As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
Today is the Outer Alliance's first "event". The idea is both for members to show their support and post an example of queer speculative fiction. Here's a brief excerpt from my story, "An Elderly Pirate Recalls the Death of Love", from Electric Velocipede issue 17/18:
Boys love other boys. It's the way of things. They're like dogs playin' together in the fields of their youth. Then they grows to be a man, each in his one way. This one takes up a plow, that one swears on the queen's shilling, the other turns his collar around and speaks with a mouth full of lemons all the rest of his days.
Ain't none of 'em has the courage to allow to what he whispered 'neath a lavender moon on a summer night when he was fourteen or fifteen. They stand in their ranks all polished and brave, and remember what it was like to share the hand of another man, to bend down and be schooled hard, to stand up and give their all, then they blush with shame while their peter quivers and weeps.
Don't you make no mistake, though. It was real love, the true love of the boy in the mirror and the boy in the fist all at once. Some of us had the kidney to remember that as the years went on, and some of us kept looking for it in dockside bars and tiny creaking cabins, or in the alleys behind houses where women opened up their charms.
I took Little Ronnie Alton off the second Kennesaw, on a night when the waves was racing mast-high and whatever dwells down deep had churned up for a cold, curious peep at the sky. It was when I had Agricola, my second command she was, a good ship and false as winter warmth.
What? Oh, that. Think about it for a moment. A pirate's ship will always be false, for even the timbers must needs be clever. A clever sharp will run an honest man into the ground every time. Why should ships be any different?
| Originally published at jlake.com. |