Can you help me with my truck once I return to the world? '66 Chevy Stepside, 350, 4 bolt, Quadrajet....
Sorry for objectifying you, buddy, but... there's just nothing about that picture that isn't HOT. The engine, the tools, the pickup, the guys, the teamwork, the pride... some things cross the straight/gay divide (if there even IS a divide...) ETA: Oh, damn, I missed the water-filled ruts in the background! I may faint! ETA2: The PLAID!
At my age a little objectification does not go unappreciated. I was in my mid 30's in that pic. It's been a decade since.
I'm queer, but it's always helped me to disassemble broad labels into specific traits. For example, the label 'gay' can be disassembled into traits specific to the character like: attracted to men, likes feminine clothing, etc.. and then it becomes easier to write those characteristics since you've identified them instead of just saying they're gay. Labels like gay & transgender are only important, in my opinion, if you/the character identify with the group!
I had this thought as well, but given that OP said three of the mcs are gay and only one of them is into feminine things, I thought about it a tick and decided to not mention it. It's not implying that gay guy = guy who likes feminine things since there are also gay guys who don't.
The disease isn't AIDS or HIV, so I'm not worried about that. It's an unrelated blood disorder called ITP, that has nothing to do with sex. And I'd love to get the input from some LGBTQ+ people, as they would know best about this topic. Thank you for the welcome! I've been writing gay characters for years, so I have looked into stereotypes in the past, and I agree, it's always good to do more research! My character doesn't wear dresses or skirts or even heels...I like what you said about the artistic makeup. He does stuff like that. His grandmother is a huge role model to him and ever since he was a kid, he's always thought: "hey, if Nana can put cool art on her face, so can I!" I try to portray it as such in my writing as well. He always talks about his clothing and makeup as art, not necessarily femininity/homosexuality. My character sounds a lot like you in the regard that he'd do the same thing if he was told to wear blue at work. He just, for lack of a better term, doesn't give a sh*t and does what he wants because he's secure and confident. Also, the story is a coming of age kind of thing, so the character is 17/18 throughout the story. So he's definitely in a rebellious stage of his life to begin with. But I agree, I wouldn't add these traits as though he does them just because he's gay. This was a great example and something I hope to portray with my characters, so thank you! My three closest friends aren't straight and you'd never know that about them. They do, as you said, come in different flavors. My "feminine" character isn't feminine in all aspects. He likes sports, is the handy-man around his house, etc. I like the last part of your reply; I just want to write a good story that happens to have gay characters in it. This is suuuper helpful! If anything, it fits my character much better as well. Calling him simply "gay" wouldn't do much to show who he is, but when I break things down into traits, it's a much better description. That's what I was hoping for, so I'm glad you noticed that. I've met gay guys who were feminine, but the gay guy who's my close friend isn't at all. There's all types of people who are gay and that's what I hoped to show with the three guys I'm writing about.
My rule of thumb is "if the story isn't romance, don't let it focus on romance." This should apply with any character regardless of sexual orientation. I have a gay character in my novel, and I've described her sexual orientation keeping this analogy in mind "Some people like apples, some people like oranges, and others like them both." I let sexual preference become simple character traits like eye color or favorite foods. I use her orientation as a plot device sparingly. Don't let sexual preference become the dominant trait of your character to the point where its brought up every single page. Sexual preference isn't the sole factor that makes up what kind of person the character is, much like whether or not they hate the taste of apples. Keep in mind that regardless of ones political leanings, an overuse of stereotypes can become annoying at the least and grating at the worse. But then again what works for me might not work for somebody else, take from my statement what you will.
