All Comments on 'Barry'

Just as good at the second read as the first one. You hit all my buttons. Thanks, Bob. Randi.

Enjoyable and enchanting as most of yours tend to be.

Thx!

"It turned out that he had been involved in a hit and run that left him in a "comma" for fourteen months."

You sure it wasn't a longer period?

Yep, you nailed it. A typical JPB story. That is not necessarily praise nor insult. It is an agreement with the author. It was enjoyable and, while not fully original, it was an oasis amongst recent postings.

Perfect. Just the right touch. You're putting together quite a string of good tales. Next one, please.

any woman dumb enough to pull a stunt like Mel did should expect the worst.

A good old fashioned, straight forward, she done him wrong story. Entertaining and well told.

They say "No man is an island", but occassionaly browsing LW feels like being adrift on a seas of cuck.

But this one certainly floated my boat.

Thanks Bob!

Not as good as ur usual. Still good, and I appreciate the work. I enjoyed it, but you have definitely written better. The set up seemed rushed. Normally I would've expected about a half page more. Still liked it, thank you for your time and effort.

No , it needed more Pauline French ! Lol

Nice little yarn . Kinda lacking in the angst dept , it needed a bit more anguish .

I know ( and love ) your straight forward, Mikey Spillane type style , but you kind of zipped right on through this like a plugged up hollow point .

It just needed more , just more .

4 *'s .

It's been terrible since your last story. I appreciate the western flavor and Barry is your usual protagonist: honest and doesn't take any shit. Please keep writing! 1000 stories would be a good target (till you pass it). Thanks for your work on this and all your other stuff.

reasonable man

I'm glad to see a story that looks at life without all the twists some of these have. Thanks....Hope to see more soon.

The Top 5 foremost RIGHT and wrong literary Features that Hall of Fame author JPB employed to multitudinous effect in ' Barry ' in my HUMBLE opinion. 

1) RIGHT : The story intro referred briefly to Melissa the ultimate main female character in offhand manner but transitioned smoothly into inciting incident with Barry's betrayal first marriage. Then JPB pulled trigger with Barry's divorce, move to Denver and pre- fated rondez-vous with Melissa. This narrator initial marital misstep smoothly sets up reader apprehension and suspense. Kudos.

2) WRONG : Sometimes a feature of writer's style can be both strength AND weakness. JPB opts for terse clipped portraits of his female characters Shelby and Melissa which make them amendable, interchangeable ciphers who give nary a clue to reader or narrator of inner motivations until they launch their game-changing agendas. Tension ratchets up from zero to a hundred in 2 seconds. Prelude scene please.

3) RIGHT : JPB reveals core of his dual female characters with spare efficient dialogue reveals. Shelby's ludicrous damage control soliloquy makes her emminenly dispensable to reader and narrator. Melissa is also deceptive in her intent YET lingering questions are raised by what she holds back and later her confusing amorous actions. Finally she explains and for Barry , it's a very good thing.

4) WRONG : Once again JPB opts for flat-line , low flow, non-emotive narrator who works, likes to dance and drink now again but stays rooted like a tree in terms of being pro-active in relationship. Barry is mired in react mode, is not au courant to his woman's wherewithals that he shares bed, board and body fluids with  Maybe next time.

5) RIGHT :" Manure happens " and JPB shows Barry is taken aback when his significant other goes sideways , but he gathers himself in short order and doesn't get maudlin or permanently embittered like say " cuck shit guy".

Bottom line(s) :  This is borderline, flash quick hitter that takes time for misdirection by Melissa , then pulls out of relationship nosedive with credible pleaser ending . JPB male proxy and female doxies rarely wear heart on sleeve , but aren't made of stone ...this time .

So nice. Ergo the obvious rating.

Full marks * * * * *

or those who make serial choices, TK U MLJ LV NV

Great tale. Happy that our hero Barry lived through the cheating cunt and found real love at the end. Always a great tale from JPB.

One thing. LSD, you think too much.. Relax.

