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Book Title: Pursuing Happiness
Author: Jessie Pinkham
Publisher: Jessie Pinkham
Cover Artist: Katia V. Michelet
Release Date: July 12, 2018
Genre/s romance, contemporary, gay
Length: 53,000 words
Blurb
A repressive childhood casts long shadows.
Growing up in a reactionary religious household left Matt Aldridge socially inept and woefully underprepared for life in the wider world. He’s still trying to figure himself out when he meets his hunky new neighbor, Collin Moravec. Matt likes him at first sight, and miraculously, Collin feels the same.
When his cousin Levi shows up needing a home, Matt doesn’t hesitate to take him in, even as it throws his own world into disarray. He’s determined to save his younger cousin some of the struggles he faced. But taking on this responsibility brings up old anxieties, and in his terror of failing Levi, Matt pushes Collin away. He has to move beyond his fearful upbringing once and for all, or he’s going to end up miserable – and alone.
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Once I’ve written a book, it’s always fascinating to see how other people interpret my words. One of my beta readers, upon finishing Pursuing Happiness, remarked in pleasant surprise that she’d expected Matt would reconcile with his family. To me, that was never a possibility. Not once had it occurred to me that the Aldridges would come around, so I wasn’t expecting my beta reader to have considered it the likely outcome.
Pursuing Happiness is a very realistic story rooted in actual struggles people face in our world today. There is a happy ending, of course, because it’s a romance, but a happily ever after in the relationship doesn’t mean the main characters get everything they ever wanted. Who does? We all have disappointments in our lives, however delighted we are with our romantic partners. A good partner is going to be there beside you when other aspects of life don’t go the way you’d hoped.
Matt’s family is toxic in multiple ways. It would be great if by the end his parents had made steps towards becoming better people and repairing the broken bond with him. The thing is, that doesn’t always happen in reality, and in a family as messed up as Matt’s, it’s pretty unlikely. His relatives have their whole lives invested in their established patterns. Some people, when faced with a sufficiently major consequence such as losing all contact with a child, are able to break those old habits and form a new way of living. Many people aren’t willing to, no matter what it costs them. This, of course, has been a fact of life for LGBT folks for ages, though it’s by no means restricted to us.
Estrangement is indescribably sad when it happens, and it feels like the end of the world when your family won’t accept you if you fail to conform to their expectations. In time, though, a person can move forward with their own life, and create a new happy ending for themselves in a healthier environment.
I know this from personal experience. People remark that it’s so sad I’m estranged from my maternal family. Yes, it is. But you know, I’m much happier for it because I’m living freely and away from emotionally damaging patterns I’d never even recognized. My own journey, while not the same as Matt’s, inspired his struggles.
The story, then, is about how Matt gets to the place where he can enjoy a lasting romance and how Collin supports him. It’s that process of healing, moving forward, and embracing a life of one’s own choosing that interests me and I wanted to bring to life with Matt. He had to go through the pain of his family’s abandonment to escape a terrible environment. However hellish the path was, eventually the agony fades and becomes worthwhile because it brings him to authentic joy of the kind he never could have experienced in his family environment.
This striptease business was a lot harder than it sounded. In theory, it was simple: take clothes off, turn boyfriend on. Matt very much liked the idea of giving Collin a private show, and it was hot to think that merely watching him would be arousing for his boyfriend. However, in practice, he didn’t know what he was doing, and he was starting to think he ought to have waited and done more research before his attempt. Although that could have been his lack of self-confidence speaking again.
He tried to look on the bright side. Even if this first try went horribly awry, he was doing it, which was better than giving in to his worry over failing or, worse still, the old family line about such activities being shameful. Matt wanted to feel sexy and he wanted to get Collin worked up, so he was going for it. If nothing else, that was its own victory.
All the same, he’d like to get the striptease at least somewhere approaching right. The articles he’d read online emphasized doing everything slowly. Be a tease. It’s right in the name. In retrospect, he should’ve gone for tips aimed specifically at men. He’d assumed that the advice could be applied to him as well as a woman, but then again women had bras and other complicated undergarments they could use to drag out the process.
The button-down shirt had been a good call. He undid each button as slowly as he could, and then inched the fabric down, first below his shoulders, slipping a little lower until at last the garment fell to the ground. With any luck, that had looked sexy.
Eye contact was strongly recommended, and while he wasn’t sure he could pull off a sultry gaze, whatever that meant, the basic locking of eyes was completely doable. And, once accomplished, very encouraging. Collin didn’t look bored. Quite the contrary, he was watching Matt’s little show with complete attention and, better yet, one hand lazily rubbing himself through his pants.
The reaction was everything Matt hoped for. Feeling desirable and extremely pleased with his success, he put a hand on his stomach and crept down to unbutton his pants. Next came the zipper at a snail’s pace, and then he hooked a thumb over his pants by either hip.
So far, so good. He’d practiced a couple times when Levi wasn’t home, even tried out three different songs before settling on which to use, and the effort seemed to be paying off. He shimmied his hips as sexily as he could and pushed the pants down a little.
“Yeah,” said Collin, whose voice had gotten gratifyingly deep with arousal. “Take them off.”
Matt smiled at the verbal feedback, and continued with a bit more confidence.
For the occasion, he’d gotten new underwear. Not crazy underwear, and he had never realized quite how many wild options were available until he started shopping. He still wasn’t sure why anyone bothered with underwear featuring a penis hole, but apparently it was a popular choice. So were thongs, which just sounded really uncomfortable.
In the end, he’d gone with a pair that was fairly modest, by the standards of what a search for “sexy men’s underwear” brought up. The major difference from his usual was in the tightness. These underwear clung everywhere, and he thought this feature did good things to the view of his package, not to mention his butt.
He spun around so Collin got a view from behind while the pants finally came off. There was only so long he could drag that out before gravity took over.
Collin whistled, which made Matt blush, of course. Turning around again, he had to admit that it felt really, really good to have his boyfriend’s eyes glued to his crotch like this.
“Loving the tight undies, babe.”
Jessie writes M/M romance and loves a rich fictional universe as much as a good happy ending. Her published works include the novel Survivors and the Tea and Empathy series, and her work has been included in anthologies by Evernight Publishing and JMS Books.
She’s usually writing more than one new book at a time, and frequently rushing out at the last minute because she got lost in her own fictional world.
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