The people who've e-known me for a while, from looking at this entry's title, are already either grinning or rolling their eyes: Here we go again.

I'm sorry, I cain't hep it.

Tell you a little bit about how I got onta the Internet as a dirty-story-writer.

Long time ago, I ran into a story at Nifty that was pretty weak technically, but absolutely compelling--at least to me--from a "story" standpoint. That story was called Fraternity Memoirs, and it was based on the college experiences of its author, who went by the screen name of John Walsh.

The story tells of how a college freshman decides to pledge a "renegade" frat, and tells the story of his friendship with his frat Big Brother and of his...uhhh...relationship with another kid in his pledge class.

One of the things that was masterful about his storytelling was his ability to convey the palpable sexual tension between him and his straight Big Brother. I was much moved by the portrayal of that friendship.

I emailed John thanking him for his story. It was the first time I'd ever written to a "Nifty" author. I told him a little bit about myself: Bisexual, if I had to put a label on it, but in a serious relationship with a woman. We got to corresponding via e-mail, and he became a very good e-friend.

He asked me to tell him the story of my first time with a guy. I wrote him a reply that took 3 emails from me.

Somewhere along that time I had joined his Yahoo! group, a little reluctantly. He'd created it mainly because the lag time between his chapters was pretty significant, and he wanted to let his readers know when new chapters were coming out. But, as these things often go, his group became a hangout for his groupies, who lavished praise upon him (aka "licked his ass"). You wanna talk serious hyperbole, though--he had people comparing him to Norman Friggin Mailer.

That was just over the top for me. I told him, jokingly, that hell would freeze over before I'd ever participate in the asslickfest which was his group. He laughed and replied that it was pretty over the top.

After I'd been hanging out at his place for a while, though, it struck me that I had a story of my own to tell. I was a senior in college, and it was the spring of my senior year, and I was about to graduate and move south to go to graduate school. My gf--no, by this time she was my fiancee--whom I'd known since we were elementary school kids, attended college in a different city, but she was going to be entering medical school in the same city where I'd be going to grad school. Life was about to change for me, and I too had some things from my past that haunted me a little. I was feeling the need to put some closure--or some something--on my past, as I moved into my future, and I was feeling a little pensive. But there weren't many people I could talk to about it because it wasn't easy for many people to understand me. See, the thing was, I was a mostly-straight-guy who nevertheless noticed guys, and who had fallen in love back in high school with his best friend. That friendship was intact in college, after a 2.5-year period of alienation, but it was a little strange, and I had a sense that he and I were about to walk the proverbial diverging roads, and that before too long we'd hear from each other twice a year at best--then once a year--then once every two years, etc., and think of each other once in a while as "someone I used to know."

God, it was killing me. But what was to be done about it? We were walking different paths. He'd gotten married that year--I was best man--and we weren't living in the same city anyway; and I was about to move even farther south.

I needed to talk to someone about how it felt for me. How I'd loved him so much, and how it seemed as though there would be this dark and empty place in me from then on, even in the midst of the joy I was feeling as I began to make a life with the woman who'd agreed to marry me. But who can a guy talk to about loving a man and a woman?

I got to thinking about how much I'd been touched by Fraternity Memoirs. I decided I'd like to write the story of myself and my best friend, talk about what happened, and put it up there at Nifty. In a way I just needed to talk it out, to Say It, as I put it sometimes. I guess, too, it was a love song to my high school buddy. I also had hopes that I might touch some reader as Fraternity Memoirs had touched me. I thought that maybe--just maybe--there might be a reader or two out there who knew what it felt like to be torn between the love of a woman and the love of a man; and maybe those readers might contact me and we could talk, compare notes, stuff like that. You don't feel like such a freak when you can talk to other people who can relate. So I took the three-email writing I'd sent John telling him about my first time with a guy, and I began expanding it. I entitled the story Crosscurrents and I submitted it to Nifty.

I thought the name was perfect, because it described how I felt. Out there in the surf, pulled in two different directions, by two strong currents that came together at the same place--the place of me.

