Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 17:15:49 -0400
From: David Buffet <tightserve@hotmail.com>
Subject: Alpha Male - Epilogue

Epilogue
	So, Arthur, that's what happened.  "Who I did over summer vacation," as it
were.  The second month of camp went on much like the first, with a few
notable exceptions.
	Shmu stayed another week. He and Matt *did* hit it off, and will continue
seeing each other, I'm sure, when the semester begins in the fall. By the
end of his visit, half the boys were calling him 'Shmu' - even Steve,
arguably the straightest among them.  But, as Shmu likes to say,
"spaghetti's straight too - until you put it in water."  When Eric finally
called him 'Shmu', we had a little unofficial party.
	Brad remained Brad, of course -- a pretty, happy, self-absorbed, sexy,
selfish, lazy, good-natured dude. We resumed our regular trysts after he had
healed. He still never got me off, but at least he never again suggested how
pleased I must have been simply for the honor of getting to blow him.
	Doug, too, remained Doug. As the summer went on, I became more and more
fond of him. Adam had seen it in him from the start. I, to my regret, had
first to learn how not to categorize.  Brad started a craze around week five
when he likened Doug to the Scarecrow in _The Wizard of Oz_, and the boys
took to calling him 'Crow' until Adam put a stop to it.  Doug has gained
admittance, as far as I'm concerned, into the great pantheon: the Cool
Straight Guy Hall of Fame.  He doesn't have a lot of company, of course, but
he has earned his spot.
	Matt?  My kid brother.  Granted, he may not be the brightest bulb on the
marquee, but Christ!  A sweeter, more adorable, gentler soul has never
existed.  He will be my friend to the day I die, and I thank my lucky stars
I had the opportunity to be there when he was beginning his wonderful voyage
of discovery.  He and Shmu and I did end up doing a three-way before Shmu
left, but not as the result of any bet.  I think I just wanted to hear that
gloriously joyous, easy hysterical laughter one more time.  I don't need to
go into the particulars of the scene, but perhaps I should?  I know, Arthur,
despite your professional indifference on the subject, how much explicit
discussions of gay sex bothers you.  That is one of the reasons I have been
so detailed in my account.
	And Dan, of course.  He and I continued to discover each other and
ourselves.  Will I spend the rest of my life with Dan?  I doubt it.  Will I
fall head over heels in love with him?  I don't know if that is possible for
me with anyone.  But we work well together, and regardless of whether we
continue on into the future, I am fortunate to have had my time with him.
He is a star in the making, Arthur, and I was able to be there to watch the
moment the swirling, dense cloud of dust collapsed and ignited into a
beautiful blaze of fusion.  Dan has become fully alpha.  And like any alpha,
he is blindingly beautiful to watch.
	As for me, I spent much of the rest of the summer writing this epistle.  I
wanted you to understand the decision I have come to and I knew this was the
only way to make you pay attention.
	But you care nothing of any of this, Arthur.  There is only one thing you
care about, and I know what it is.
	Let me tell you about something else for which you care nothing.  How I
have grown!  I have spent silent evenings and left questions a mystery.  I
have discovered ambiguity and that the lines we construct to differentiate
things are artificial.  There are parts of me I do not recognize today, and
others to which I've bid a happy farewell.  This will not surprise you as
much as it does me, of course, as you saw it coming all along.  More than
saw it coming, Arthur, you banked on it.
	And here is something else you counted on: I did, indeed, make the
breakthrough.  It was glorious.  The lucidity with which I was able to think
afterward!  The transparency of the world!  I needed so few observations
once I made the leap.  Within a week, I was through transcribing behaviors
and was writing the paper out longhand in my little green notebook while I
sat in the stands.  How strange it is to write longhand, I must say.  But
that is beside the point.  It's all there.  How it works, why it works and
who it works on.  It's well documented.  It presents a whole new paradigm,
Arthur!  And get this: it was a breeze to write!  Can you imagine?  And
here's something else - I wrote the whole thing in two weeks!  _Mechanisms
of Social Control in the Human Alpha Male_.  It's good, Arthur.  It's very
good.  It breaks new ground.  It's important.  It drips with future grant
money offers.
	 And you will never see it.
	Did you think I wouldn't figure it out or did you think it wouldn't bother
me?  I wonder which it is.  Either one I find unspeakably insulting.