For that matter, it's not even the sole factor of orientation. I personally am asexual-aromantic (as are about 3% of the population), the most common combination is heterosexual-heteroromantic (≈80%), the second most common combination is homosexual-homoromantic (≈6%), so the two do generally line up, but it's not a guarantee: there's plenty of people who are bisexual-homoromantic, heterosexual-aromantic, asexual-biromantic... Asexuals like me have it lucky, we get to have a really funny way of distinguishing the matches from the mismatches: Ace of Spades (hello) means asexual-aromantic, Ace of Hearts means asexual-(hetero/homo/bi...)romantic. Homo/Bisexuals, on the other hand, have to put up with people claiming that their orientations are about sex in a way that everybody knows that straight orientation isn't. The conservative tagline "Straight couples make love, gay couples fu screw" doesn't sound as compelling when you realize that it translates to "Heterosexuals and Bisexuals are always heteroromantic, Homosexuals are always aromantic" because putting it that way makes it obvious that there are a dozen other combinations being ignored, but people don't phrase it that way. They talk about gay and bi orientations as being fundamentally "more sexual" than straight orientation is, to the point where even saying "every homosexual person is also aromantic" isn't enough for a lot of people. Pedophiles are disproportionately straight (north of 90%, whereas the general public are about 85%), but talking about gay/bi orientation exclusively in terms of "who you have sex with" or "what you do in the privacy of your own home" – instead of also talking about "who you fall in love with," as they do for straight orientation – creates the false impression that "I can trust a straight man not to be romantically interested in little girls, but I can't trust a gay man not to be sexually interested in little boys" (even though, again, a 10-year-old boy in the company of a random gay guy is objectively safer than is a 10-year-old girl in the company of a random straight guy) I don't even like using the word "homosexual" unless I have time to go into a more in-depth explanation about the difference between sexual and romantic orientation, just because when people see a heterosexual-aromantic person, they think he's "more romantic" (and less predatory) than a homosexual-homoromantic person.
If I tell you that the fellah' there with me is named Earl, does that seal the deal? No lie. Earl Stone. My dad was working part time as the office manager for an auto AC place where Earl was a mechanic. I pull into the shop one day with the pony, Earl sees it and asks me to pop the hood. He asks if I realize what I have there and I told him that yes, I was well aware that not only was she a '64 1/2, but she had the much rarer 260 cu V8. I then told him to look inside the pristine cabin and clock the factor AC unit that made her a gem amongst gems. He asked me what my plans were for that motor and I told him none, really, because I didn't really know much about tricking out motors. A couple of days later my dad tells me that Earl couldn't stop talking about my car and did I maybe want to let him help me rebuild the motor you see in the picture above. Earl is as Florida redneck as his name promises him to be, but he turned out be the sweetest guy you could possibly meet. When I told him that the pony was my only car he lent me a little beat-up Nissan Sentra to drive while we pulled the motor, stripped it down, cleaned and restored everything. Every afternoon when I went to his place (that's his place in the photo) he had something new that he had ordered for the motor and he was like a little kid. "Look, the freeze plugs came in yesterday. Let's have some fun!" I paid for the carb, the intake and the exhaust. He wouldn't let me pay for anything else. He did make me do the work myself. Here's the best day of that period of time, true story: He had a bunch of crap blocks on his property that he had me practice on with the honing tool before he let me touch the pony's cylinder walls. There's a trick to it. You want an even, symmetrical criss-cross pattern, and doing it by hand takes practice. I'm as dirty and schmutzy as you expect. My friend Matt and his friend Chris (the latter of whom hated me) came by the shop (Earl's place). Matt had an old green '71 Camaro that was falling apart, but of which he was very proud. I show them around, showed Matt the bench where I have all the stuff for my motor, the cherry picker where I've got the block itself. Earl makes a show of asking me for this and that and tell them what this is and that is and where we got this and that and then show them my practice work. The whole nine. I do all that and then I tell Matt I'll see him later and they leave. A little while later Earl comes to where I am to inspect my work and asks me if those guys know I'm gay. I tell him yes, that Matt is a good friend, but his pal Chris is not my friend and won't even look me in the eye because I'm gay. Earl walks away laughing and tells me to finish what I was doing. You'd have to have been there to hear how he laughed to hear the direction of his disdain. It was like he was saying "That asshole probably doesn't know how to change the oil in his car by himself and you're learning how to hone cylinder walls to fit new sleeves. My work here is done."
"Earl Stone"? Cowboy, take me away! (with your strong, tanned forearms with just the right amount of hair...)
Yep. Every once in a while life throws you some good material. ETA: And obviously, Earl was a lesson to me in unfair stereotypes and what we miss out on if we only let someone be a one-dimensional caricature. He had the reddest of necks, but he was very kind to me and for that moment of getting to watch Chris eat a plate-full of homophobic crow, there's no way to repay that.