Five Stars

I’d like to see JPB try to write one of his stories in first person female. It might be interesting.

Bob’s stories are usually tightly constructed, but sometimes too dispassionate, as this one was. Even his ending plot twist was forced, and will leave his protagonist always with a nagging suspicion.

I grew up around the DTC, lived in Highlands Ranch, worked in Castle Rock, partied in Sedalia. (what’s the name of that great little breakfast stop on 85 and the cutoff to Devil’s Head?)

Yeah pretty much boiler plate, but well done and satisfying. (Hey, I’m a sucker for happy endings.) But hey, nobody ever thought twice about a vase of sunflowers until VanGogh. Form over content - style over substance. *****

Communication: a small thing but without it, the death knell of many relationships.

Maybe it's just me, but although this was a typical JPB tale, I enjoyed it more than his last few, which I also liked fine. Perhaps it was more to the point, trimming away a few of the extraneous details that, while interesting the first and second time, tend to get reused a lot in his stories.

Thanks for the story, Bob.

Cog

To see decent authors are still around in this category.

abohtThanks for writing this; I enjoyed it. There is something refreshing about the protagonist's laissez faire yet "Don't think I am a carpet you can walk over" attitude.

but still a good story.

Nice to see one of the regulars back. All the regular top crop writers have been absent and there have not been many good stories for the last few months.

Because nobody died

He’s a grown man who agreed to marry a manipulative immature game player who would lie and break his heart to test him?That is idiotic in the extreme.

Some typos are funny, and having a love story turn on a terrible punctuation accident that leaves someone in a comma for months is hilarious. I'm not making fun of JPB, and two very similar spellings are hard to catch, and how often do anyone of us write 'coma' as opposed to saying 'comma' in our heads, so it's nothing but a typo (of which there might be more than one in this comment, it seems there usually are in comments from grammar nazis), but it just struck me as a funny typo.

Thanks for the story, JPB.

Boring, predictable, emotionless, cardboard characters, lifeless plot, author just going through the motions at this point...

...but it’s JPB!!! So five stars, obviously!

After reading stories in LW lately, I appreciate how JPB handles infidelity. He doesn't set people on fire, and he doesn't beat women. That seems to have become a bar many writers are unable to reach, although it doesn't seem that high. Barry smacked the guy in the nose, which seemed reasonable, although it could lead to jail time and losing his job. JPB, the writer, has several personas. I see a lot fewer cream pies and gang bangs of late. The persona I prefer is the one that wrote this story. He does not tolerate cheating. The husband removes himself from it, with no pick handles required, although he does rough up wives' lovers in some stories. I do love Pauline French, although she had a minor role here. The only negative thing with this story is that the separation with the cheating wife was void of much emotion. The story never reached an emotional peak. It was pretty mild and never really got the readers' juices flowing.

She's talking about not divorcing, yet she already cleaned out the accounts!

"I'd probably had more to drink than I should have and he offered to walk me to my room. If I'd been a little more sober I would have said no, but I didn't." - Okay, that sort of explains the FIRST time, but not continuing it when sober!

"just goes to show how stupid I can be at times" - "at times"? Understatement of the year!

Typical Loving Wife! Meets first love, spark is still there. Instead of offering her husband for an amicable divorce and marrying first love, cheats!

"I'll take the couch tonight" - Screw that! Tell her to sleep on the couch, or doesn't he have a second bedroom? LOL, she did just that!

I agree that her "ploy" was stupid! He had already asked her to marry him, HIS commitment was never in doubt. Why would she expect him to fight when she was apparently so committed to DATING the new guy that she would spend the money to move out

Did the cheater cheat again? Like you said, "once a cheater always a cheater."

After reading comments praising story as highest score worthy, I figured I missed something. So I re-read story.

Openin four or five paragraphs state he sort of knew some girl in high school. He goes to college, gets job, meets girl,gets married, she cheats, divorce he moves, high school girl magically reappears, true love at last.

Author states this is his usual story.

If that is true, the only ''legendary'' thing about him is his number of stories. Seemed author just decided it was time to up his count by one.

