Noticeably, a new character has taken hold in Controversy. Keith and Ramona have been around for a few chapters, but now Keith is taking a more significant role.
Click here to read Chapter 12.
When I outline a book, I have a very simple framework. I was going to introduce a new love for Brad. I knew it was coming about halfway through Brad's story. What I didn't know is how taken I would be with Keith.
When writing A Bed, A Desk and My Unfortunate Soulmate (Book Eight), Geoff was the college freshman whose sexual development just exploded on him. His addiction to porn and all things sexual placed him in a bisexual (or pansexual) realm, if his identity needed labeling. But Keith, as an older adult, is a new type of character for me.
It's also a challenge. To my knowledge, I don't know any bisexuals personally. I always strive for authenticity in my books, so sometimes I have to make assumptions. (By authenticity, I mean not every character is an idealized quarterback — blond, of course — with an eight-inch schlong. And naturally, everyone on the team has a huge dick and all like to get off together even though they are straight. Right.) As a writer, I prefer the real world. I want every reader to find someone with whom they can identify. I'm hoping Keith comes across as true. I wish I had some bisexual friends: I'd really enjoy talking with them. I'd find them fascinating.
Keith has a wonderful innocence, coming out later in life. It is this youthful quality that Brad (and ME!) find endearing about Keith. I've really enjoyed developing this character. His impact on Brad's life in the upcoming chapters is massive. I hope you are drawn to him as I have been "creating" him.
Thanks for this beautiful chapter! The lessons Brad and Keith are exploring--intimacy and sex and attraction--are so beautiful. You're making me think of the relationship where I too learned these things. My man said he needed to start with being naked, holding and kissing, and looking into each other's eyes. As we talked about being vulnerable to each other, he admitted that that scared him--but it's so worthwhile!!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to more!
J.
It's interesting that you mention this. I know men who used to be married to women, but they don't consider themselves bi, only gay. I'm not sure I know any "confirmed" bisexual people either.
ReplyDeleteAs usual with your writing, I'm especially enjoying the true-to-lifeness, including some of the Really Big Life Questions.
ReplyDeleteI stopped short, while Brad was still in that agonizing period of "doing the right thing" and resisting all the nasty impulses, and as he thinks ahead to the possibilities with Keith he observes, "Keith's feelings were way stronger than mine." Now, I don't know where the story is going, even now that Brad and Keith are a couple. But this puts a finger on one of the hardest-to-reckon-with problems in all relationships. How often do people in them have feelings anywhere close to being in balance?
I really loved Brad's great insight in the afterglow of his and Keith's first time as a couple: that "figuring out the other person" is "the great part" about sex. This is something I doubt is often understood in the straight world, and as so often happens in the gay world, we've just taken over the most bone-headed orthodoxies of straight "culture," all too often exaggerated them into even wackier parody. And there's poor Keith imagining there's a book that will reach him everything he needs to know about the "right way" of being gay.
What makes this so powerful is that I think we can all identify with it, especially those of us who came late to their gay "awakening." It was one of the things that made Cooper -- probably my favorite of your characters -- so touching. Coming to it so late, he was so haunted by the fear that it was too late for him to learn how to be gay. But then, I've always been charmed by how little sense he has of what a "catch" he is. It interests me that all the characters connected to him have (I don't know how else to describe it) a special glow of humanity.
K.F.