Dear Reader,

I just read a scene in a romance novel where one character invites the other back to his place, despite being very omg-first-time-with-a-man nervous, and the other character notices the nervousness and suggests that they watch a movie. And it suddenly occurred to me for the first time (in spite of all the “Netflix and chill” references that have proliferated in the last decade) that in real life, it has never dawned on me in the moment that “Let’s watch a movie” means “Let’s put a on movie while we make out.” I have only ever interpreted this as a literal interest in watching a movie, then been surprised that the other person seems super distracted and not actually that into the movie.

My god, I really am an innocent naïve newborn baby.

Left to my own devices, I don’t watch many movies or shows or other TV. Most of the time, my television is actually my stereo, with Spotify being hands-down the most used application. I’m not anti-TV, and sometimes I’ll get on a kick of watching or re-watching something — but it has literally been months since I’ve watched anything at all. Since June, I think. Maybe longer.

I think it often comes across as a humblebrag to say “I don’t watch TV,” but in practice, what it means is that my pop-cultural competence is pretty shit. Common conversation starters in the modern world are things like “What shows are you watching?” or “Seen any good movies lately?” and I usually struggle for a response. Sometimes I’ll say, “Haha, I haven’t been watching anything new lately, just doing the comfort thing and re-watching old [blank] episodes,” where [blank] might be Parks & Rec, or The Good Place, or maybe Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Burn Notice, depending on the conversation. Mostly that gets me a pass; or if the other person says, “Oh, I love that show! I love the one about [whatever story or bit],” I will at least be able to competently and comfortably share their enthusiasm. And then I can usually nod along with the rest of the conversation without having to pretend I know what the hell anyone else is talking about.

A lot of things are kind of like that, I think. Social masks are all over the place.

Thinking about dating and movie-watching: I once went out with a very sweet country boy, while I was living in Colorado. This was when I worked at a jewelry store, after college and before law school. I met him when he came in to buy a pair of earrings for his mom for Christmas. He came back a few days later to ask me out, and he was really charming and down-to-earth and likeable. And then halfway through our date, he excused himself, and when he came back, he said, “Sorry, I had to go take care of my dirty little habit. I chew.” And I just smiled and nodded and had no idea how to respond, but Reader, chewing tobacco really grosses me out. I liked him, but I just couldn’t get my head past it.

So he asked me if I wanted to come back to his place and watch a movie, and I said yes because I did really like him, and I was definitely down to watch a movie. And that’s what we did, specifically Shaun of the Dead, with a solid several of inches of space separating us at all times, and him never quite making a move past putting his arm behind me on the couch, and me thinking the whole time, So were you spitting out your chew earlier, or getting a fix, or rinsing your mouth out or what? Oh god, is the inside of your lip all gross and cancerous like that educational movie they made us watch that one time in junior high? Are you chewing tobacco right now?

And I just didn’t know how to say or ask any of it, and definitely was not sure I wanted to be in a regular kissing sort of arrangement with a tobacco chewer. So I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t kiss him when I left, and we didn’t see each other again. And then six months later I moved across the country to start law school. But I thought of him off and on for a long time afterward. I hope he found a nice someone to settle down with. He was a sweetheart.

I was about to write, “I hope he found a nice girl to settle down with,” and stopped myself at “girl” because I am trying to be more conscientious about not assuming straightness just because of a current partner or love interest. I know he was into me, but maybe he’s since embraced his bisexuality, or maybe it just didn’t come up on our date. It’s not like I came out to him as bi either.

When I did first come out to friends and family, it was as bisexual, but now I find myself more identifying as pansexual. I don’t have strong feelings about this, and I’ll still use either term. I always thought of the word bisexual in the inclusive sense of “attracted to people of my gender and not of my gender” without necessarily attaching a gender binary to it. But as I’ve also come to better understand myself as genderfluid (or maybe genderflux? or maybe bigender? anyway, not fully cis), the word pansexual has felt like a better fit. A good friend of mine has said to me more than once that if a tentacled space alien asked me out on a date and turned out to be smart and interesting and have a good sense of humor, I could probably fall for them. She ain’t wrong. I like a person for who they are as a person, and I especially like people who are interesting.

