conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Michael, Ryan, Nancy with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Stranger, Father, Beloved'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Stranger, Father, Beloved
  Embarrassed by his parents' wealth, Dave had tried to build the structure as primitively as possible, with material he could afford himself. Ultimately, he could not do it; the thing would not come together. Jill had come upon him one day, coffee in her hand, and was alarmed to find him slumped over, sitting on a log next to a mess of beams and boards. What he had built had somehow come down. When she had asked him about it, he refused to tell her what had happened. His friends Rick and Jamie, who helped him build when they had the time, had apparently left for the day. Or maybe his bad temper had driven them off. Jill would never know.
  It had begun to drizzle, and Jill told Ryan about how she had looked at his wet, thick brown hair, his perfect face drawn into a tight expression of anger, and had known she was in trouble. His plaid shirt was clinging to his back, and he'd had a cold, distant look in his eyes. She had desired him, sitting there in the rain. It was strange to feel passion for someone so angry and distant. She had felt increasingly panicked as it occurred to her that he was moving on, moving on from her this time.
  The rent was overdue, and their tiny apartment was cluttered with boxes of his things, useless things he collected, such as vintage magazines and postcards. He refused to throw them away. The place was damp and unclean, and staying there was loathsome to both of them. But she could do it, would do it, for him.
  Ryan was silent after Jill finished speaking. Jill now appeared to her in a new light. It had never occurred to her that Jill had been through such deep suffering or that a beautiful man she really loved had abandoned her. In fact, Ryan had never really thought of Jill as someone who could even have a handsome lover—the idea seemed cartoonish. The boyfriends Jill had had when Ryan was a girl had seemed fake, disposable. But there was the photo, the proof. Jill's connection to such a man was exciting, amazing.
  The two of them stood there in silence. Something had changed. Jill was no longer the same old Jill she had always teased and berated in her mind. She was mammoth, a woman of drama, a woman who had had love and lost it. Ryan hunted around in the box and pulled out several more photographs of Jill at various ages. Tiny baby Jill in the safe arms of relatives; teenage Jill, her smile too big, her legs toned, her face sunburned. And more of her with this man, his piercing blue eyes locked into the camera, his arms protectively around Jill.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Stranger, Father, Beloved
  Embarrassed by his parents' wealth, Dave had tried to build the structure as primitively as possible, with material he could afford himself. Ultimately, he could not do it; the thing would not come together. Jill had come upon him one day, coffee in her hand, and was alarmed to find him slumped over, sitting on a log next to a mess of beams and boards. What he had built had somehow come down. When she had asked him about it, he refused to tell her what had happened. His friends Rick and Jamie, who helped him build when they had the time, had apparently left for the day. Or maybe his bad temper had driven them off. Jill would never know.
  It had begun to drizzle, and Jill told Ryan about how she had looked at his wet, thick brown hair, his perfect face drawn into a tight expression of anger, and had known she was in trouble. His plaid shirt was clinging to his back, and he'd had a cold, distant look in his eyes. She had desired him, sitting there in the rain. It was strange to feel passion for someone so angry and distant. She had felt increasingly panicked as it occurred to her that he was moving on, moving on from her this time.
  The rent was overdue, and their tiny apartment was cluttered with boxes of his things, useless things he collected, such as vintage magazines and postcards. He refused to throw them away. The place was damp and unclean, and staying there was loathsome to both of them. But she could do it, would do it, for him.
  Ryan was silent after Jill finished speaking. Jill now appeared to her in a new light. It had never occurred to her that Jill had been through such deep suffering or that a beautiful man she really loved had abandoned her. In fact, Ryan had never really thought of Jill as someone who could even have a handsome lover—the idea seemed cartoonish. The boyfriends Jill had had when Ryan was a girl had seemed fake, disposable. But there was the photo, the proof. Jill's connection to such a man was exciting, amazing.
  The two of them stood there in silence. Something had changed. Jill was no longer the same old Jill she had always teased and berated in her mind. She was mammoth, a woman of drama, a woman who had had love and lost it. Ryan hunted around in the box and pulled out several more photographs of Jill at various ages. Tiny baby Jill in the safe arms of relatives; teenage Jill, her smile too big, her legs toned, her face sunburned.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: four more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He thought back to that rainy night in college when he and Alex had run from the library, a little after midnight, and stopped in Alex's dorm room to dry off. His own dorm room was farther away and the rain was coming down hard, so Alex's room was the logical place to go to. Earlier in the night, they had each worked on an essay, as the water had pounded the tall stained-glass walls of the beautiful old library. It being a Saturday night, the library had been almost completely empty, and the campus, too, was strangely vacant. It appeared that the world of other people had retreated completely out of view due to the rain. In Alex's single dorm room, they had taken off their shirts and pants, leaving on their underwear, and wrapped towels around their chests. Michael had sprawled out on the floor of the room after Alex threw him a pillow from the bed. The heater was on full blast, and both men had realized how tired they were.
  Alex had been different from his usual self and surprised Michael by producing a small bottle of bourbon. He had poured two small glasses and handed one to Michael, smiling. With Alex lying on his bed and Michael on the carpet with a pillow, with only the small lamp on in the corner of the room, the two had talked about their families and finally drifted to sleep, listening to the rain. He could feel the heat from the radiator warming him.
  Suddenly it occurred to him that maybe it wasn't too late to get his PhD—maybe he could still do it even though he was in his forties. But he could not imagine such a thing, could not imagine returning to grad school and sitting in the classes with young people. He saw it as too much like an admission of failure, his tail between his legs. He wouldn't try to follow another course.
  Michael popped in the video of the girls and watched the plots with attempted glee. If he was going to misbehave, he better try and enjoy it. The second one was even an office seduction that tickled him. But twenty minutes into it, as he sat Indian-style on the carpet gazing up at the screen, he could not watch anymore. The girls in the video, probably all eighteen years old or so, reminded him too much of his daughter. There was a certain look in their eyes that Ryan had—a stunned kind of look, an unsure kind of invitation, vacant heated anger. He found it disgusting for a man of his age to watch such young women. It was sick, and luckily he discovered he did not get any pleasure from seeing girls in naked vulnerable positions. In fact, the sexual acts made his stomach turn. He was a father now, and this kind of nonsense was something he had outgrown. He put in Hot Shocks and made himself another drink. The men were really going at it. The penetration between the men seemed deeper somehow.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs. Start with the sentence 'Thank you to Karen Russell, Molly Antopol, and Elyssa East for your kind words and unwavering support'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Thank you to Karen Russell, Molly Antopol, and Elyssa East for your kind words and unwavering support. Thanks for always being there, Jamie Pietras, through all the long years. Thank you Eva Wylie for letting me use your image for my website, and to Dr. John Wylie for allowing me to consult with you in your area of expertise, psychiatry. Thank you to Deborah Kelley-Galin for listening to me throughout it all. Thank you, Scooter Jones, for being my writing companion.
  TAYLOR LARSEN is a graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in fiction writing. Taylor taught fiction writing at Columbia University as part of the Columbia Artist/Teachers faculty and at The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, as well as literature courses for Pace University. is her first novel. Originally from Alexandria, Virginia, she currently resides with her husband in Brooklyn, New York.
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  Subjects: LCSH: Middle-aged men—Fiction. | Families—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Coming of Age.