This month we are proud to present three fabulous short stories: the stunning, Why Are You Wearing My Daughter's Earrings by Hugh Fleetwood (The Dark Paintings, Brothers, …), the sexy, When In Rome from Anthony McDonald (Adam, Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet) and the laughter inducing Entertainments Officer from Paul Mann (The Seaman’s Mission, The Last Cargo, ...).
Meanwhile, up and coming star David Llewellyn (Eleven, Torchwood: Trace Memory, Everything is Sinister) gives us his fascinating lowdown on the homoerotic aspects of comic strip art. All proof that BIGfib isn't going to shut up about anything soon...
As most readers will know - BIGfib used to be a satire magazine, so it’s no surprise that a few of the people who signed up to our satire site don’t want to receive a gay literature magazine
What is surprising is the number of near-identical emails I have received justifying the decision to unsubscribe..
In a nutshell, the message I keep receiving is, I have nothing against homosexuals, but now you have equal rights, surely the time has come for you to shut up about your sexuality.
It’s a point of view I seem to be coming across more and more frequently anytime anyone mentions anything “gay”.
The elaborate version goes something like this : Surely gay literature / TV / music / whatever – should be able to stand on its own two feet without having a specific gay niche.
Surely the time has come for homosexuals to feel comfortable enough about who they are to stop harking on about being gay. And if there isn’t much gay-friendly lit / tv / whatever around, then surely its precisely because homosexuals ranting on about their homosexuality is a turn off for the wider (hétéro) market.
It’s interesting, because though I’m not going to jump on some Seventies soapbox and declare homophobia, I do think that it reveals a couple of interesting points.
a) That many heterosexuals still don’t realise how pervasive sex is (the kind that doesn’t shock them) in everything that they read and watch.
b) That many of them, while not (for the most part) wanting to burn homosexuals, still aren’t very comfortable with by depictions of gay love, sex or romance.
c) That in many parts of the world - Iran, Quatar, Saudi Arabia homosexuality is still illegal, and in many cases people are still being put to death for the simple reason of their sexual orientation.
Now if I were to avoid reading, watching, or listening to anything that overtly suggests a heterosexual act of love or attraction, let’s face it - I wouldn’t be left with much.
The vast majority of what I read is, of course, straight – and for the most part that doesn’t make me uncomfortable.
Bookstores have vast ranges of heterosexual literature, and the assistants who work in them a wide knowledge of the various genres.
But when from time to time I want to find a piece of literature depicting a life that looks a little like mine, a sex scene that I might actually consider erotic, or a hero with whom I could possibly fall in love, I head to the gay section, the gay magazine, or the Gays The Word bookstore in London, for the simple reason that looking for literature containing gay characters anywhere else is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Sex, love, and relationships, are the kingpins around which all human experience is built and as such have a primordial place in literature, whether it be gay or straight.
As long as most booksellers at Tesco can’t point me to a book with gay characters (because neither they, nor the buyers are gay) and as long as most literary magazines don’t review gay literature (because they don’t think anyone is interested), and as long as most publishers don’t publish a great deal of gay literature (because the majority of their readers aren’t gay), the niche will have reason to exist.
BIGfib is that niche.
Enjoy!
Love to all.
Nick Alexander.
See Nick Alexander's author profile <here>
Purchase Nick Alexander novels here:
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