Essays on Me #1
Me & Yaoi
Aged 15, or thereabouts, a friend, a girl friend, very nervously sent me a document which contained a moderate slash story featuring Legolas & Aragorn. This was the beginning.
That friend was also my first kiss, in a tent in her garden. We were girlfriends for a month, secretly, until somehow the rumour got out, and I denied it all. Too afraid and unsure of my own feelings to admit. I still have traces of guilt over this; she really was a most excellent friend, and I did love her dearly. Fortunately, we stayed friends. I have my suspicions over the source of the leak, but that will wait.
She also introduced me to: Buffy, Fight Club, webcomincs, Foamy and other such brilliances.
But this is about me and teh boyluve.
I can’t entirely explain my fascination with it. I find a great deal of gay culture irritating, and a great deal of gay people for that matter (same as any other section of people). So that’s not it.
I think the primary cause of the deliciousness is in the writing. I find the written word infinitely more erotic than the image, hence the attraction to fic. I like the many dimensions fic has, the many ways in which many authors can interpret and spin and move around a story, and the characters. I found heterosexuality to be, sometimes, and in some ways, stale. Stagnent and old, not at all exciting. Yaoi is exciting, fresh, urgent and a wonderful escape for the mind. I enjoy turning over the characters in my mind, seeing them in new stories, new situations. Familiar faces in new settings. It’s thrilling. I like the secret of it too; thinking about a recently read fic, holding it close to myself.
There’s a new, recent dimension to my attraction to this genre. My newfound attraction to men. I feel 13, discovering boys for the first time. Throughout my love of yaoi all those years, and all those years of loving various male characters and having their posters on my walls, I didn’t feel the same kind of attraction that I later felt towards women. At that time I didn’t feel a direct attraction to anyone, beyond appreciating an aesthetic. Now, I find myself feeling that attraction. It’s exciting; if I weren’t in a serious long term relationship with the person of my dreams, I could see myself being quite the slut. But that’s another essay…
