As with pretty much all creative types, there are recurrent themes in my work, namely: nudity, intimacy, sexuality, identity and relationships, from a perspective of “what if we, or a given culture or race, were open and comfortable about such things, rather than the conflicted, restricted approach we tend to take?”. This blog will detail their origins and inspirations, and how I explore them. Fair warning: it will touch on some sensitive subjects.
To start with, the origins. The earliest stirrings would have been thanks to a book, a massive tome of a medical encyclopedia. As a single-digit sprog, I often would sit on the floor with it, leafing through it. I avoided the gruesome and gory images, often explored the transparent sheets that let you layer up the organs and structure of the body in illustrated form, and always spent a long time looking at one particular image.
It was a full-page, full-colour photograph of a woman, standing in a neutral, arms-at-her-sides pose, and entirely nude. There were lines pointing to various parts, attached to boxes detailing the things they could be affected by, and memory suggests she may well have at least been bald, and possibly had no hair anywhere on her body. I was too young and too naive to have any real concept of sexuality, but I was still drawn to the photo; it appealed greatly to me. I believe that, at least on a deeply subconscious level, this photo was the start of my journey to realising we have really strange, narrow attitudes to our own bodies, and that’s something worth questioning.
The second influence was also in book form, the lurid bodice rippers my maternal grandmother was endlessly fond of. Frequently, when I stayed with her and Grandad, I’d steal time to ruffle anxiously through the ones kept in a spare bedroom, looking for the good bits, the forbidden stuff, the stuff I wasn’t supposed to know about, let alone read or see. However, all they ever stirred in me was, beyond the anxiety and thrill of doing something ‘naughty’, confusion, and before long I came to realise how strange and even comical those scenes were, breathless torrents of euphemism-riddled purple prose I struggled to understand the appeal of. That was, again subconciously, a major factor in starting to question our fixation on, and contradictory attitudes to, sex.
The third, and biggest influence was during the first couple of years of secondary school. Physical Education (PE) at my school involved the most basic changing facilities imaginable, a U-shaped room with benches and hooks along the walls of the arms, connected via an open doorway to an O-shaped, tiled shower room with just naked heads spaced along the walls. At this point, just beginning my young teens, I was much more aware of society’s heavily-impressed, deeply unsubtle messages of “nudity is bad”, “you must not be seen nude or see anyone else nude, especially a girl”, and so when thrown into this situation, questions quickly cropped up.
If being nude around others is bad, then why am I being forced into being nude around a couple of dozen other boys, hardly any of whom I know, and several I don’t like, and who don’t like me? Moreover, why am I being forced into being nude in front of an adult male teacher I don’t know, and really don’t like thanks to his deeply unnerving habit of leaning next to the doorway between the changing and shower rooms, seeming to closely scrutinise every boy that passed by him? Even at such a young age, I realised there was a pretty hefty contradiction, here.
I’m pretty sure these experiences are a major reason why I became extremely self-conscious about my body around that period, to the point I struggled to even bare an arm in the privacy of my own room. I worked through it slowly, over the course of a few years, steadily wearing less and less in private, until I was fully nude, and quickly discovered I liked it; it felt nice, comfortable; and a naturist was born. This was also when I started entertaining little scenarios in my head when I went to bed, to settle my hyperactive mind enough to sleep, and my preferred scenario was being nude with a girl; nothing sexual, literally just being nude. This was when I realised I wasn’t really being or doing any of the things conventional wisdom dictated a teenager like me should be or do.
Naturally, all of this, all the questions and thoughts now swirling in my mind, were explored via the best, and only, outlet I believed I had: my writing. In the ensuing twenty-five or so years, this has evolved and expanded into something that could lay some claim to being genuinely unique, not least in its extent. Other storytellers have touched on these themes and ideas – Alan Dean Foster in Quozl, and Janet Kagan in Uhura’s Song, for two examples – but none, to my knowledge, have embraced them anywhere near as much as I have.
Now to explain them. First, nudity. What if, I wondered, people weren’t hung up about their bodies? What if nudity isn’t seen as bad, or wrong, or harmful, was just a normal, accepted, commonplace thing? What if instead of being taboo and sexualised, body parts like breasts, and vulvae, and penises were treated and regarded just the same as elbows or faces? What if clothing was treated as a utility, not a necessity?
Second, intimacy. What if we were as open and tactile in our affections toward each other as we are toward our pets, and as animals are toward each other? What if we were freer with hugs and kisses and warm touches, if we cuddled and rested together, groomed and washed together? If we expressed our feelings and our bonds more freely, and more frequently? If we weren’t as emotionally and physically distant as my family has always been?
Third, sex and sexuality. What if we didn’t think of it as dirty and taboo, yet at the same time the most pleasurable and desirable experience of all? What if we didn’t both repress sexuality and exploit it? What if we accepted it, and accepted that it means different things to different people, manifests in different ways in different people? What if we properly acknowledged that sexuality doesn’t arrive fully formed and well ordered at age eighteen, that it’s a normal part of a child’s growth and development, especially during adolescence, and were open, communicative and supportive with them about it, rather than repressive and forbidding and reactionary?
Fourth, relationships. What if we acknowledged and embraced the fact that relationships come in infinite varieties? That they’re not always and exclusively based on or focused on or driven by sex? That they can’t really be categorised and itemised, reduced to the simplistic metrics and expectations we use and have? That it’s entirely possible to have multiple kinds of intimate relationships with multiple people?
Fifth, identity. What if we accepted that identity is a far more complicated concept than just male or female? That we are not categories or types or groups, but individuals, no two people exactly the same, and all the better for it? That the only person who has the right to dictate someone’s identity is that person? That we didn’t firmly affix identities to people at birth, and instead allowed them to discover and decide for themselves as they grow?
These themes are explored in fairly understated fashion in my fanfiction, as I try to blend them with the characters and the worlds I’m working with and in. In my original work, however, they have full rein, no half-measures, no shying away, no compromise. This is at its zenith in Moonglade, an entire fantasy world, from cultures to subcultures to belief systems to characters, built around them.
I find huge rewards in the challenges and discoveries these themes provide, but the flip side is that they put people off. The scenarios and characterisations I come up with don’t fit societal norms, don’t follow conventional wisdom, in fact question and subvert them, and that’s not something, it seems, many people are willing or able to even entertain, let alone engage with. Certainly no mainstream publisher would touch my work with the longest of barge poles, and I sincerely doubt any indie ones would either. It would struggle to be more niche.
But is that going to deter me? No. I believe if you don’t challenge yourself, and the accepted structures and wisdoms of your society, test your beliefs and those of wider culture, neither you or it will truly grow. Besides, the path less travelled is always the more interesting one.
Foxy Musings 