I received an email from a reader today who asked me a wonderful question: do the characters in my stories, by showing such (ahem) flexibility in their sexuality, defy “the ‘we’re born that way’ reasoning that some people have begun to embrace?” This is an excellent question, and one that I wanted to answer publicly. So, here are two answers, and a bonus-round question that I think is related:

• Are people born gay? Yes.
• Can people choose to be gay? Yes.
• Does bisexuality really exist? Yes.

The question of whether people are “born this way,” as the Lady Gaga would have it, is really a political question. In times when the measure of people’s citizenship is whether they sleep with the opposite sex (fuck you, North Carolina!), it is a powerful political move to claim that sexuality is as determined as hair color or shoe size or anything else on the genome. It would take particular cruelty to claim that people who are simply following the biological dictates of their being should be discriminated against (go ahead and fuck yourself again, North Carolina!). And that’s the power of the Gaga–being “born this way” is a weapon to use in the culture war, the war for equality.

But once that moment is over–once the battle has been won–we will set aside biological determinism just as surely as we have done for race and gender and ethnicity. We now understand race and gender to be a complex of identities and choices and biology; that subtlety is possible only because we accept that all people, regardless of race or gender or ethnicity, are entitled to human and civil rights. We no longer trouble ourselves with what being “black” or “female” or “Peruvian” means–all of these mean different things to different people. Equality allows nuance.

Now, sexuality is a slippery beast, because it is not a visible, enduring part of people’s identity. But, I would argue, neither are any of the other categories. People can choose to disavow their ethnicity (Peruvian becomes Chilean) and their sex (a woman can dress as a man, or become one) and their race (black people invented “passing”) or to make it a central, defining part of their self-concept. It all comes down to choice, because the choice has no political consequence. And this will be true for homosexuality as well.

Once the battle for equality is won, of course.

It’s hard to defend the human and civil rights of an arbitrary assortment of behaviors (“Sodomites can’t marry? Then stop committing sodomy!”). Defending an inborn identity is much more effective. And once we have achieved the equality that all people deserve, then we will be able to relax. It will matter a lot less whether people were “born this way,” or were just that way for a few years in college, or could be this way or that way depending on whom they are with.

You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Bisexuality. I have always believed that everyone is bisexual–that far from being a hedge used by gay men to keep from being dragged out of the closet, it is actually the default sexual orientation of every damn one of us. It’s not bisexuals who are in denial–it’s the Kinsey 0 and 6 outliers who are in denial. Once we stop caring about origins and labels, we’ll be able to do what we want. With whom we want. We won’t even have to call it “bisexuality,” because that won’t matter anymore. We’ll just call it sexuality, and we’ll treat everyone equally no matter what kind of sex they’re having.

Does this sound like an evangelical’s hell on earth? Damn right. And it’s the future. I guarantee it.

Oh, and fuck you, North Carolina.

Writing porn isn’t my  job. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s job, actually, though there may be a few lucky lechers who make it work. My day job is teaching college English. At night I write porn.

I decided to write my first story when a student in one of my classes came to my office hours to talk about an assignment. While we were discussing his paper, he started to cry. His paper wasn’t that bad, so I knew there had to be something else going on. Being the pushy person I am, I asked him what it was. He couldn’t tell me. So I asked again, in my trademark gentle, nudging, insistent way, and finally he told me.

“I think I may be attracted to men as well as women,” he choked out, then started crying again.

Now, my gaydar is, as Aunt Emily puts it in “Cupid’s Big Weekend,” weapons-grade. I saw that he was grasping for the life preserver of bisexuality, even as we both knew that he was really gay. Having been raised Catholic, he couldn’t admit it, even to himself. But the pressure of holding back his natural attraction to men had built to the point that he could no longer carry on as if it didn’t exist.

What was most devastating to him was the idea that being gay meant he wasn’t the person he thought he was. That he could never have the life he had always imagined for himself. That he could never fall in love, never have a family. That he was suddenly something completely alien to everything he had been brought up to think about himself.

As he sobbed, I tried to tell him that he was the same person now–now that he had said it out loud–that he had been earlier that day, and the day before that, and the year before that. It’s just that now, having been honest with himself, he could finally be more than he had been before. He could be happy in ways he could never have experienced while he was locked away inside his own closet. [If this sounds an awful lot like the conversation between Josh and Calvin in “Cupid’s Big Weekend,” that’s because it is. Ripped from real life, that was.]

