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It is difficult for anyone to be able to write authentic, emotionally honest, psychologically true, and sexually explicit experiences and fantasies in our culture; for gay men it is near miraculous. We are told, from our earliest years, to repress, hide, lie, and distort our gay desires. So is it any wonder that when gay men put pen to page -- or fingers to keyboard -- that they have a problem writing without hesitation or self-censorship? The bottom line is that it takes hard, often unnerving, work to write honestly about gay lives. The process by which gay men learn and continue to write honestly about our sexuality is an arduous one; before the writing has begun we must first be honest with ourselves. We must forthrightly face our sexual desires and feelings. This is harder than it might seem. It would be easy simply to transcribe a routine sexual fantasy -- you want to fuck the policeman you saw earlier that day; you want to do it in the back of the police car while it is stuck in traffic; you want him to keep his hat on while you push his knees over his head -- but it is much harder to get at the less-than-immediate emotions of the situation: What are your real feelings about police or men in authority? Is the fucking an act of revenge against an established homophobic institution? If your semi-public sexual activity is, in part, an act of humiliation, what does that say about your feelings about gay sex? Is it a rape fantasy, and what does that tell us about the relationship between sex, power, and violence in your fantasy life?
Writing honestly is not easy. Good writing about gay sexual desire and activities depends completely upon the writer's ability actively to pursue, mediate, and interrogate the endless labyrinths of his sexual imagination. Once the process has started, it is never-ending, for the sexual imagination is never static; unrepressed, it will flourish and thrive, shocking and surprising us with its often Byzantine and rebellious manifestations. Remember: self-repression of the imagination is an active, intentional act. It may be culturally induced and supported, but we must take responsibility for letting it shape and control our lives and minds. Writing -- and thinking -- as truthfully as we can is an act of resistance. Muriel Rukeyser, in her poem "The Speed of Darkness," wrote: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?/The world would split open." Writing honestly about our sexuality and desire is a way of changing our lives as well as the world.
--Michael Bronski
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