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Question about representation in published literature [message #79042]

Sat, 11 July 2026 06:01

ThisRick

Getting started

Location: Western USA
Registered: October 2021
Messages: 19

I've been enjoying a couple of the current stories.

Something has occured while reading: what if Aled didn't find Harry( https://iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/edward-kyle-stokes/eig teen-years/01.html), or Deacon, Isaac ( https://iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/victor-thomas/the-nerd -the-jock-and-the-bully/00.html)? These are contemporary stories, so one would assume each would have eventually had the opportunity to find a suitable partner.

I'm an old guy, born in the mid-fifties of the last century. That was not a contemporary time, and finding any people with similar attractions could not be taken for granted. Or knowing that such a world existed - that men could have something beyond sexual contact such as portrayed in the two stories above. Even sexual contact was shrouded in dark, negative innuendo in my experience.

For those of that era, many never did find a same sex connection in their early years. Some found it possible to have an opposite sex and therefore acceptable partner. I'm one of the latter and had a twenty-five year marriage to a woman including two children. I never had any contacts outside my marriage and was quite content but after a divorce in middle age I was free to investigate the community of gay men which was fun if a bit overdue.

Is there any representation of this situation in published gay literature, that of men who have lived a life without any romantic or even sexual contact with another human? It's not uncommon, I've heard many stories from men who came out in later middle age having had no intimate relationship with another human of any gender. Indeed, my longest gay relationship was with such a man. I wouldn't expect such a story in a site like this one, but the wider world of literature certainly has depicted tragic stories. I feel this story of love denied is particularly poignant since it stems not from the fates but from mankind.

There is one story here I know of that ended with a somewhat similar situation in the last chapter ( https://iomfats.org/storyshelf/hosted/joe-casey/enough-rope/ 01.html).

I mourn the lives of men who would have loved men but were not able to overcome the cultural headwinds of hatred for this kind of love.

It's also distressing to think that their stories are dying with them now, erased like their love was when they were young.

- Rick

Re: Question about representation in published literature [message #79043 is a reply to message #79042]

Sat, 11 July 2026 07:14

timmy

Has no life at all

Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13830

Very many of us here are of this generation. So many of the stories are stories of yearning not reflective of real life fulfiulment. Indeed, my own are written precisley to fulfil the needs and desires I have been unable to express. I did write, have written, about my teenage years, but cannot write a story about adut life, because it would be a standard herterosexual love story.

[Updated on: Sat, 11 July 2026 09:43]

Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School

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