I admit I may be wrong, I did write I must be missing something.

Like...he and wife work for same company, at same location, yet routinely do not go together in one car to work. No wonder she couldn't afford to buy and keep spare charger at work.

Author did his usual, fans gave their usual five stars, who am I to break the pattern...

Signed,

The Usual One

I didn't know Melissa, I never cared about Melissa, he gave no indication that HE cared about Melissa, so I didn't care about her and him, and in the,what, 20 some paragraphs she was actually IN the story, we didn't get a huge sense that they loved each other desperately.

So this was cold and bland. I frankly liked the interactions between him and Shelby more

Boilerplate though I did like her little 'twist' about the man at work.

One of my favorite writers hits another homerun. *****

I liked her and her back story as well as the trick she pulled, though it would have really pissed me off.

I think this one is actually worth some fleshing out and expanding because the dynamic between Melissa and our hero has good drama potential.

Should be in romance though as the first marriage wasn't vital to Barry and Mel's development.

Was miles better then what the cucky wimpy cum slurpers have been writing about for the past few weeks. But we all know those silly fags like to eat my used CONDOMS

It seems as though JPB barely puts any effort into his writing. He just writes the same story over and over again, changing only the characters’ names (sometimes), and making slight tweaks to the plot here and there. I can’t help but wonder about the purpose. What motivates him to write? Is it the accolades of anonymous strangers?

He’s not the only one, of course. It seems as though the most popular writers in this category all phone it in and write the same damn story over and over without an ounce of effort or originality. Yet, that’s what the readers seem to like. I guess there is comfort in drab, predictable, repetitiveness.

Why does all the male characters in this author's tales always so much in a hurry to get married?

In short: it's hella-stupid to ask a woman to marry you less than a year into your relationship. Fuck, the engagement by itself should take at least 12 months, minimum, yet those doofus get themselves hitched as soon as the girl says "YES!"

Then, later on, those guys asked themselves why their relationships didn't worked... why would it worked, since you don't even know who you married!?

Shelby is the prototypical JPB slut: full of shit, more upset about being caught than about betraying her vows, more scared of being alone than of losing her husband, highly immature in every way that matter... essentially, catnip for guys like Barry/Rob/Robert/Bob/etc.

Melissa... well, hopefully, she's done with the idiotic mind games, and will be straightforward in her relationship with Barry from now on... Thing is, she is still a JPB broad, which makes her highly susceptible to eventually become the cheater she seems not to be right now (barely matter that she got cheated on herself - such an ordeal never stopped any of the other JPB's tramps before.) Let's hope for Barry's sake that her fit of immaturity, with that whole 'moving-out-cause-of-a-new-guy' nonsense, was an outlier, and that she'll actually communicate with Barry, from now on, if she has any issue with him...

Ha! As if! No way that's gonna happen, not in the JPB-verse...

You're not stretching yourself too much here, Bob. Some of us thought that the 'cowboy assignment' Randi gave you would have help you to find new storylines to write. Sure, you are who you are, and, frankly, you truly are a LIT legend because of that, but there's really nothing in "Barry" that you haven't already wrote a decade ago. Push yourself a little - worst come to worst, we, your readers, won't like what you came up with... so what? You would still be JPB.

A little bit more effort in your future work would still be appreciate. That's all I'm saying.

He subtitles the story 'my usual' and everyone is all butt-hurt that it is not a unique masterpiece. In music, this would be variations on a theme. Good ones. Thanks, Bob. Keep 'em comin'. 5 stars. JPR

5* from me.

Score is Good.

Nothing unusual here, EXCEPT...

Pauline French isn't barren, and pops out a bunch of kids?

I remember Pauline, most often UNABLE to conceive, thus promoting her promiscuity with casual hookups fueling her desire to never be tied down to just ONE guy. Great in bed, and legendary sexual contortionist, never more than balm on a blighted man's ego.

Is this the first time she settled down to marriage and kids in JPB history?

Most UNusual for this reader.

