Introduction

*** CAUTION ****

This story is totally inappropriate for young children, and should be approached with caution by teens.

The reader should be warned that while graphic sex and violence is avoided as much as telling this story allows, yet this is a gritty, hard-edged story. Many will find it distressing to read, but the story is also one of strength, morality, spirituality and eventual redemption.

In writing this story my objective was to uncover an explanation for the life of a young man I had met and known but briefly, whose life intrigued, amazed, disturbed me. A young man who was very much like the one you shall meet here, but not exactly.

The key events of his life up to fifteen are more or less true, though some of them have been exaggerated, and of his family’s actions and motivations all of this is fictionalized. I needed to understand him and to do that I had to figure out what was going on with his family. I am considering adding a "Truth about Will" section so that you can see how much of this story is true and how much is invented.

Intergenerational Sex? Maybe. Some say this story has it, some say it does not. I would tell you that the sex included is "intergenerational" in the sense that sex between a young person and adults occurs and is reported to have happened. Details are scrupulously avoided to the extent consistent with effectively telling the story, and no glamorization or appeals to sexual appetite is offered in the telling.

This is difficult stuff, because there is an important story to tell and it cannot be told, it does not exist, if the character in question is not involved with much older people. It deals with a person who is sexually abused by older people, and demonstrates in some graphic ways the damage done. The reader cannot understand the character or the damage he suffers without understanding the relationships that have led him there.

Dedication

This story is dedicated to three who have passed: Calvin, whose sweet nature I treasured and never thought I would lose; to Kevin, whose complexity and contradiction I miss terribly - both as my peer confessor and co-conspirator in the search for God - and how he would hate my saying that!. And most of all to T.W. H; I am sorry I was not able to be a better person for you, but I am a better person because of you.

Revisions

This story was originally posted as an in-process draft at ASSGM and at the Nifty site, and is still archived at those sites.

Because of the really significant amounts and energy of feedback, I am in the process of turning this into a full novel, and the version you see posted here contains about 50% more material than the original. In addition, some character names have been changed, and the story refined, though in its essence it is unchanged.

You will note this version has chapter titles; consider them a working pretension, an experiment that may turn out to be failed, I would not be surprised to see them disappear in a later revision, but feel free to comment on them. I know that if they are useful they are still not quite right.

At some point, I hope to be able to publish A Father’s Love as a real novel. Until then, this draft will have to do and will no doubt contain some errors, inconsistencies, and flaws. To that end, I continue to work on this story, and I hope you will provide feedback to me on what you’ve seen here, so that the final product can be that much better. Write to me with your comments at Boyfisher69@yahoo.com.

Thanks

Thanks to Nick Archer and Richard Lyon for bringing this story to forums where it can be shared more widely. Thanks to many fans of the story who have written and whose feedback has been valuable in making changes between the draft and the version presented here. Thanks to JavaBiscuit who inspired me to start writing my stories by his own well-written example in Courbusier. Thanks to the other authors on Archerland who also encouraged me and/or Nick, or at least didn’t discourage him from adding me to his site.

Thanks to Hunter Black who made me realize the story really was that good.

Thanks especially to the many fans who told me that this story mattered to them; in particular those who identified with one or another character.

Thanks to Wulfie who provided a lot of useful background material about the life of a male hustler and whose almost completely true story is related here.

Thanks to my lifelong friend, Coffydan, who read my first story when we were fourteen and told me I should be a writer. Then he went out and did it. He read, critiqued, suggested, then told me "Follow the Force, Luke."