“Race, gender, religion, sexuality, we are all people and that’s it. We’re all people. We’re all equal.”
―
The duality of gay-bashing
Now, when I began writing Who’s The Bitch, Now?, I found myself in a position where I get to play out a lot of my darker fantasies. One of them being that a homophobe gets his arse beat by a gay guy. Granted, I have knockdown my fair share of homophobic bigots during my time as security. I’ve never been a fan of bullies – of any kind. They have always been a plague on my youth and I’ve always found them to be pathetic cowards who always need an entourage to make themselves feel important. Even though there was a specific order in which I was writing the stories, when I got the chance to write this story, I went all in.
Okay, so, point of order, in the original story, the main character was a trans man of African American descent and I did that because it was something familiar to me. Although, when it came down to the photoshoot, I realized that I didn’t have enough representation for the other tribes of the LGBTQ+ community. See, I already had a trans character for my 29th short story, A Damn Shame, Really, and I didn’t want to repeat the process so I changed the character’s name and ethnicity. However, I did keep the antagonist the same; I didn’t feel the need to change him.
This story was very easy for me to write for many reasons. One of the main reasons was because it was loosely based on a conversation I had with my younger brother. I’ve never been a victim of gay-bashing – and I pray that I never do – but I know what I would do if I was going to become one. I would be out for blood because I promised myself when I was younger, that I would never allow myself to be a victim. So, my brother asked me what I do after defending myself. That’s where this story picks up.
I wrote it out in a way where the main character is in complete conflict with himself, much like how I would be in that scenario. The reader was going to learn very fast why he was there and I didn’t want to pull any punches on what was going on in his mind. I didn’t put too much focus on the timeline because that wasn’t important to me this time around. Really, I wanted to focus on the immediate chain of events and the inner turmoil that was ensuing. I must say that it was a lot of fun getting inside the protagonist’s head to play out everything that I would think of at that moment and time.
The twist ending was something that took a lot of revisions because I didn’t want anybody to die. I didn’t want the antagonist to die; I can’t remember why. Nevertheless, I decided on the final twist ending because it left all parties involved hopeful for the future. Granted no one is a winner, but no one loses, either, hence the title. And, with that, I hope you enjoy the story.
You can buy the book on Amazon. The link is here.
You can also learn about it on Goodreads. The link for it is here.
