Today, caught up in the emotion of National Coming Out Day I was brought back to my unfinished short story. Normally my mornings are filled with optimism and nights get filled with over-enthusiastic plans. Plans that only ever get half done because I never get work done as fast as I thought I would at night. 

Today's plans included not only finishing a short story I haven't been able to in 5 months but write a lovely blog on the matter. Because it's not like I have lost all interest in this theme but that I can't think of anything else. It isn't always Barry and Mark that I think about. Sometimes it's an older couple I would want to work into a much longer feel good piece. Or random other short story ideas. Or hell even just different FanFiction pairings. 

This new obsession began to bud during my podcast days. Dan Savage was on a show I liked and he mentioned something that really struck me. It wasn't surprising in the least. It was just something I hadn't thought of in that way. The sort of thing that becomes obvious and strange once you fully see it. The thing was in regard to being labeled gay, bi, or straight and "experimenting". Girls can experiment in college and no one cares anymore. That one time doesn't label them an irreversible lesbian. They can still be straight with one little event in the other way. But guys can't. They are labeled after that one event. 

This need for people to classify others bothers me for many reasons. But my attention has shifted from the slut label to these new ones. I haven't been focusing on trying to portray healthy sexual active females as exactly that, healthy. I've been focusing on trying to portray different types of love and pleasure as simply those things, regardless of gender.

Part of me has always thought had I found the right girl in college, who knows. Now that I've found my life partner it's a little irrelevant. However, the exact label of what I am or could have been has never hung me up. I could be 100% straight. Or I could be something else. But I don't feel like I can claim anything with zero real 'evidence'. It doesn't really matter though. 

So the fact that people think it matters what others are labeled as blows my mind. Though, I've had my opinion changed before by seeing others points of view. And if these black and white, square, organized people won't listen to real stories, maybe they'll listen to my make-believe ones. 

The end of this is that I haven't finished the story. I still don't know how to end it. But I think I got it narrowed down a bit...again...different than the first narrow down.