Just a little hope
“Oh, that’s um…nice.”
Yeah, that’s the usual response I get when I meet people in person and say I’m a writer. Well, it’s actually the second response. Conversations normally go as follows;
Random person: “So, what do you do?”
Me: “I’m a stay-at-home mom, but I also write.”
Random person: “What do you write about?”
Me: “Well, I write gay erotic romance. I’ve had some short stories published and also a novel. I’m working on the sequel to that right now.”
Random person: Long pause as they figure out what the hell to say, then, “Oh, that’s um…nice.”
End of conversation.
Over the past couple years since I’ve had my first short story published, I think I’ve figured out a few reasons why I get this pretty standard reaction. One being when I talk to someone face-to-face, they don’t get the chance to stare at an email while they think of response. They feel they need to say something fairly quickly since I’m standing in front of them smiling. But maybe it’s because I am standing in front of them that causes this reaction. As a guy friend of mine once said to me years ago when I got huffy at him for drooling over a provocatively dressed woman, “Oh, you’re hot too, but you’re like, Marsha Brady hot.” I never was quite sure how to take that comment, but I translated it into I look like a good girl. But you know what they say? It’s the good girls and boys you have to watch out for.
Combine that with the “erotic” part of my statement. If when I meet people, they instantly get that same impression my friend told me regarding my outward appearance, me spitting out the word erotic just all out stuns them. It’d be like if there was a very special Brady Bunch episode where Marsha confesses she’s an underage stripper. You just didn’t see it coming. And simply being associated with something erotic in any way tends to give the idea that I must be a wild woman swinging naked from a trapeze in my bedroom every night, which so isn’t true. I’m really clumsy. I’d be certain to fall off and cause some terrible injury to myself.
The final reason I think people don’t know what to say is by far the saddest, and that’s the bigotry directed toward homosexuality. Occasionally I get someone who says, “Why do you write that?” My response, “Because I believe in equal rights, and love is transcendent to gender and sexuality.” After this declaration, I often see confusion on people’s faces, as if they’re trying to come to grips with this jolt to their minds and beliefs. Marsha Brady writes hot man-on-man action! How’d this happen?
But despite this shock, as the conversation ends and we part ways, I always hold onto the hope that when that person crosses paths with someone deserving of acceptance, whether it’s for sexuality, race, religion, or any of the other so many sad reasons people are singled out, that they’ll show acceptance to them. Maybe it’s a naïve hope, but I believe acceptance works like a chain reaction. What a beautiful place the world would be if all preconceived notions could be dropped when we meet a person, and instead of deciding who they must by looking at their outward appearance, we wait until we truly know them as an individual.
Now, that’s not to say confusion is the only reaction I’ve ever gotten when I talk about my writing. And it’s not to say that I haven’t politely turned down prayers to save my soul, or fought with every bit of my willpower to not burst out laughing at the suggestion I should write children’s books instead (if you’ve read my work, you know why that last suggestion is hysterical), but I’ve also come across people who offer full support. Those encounters are what swell the hope I have and keep it strong.
So, if you read this and think, “Oh, that’s um…nice,” I’m okay with that. If you read it and think I’m a total loony, well, you wouldn’t be the first. Or even if you read this and then think of it the next time you see a Brady Bunch rerun, I’ll take that, too. But if you read this and think that the next time you meet someone, you’d like to share in the hope I have, then I’ll be overjoyed.