That is one sweet engine - I love that you describe it as 'little' though ( Its a whole US/UK thing, over here hardly anything has a V engine unless it's an import - although I did have a V6 LPG converted landrover once - most cars have less than 2000cc, and muscle cars aren't really a thing. The only "sports car" I've owned was an MX5 1.8 - what you guys would call a Miata- which was totally a chick car but its road handling was great it went round corners like it was on rails) .
I guess it's all relative, yes. In the world of American V8s of that era, 260 cu is a small small-block. But there's a collector for everything, and rarity has as much appeal as shear size, and with the motor and other options my pony came with from the factory, she was rare enough. I had the original bill of sale for that car, $2700 and change, which was the kind of thing one framed and displayed in the dash of one's car at car shows, which are just adult versions of high school wiener measuring contests, and where the homoerotic subtext is heavy in the air. Heavy enough to have ended in the occasional "your place or mine?" scenario for Li'l WreyWrey. So yeah... full circle for this thread.
what are boat shows? (That's where I frequent) OP, I think you've thought well and long about your depiction of your characters, it sounds really good. Good luck!
Yep. So, to the OP, and to swing things back on track... What we think of as stereotypically "gay" things can really be dependent on agenda, point of view, experience, exposure, lots of things. There are some people who think "gay" means a lisp and a limp wrist adjusting a silk ascot that finishes off a supremely affected persona. And, yeah, that exists. But so do leather bars where the testosterone in the air burns your eyes (lots of roid use in that crowd), and the aforementioned limp wrist and ascot are not welcome. Some people think it means working at a "typical" job like a hairdresser or a florist, and again, yeah, that exists, but the medical field is also chockablock with LGBTQ folk. When I lived in Melbourne, FL, you just weren't a card-carrying lesbian unless you had worked as a paramedic on an ambulance. *shrug* And again, I'm not trying to say that car shows and big block engines glittering chromium-bright in the sun are always sublimated homosexuality, but I certainly did have my share of fun at those events, and with guys that would make you say "Him? Are you kidding? No way he's gay!" He was last night. See, this is the problem with stereotypes. They paint people into corners. The people the stereotype is about as much as those who hold the idea of the stereotype in their minds. Again, this is why the "coming out" phenomenon for media people and sports stars was and remains important. As long as people think that being gay is just this [insert stereotype], then it becomes small enough for people to think "Well, that's just those people. That's too small for me to be worried about." It's not just those people. Yes, it is those people too, and we in the community have to be very, very careful not to let the prejudices get internalized and shun our own people, but it's more than that, much, much more. I don't think you have to avoid writing about Ascot Guy for the sake of being PC, because Ascot Guy is here too - he's reading this right now - and he doesn't deserve to be shoved aside as inconvenient just because he's the guy that those opposed to us use as their example, just because he's the demonized image. That's insult to injury. You can write honestly about Ascot Guy and Leather Bar Guy and Auto Show Guy and Dude You Would Never Think Is Gay Guy without fear so long as you remember that they are people and they deserve to be engaged with the same fullness of thought, consideration and multi-dimensionality that you would give to writing anyone.
A good place to meet rich arseholes , regardless of your orientation The difference being that bike and car shows are about owners showing off their machines , boat shows are about manafacturers selling new ones.
Not to mention of course those guys who are ascot wearing and affected (or otherwise stereotypical) but not in the slightest gay. I remember a hair dresser I used to know ( I actually met him through an MX5 owners forum) who in looks and manner appeared to be gayer than spring time. Until I met his absolutely stunning (and very female) ex glamour model wife. Looks can be deceiving, and stereotyping is for those who can't be bothered to get to know the actual person
There's actually a bit of a backlash (one of MANY, I'm afraid) in m/m land about too many of the characters being too "straight acting". This is coming, as far as I can tell, from gay readers and writers who think the female readers and writers are fetishizing one "type" of gayness but ignoring others. I don't know. It's never going to be black and white, right and wrong I don't think. I just try to be a responsible human being and then accept that not everyone's going to like what I do. (I have a new book out today, and, you guessed it, both characters could be seen as "straight acting". I'd say it's because that's who they are, but I can see how less macho gay guys might get sick of seeing themselves not represented in a genre that's supposed to be about them (at least in a way).)