	How hard it must have been for you, Arthur!  To be so close to him, and yet
to be so completely bound by the law.  That doctor-client privilege thing
cuts both ways, doesn't it?  It protects you, yes, but, alas for you, it
protects the client more.  I can imagine you sitting there in your
therapeutic semi-detachment listening to him talk and desperately trying to
figure out a way you could get him to sign an informed consent to allow you
to do the research yourself.  But of course, you knew he never would.  You
never even bothered asking.  Instead, you plotted.
	How long, Arthur?  How long did it take for you to come up with the plan?
How did you plant the idea of me in his head, I wonder?  In which therapy
session?  He was a client of yours -- you could, therefore, say nothing to
me about him.  I don't for a moment fool myself into thinking you'd have any
moral qualms about it.  You'd have sung like a canary if you were able to.
It is, though, the law, and if you were caught you would have been ruined.
If only there were such protections for the relationship between a graduate
student and his advisor!  Alas, there are not, and we can be treated like
slaves.  No, you could not tell me about him.  But you could tell him about
me.  And did you ever!  Well, not everything, right Arthur?
	So you had an alpha in therapy.  You knew what he was and you knew how
valuable he would be as an object of study.  But you couldn't do it.
Meanwhile, the alpha had a yearning -- he was lonely.  He wanted a friend,
and you saw a way he could build himself one.  I filled so many of your
needs, didn't I?  You whispered in Adam's ear.  "I know a student who is
very submissive.  He doesn't know it yet, but trust me: he is.  Have your
coach hire him as a gofer for the summer, then set him up with Dan.  Who
knows?" you probably added as an afterthought, "maybe he'll even be able to
help you understand some of your power over people."
	And what did you say to Johnston when he called you after Adam began acting
on your ploy ? "Yes, I have a student who's doing some research into
something he calls the alpha male syndrome.  Really?  You have one?  How
fortunate!"
	And Arthur!  How surprised you seemed when I called you that evening with
news of the job.  Brilliant acting, I must say.  "Oh, yes, Mark, I think
that would be a wonderful experience for you.  Who knows?  It might lead
directly to the diss itself!  I urge you to consider it seriously."
	But to work, Adam had to cooperate with me, and, as we both know, Adam
doesn't cooperate unless Adam *wants* to cooperate.  What was it then?  "You
might want to consider not telling him that he's for Dan."  Did the
suggestion come from you or did Adam figure that part out for himself?  You,
I tend to believe.  You would not have left such a large thread dangling in
chance's wind.  "He could take it wrong," you probably said.  "Let him
believe that he's there to study you.  It will make it easier for you to get
what you need from him."
	How brilliant! A double feint! In sheer deviousness, Arthur, you are
unsurpassed.
	You did miscalculate, though.  Not in my ability to figure out the
parameters and mechanisms of alphadom.  I did it!  What a feeling of float,
Arthur!  What an accomplishment!  What you did not expect was that my
recognition, belated as it was, of my own tastes and proclivities would
begin to unravel a chain of long-standing, deeply seated self-delusions and
blind spots.
	There was a logical inconsistency in your plan, Arthur.  It was glaring.
The boys knew about me on the bus.  Adam started working me from the moment
he saw me.  I was a Corey when the summer began: older and better defended,
but a Corey nonetheless.  So why didn't Adam treat me the same way he did
Corey?  Why did he never once approach sex with me until Dan invited him to?
  If the only point were to help me realize my submissive side, he could
have done that on the first day.  His methodology was taking time to work
with Corey, but it surely would have been instantaneous with me!  But he
didn't.  That wasn't his goal.  His goal was not to get me to submit, but to
get me to submit *to Dan*.  Why?  Why would someone who had ostensibly
brought me to the camp to study him spend all that time and energy working
me when he could have focused me on himself with no more than a quick, if
forceful poke?  It didn't make sense.  From Adam's perspective, the research
must have been of secondary importance at best.  And he hardly cared when I
explained my discoveries.  He was politely attentive.  I don't think my
breakthrough was even particularly newsworthy to him.  I was just
explaining, in scientific terms, things he intuitively knew all along.
	So if I were there for Dan, if that had been the plan all along, how could
Adam have possibly known to invite *me*, of all people, to the camp?  My
research was known by many.  But my submissive nature?  Even *I* didn't know
about that!  No, that was known by only one person, Arthur.