He cried a lot that day, and so did I. We talked for a couple of hours. And what he taught me was that the biggest fear in a young closeted guy’s life is that if he admits, even for a second, even just to himself, that he is attracted to another man, then life as he has known it is over. He can no longer be the good son, the devout Christian/Muslim/Jew, the upstanding citizen. I wanted to find a way to tell people in his situation that it’s okay to be attracted to other men, even if they’re not ready to admit that they may be gay–they may not be. But they can try it out, and see if it’s for them–that’s what college is for, right? It’s a truism of our culture that all women can be lesbians for two years in college. It’s dramatically unfair that men don’t get a similar chance to explore.

That’s why I write stories about college men figuring out their relationships with other men. I want to show that love is not bound by our narrow definitions of what’s appropriate. I want to let people who think that admitting their same-sex attractions will destroy their lives see that it won’t. It just won’t.

I’m not saying that coming out isn’t hard–it almost always is. And I’m not saying it’s a perfect world to come out into–it’s not. But I know that there are many young men in exactly the same situation as my student, who are feeling crushed by the weight of attractions they refuse to admit, because admitting them means that they are not who they thought they were. And it is to these young men that I write. I want them to read my stories and see that sexuality defies labels, and love defies rules, and they should defy anyone who tells them that their feelings are wrong.

My student and I talked again every few days for the entire school year. Through his first open crush, through his coming out to his parents, through his figuring out what life after college would look like now that he didn’t have to be alone. I was the first person he told, and I was honored by his trust. I feel so lucky to have been there when he needed me.

But I can’t be there for everyone who needs to hear a kind word of acceptance and understanding. That’s why I write. And because I know from experience that even people who cannot admit their same-sex attractions during daylight hours will seek out gay erotica at night, I write porn. It’s kind of a bait-and-switch–they find my stories because of the sex, but they get a side-order of sexual identity politics that I hope stays with them longer than the sexy bits.

It absolutely makes my day when I get an email from a college-age reader who says that my stories helped him see that he could be true to himself, that there are possibilities for love on the other side of coming out, that he now knows he’ll be okay.

And that’s why I write porn.

Here’s a funny thing. Judging from the comments and emails I’ve gotten, my man-on-man (and sometimes man-on-man-on-man!) stories are being read and enjoyed by straight women. This got me thinking (as things sometimes do).

I posted my stories on Literotica.com recently, mainly to see if I could attract a different audience on a site that’s more on the consciously “literary” side of erotica. There, “gay male” is but one of dozens of categories of stories (as opposed to Nifty, where it’s the vast majority). What’s interesting is that a lot of the positive feedback that the stories have generated comes from straight women.

Straight women, gay erotica. Hmmm.

So here’s what I’m thinking. American culture is still so wrapped up in traditional masculinity that men feel they must conform to that tradition–strong, silent, and emotionally comatose. Straight women, though, want to see men being sensitive, vulnerable, and open to new experiences, while at the same time still being strong, sexy, and, well, manly. Even, it seems, if they end up being manly with another man.

I love this. Here’s why.

One of the main reasons I write is to get people to think about sexual identity in new ways–to see that men can fall in love with other men (and often do) and that their love can grow to involve physical intimacy without their having to adopt a stereotypical “gay” identity. Not that there’s anything wrong with being flaming–Bryce from “Frat House Troopers” has a devoted following, including among straight women–but a masculine man needn’t give up the masculinity that is a part of his identity simply because he falls in love with another man.

If I can slip into being academic for a moment, this entire dynamic really plays with the idea of the “homosocial,” as outlined first in the mid-90s by the late Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. She showed that in a patriarchal culture, men are required to have intimate ties to one another–being close to other men is the only way to access societal power–but that physical intimacy is strictly forbidden. This makes for a slippery slope–you have to have close relations with other men, but not too close. My stories provide a way out of that double-bind: my guys get to love each other, have sex, and live happily ever after. Take that, patriarchy!

So, if you’re a straight woman who enjoys my writing, welcome. And thank you. And, if the occasion arises, share it with the straight men in your life. They may find it liberating.

Love,

~xm