Freedom to Choose

Author’s Note & Content Warning

Freedom to Choose was originally written sometime between 2010 and 2012. I’m not 100% sure of an accurate date, due to the number of computers I’ve upgraded through over the years, which has altered my document create date (at least, on at this particular machine.) This is worth noting because...damn, I was dumb back then.

There are a few things that I’ve changed since originally releasing this as a free short story in 2020. First and foremost, I fixed a number of typos. I’m sure I missed some. Alas, it is the bane of all authors and publishers –traditional and independent. I used to have this really terrible habit of everything being very stream of conscious (much like this is). I also had some really annoying style choices, like people nodding at everything. That has probably been replaced with people sighing at everything. Can’t win them all, I guess.

But the absolutely most deplorable thing that Past-Sam used to write is: unsafe sex practices and the Gay-For-You trope. If you read my other work, you’ll notice that I very specifically mention safe sex practices, specifically condoms. In Something More, Kyle mentions gloves for anal fingering. In a (as of 3/2023) unreleased Mora Stephen’s book, there is mention of dental dams. I believe very, very strongly that writing realistically about safe sex practices is essential.

As authors, we don’t know who is going to read our books. If this were to fall into the hands of a naïve college (or even high school) student, who only read words waxing rhapsodic about how good it feels to raw dog inside another person... I’m nauseous just thinking about it, actually.

I’m not here to preach safe sex, I swear. But I will always strive to include it. To the point where I altered 1 of the 2 scenes in this book to include it. So, why didn’t I also alter the first? Well...that’s a complicated explanation. On one hand, I originally wrote this before I had this stringent mentality around showing proper condom use and (to an extent) technique. It felt disingenuous to past-me to not leave this as the story that Past-Sam apparently wanted to tell. And Present-Sam has grown up and is fairly rational. So, I’m going to leave it to be. At least in part.

If Present-Sam was writing this story, it would have been much different. And that’s actually because I absolutely abhor a Gay For You story. I tweaked some language around here to make Patrick more self-aware of his attraction from the beginning. To try and explain why he wanted to stick with the Straight label instead of the Gay, Bi, Pan, or any other label. As I was reading through this, I also considered whether or not I had accidentally written a demiromantic character.

Gay For You is a harmful trope. Unfortunately, when I started reading Men-Loving-Men fiction –it was rampant. It still is, really. Between studies and anecdotal observation, it’s a fairly common thought that men are more willing to hook up with other men (and trans folks) than women are. (Is this because of female internalized homophobia? Possibly. The number of Late In Life lesbians seems to be rising, with many awakenings being recorded and documented via social media like TikTok. Anyway –the trope!) Part of the reason that this trope became so engrained in MLM fiction is because...until the last few years, a LOT of MLM fiction was written by Cisgender Heterosexual Women.

There are a lot of conversations out on the internet about Cis-Het Women writing Gay romance. For a long time, I thought I was a cishet woman writing gay romance. After all, I have a vagina. I use she/her pronouns fairly often (because I live in a rural, conservative area where the argument is not worth my safety). While I have identified as pansexual for nearly a decade now, I didn’t start identifying as non-binary until I was probably 28 or so. I wasn’t public about it until I was 30. I’m part of the queer community. Does that give me a pass? No. It doesn’t. But I recognize that men are different from women and do my absolute best to try and create characters who are true to life. A lot of cis-het women MLM authors are simply writing women with dicks (and I don’t mean transwomen fiction, which honestly there should be more of!)

When it boils down to it: Gay For You is based on the premise that a man is 100% straight until he finds the fairy tale man of his dreams. Now, I know a LOT of gay men who love a good fairy tale and even a little magic –that is not how Gay For You works. At least one of the men is usually openly gay, or at least already questioning. The other is touted as very much straight. And essentially, it feels like the Gay Man has predatorily turned the straight man gay. Gay men have been calling this trope problematic for years,