"What Wasn't Said" Workshop

The story is about two young men who work (or used to work) as tugboat drivers on the Mississippi River. Both are revealed to be closeted homosexuals, but this is never directly said, just as the title “What Wasn’t Said” alludes to. At the end of the story, Micah Peers comes out to the unnamed narrator, Peers most likely admitting that he loves the narrator, but the narrator doesn’t respond. Peers later dies in a hurricane (I think it’s Katrina, as Lakeview was cited), and the narrator is left with guilty memories.

            One of the piece’s greatest strengths is its pattern of revealing or not revealing. I like how it mixes up the order of events instead of telling the story from point A to point B. Your decision to not use outright homosexual language also works really well with the title and the overall discomfort the narrator has with his sexual orientation. However, I’d like to see a little more scene and less summary during the part where Peers comes out to the narrator. This is your crisis moment, and as it’s a time that the narrator regrets, I think the scene would be burned into the narrator’s memory, despite how much he tries to forget it.

            Also, I think the beginning paragraph can be cut down a bit, as the loudness and talk of the city doesn’t affect the overall story too much. Or perhaps you could begin the story by instilling a sense of homophobia in the city, such as is shown in the Bible-pushers later on.

            Overall, I think you have a good story that has a consistent tone and characters with potential for a lot of sympathy.