I started getting emails almost immediately. From gay men who loved the story; and from bisexual men who got it on another level entirely, because they'd lived versions of it. That was tremendously gratifying.

By the fifth chapter, Nick Archer from the Archerland gay-fiction site had contacted me and asked if he could host Crosscurrents at his site. I knew nothing about all this, but I liked Nick from his email contacts, and after some further inquiry with him, I agreed. Archerland is no more, but I'm now hosted here at Gay Authors.

In any case, for the most part, I've enjoyed the reader email in response to Crosscurrents over the years. But from time to time I get letters either lecturing me, or confused as hell, because they don't know why "Andy" doesn't come out as gay, or why he's trying for a straight boy. I've also gotten letters telling me that straight men cannot be with gay men, can't love gay men, can't make love to them, would be repulsed by it, so the "Matt" character must be a gayboy in denial. And I've gotten letters ripping me a new one for telling a story about a "bi" man falling in love with a "straight" man. Somehow by telling a story like that, apparently I'm betraying the entire gay community (funny; I didn't think that as an author trying to talk about real-and-true things from my life I was accountable to any "community.").

My point is, the only negative email I've ever gotten is from indignant readers who don't want to accept that a man's sexuality could be multivalent. Many of these indignant readers insist that bisexual men are just confused and/or scared gay men. And they neither concede the possibility of, nor approve of, a "straight" man loving--intimately--a "bi" man. And then there are the readers who want to know why I don't make it more clear that "Andy" is gay and that "Matt" is at least bi.

What is this about? Why are people so determined to tell me what makes my body respond sexually, as if they know better than I do? I mean, I'm the owner of said body, right? I guess I know what gets my engine going, and I guess I know better than people who aren't me.

I've also gotten this in response to a story I helped complete that's not even mine: Dan Kincaid's It Started With Brian. The story has been an intriguing one. It takes 26 chapters for Brian to admit to Sam he's in love with him. But in that very same conversation Brian makes clear that he's straight. Or, rather, he doesn't deny it when Sam says "but you're straight." Rather, he counters with, "But I love you." And this in fact is part of the dilemma, part of what keeps Brian at arm's length for years until he finally decides, to hell with the labels, I want Sam. But I have readers who have emailed me and they seem utterly unable to just let the story tell itself. They want to know why it took so long for Brian to accept his gayness, or they tell me they knew all along Brian was gay, or they figure he must be at least bi, or yada yada yada. I've received more email asking questions about the sexuality of these guys than I've had commenting on how cool it is that Brian is finally making an attempt to get the two of them where they should have been years ago.

It mystifies me. Why does a label have to be attached to these guys? What's wrong with accepting the description that they give of themselves? Granted that some gay men have tried not to face their "gayness" and have hidden under descriptions that aren't accurate, why does this need to label have to attend the reading of the story? Can't the story just be the story? It's a love story, and it's a love story that happened. Why the urge to dissect and label?

I ask this with some urgency, first of all, because everything I've experienced in my own life, and in hearing from some of my readers, and from research and reading I've done, suggests that sexuality is much too complex and nuanced to be adequately captured by the labels "gay," "straight," and "bi." Secondly, and maybe more importantly, in the story under consideration, it's precisely the oppressiveness of these labels that keeps Sam and Brian from opening up to each other, thus wasting years, and causing both of them years of pain. Both of them were attracted to women, Brian almost exclusively so; but both of them were in love with each other. It was an awful thing that the labels shamed them into wasting years apart that they could have had together.

I should clarify that I'm not pissed at any of the people who've responded in this way to It Started With Brian. It does mystify me, though. I don't understand why so many people feel compelled to rush in and proclaim that a person is gay. Or straight. Or bi. It doesn't alter the fact that the story is a love story, and it only insults the characters involved by telling them they don't even know their own sexual responses.

Okay, I'll shut up now. Some of my readers characterize my occasional rants as Adamic Blasts. I think that's unfair. I am warm and fuzzy everywhere.

I do trim, though.