“HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?” straight people invariably ask when they learn that I write and publish gay male erotica. I always listen for the inflection, as the question comes in two varieties. If the emphasis is on the “how,” it indicates genuine curiosity about the process and its origins; if it’s on the “do,” I know I’m encountering homophobia of a kind that isn’t exactly what a straight women normally expects. I answer both inquiries truthfully, but when I’m dealing with the latter the response is briefer, because it’s usually coming from a middle-aged man who wants to flee. There is also the occasional arrogant fool who engages in some puffed-up, empty-headed sputtering. This fellow gets a special response. “I do it quite easily,” I tell him, which ends the exchange with the point going to me.
I never set out to stir controversy or to do anything other than try something that intrigued me. After writing straight fiction for many years, I came across a call for gay male erotica in a writers’ magazine, and since I’d always found it easier to write male characters than female ones, I decided to give it a try. An idea quickly came to mind involving a guy who has sex with the pizza delivery man, and so I sat down to write. What happened then was beyond anything I had anticipated. As the story spilled out of me in a single, highly liberating two-hour session, I found myself caught in an incredible rush. A lifelong tomboy, I had apparently tapped into another side of myself, one in which male intimacy was my core mode of self-expression. When the story was completed, I decided on Dale Chase as my pseudonym, because I had known since childhood that, had I been a boy, I would have been named Dale. (I added the “Chase” because it sounded cool.)
Initially, the only reaction I considered was that of the editor, and by the time the first story was accepted I’d sent him three more, which he also accepted. And so it began. When I shared this new endeavor with a few close friends, all were stunned. I held off for a while longer before informing my grown children, as it’s not easy to tell the kids that mom is writing gay porn. On the other hand, when I did reveal it to them a few months later, I was met with wide-eyed wonder and complete support.
I soon learned to reel in my excitement when dealing with the straight world, but I didn’t anticipate the looks I would encounter on certain men’s faces when they realized that I was able to depict male-to-male sex, and did so with commercial success. In contrast, once my women friends had gotten beyond their initial confusion as to what I’d taken up, most had no problem with it. In fact, they soon displayed a refreshing curiosity, with some asking to read the stuff, although a few of the married ones felt the need to hide the stories from their husbands. One friend who did tell her husband was met by the question, “So does she get aroused when she writes that stuff?” After telling me this story she added, “Like you wouldn’t!”
Before long I saw a pattern developing. Men in their twenties thought my endeavor totally cool, men in their thirties worked toward acceptance, though some just couldn’t grasp the idea, and men in their forties and beyond would try to change the subject as quickly as possible, sometimes after assuring me that “I’m not into that.” Of course there were exceptions, but they were few, and sadly the pattern has persisted to this day. I’ve learned to curb my enthusiasm, allowing that while people are generally happy for my success as a writer, some may not be able to deal with how I’ve achieved it.
The most amusing of my attempts to educate a straight man was with a workplace friend, a fellow in his late thirties, married, affable, who just couldn’t understand why a straight woman would want to write about two men having sex. In an effort to gain some perspective, I asked what he thought of two women having sex. His eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah!” he exclaimed. But when it came to transferring this fantasy to my interest in sex between two men, he drew a blank. It was only when I saw him the next day that he signaled to me that the analogy had sunk it. It had taken him—an intelligent guy!—24 hours to grasp the concept, but at least he was secure enough in his manhood to make the connection. Now when I see him, he often asks how the porn thing is going, which I take to mean that he truly gets it.
What makes the mixed reaction from straight people tolerable is the overwhelming support I’ve received from gay editors and writers. When first submitting a story to an editor, I did not announce my gender, as I wanted the work to speak for itself. Upon acceptance I revealed that I was female and was met with exactly the response I wanted—which is to say, almost none. When I later revealed that I was not only a woman but a straight woman, again there was no problem. Wonderful correspondences sprang up, and I have found gay editors a delightful bunch: witty, wise, and playful, as well as supportive and encouraging.
Along the way, I have encountered certain assumptions that are not limited to one camp or the other. Both gays and straights have asked me, understandably, if I also write lesbian stories, and when I respond in the negative they usually demand to know why. “Because I’m not a lesbian, haven’t a clue in that regard, and have no interest in ‘writing female.’” While a few women have viewed this as deserting my gender, most accept this clarification. I usually add that I’ll probably never write as a female, and will certainly not write straight fiction, again.
The assumption that I’m a lesbian is common as well. While I can usually disabuse people of this assumption, I was recently at a gay writers’ conference in New Orleans and was informed that a small cluster of lesbians didn’t believe I wasn’t one too. Apparently they thought my physical demeanor was a dead giveaway. And it’s true, I do have short hair (though not buzzed or butch short, just girl short), I favor jeans and T-shirts, don’t like makeup, and don’t act especially feminine. But appearances do not a sexual orientation make. The research I’ve seen suggests that about eighty percent of little girls who are tomboys will grow up to be lesbians. That leaves twenty percent, and I’m apparently part of that segment. Even though I’ve been married and divorced twice, I adore men and have a deep appreciation for the male body—as anyone who reads my fiction will attest.