	I won't even ask you if you had any misgivings about betraying me the way
you did.  But did it make you uneasy to betray Adam?  You could not get the
credit for the research on him.  So instead you arranged it so that you
could get credit in a different way.  If I do the research, you still get
the credit, don't you?  You knew he would never give you informed consent.
But what made you think that he would give it to your proxy, if he knew that
was the reality of how things worked?
	And what of the little green notebook?!  That is the only question you want
me to answer.  Has it pissed you off, Arthur, that I have written all these
pages and still not made that clear?  I will do so now.
	I gave it to Adam, of course.  It is his.
	And what do I have for you?  Consider this my official resignation from the
program.  I can't work with someone who uses people the way you do.  Isn't
that funny coming from a submissive bottom?  Here's the difference between
you and Dan, though: for Dan, *no* means *no*.
	I am going to take a year off.  I'll probably hang around campus for a
while in the fall, if not just to see what develops with Dan and Adam and
me.  Then I need some time to discover myself.  Isn't it ironic?  One of the
first things Dan ever told me was he didn't like psych majors since they
usually went into the field to figure themselves out.  My, but I was so well
defended at the time!
	The need to publish seems less pressing to me right now.  There are more
important things to me than my career.  Did you ever think you would hear
*me* say that, Arthur?  Besides, I know everything that's in that notebook.
If I do decide to publish, with Adam's okay, of course, it will not be under
your tutelage.  I can get a degree from anyone now.
	So Sharon has the sweat -- she'll make a pretty penny off that, I tell you!
  And oh, Arthur, such a pity!  You're not *her* advisor, are you?  You
won't see a cent of it.  And I can return to the field if and when I want.
With what I bring to a program, I can have my pick of advisors.  So if I
choose to publish, your name will appear nowhere on the dissertation.
	And what do you get Arthur?  For all you work and plotting and
machinations, what do you get?  Well, here's a hint: watch your backside, my
dear.  Adam knows how to find you.  And Adam is angry.


The End


A Final Note From the Author:
	Well, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the tale.  I certainly had a
wonderful time writing it and receiving all your (mostly) wonderful
feedback.  Now, having posted a book for free, it is my time to ask a favor
of you.
	I have discovered, in writing, a new talent.  I did not know I could do it.
  I *do* know, though, that while I seem to be able to string words
together, there is something that I lack altogether: ambition.  While it may
seem strange, though I can spend hour after hour at my computer writing the
story, I can't seem to find the energy to compose a cover letter, look up an
address, or stamp an envelope.  Toward that end, I am attempting an
experiment.  Here's where you come in.
	I've received emails, at this point from just shy of 900 different people
telling me how much they have enjoyed Alpha Male.  Many of those have urged
me to publish.  Certainly, among you, is at least one connection to an
accomplished literary agent.  If you have enjoyed the story, if you think it
has merit and should be published, if you want to thank me for taking the
time to write it and post it for free, I ask, in return for this favor: do
the footwork for me.  Ask your friends to ask their friends.  Someone of you
must have some connection to the publishing industry, whether you know it or
not.  If not, find the name of someone who is good, and send him or her an
unsolicited letter.  Find a literary agent.  Contact him or her, point him
or her to Alpha Male, and, if (s)he likes it, invite him or her to email me.
	What have I to offer a publisher?  Why publish something that is already
posted for free?  Well, I plan on spending much energy on a rewrite.  There
are some problems I need to fix - not the least of which is the arc of the
story.  In addition, I have left room for the addition of value.  I have
left a number of characters relatively blank, thinking that I could flesh
them out in a publishable edition.  I can also easily adjust the ratio of
sexual to non-sexual scenes as an editor deems fit.  I expect that the book
can readily increase to twice its current length, should that be called for.
  To an agent, I offer my talent, profligacy (as evidenced by the pace at
which I wrote and posted the original) and the boundless energy with which I
throw myself into a project.
	What have I to offer you in return for your successful footwork?  Once I
check the credentials of your contact and we start working together, I will
happily include you in the rewriting process, making new and adjusted
chapters available as I produce them.
	I will not be publishing anything new on the internet until I am done with
the rewrite and publication of Alpha Male.  If you want access to my work in
the meantime, write a couple of cover letters and send them out to good gay
literary agents.
	And to all of you who wrote, thank you.
	Sincerely,

	David Buffet