# Obvious things about a creative work you realize after the millionth time (OPEN SPOILERS POSSIBLE) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 24, 2009, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117 "2009-07-24T13:20:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 3487
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2020, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117/3487 "2020-01-22T17:21:30Z")
As a hormonal, nerdy teen girl I read James Kirkwood Jr.'s “Good Times, Bad Times” and had a mad fantasy crush on Jordan, the sensitive young man with heart trouble. Narrator Peter, his friend, wasn’t so bad either. I daydreamed many a scenario where I had a passionate affair with one or the other of them. I read the book again years later and realized I had completely overlooked the homoerotic overtones. Not only were Jordan and Peter out of my reach because they were fictional characters, had they somehow come to life exactly as written, I wouldn’t have met their criteria for romantic involvement. Dammit! (I have mixed feelings about the book now. It was in some ways a wonderful novel; I wasn’t the only one who identified strongly with it. But the plot was ultimately self-loathingly anti-gay; had the author (gay himself) written the same book at a time more accepting of homosexuality surely he wouldn’t have tied the headmaster’s evil to his sexual orientation.) --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-things-about-a-creative-work-you-realize-after-the-millionth-time-open-spoilers-possible/504117)._