Joe College, Part 2 (2021 revision)

When I started this project, it was intentionally casual, intended to be a slight personal distraction, built on the premise of writing a raunchy campus comedy (Van Wilder, Animal House, etc.) with a gay protagonist.  That changed when I figured out Matt Canetti and Chris Riis.  They felt too big and too human, the characters' interactions were too genuine, and the whole project sprawled.  Here we are, thirteen bittersweet years later.

I've been re-reading parts of the story over the summer, both with an eye toward what I'll need to do when I eventually revise it, but also to reconnect with the early chapters as I bring this to a close.  The last couple of years have been rough for everyone.  It's brought too much cynicism into my outline for the end.  I needed to get back in touch with my guys.

Some of it holds up pretty well!  The second part does not.  Because it was written with an eye to raunch and mild amusement, the voice was a mess, Joe faced no consequence for his misdeeds toward Andy, and important details were glanced over.  The sex passages felt mechanical, joyless.  Some of the dialogue was atrocious.  And it wasn't even funny.  Joe didn't display the idiosyncrasies I later discovered.  Andy Trafford seemed empty.

About a month ago, I started playing around and overhauled the second part in a few days.  I've been rereading and tweaking ever since, not just because I'm being neurotic, but because it felt nice to spend time with these guys.  Like exiting a time machine and having new adventures with old friends.  

The original chapter two embarrasses me.  The new one does not.  Hope you enjoy.

Joe College during Covid lockdown

During the lockdown, I sometimes thought about my characters -- where they'd be, what they talked about, how they organized their lives during that time.  It was a gentle distraction.  Sometimes it helped me sort out their story trajectories.

Does it make sense to post installments that jump ten years into the future from my most recent chapter?  Is it a productive use of my writing energy, when I could be pushing the story toward the finish line instead?  Who knows.  Probably not!  But I'm not beholden to a publisher, editor, agent, or schedule, and my only remuneration is e-mails and comments.

I don't think of my story as capable of having spoilers in the traditional sense.  If you want to be surprised in real time by how it unfolds, you can wait and read this later, in the normal order.  At most, you could infer my general intentions of who will be in the picture and what they'll be up to later in the story.  I'm not filling in background or providing exposition, beyond what people experience this spring.

I'll keep adding to this post.  My thinking is that this section will run from New York's shutdown order of March 20 through the end of the curfew imposed on the City's protestors a few weeks ago.  I'd like to claim that I'm writing this solely for myself, as a way of making sense of what just happened, through the idealized and somewhat more comfortable world I've created for the characters.  Writing it feels cathartic.  But if I were doing it solely for my mental health, I wouldn't feel compelled to share it as a work in progress.

Second installment; June 30, 2020

Third installment: July 13, 2020

Chapter 34 is posted.

Available here.

Chapter 33 is posted.

Here's the link.

Chapter 32 is posted.

Here's the link.

What's up, everybody?  Is anyone still here?  It's been 33 short months since the last installment.  Given that wait, I feel like whatever I cooked up was bound to be underwhelming -- short of Daenerys sitting on the Iron Throne and Jon Snow hooking up with Gendry, which definitely happens.

I've also been avoiding e-mails and comments recently, in order to make sure that any feedback didn't distract from my efforts to hammer this out.  I skimmed through them today, and thankfully no one was too threatening or frustrated.  Sorry if I've left you hanging, but, you know.

The next chapter will be graduation, so I expect a lot to happen.  How much actually gets resolved is harder to say.  I expect three or four more installments altogether.  Thanks as always.

Chapter 31 is posted.

Here's the link.

Chapter 30 will post soon.

It's done and e-mailed in for posting.  I may not be on my laptop for awhile, so can't update with a definite link, but I assume it will be posted at this link within 48 hours.  If not that link, you should be able to find it.

Apparently it's been seven months since my last chapter, and this one will probably seem anti-climactic!  Sorry about that.  It was supposed to be the first half of a longer chapter, but it developed its own story arc that stands alone.

The next chapter is one I've been waiting for years to write, like Chapter 16, Chapter 25 and Chapter 28.  Those chapters almost wrote themselves.  I'm hoping the same will be true here, but I never really know.

Thanks for your patience.  I think that there are only (?) nine chapters left.  If you're digging the story, the waits are probably frustrating, but we're all going to miss this when it's over.

Chapter 29 is posted.

Here it is.

Chapter 28 is posted.

It's available here.

Opposing views on Chris Riis

A couple of different takes on Chris popped up in the comments to my last post.

Opinion A:

Also if Joe and Chris don't end up entwined, you're going to have to write an alternative ending just so I can cope emotionally and continue with my day.

***

I hope, I pray that Chris sees that he loves Joe so much. And I know it's not going to end with Joe and Chris happily ever after- but god I wish I could change it so they could.

Opinion B:

Why anyone would want Joe to end up with a guano-head like Chris is beyond me. The story is about Joe's growth, and it's obviously bringing him to a point at which he's worthy of Andy. Chris - despite the fact that he's a fucked-up child and therefore deserving of sympathy, like the rest of us - is a means to an end.

Judging from the e-mails and comments, Chris and Andy are the two characters that people seem to really, really like -- although Chris also has a lot of detractors.  For me, it's just cool that people have a strong feeling one way or another.  Anybody else feel like giving their opinion?

Myself, I fucking love all of these characters, including Joe's asshole brother Rob.

I also want to mention that Chapter 28 should be done and posted soon-ish.  Not necessarily this weekend, or even the weekend after, but it's around 80% complete and the rest is falling into place.

Chapter 27 is posted.

You can read it here.

Chapter 26 is posted.

You can read it here.

