Teaser Chapters from an Unfinished Self-Portrait Series by Christopher X. Sullivan

An asexual man meets a male model... and slowly falls in love.Chris is a nerdy bookworm with a very direct personality. He tends to take jokes literally. He doesn't like small talk.  Chris has never been sexually attracted to anyone in real life, though he can look at photos and think up exciting scenarios in his head... as long as the people are all wearing clothes. Porn is definitely a no go.  Mark is a charismatic, beautiful man with a pretty person job and pretty person problems... moreAn asexual man meets a male model... and slowly falls in love.Chris is a nerdy bookworm with a very direct personality. He tends to take jokes literally. He doesn't like small talk.  Chris has never been sexually attracted to anyone in real life, though he can look at photos and think up exciting scenarios in his head... as long as the people are all wearing clothes. Porn is definitely a no go.  Mark is a charismatic, beautiful man with a pretty person job and pretty person problems. He's very pushy.  Mark is also struggling with a summer college course for business writing. Luckily, Chris makes a living from his writing and always falls for a sob story... so he ends up helping the model with his assignment.  After a chance encounter in Chris' favorite park, the two men's lives slowly entangle until the pair become inseparable.  First Chris and Mark become friends, then companions, then partners, then lovers... and then they get engaged, married and... finally... adopt a very amazing kid.This is their story... or, well, I guess it's my story. I'm Chris and I wrote this. It's very weird to refer to myself in the third person, so I'm going back to first person now.Mark didn't tell me he was into guys until I was very much in love with him. Anytime he got close to telling me the truth, I would instinctively pull back. But I never ran away completely, and he kept coming after me.  I guess you'll have to read the book to understand why.[ADVISORY: I'd just like to make sure you know that this book is not the complete love story between me and my husband. I've broken my story up into ten 100,000 word installments. Each installment follows its own 'arc'. There are four 'super arcs' typical of romance novels spread over the ten installments."The Book of Beginnings" contains the beginning of each of those ten installments. So we're going to jump through time quite a bit. These 'beginnings' total over 140,000 words and the final project will be over 1,000,000 words.Don't worry, I will finish this story. It's terribly important to me. But it is huge. So I will also be posting an Abridged Version, which will consist of the chapters in "The Book of Endings" and "The Book of Beginnings".This is an unfinished project, but my health is prompting me to search for an audience before I'm finished. If you want to be an early reader and look for typosz, please get in touch. You will make the completion of this story possible and free up more of my energy for non-typo stuff. Thank you so much.] less

I didn't own a suit. Mark (a fashion snob) thought that was a crime against humanity which he was going to correct no matter how much I protested. I had a summer wedding to attend and I was prepared to dress as my usual scruffy, unremarkable self. Mark, the male model, the man who personified Vanity, the King of Drama... he who had spent the past two months finding me random shirts to wear instead of my usual drab attire... yes, that Mark.. moreI didn't own a suit. Mark (a fashion snob) thought that was a crime against humanity which he was going to correct no matter how much I protested. I had a summer wedding to attend and I was prepared to dress as my usual scruffy, unremarkable self. Mark, the male model, the man who personified Vanity, the King of Drama... he who had spent the past two months finding me random shirts to wear instead of my usual drab attire... yes, that Mark... I never should have opened my mouth about the wedding... Of course he was going to buy me a suit... as if money was no object. This purchase made me uncomfortable because it was the first inkling I had that we were something more than just 'good friends'. Mark wanted me to look good, and that's just the way it was going to be. Normal friends didn't get that... possessive or territorial. This short story isn't exactly a love story, but Mark and I were clearly in love at the time (which I had no problem with, although I never would have accepted going further and being in a gay relationship). At the time, I thought Mark was just an excessively affectionate person. I didn't know he was hitting on me. Newsflash and spoiler alert: he was. He's gay. He's gay, gay, gay, gay. Like... so gay. This story takes place before Mark and I even flirted with the idea of becoming boyfriends. I would define this stage as a Queer Platonic Relationship. I was happy being in that place with Mark. Mark, however, wanted more and (as per usual) he eventually got his way. But all that traditional relationship stuff would come much later. This short story is about an event that laid the groundwork for us eventually getting together. We fit... so well. So naturally. I was one hundred percent at ease with Mark. And he was so patient with me, reeling me in, seeing how far I would go... There's more information in the 'Author's Note' about who we are and where this story fits in the exact chronology of our relationship. This story is the first finished excerpt from my large memoir about the love story of my life featuring Mark, the man I hope you fall in love with as deeply as I have. I tried to write about the happiest memories, while also staying true to the roller coaster of emotions that accompanied my transformation. My love story isn't a 'straight-to-gay' one. This is a 'not inclined either way' to 'well, if I get to cuddle at night with your arms around me, then I guess you can stick something up my poop hole... occasionally' kind of love story. There won't be any sex for the first three hundred thousand words... that's how you know this is an asexual-to-demisexual story. Also, my apologies to Mark for making him look like an alien with the watercolors on the cover. I want to have an illustration at the top of each chapter... and I'm rusty. Mark protested his appearance: "Hey! You look better than me!" To which I said: "So like normal." He gave me the darkest look you can possibly imagine. He gets so touchy about his appearance, and it makes me laugh. I'll try real hard to make him look super duper sexy in the next illustration. I promise. All my memoir short stories will be publishing on Kindle Unlimited first. I'm going to post two stories a month until the full memoir is either finished or my eyeballs rot out of my head. less