Always Bob, you remain a must read. THAT is why you are legendary!

Thanks!

Nice story. Thanks.

Good read.interesting and enjoyable, thanks!

Some of the comments are just too revealing. Mighty Horny's super-patronizing effort was a classic. Look at the scores. We love him as he is.

Yes, it’s in JPB’s usual mode, but with less turnstyle girlfriends. The protagonists approach relationships like contract negotiations sometimes. Still, a happy ending, which is what I root for. The first wife folded after her line of BS pretty fast, but the second one seems to have more staying power.

My only grip is that Shepler's has been bought out. Other than that, JPB stays consistent to his style.

@ReedRichards - JPB done it before. Generally turned out REALLY BAD for the faithful husband - it's how the couple of his female-centered stories turned out, anyway.

Sure, I did said it was predictable... but I did also said I liked it, didn't I?

So I asked one of my favorite author, one of the best around here, to try to come up with something new next time around... So what? What does it supposedly revealed - that I'm done with his usual, but wouldn't mind seeing pull out something else?

Yes, sure - it 'super-patronizing' to request of a great storyteller if he could write different and more inventive stories... how dare I think he could become even greater? lol

People who concoct tests to gauge feelings are manipulative liars, who will stab you in the back if it fits their next whim.

The writing is usual is nearly flawless but the ending is irrational and it makes no sense. In fact it so bad it is offensive. Superficially this might seem to be a breakdown in communication but that covers up the real problem here -which is that the woman is mentally unstable and nobody should ever marry this idiot.

FACT #1 the guy /husband to be actually ASKED her to get married a year ago --she said no.

FACT #2 Apparently during the course of the year she changed her mind but she claim to not wnat to say anything because she didn't want him to feel pressured.

How can that possibly makes any sense given that he actually is the one to ask to get married?

She might realistically wonder .... if say 6 months later if he still want to get married but she could not possibly think that if she raised the issue again he would somehow feel pressured.

He asked her to get married. She did not pressure him to ask ... he asked her to marry openly and did so of his own free will.

For a woman any person to think this way is to sign of irrational mental instability and a serious character flaw.

So much better than all these gay married cuckold wimp storied which are usually not well written. Thanks Bob

Perfect JPB story. LW has become a desert of cum swallowing cuck stories. Good to see one where a man has some actual self esteem.

This could have turned out so badly. Testing a man with a potential affair in such an unemotional off-hand way, after he has been turned down before, is downright dumb of the girl. Nor are there any discerning features about her attitude prior to this apparently casual and guilt-free abandonment of their relationship. His reaction is a natural male one, to not show his feelings in the face of inevitability, and walk out and cry alone or drink his sorrows away. The way she springs it on him makes it impossible to assess her emotional involvement; I would have thought this test would come at a point where they are discussing meeting each other's families, or a holiday or weekend away. Her swift capitulation and assertion that this was a test of his feelings for her seems unnatural. So overall, I have a very bad feeling about the long term prospects of this marriage.

Damn I wished life was like these story where I can go around and hit anyone I want not have charges against me.

Lots to like and much appreciated. Loved the 'fell into a comma' phrase, Bob-still having trouble with the punctuation I see!

And you enticed Harry out of his cage to demonstrate yet again that he's still 'beyond stupid'.

Nice one!

Really? I would have expected it to leave him in an exclamation point.

Newsflash, Anon: you can hit whomever you want and not go to jail... if you're smart enough about it.

Not gonna tell you how - 'would give you bad ideas.

Well written but, I couldn’t find myself caring about Barry. It wasn’t that his character was poorly developed, it was that I didn’t find him likable or interesting, but kind of arrogant and dull.

. It would be interesting to know how much time this took compared to his earlier writings. I agree with HDK there seems to be a less emotions in his current writings, I don't know if he is maturing or just getting bored.

Anony 156

It is not one of your better ones. I am sorry but she was playing a bullshit game and he basically let her get away with it. She is manipulative and he lets her. She has no consequences to the fact she was testing him which shouldn't have needed to be done if they were together that long.

