Sex in the (Gay) YA Novel
By Martin Wilson
When I was writing my novel, I came to a scene that I wasn’t sure I could get away with. Two boys. Fooling around. In a shower. As my fingers hit the keys, a voice in the back of my head whispered words of caution: What are you thinking? I worried that my editor would take it out—this is too racy, I could hear her saying, for a YA audience! Despite the nagging voices in my head, I wrote the scene anyway. I wrote it because I had to. I hadn’t planned on it, necessarily, but now that I was there, the experience in the shower felt like an honest thing that would take place between these two characters. I wrote the scene because it felt true and necessary. It was, in my mind, anything but gratuitous.
In the end, my editor didn’t have a problem with the scene at all. In it stayed! And, to many readers, it remains a favorite scene of the book (interpret that as you will!).
But sex in novels is a tricky matter, especially in YA novels. And perhaps even more so in gay YA novels. Teenagers and sex aren’t supposed to mingle, though of course anyone who doesn’t live in denial knows that this isn’t always the case. Judy Blume knew this when she wrote Forever—a book I haven’t actually read in entirety. No, I’ve only skimmed the “dirty” parts that my childhood friend Shelley underlined in her worn paperback copy. But Blume was brave and perhaps ahead of her time in confronting that dirty fact of life: Sex between teenagers happens, whether you want to believe it or not.
I strive to make my novels as realistic and honest as possible. And so my attitude about a lot of supposedly controversial things—sex, but also profanity, drinking, drug use—is that these elements have their place in a book if they are treated in an honest fashion. Cussing, pot smoking, beer guzzling, getting naked—these things all have a place in YA, but not if they are inserted into a book just for shock value.
Every book is different. Every character is different. So here are the rules I’ve imposed on myself for sex scenes in my fiction: Does it advance the story in a crucial way? Does it deepen a character—and thus a reader’s understanding of such a character? Is it true to this character? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then by all means, those scenes can be written.
But here’s some caution to the aspring writer out there. Sex scenes don’t have to be graphic. In fact, many times it’s true that the less graphic the sex scene, the better the sex scene. Writing about sex—like the act itself—can be awkward and embarrassing. When does a sex scene go from tasteful to purple-prosed and prurient? It’s a fine line. One should never, ever use the words throbbing or pulsating. One should never call certain things members or glands. For those who can’t resist a sex scene, proceed at your own risk. One magazine even hands out a Bad Sex in Fiction award each year (past winners include esteemed novelists like John Updike and Norman Mailer).
In my new novel, which I’m hoping to finish in the next few months, I have once again been confronted by the sex-scene dilemma. There are a few racy scenes in the novel, but in the scheme of things they’re all very tame. But they are there, or alluded to. Because, once again, I feel that the sex must be there. The sex is true to the story, true to the characters.
I sometimes think that many YA writers are too cautious about sex, especially gay YA writers. Sex between a boy and a girl is crazy enough. But between two boys, or two girls? Watch out! But by shying away from such scenes only because one is worried about a conservative librarian in, say, rural South Dakota, or because one is nervous about offending a few religious parents in Macon, Georgia—well, that writer is doing himself and his readers a disservice. After all, if straight kids can have sex, if they can delight in or suffer through all the aftereffects that sexual activity brings with it, then gay kids should be able to as well.
Martin Wilson is an author of several short stories and his debut novel, What They Always Tell Us. He currently resides in New York where he works in the publishing industry. You can learn more about Martin and his novel What They Always Tell Us at his website, Martin Wilson Writes.