TEAM REALITY: Day 13, "Five Times Ray Kowalski Was Ashamed of His Dick and One Time He Wasn't"

[sage]

Title: Five Times Ray Kowalski Was Ashamed of His Dick and One Time He Wasn't
Author: j_s_cavalcante
Team: Reality
Prompt: I never said they were poisonous.
Pairing(s): Fraser/Kowalski, (Kowalski/Stella)
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 22,600 words
Warnings: Some brief scenes concern issues of teen sexuality and development (ages 14-17), frankly depicted.
Author's Notes: Reality, comin' atcha. A number of real-life incidents are woven into this story. I'm not telling exactly where. :)
Many thanks to my brilliant, stalwart, and ever-encouraging friend (and Team Reality Captain), nos4a2no9. I am grateful for her savvy insta-beta of this story. But she did more than beta this project. She husbanded it. For nearly two years, she has aided and abetted my probably unhealthy fascination with RayK's generous male endowments and my exploration of same in both fiction and art.  I therefore dedicate this piece to her.  Nos? This (big) one's for you. ;)
Summary: Uncovering the root of Ray Kowalski's self-esteem issues. ;)

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Five Times Ray Kowalski Was Ashamed of His Dick and One Time He Wasn't by J S Cavalcante

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Comments

[simplystars.livejournal.com]

Oh, author. Author, author, author. I do not know who you are, but I love you. &hearts

This is such a beautiful story, and I shouldn't have read it because it is so long and I'm supposed to be packing (not to mistake: LONG is GOOD - hear that, Ray? *g* but packing is not) and I just finished and I don't have the time to detail everything I love about this story at this particular juncture.

But this is marvelous, and it can be so nerve-wracking waiting for comments to come in, so I wanted you to have one complete with YAY!PORN! arms: \o/\porn!/\o/

This has to become RayK backstory fanon. It is so lovingly crafted but doesn't flinch from awkwardness - in youth, and adolescence, and in loving the wrong person, and in loving the right person. But all the peek-through-fingers moments of the story just made the happy ending that much more welcome and joyous and just the epitome of loving.

So I *will* be back with more of What I Loved About Your Masterpiece! In the meantime, OMG thank you for the happy daydreamings I will take with me on a long boring hotel-conference weekend. :)

[simplystars.livejournal.com]

Still speechless (mostly I blame my brain and being very tired atm). But oh, JS. How I loved this. &hearts And I *will* be able to tell you more precisely why. Soon!

[j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com]

*hugs you* You are incredibly sweet. And thanks for pretending up there that you didn't know who I was. Hah. I told my teammates I realized no one was going to be stumped for a second. It was the one major reservation I had about writing this story for the Match.

secretlybronte, bless her heart, pointed out that we do want people to write like themselves, instead of, well, not like themselves.

Yeah, that was an extreme paraphrase. I'll have to look up exactly what she said. Because she does not ever sound like Frannie. Me, though, I know I'm tired, when I start talking like Frannie. :)

[j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com]

Stars! Thank you SO MUCH for your thoughtfulness in leaving these comments when you did, with the YAY!PORN! arms and everything, even though you were packing to go out of town. You made my week with that, you know? You made my month with your kind rec posted before the close of the voting.

I'm so glad you thought the story didn't flinch from adolescence and other uncomfortable Realities on the way to a happy ending. And that you were willing to peek through your fingers and keep reading! :) There are a lot of real-life bits and pieces in the story: like a lot of writers, I have the shameless tendency to cannibalize my own experiences, or those of people close to me, for use in fiction. There's probably a ring of Dante's frozen hell reserved for those of us who do that...or maybe not, maybe it's just a natural thing. John Gardner, the late writer and teacher, wrote eloquently on the subject. Anyway, I enjoyed doing that; it felt like I was giving the story an extra boost of Reality, which was just what the challenge needed, I thought.

Also there is a Streetcar reference hidden in there that no one, so far, has picked up on. :) (I think I will give a fannish prize to the first person who does.) So I had fun with this piece above and beyond the joy of finally writing the Hung!Ray story I'd been wanting to do for ages.

The research for this story, also, was vastly entertaining. :)

In conclusion, \Stars/

And Ray Kowalski. Hung like a MOOSE. :)