Interesting is my catnip. It’s one of my go-to most sincere compliments. If I describe someone as really good-hearted and super interesting, that’s pretty much my absolute rave review of a fellow human. If I describe a book or a show as really full of heart and ideas that are really interesting, that’s 5 gold stars right there.

Lots of things are interesting to me. I’m pretty deeply egalitarian when it comes to valuing knowledge and experience. Whether you work in cow shit or in front of a computer (or both! or neither!), the thing that interests me is how you engage with what you know, and how you grow your knowledge, and what you’re curious about. It’s not that I think X-set of life experience is equivalent to Y-set of academic achievement or Z-level of professional qualification. It’s that the world is huge and spectacularly intricate, and domain expertise comes in all sorts of forms, and ultimately I’m a lot less interested in labels than in what people actually know and do.

I think maybe most people aren’t used to being told that they’re interesting, that their thoughts are interesting, or that they know things that are uniquely interesting. So if no one has told you lately, then listen: babe, you are totally interesting. You know lots of things I don’t know. You have a special area of expertise that I would find totally fascinating. I have no doubt about it. If we have a chance to sit down and have a conversation, it would be entirely my honor and privilege to hear what you know. 

But if you chew tobacco, I probably won’t want to kiss you.

On the book side of things, I have been trying to read as widely as possible from the authors who will be at GRL this fall. Most recently this led me to the Finding Home series by Carly Marie, starting with At Home. And I have to admit, this one was something of a learning experience.

The book blurb alludes to the fact that this story involves Daddy kink, and I thought I had an approximate idea of what that was going to be — maybe some rough outline of a domination-submission dynamic, maybe some bratty pouty behavior that gets disciplined. I was not really expecting to read about age play and age regression. I was definitely not prepared for diapers. But, look, if I’m going to proclaim myself to be open-minded, then I actually have to make the effort to be open-minded, right?

This story wasn’t really for me, but there were lots of things about it that I found thought-provoking. Derek is dealing with new-found fame as a country music star that has pushed him back into the closet. A chance encounter has him meeting Colt, sheriff of a small community outside Nashville, with instant chemistry between them. Colt knows himself to be a Daddy Dom. Derek is intrigued by age play, and while he hasn’t had any prior experience with it, he takes to it immediately.

A big part of the story arc involves — spoiler alert, so skip this next bit if you hate spoilers — Derek dealing with a homophobic manager at the start of the story and then later being outed as gay when a photo of him kissing Colt gets published. There were a couple of things that stood out to me here.

Regarding the homophobic manager, there’s a funny distinction that the story makes between whether the manager is “just ignorant” or “clearly homophobic,” as if those are meaningfully different categories. In the context of the story, I think this works as an example of the compromises queer people sometimes make, or feel they must make, with their own principles or even their own interests in order to get by in the face of pervasive homophobia.

Derek coming out as a gay country music star also struck me as poignant, not because he was outed by the media — particularly since he expected that would inevitably happen at some point, and didn’t seem to be all that concerned with avoiding it — but rather because while he could be out as a gay man, he would never be able to come out as “little.” It’s clear that Colt and Derek’s Daddy/little dynamic is every bit as integral to their relationship as their sexuality, but the book doesn’t try to get around the fact that most of the rest of the world will find it too taboo. The closest they come to being able to be seen and accepted is that Derek has a tendency to slip up and call Colt “Daddy” around bandmates and family members, and he discloses the nature of their relationship to his brother who explicitly asks about it and already has a clue what it means. Maybe they can’t be out to the world, but their friends and family give them a few harbors of safe and compassionate space in which to be themselves. Which is really what a lot of queer romance exists to do.

So, no kink-shaming here. Among consenting adults, people should get to be who they are, and love how they love, and not be questioned or psychoanalyzed or put under a microscope.

Looks like it’s going to be lovely this weekend in this corner of the world, so I mean to get outside and make the most of it. Hope you can too.

Love,

Beas

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