UPDATE, 2/3/14: This is not the last chapter! I'm getting e-mails from people who have that impression! There are probably around 12-15 installments left, not to mention that this would be an incredibly anti-climactic conclusion.

Chapter 25 is posted (updated with DVD extra)

You can read it here.

Updated, 9/22:  I'm starting to sketch out a little of the next chapter.  Moving on from the last one is hard.  Click through for a deleted scene and some director's commentary.

Chapter 25 preview (updated x3)

Chapter 25 will be massive.  I was expecting a range of 15,000-20,000 words, but the section I intended as the set-up for the main story arc already clocks at 6,000 words -- about three times longer than I planned.  That would be enough for a stand-alone chapter, and I thought about posting it that way, but the whole thing ties together thematically, so I'm sticking to my original concept.

In the meantime, here's a small preview.  It won't spoil you on the main arc of the chapter, if you're worried about that kind of thing.  I picked it mainly because it's fairly self-contained, so don't infer too much about which characters show up and how the rest unfolds.  If this goes over well, I might do similar posts in the future, depending on timing and what I'm writing.

Update, 8/18: This chapter is huge. The length of a short novel. Some of the things you've probably been wanting for a long time kind of, sort of happen.  I think every character either appears or is name-checked, but it takes place in its own kind of bubble and is close to being a stand-alone story, the way Chapter 16 was. Is it bloated? Too shaggy? Kind of epic? I'll let you guys decide soon, almost definitely by the end of the month.  Very excited to finish it.

Update, 8/29:  Well, I spoke too soon. Had a night to myself last night for the first time in 10 days, so the new chapter won't post in August. Soon, though. Sorry for the false optimism.

Update, 9/4:  Chapter 25 is done.  I've mailed it in for posting.  32,543 words.  Insane.  Read it slowly, because I might need some recovery time.  I'll write a new post when it's online.

Chapter 24 is posted.

You can read it here.

And, FYI, you probably want to read it in private.  Just saying.

Chapter 23 is posted.

You can read it here.

This story doesn't end when you probably think it will end.

I wanted to explain a little bit about the structure of what I'm writing.  Somewhere around Chapter 10, the whole shape of this story came together in my head, and I've been pacing it pretty strictly according to that design.

A lot of people understandably seem to be under an impression that this is going to wrap up at the end of senior year.  Given the title and how invested I am in the setting, this would make sense.  That assumption would guide your expectations about when things fall into place, how much more is left to the story and how I'm pacing it.  But if this were in paperback, you'd be able to thumb ahead to see how many pages are left, maybe skim ahead for the dirty scenes, and have a summary on the back cover telling you what it's all about.

So it only seems fair to flag that the story won't end at graduation.  And while I'm getting closer to the kinds of scenes and sequences and plot developments that you'd expect, the heart of it won't come together until later, post-graduation chapters, which will involve almost every character who's had a line of dialogue.  And man, it's going to tie up.  There won't be a loose thread.

And now you may be thinking, "Jesus Christ, JPM, you're driving me fucking nuts.  It takes you 10 months to write one chapter, and now you're talking about shit happening years after college."  So, yeah, that's kind of lame of me, but I wanted to flag it now so that when we get to graduation and not everything is resolved, you don't think I was a tease.  It's part of the plan.  And hopefully we won't have another ten-month lull between updates.  I'm trying to be better.

If you're still rolling your eyes, trust me, this wasn't what I had in mind when I wrote the first chapter, back when I thought this would be kind of a gay "American Pie," only with a little more heart.  This has a life of its own now.

The good news is that Chapter 23 should be posted fairly soon.  It's kind of a stand-alone short story about one of the secondary characters.  Chapter 24 will end junior year.  Chapter 25 will be set in the summer of 2004 -- it's going to be long and pretty and is something I've been looking forward to writing for at least a year.  And then it'll be chapter 26, we'll be in senior year, and there will be consequences.

Last thing: Occasionally people seem to worry that this will have a tragic arc.  I'll just note that I hate how so many depictions of gay guys, even the good ones (Brokeback, A Single Man), seem to require one of the characters dying.  That's not my jam.  But I've already reassured you on this front.  If you worry that I'm setting up for something truly sad, just go back and re-read the first sentence of Part One.  It'll still be true at the end.

Chapter 22 is posted.

You can read it here.

Chapter 21 is posted.

You can read it here.

An open thread while we wait for Chapter 21.

Yo! I know that several of you are waiting for more of the story, and, as always, I really do appreciate your interest and enthusiasm. Wish that I thought a new chapter was imminent -- this stretch really is a monkey on my back -- but after putting down a few thousand words, I kind of don't like what I have, so it's going to require some more thinking and work.

In the interim, you can leave any questions, complaints, love letters, etc., in the comments. I can't promise that I'll respond, but I'll definitely read them.

Here's an e-mail I just sent to a somewhat demanding (if complimentary) e-mailer who aggressively asked me why the hell I'm not updating more frequently:

Dude! You have to understand that I'm a just a guy with a demanding job, an active social life and lots of interests that tend to demand my time, too. Working on the story is a really cool activity that I enjoy, but it's not like I'm getting rich or famous from it -- I'm just some guy doing it because I like it. I also try to resist the urge to post a chapter just to meet demand. Last chapter, I had several thousand words written before I decided that it sucked and went back to square one. Something similar is happening with this one. I've got a plan and structure in place for the whole story, but there are certain sections that I knew were going to be kind of hard. This is just one of those things. I'm not a professional; I have to do the best that I can with my time and my ideas.

That said, thanks so much for your interest and enthusiasm. I really appreciate it, and feel very lucky that people take an interest in what I'm doing. I've got to think that by the end, we're all going to have a better time if I just try to enjoy the writing and do the best that I can, and not rush it just to put a new chapter out there.