All Comments on 'Chance Encounters'

Well written, but that was a boat load of depressing

I enjoyed this narrative of your life up to age 54. I only hope your night with Key awakened you to the fact that you are still very much alive and have a lot to offer to another David.

I like that your writing is not just your usual male on male tale with no substitute. The reason your stories appeal to my sensibility, centers on the fact that it is relatable to anyone. You do not have to be gay to embrace the sensuality and the pains of life within the storylines. Therefore, keep doing what you do best...creating good therapeutic stories.

As always, beautifully written. Thank you for sharing your work with us.

Lovely as always. ....Thank you

Enjoyed all three of these tales. Your writing is as excellent as ever. Another 5! You have been one of my favorites since "Lightening in a Bottle." Thanks for sharing.

Really enjoyed this story. Your stories are incredibly easy to read with a subtle sense of flow and changes. Three powerful memories, three moments in time, woven into a broader life . . . exquisite!

I will not forget this story, because it unfolded the way moments with past lovers often unfold in my own memory. My mind still drifts back to my own moments with Hank, Billy and Tom, decades ago. I've never been sure 'why these moments?' but, for whatever reason they glow brightly and have great meaning to me.

Your story unfolded like those memories and I relished reading each moment of your tale. Thank You!

Thanks for continuing to contribute very exciting and sensual stories. Having grown up in. St. Louis and living now in Kansas City I appreciate the feeling of the stories being personal to my life. Look forward to your next story.

The whole story is really good, but the last part is just amazing. I miss stories about senior love/relationships. Moreover, it is bittersweet, we all love a great sad story.

At first I didn't see the benefit of weaving together three stories about three different moments in the narrator's life; I even thought they might work better as stand-alones. But when I reached the end it hit me: this narrative device allowed me as a reader to not only share the sexual experiences of the protagonist but also a long stretch of his life. My deep acquaintance allowed everything, by the end, to come together in a really poignant conclusion. I love all of your stories, by the way. This strikes me as one of the very best!

This was a very well written story and I enjoyed it on that level. But it was three very sad stories. After each, his friendships with all 3 men abruptly ended. These were men he had been close to for years generally, but each seemed to want to prove something and then disappeared. Adam was clearly the most generous lover of the three and these 2 did at least have some interaction (though brief) after their sex. I find it very sad that each relationship seemed to have close bonds and real feelings that led up to the sex, but then those relationships were immediately ended from the sex. Ky’s sudden and secret departure was especially cruel and out of character since he had spent much time supporting Dan through his grief. To finally fuck and leave without even a goodbye did not match the character development. Another curious thing is the timeline. If Dan was with David for 26 years, that would have started in 1994 (when Dan was about 27). Dan met Adam in 1992 but their sexual encounter happened years later when Dan was 36. Their conversation about Dan’s hook-ups on average monthly (for the last 18 yrs), and then Dan’s choices and behaviors with Adam, certainly didn’t seem like Dan was 8-9 yrs into a long- term relationship with the live if his life (David). The math doesn’t work. This caused me to disengage from the story’s integrity and broke the continuity of the entire tale. But your talent as a writer is undeniable. Well done.

This was sad and beautifully written. Characters seemed very real. I hope they all found joy somehow.

still as good as I remember and still as depressing as I remember

This piece has haunted me since I first read it. There are many things I like about it: hot men, hot sex, boundary-pushing. But the overall downbeat nature of all three segments, while realistic, hampers the eroticism of the sex scenes. No matter how long or how close the relationship with the objects of his desire, the sex was essentially the end of it. Aside from his 26 years with David, my sense was that Danny always ended up alone, and ultimately unfulfilled. It's as if his sexuality condemns him to loneliness and disappointment, a very retro theme.

The one thing that bothered me was the unnecessary injection of politics surrounding the Reno clerkship. It added nothing to the story and nearly killed my interest in continuing, particularly in the current political atmosphere (understanding that this was written 4-1/2 years ago).

But I persevered. The reward was in the lovely writing and well-detailed description of Danny's inner life. Thank you for sharing this.

Melancholic and erotic, times of joy stunted by the uncaring nature of life in general. Even in the absence of true malice, there are 8 billion people in the world and life for any one of us is ways rocked back and forth by the others, by their hangups, and for a gay guy, quite often by those others' inability to fully accept who they are.

Seems like some readers were surprised in a bad way by the ending, including the one claiming Ky's departure is straight up out of character and shouldn't have happened. I don't know what they were reading, because it was signposted pretty hard in the lead up. Ky makes no secret of not wanting anything serious, further than just relationships, he doesn't want to be close to someone at all by any amount. He goes so overboard it's likely his wolf persona is just a clumsy coverup for someone who's simply terrified of such a thing and is trying to play it off. He weirdly makes a point of not liking kissing, then tells Dan that he shouldn't have assumed that meant he wasn't good at it. If he's good at it, he's had practice. If he's had practice, he's been close to someone before, and the experience left him with such contempt for closeness that he openly talks about how even kissing isn't his thing. They didn't know each other long enough to be soul mates, but Dan made Ky's stomach flutter just a little, just enough to want to kiss him, and as soon as that happened, it was over. Ky leaving was inevitable, set in stone long before Dan found him gone.