Perhaps the biggest erroneous assumption, one that’s again made by gay people and straight—and again understandable—is that I’m a “fag hag.” People assume that I must know lots of gay men and from there jump to the conclusion that this is where I get my ideas for storylines. The fact is that when I began this writing I knew not one gay man. This was more a result of living in a quiet suburban bedroom community than of any conscious decision. The ideas for stories about gay men came to me long before I knew any actual gay men. When I explain this to people, I find that gays are able to grasp the concept quite easily, while straights require further explanation, and we’re back to the question of How? The explanation is really quite simple: I am a woman with a strong male side who is attracted to men.
Compounding the challenge of explaining what I do is the ongoing erosion of respect for invention in literature. “Based on a true story” has become the mantra of popular fiction in a society that’s losing interest in anything not based on “reality.” Asked to consider the position of a straight woman creating stories about gay men having sex, many people seem unable to conjure any image. The possibility that imagination is not bound by one’s gender or one’s sexual orientation is something they find it hard to fathom. (Case in point: my third story, “Bear,” was about the contrast in body types between a big furry guy and a slim smooth one, but I had no idea there was a “bear culture” or that the word “bear” had specific resonance in the gay world; it was pure coincidence!)
I sometimes wonder which is a bigger leap, being straight and writing as gay, or being female and writing as male. Crossing gender can have as much impact as crossing sexual orientations, and I’ve encountered vigorous debate among a few gay writers on whether or not they can tell from the writing that I’m female. Opinion has been about evenly divided, but one guy reacted so strongly that I think he tipped the scales. This individual contacted me through an editor to propose a collaboration, but when he learned I was female, he e-mailed back to me: “You’re a chick? I can’t believe you’re a chick!” It seems he’d been sufficiently taken in to have had sexual fantasies about Dale Chase. He later reverted to lower case and confessed that he was disappointed and would have to set aside certain erotic fantasies concerning this collaboration. In the end, I had little interest in this project and did not contribute to it.
As I moved from magazine work to anthologies, there arose the matter of the requisite author biography, that little fifty-word paragraph at the back of the book. Perusing a few, I saw there were a few women who were totally upfront about themselves, but I went with a personal preference and made Dale Chase a man, a decision that, given my honest gender blur, didn’t feel like an untruth. The Dale Chase persona is my creative side, a guy with all the success of a writer who knows about men. Karen Thomas is a physical woman who’s stuck working a day job and cleaning the house, and who sometimes wonders if she’ll ever have another date with a man. For it is in this context that explaining my gay writing to a straight man is at its most impossible.
One thing I’ve found encouraging is that I am not alone as a straight person writing as gay. I’ve met other straight people, both male and female, who are doing essentially what I do. However, I have also found that each of us is quite individual both in what we’re writing and why we’re writing it. Initially somewhat fearful about intruding into the gay community, I have ventured to a number of gay literary festivals and found wide acceptance and even camaraderie with gay writers.
Another point to consider in this discussion is the converse of what I do. Gay men have been quietly writing straight fiction for mainstream audiences for years, if not centuries, something that people don’t seem to find all that hard to believe. I would offer that this is because, deep down, most people believe that everyone is really straight or at least wants to be, so of course a gay man would have no trouble casting himself in the role of a straight person writing for a straight audience. Going the other way, however, is harder to get one’s mind around. It means leaving the safe and secure world that “everyone” knows about and venturing into a smaller, more dangerous world that many people reject. Just as a practical matter, why would anyone want to trade mainstream publishing for gay publishing? (One answer: the former is a hostile place if I ever saw one.)
Six years have passed since this venture began, and I still find considerable fulfillment in writing male erotica. I’ve also moved into non-erotic fiction and had some success. I sometimes think being straight adds to the mix, as I am confined only by the limits of imagination. My work draws upon characters who inhabit the larger world and, while it may lack that close tie to familiar gay markers, it draws on the whole of humanity, now reaching into the past as I work on a collection of Victorian gay erotica.
Two years after Dale Chase hit the pages of Freshmen, I went to San Francisco’s Castro district for the first time. It was like visiting Disneyland. I walked along those streets surrounded by a wonderful rush of energy and all those beautiful men, feeling very much at home even as a tiny pang persisted inside, the one that said I didn’t really belong, that I would get back on the train at day’s end and go home to my suburban straight life. It is not always an easy mix. The sense of belonging to the gay literary world has become quite real, but the fact that I am not gay does, as much as I wish it didn’t, place me outside the larger gay world, at least in my own careful mind.
Karen Thomas writes gay erotic fiction for men under the penname Dale Chase.
