In Which The Flippity-Floppity Makes Me Ask, "What The Hell?" – The Rise of Alec Caldwell: Volume Three by Casey K. Cox

I’m not confused, I’m just well mixed. – Robert Frost

No, I’m confused, and clearly, so is Alec Caldwell. Seriously flummoxed. A person has to be to use the word flummoxed, right? I was going to go with the whole discombobulated thing too, but I didn’t want to get too carried away. But, come on! This book made me start humming that Britney Spears song “Toxic”—I’m addicted to you/Don’t you know that you’re toxic? Britney…Spears. My apologies to everyone who loves Brit-Brit, but WTF? Just, yikes.

Yes, the fecal matter hit the fan blades in this installment of Alec Caldwell’s flippity-floppity-think-one-thing-then-do-another-contradictory-change-his-mind-so-damn-fast-he-gave-me-whiplash life. This book was like a doctoral thesis on why an open relationship won’t work for Alec and Hamilton, and it seemed to prove its point rather well. Can you really have your cake and eat it too? It doesn’t seem like it, especially if it makes you start smacking your cake around a little bit because you’re jealous that other people get to take a poke at its creamy middle. Does that even make sense? I doubt it. Don’t blame me, I’m still flummoxed.

So, please excuse me while I state the obvious here: there’s a difference between love and obsession. Well, duh, you say, but I honestly am not sure if Alec, or Hamilton, for that matter, knows the difference between the two. They say absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, not make it wonder what it’s missing somewhere else. Plain and simple, the mere possibility of being in a monogamous relationship shouldn’t make you faint. And that is why, dear Alec, I believe you’re in love with… not Hamilton. You’re infatuated, you’re definitely in lust, certainly addicted to the boinkery, but true, grown-up love? I sniff skeptically at that. ::sniff:: I’m not saying who I think Alec’s truly in love with, but if you read the book, you’ll probably know exactly who I mean. Then again, I could be way off base because Alec is nothing if not consistent in his inconsistency.

And then there’s that damn Club…

Engineer Casey K. Cox has steered this choo-choo straight to Dysfunction Junction, with a slight detour at Manic Switch, where the most well-adjusted character of the bunch seems to be Bradley, who considers himself a whore and is just damned happy to be so. Go Bradley!

I confess I had a very difficult time remaining engaged in this episode of the porn-opera known as The Rise of Alec Caldwell, mostly because I’m not feeling particularly warm and/or fuzzy toward Alec and/or Hamilton just now. If you’re an emotional reader, you might feel like I did through the entirety of this book: Wait, whaaaaat? ::facepalm:: But truly, it’s almost impossible for me to see all sides of a situation when those sides are mixed and muddled by ambiguity and inconsistency. Jack Kerouac once said, ”I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” This is Alec in a single sentence, and I’m not sure if his frenetic flip-flopping is attributed to the series’ stream-of-consciousness methodology, or what. Of course I know we’re not always linear in our own thinking, so should I expect a fictional character to be consistent in his? I don’t know the answer to that, but I can say that reading the constant pendulum swing of thoughts and feelings can be an exercise in frustration for me. Mission Frustration: Accomplished. Good on you again, Ms. Cox!

I’m going to be perfectly honest and tell you that I kind of preferred the bounteous blow-jobs and butt sex and prodigious pornication of the first two volumes, over the relationship exploration in this installment, but only because this relationship is, in itself, over-complicated by the fact there are too damn many people in it. But that’s just me.

Maybe it’s a good thing that Volume Four isn’t going to be available for download until later this year. It’ll give these boys a chance to get their crap together, and give me a chance to recover from my discombobulary flummoxity.

You can download the first three volumes here (proceed with caution):