I wrote my first transgender love scene this week for 'Leaving Wonderland'. It was steamy and sweet and saturated with emotion. It wasn't gratuitous; it needed to be there to push the story forward, to bring two people together whose union was vital to the plot.
It was laced with hesitation and nervousness, a natural emotional blend when two people cross boundaries into unknown territory. But once that connection was made it flowed and reached an earthy, almost spiritual climax. It began with heat and concluded with a harmonious surrender to vulnerability and tears of the pedigree only found in love fulfilled.
It was a challenge I set for myself, to work outside what I know as a CIS man, and explore a sexuality I am only aware of as a near observer to members of a community I feel allied with.
How did I write a transgendered female character? I thought of a woman, because that's what she is despite a twist of nature giving her a female brain inside a male body. I thought of all the transgendered children and youth who lay awake at night wishing they were dead because their true emerging selves are too often rejected by those who are supposed to love them. I thought of that struggle, that lonely survival, and how deeply emotional it must be to find someone who accepts them just the way they are.
Love is love. It doesn't have a gender or orientation and is only absent in sociopaths. We all crave acceptance for our true selves and when we find it we love deeply, freed from our defence against vulnerability, surrendering our souls to the one who accepts and loves us back.
Royal and Renée are two of my favourite characters, first appearing in a short story about an unlikely romance between a Romani gangster and a transgendered young woman. I enjoyed them so much I transplanted them into 'Leaving Wonderland', my first spy novel. They fit there. They imbue the story with mystery, adding so much to the interweaving suspense of the central plot, their love story riding shotgun in the mad dash to the climax of the novel.
Penticton, BC
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