Gay For You?

Some of my favourite stories are Gay For You. I like the idea that friendship (or, even better, total animosity) can be so intense that it might take you in an unexpected direction. I like the angst of a good Gay For You, in that a character is usually totally blindsided by his or her own desires. 

Source

But here's what I don't like: the crazy idea that another person can somehow make you gay. 

That's crap. What another person can do is give you the courage to explore a part of yourself you might have had on lockdown most of your life, but you cannot catch Teh Gay. 

Sexuality, gender and identity are weird, slippery fishes. Tricky to catch, impossible to pin down, always on the move. (Okay, now I'm thinking I could have picked a better analogy than fish, but it's late and I'm tired. And earlier I watched a program that had fish in it.) The point I'm making -- I think -- is that Gay For You is only half the story. And if you read a lot of romance, it's usually the only half of the story you get to see because a big Happily Ever After descends and there are rainbows and unicorns and puppies and bubbles. 

(I mentioned it was late and I'm tired, didn't I?) 

Okay, so here's an example. 

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Max. And he had a best friend called Paul. And one day Max looked at Paul and thought things that he'd never thought before. These new, unsettling thoughts began with kisses, and ended somewhere Max had never imagined he'd go. 

But he did, and it was good, and it was Love. 

The End. 

That's where romance drops the curtain. Except what if five years down the track Max finds out that Paul screwed around? Or what if Paul gets a job on the other side of the country? Or what if Paul is killed in a car accident? What if, for whatever reason, the man that Max was gay for is no longer in his life? 

Does Gay For You still hold? Does Max magically no longer enjoy sleeping with men? Suddenly he's straight again? Of course he's not. 

I don't believe there is such a thing as Gay For You in real life. I believe there is Out For You, it's just that in romance it's difficult to spot hidden under all those happy endings. 

Happily Ever After?

This might seem like a weird confession for a writer of romance to make, but here it goes: 

I don't believe in Happily Ever Afters. 

Please disregard what it says in my little blurby thing. I was probably drunk or delusional when I wrote it. Not to say that I'm always drunk, and not to say that delusional always picks up the slack when I'm not... Let's just say that life is more interesting when you have no idea what's going to happen next, and get to the point. Which was that I don't believe in Happily Ever Afters.

There is an implication, at least I think there is, that living happily ever after is boring. It implies a life free of conflict and strife, and who the hell wants one of those? Conflict and strife define us. They make us stronger. They teach us important things about ourselves. They make real life interesting, and they're absolutely essential in fiction. 

I also think relationships are more complicated and interesting than Happily Ever Afters. At least, they should be. 

I first had a problem with HEAs when I was a child. 

"And they all lived happily ever after," my mother said, and closed the book. 

"But what happens next?" 

"They all lived happily ever after." 

"But what did they do?" 

"It doesn't say. It can be whatever you want." 

But surely if it was as exciting as what had come before, someone would have written it down? 

But you know the thing I hate most about Happily Ever Afters? The next words are always The End. Close the book, go to sleep, the story's done. And that's just not good enough. I don't want to leave a stagnant world when I close a book. I want to leave it changing, vibrant, alive.  

Maybe I just hate to reach the end of a story. Maybe that's the real reason I choose to write Happily For Nows. Leave that door open just a bit, so there's always a way to go back. 

As a reader, I like that. As a writer, I love it. That's my happily ever after right there. 

Do you prefer an HEA or a HFN?