As you know I hate âalliesâ invading queer spaces. As a writing challenge I wanted to write a story told from the second person for ages. I began today. Letâs see how this works out.
Of course I am interested into feedback - but please do not expect that I care about it. I know what I want to tell and how to tell. Feedback is expectation management for myself :)
I need to share this part of the story right away. The universal gay experience. BTW the story will hold the readerâs hand very often.
Of course I am rewriting as I go:
And still, when the moment arrived â when another man moved close enough to become briefly possible â you reached instinctively for reassurance that you remained outside the possibility yourself.
Not outside the room.
Outside the implication.
He was gracious.
You did not ask what that cost him.
Most people never do.
Writing is a practice. I used to need several paragraphs to say the same thing I now said in o e paragraph.
Love behaves well in public. Love makes a clean argument. Love fits comfortably inside the language of tolerance and dignity and equal rights and all the careful respectable frameworks that allow everyone else to feel generous at a safe distance.
@jascha thank you for sharing your perspective in such a relatable way! đ€
not sure, if my wording is right (I am clearly not a native speaker), but I liked reading your text, for me, it is easy to read (quality of writing) đ you expressed so well, how a person shifts from being part of, to "downgrading" the approaching person probably unintentionally but socially learned (and probably not reflected) with just one sentence đ
@jascha I really needed the follow up to understand your point. Parts of it come off preachy and a tad condescending to my taste.
To me, the crux of the issue is that the person youâre talking to isnât comfortable with their sexuality. Theyâre not an ally; theyâre still on their journey.
I also think itâs completely fine if people arenât used to seeing everything they see in a new environment. Whatâs important is that lack of knowledge or understanding doesnât turn into judgement.
@jascha In addition, the âinvited but not welcomeâ paragraph might sound like a zinger, but it feels a bit gate-keepy to me. You canât conditionally invite someone.
Theyâre either welcome, or theyâre not.
@jascha Really interesting, I'd like to see where this goes. My first thought was that as a queer, not an ally, I also have some of these experiences: the music not being what I expected, or using the right words - mostly, but not always - and practicing correcting myself.
Also, TIL the phrase 'brave space'. I've been to such spaces, so useful to have the term. đ
@jascha I stumbled over the "describe it afterward" and had to read it two or three times. How about:
> But you thought about it, and wanted to be prepared. You googled the venue, and thought about what you would wear. You even started thinking about how you could describe it afterwards, if asked.
tomate đ
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