Role

A few fans inquired about my characters and their identity. I never stopped to think about what they are and what role they have; I write and see how they react to certain situations with other characters.

 When I answered the question, the same comment comes back to me:

“But aren’t you gay?”

The comment bothers me a bit since I have always thought, “Why does that matter?”

I, as a person, do not identify as anything but a human in this blue sphere I call earth. I can understand that most people need to know others’ roles to communicate appropriately with them. For example, yes, I am gay, and others have given me this role to understand me.  But, I do not use “Gay” to define myself as a person. For instance, once a gentleman walked up to me and said, “Hi, my name is Mark, and I’m gay.”

In my mind, I honestly did not care or understand why he introduced himself like that to me. I mean, we were at a gay bar on Halloween, and he was wearing a Spartan costume, while his body had a pride flag tattoo. I did not have to be Sherlock to deduce who and what he was. Good for him, though I want to know who he was as a person, not as he presents himself to society.

When I use my Instagram, I will say I use tags like “Gaymer, gay nerd, etc.” to identify, but that’s only because I’m thirsty for attention; and after my five likes, I am satisfied.

I can see how I translated my lack of roles in my book. For example, I have always thought of Ruffus as a promiscuous human. Not gay, not bi, nothing else, which incidentally annoyed a few readers because they could not put a label on him and want to relate. This tells me two things; one of them is that they relate to my story’s main character, and that is the most significant achievement I have completed as a writer. The second one is that people are reading the book.

My opinions are my own, and people will disagree or agree with me. Today, this is a hard blog to write out since I’m not as well educated in the whole gender and identity talk as others would be. I will do my research since I have to make sure I do not insult anyone I talk to daily. People can be who they want to be as long as they help society forward. I will be me and write about how my characters feel and think. If I make an ambiguous character, I will leave it at that. Why? Because it should not matter.