all of literature, as does the novel itself.

While A Certain Lightness in June has a more complex set of circumstances than Chapter Nine of Alone/Together, your story could benefit, I think, from tying the two parts together.

Before closing this, I will repeat my opening comment: your story was really excellent. (And, if you need an extra editor, keep me in mind.)

If you have any sense whatsoever, you will run, not walk, right into that offer.

Thanks for the comments, Benji. Is that from Les Mis, Marius's part in "One More Day"? I'm sure more than one songwriter has used it, but Les Mis popped into my mind first. It's the fault of a couple of my high school friends... they were obsessed with that musical.



Danke schön, Steve. I'm somewhat fond of this type of story, actually, because I'm such a lazy person I just let bits of their past come to my head instead of planning their lives out beforehand. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I'm actually very optimistic for both Foster and Bud. There's definitely going to be more difficulties in the future, but I believe that, overall, things are looking up for them. Of course, that could just be my imagination. B)



I think you have an intrinsic understanding of this story, old bob. Thanks for much for your comments. And I think the difficulties of the first reading might be due in part to the many typos and mistakes I made...




I'm glad you thought so highly of my story, although I will protest that it wasn't well edited at all -- I was quite impatient and didn't get it betaed before I posted. Hopefully I will get off my lazy arse and do that within the next few ___.

Re: your criticism, I agree that there isn't a binding element between the two storylines, and I agree that including such an element would make an excellent story. Such an element would need to be rather subtle -- the last thing I want to do is distract the reader and get him/her all excited about some sort of "connecting symbolism." It should be subliminal. My instinct while writing this story was that, unless I could think of something suitably unobstrusive to connect the storylines, the piece as a whole wouldn't profit. Since I couldn't think of anything, I didn't write it in. (If you think of something, let me know!)

Thanks for the comments.

Green? You mean those horns you have? They're not green, they're skin colour. Well, not that I looked, but I'm sure I'd have noticed if they were green.




I agree with you on (a), but... hmm yeah, you're right about ( b ) and ( c ) too. But I still think he was a bit of an idiot. He should t least have stayed around to see if Bud wanted to talk more instead of sticking his head in the duvet like that. Sleepy, my foot... He could've slept on the bus to his summer internship, the idiot.