The only thing I don't quite buy is his warning to Jeff.

Even if you believe 100% in "once a cheater, always a cheater," this wasn't your normal everyday cheating. Jeff was her high school sweetheart that she was going to marry. I doubt that she has another one of those lying around!

One thing does bother me about the whole coma (comma?) thing. They were THAT close, and nobody in his family knew how or cared to contact her?

Personally I would have rejected the pity sex and never gotten back together again.

But I have nothing against other people being happy. From the way the story was going I was expecting Jessica to take him home.

What t f? A really stupid ending. 1*

A pretty dull LW story with a good-but-trite ending, then a fairly good Romance story with two (poor-communication) hairpin turns and a (I hope) Happy Ending!

3*. average between the (essentially unrelated) stories.

Once a cheater etc. In this story it's Once burned . . .

These people were cheated on and spent the rest of their lives in fear of it happening again. So afraid they ran from work, relationships, and happiness.

It's sad they missed out on so much.

JPB writes almost perfectly, this story included. I disagree with HIV - JPB wrote Melissa's character perfectly - she expected Barry to read her mind and then started playing games when she couldn't. Realist female behavior for sure. Nobody writes women better than JPB or PapaToad (except, of course, our Lady Lit writers).

He threw his first wife away so fast. Any time a man does that it just shows their was no real love there. A love bond is much harder to break than that.

Secondly. The story fell flat when we didn’t have more interaction in the first marriage. What happened when she was caught lying? How did she try to get around that?

Just not a very satisfying story.

It would have served Melissa right if Jess got him on the rebound!

@Mgbdallas - You CAN'T be serious! If a man "throwing away" his cheating wife shows that he had no real love, how much "real love" did SHE have that allowed her to cheat on him? "What happened when she was caught lying? How did she try to get around that?" - Um, by lying! She had SO much love for Barry that two months after the divorce was final she married Jeff!

He caught his first wife cheating and then she lied about it and he caught her again...walked away and had the self control to just hit the cheating snake in the face once. Great story.

I love a happy ending, and Pauline French.

Five of course.

Jedd Clampett

A JPB is like a Hallmark.

Excellent work, excellent story. Everyone, whether man or woman, can actually see themselves in this same position, and doing the same thing. EXCELLENT ....

I would dump someone immediately for that kind of heartless and cruel stunt.

Gees Pauline French gets around. Lol

Maybe it was that third drink.

Everything you want in a story, especially no superior BBC. JPB is always on point. Love his work.

‘Nuff Said.

Well written story.

Something we expect

and get from JPB.

Melissa's lying does

put a bad taste in my mouth.

I've met women with the

"chase me if you love me" logic.

Didn't work on me.

Wonder if it works, in general, lol.

I don't think Melissa is the last stop

on Barry's journey.

Just hope he gets there.

Thanks JPB!

The thing that still bugs me, even WITHOUT Barry's prior proposal, was her "interest" in the new guy being strong enough to warrant her spending the money on a new place. That's strong enough to convince most guys that she was done with him, so why fight and/or beg? Now, if she said she was going to stay with a friend while sorting things out he might have felt more like he had a chance.

It also reminds me of the cheating wives who when the husband files for divorce, they ask, "Why didn't you fight for us?" when the fight was already over!

Thank the gods for Bob ..... providing us with a real testosterone filled he-man story amidst all the dick smoker cuck stories that have laid waste to LW!! Thanks Bob !!

Run away.

Your characters are all made out of cardboard. They have no emotions, other than needing to drink alcohol when they have emotional problems. They are clueless to the manners and signals given by other people, that indicate love, deceit, honesty, or betrayal. They fall in love and get married within months, or at least want to, but never seem to know or understand the character of the person they married.

After Melissa declines to marry him at the time, they both just drop the subject and never discuss their evolving relationship? They never have those long deep discussions about their failed marriages and other love affairs? What they love about each other, and what remains uncertain or doubtful? What it means to commit your self to a spouse, what each wants from the other in terms of love, respect, trust, fidelity, children, finances, housing, retirement?

One dimension is a point in space that occupies nothing, has no substance, and is infinitely small. Sound anything like some of your characters?

Your approach to writing is like your characters' approach to fucking. Quantity, not quality, is the measure of achievement. And I will give you that, you've got quantity down to a science. Maybe someday you'll get writing down to an art form.

Thanks for the usual. At least you're consistent.

Excellent point! She herself mentions it, AFTER, but the time to bring it up was when she was beginning to feel ready for marriage, NOT play her silly ass game that could have lost him. I was half expecting Jess to make a move on him.

Had a similar with my wife.. We were committed and understood we would marry some day. Out of the blue she said "I think we should date other people for a while." I responded: "I do not play these emotional games, I know what I want, if you don't, then have at it. Give me a call when you get it out of your system." She grabbed me the next morning...... we have been married 50 years.

I wouldn't call it autism... but robotic, but i agree with what you wrote.

Maybe JPB developed such a hard skin after all he went through relationship wise, that this is the result. The "no-end" or "half end" of his stories is getting old too an becoming annoying. Maybe it's time to raise your bar Bob or improve your game.

As I said in some other comment it seems you write them and publish them without further consideration or care for you stories.

Entertaining, but it does feels more of the same.

Apparently Selby took the money in the shared accounts which is an obvious exit move and then turn around and talk about not wanting to lose him.

Feels like an editing error, the banking bit should probably be inserted later.

loved the story. All seemed believable. Great writing.

the end ruined it; too abrupt; write longer JPB...emotional turmoils require longer deliberations and so are the changes that come with it. instead of short stories write some kind of magnum opus that readers thirst for episode after episode; this is crying for part 2 and how shelly gets her comeuppance with the second divorce within six months and realizes the hero's value and comes back to him begging him to take her back because she loves him truly this time and doesn't need anything from him except his love.

no. Not going to marry an insecure manipulate bitch with more baggage than Samsonite. You want me to beg and plead with you to stay with me instead of some other guy? Well then much like the Eagles, I'm already gone.

3. There really WAS a new guy, she went out with him, he fucked her brains out and made her cum like she never had before. But then he turned around and showed he was a controlling prick, she got scared and rushed back to boyscout.

she's lying through her fucking teeth and will marry him while secretly fucking the other guy.

Worst of all is, what the hell is he going to tell Jessica when he shows up with his 'little cowgirl' again?

You still have the touch, JPB.

Hope many more will follow.

Just wanted to remind myself what a really good JPB story was like. This is.one of my favorites.

She's too immature to make a serious decision without playing games. I hope she is willing to grow up now. Good story, though! I enjoyed it.

I wonder if Barry is a silly boy, hope he has a prenuptial ready to protect himself from another silly girl. Should have stayed with the waitress she seemed more down to earth then the silly girl. Hell the escort was probably a better choice then a silly girl playing entitled games.

Why would he believe her? She's been playing games their entire relationship. Her "test" was just one more game. Does he really want a committed relationship with a game player? I think not. Good story, Bad ending.

.

He was a man. Ended up a dumb ass with a crazy manipulative bitch with baggage

Stupid moron

.

NEVER make a commitment to the type of psycho cunt willing to decimate you emotionally for a shit test. They will never stop with the games

I have to agree with SCHWANZE1.

Again. Schwanze1 did nail it perfectly.

Nice test she put him through. He should have dumped her and hooked up with Jessica.

Schwanze1, Lujon and 26th correct, he was a man but later cut his own balls off and handed them to the little cowgirl. Sad for Jessica, but not anyone else.

Tests and games. Fuck it to hell.

~Enkidu

Looks like I get to be "lucky 100" for comments. Nice to be lucky at something. Thanks Bob, needed something good to read - even if it is the third time.

Bullshit! If the bitch is that manipulative he should be showing her TBE same door she threatened to walk out of. No man or woman should allow themselves to be pushed around by anyone... Spouses, parents, employers, or kids!