The Thinks and the Feels: Kennedy Ryan's LONG SHOT

(Content Warning: discussion of domestic violence and rape)

On the eve of the NCAA basketball National Championship, star college baller August West is sitting in a bar, reluctant to return to his hotel room. It's not only the eve of his biggest game ever; it's also the eve of the birth of his father, a former NBA player who died fifteen years earlier, and he's restless and jittery. But after his high school coach, whom he was supposed to be meeting, has an unexpected emergency, West reconciles himself to an early evening.

Until he hears the young woman cussing like a sailor at the basketball game on the television at the other end of the bar.

Said woman's knowledge of basketball is almost as impressive as her colorful language, and West feels an immediate connection. Not because she plays up to him—in fact, she's initially pretty dismissive—but because he discovers that she, like he, is biracial. When he asks her where's she's from, the woman explains about her New Orleans Creole stock on her mother's side, and her German and Irish on father's: "I'm a mix of everything the bayou could come up with... So my cousin says I had more ingredients than gumbo," (Kindle Loc 231). Though West's mother is the white parent, his father the black, West and "Gumbo" share the same experience of feeling like a racial outsider. "Did you ever feel like you didn't quite fit anywhere? I mean, like you were always kind of in between?" Gumbo asks him, which causes West to think "I may not look a lot like my African-American father, but I look nothing like anyone in the family I have left. Most kids were one thing or the other and clumped together based on that. It left me sometimes feeling adrift" (245).

West and Gumbo (her actual name is Iris) get so caught up in their conversation that they end up shutting down the bar. But when West goes in for a kiss at the end of the night, Iris call a halt. To West's everlasting regret, she's already got a boyfriend.

After this opening meet-bittersweet, a reader is expecting that the aforementioned boyfriend is not long for Iris's arms. And that the resultant romance will focus on two people connecting over their mutual biracial identities and experiences.

But said reader would be mistaken. For Ryan's story is less traditional romance and more women's fiction, a journey that the author hints at in the Author's Note that prefaces the novel:

I started writing this book two years ago out of righteous indignation on behalf of a young woman whose journey I didn't understand. I write when I have something to say, and I knew I couldn't say it from a place of judgment and hypotheticals. So I started talking with women who had walked that path.

Ryan writes in abstractions here, but one can't really write a review of her novel without being more specific. For the "path" that she refers to is the path into and out of an abusive romantic relationship. The "place of judgment" Ryan mentions is likely the judgment that many who have not experienced such a relationship first-hand tend to make about not the abuser, but the person being abused. Why didn't they leave? Why did they take it when the verbal abuse started pouring out of a love one's mouth? Why did they stay when the fists started flying? They just must be weak, or must want to be abused, right?

But the Iris we meet along with August is not weak in the least. As August observes, "A lot of girls just reflect. They figure out what you like so they can get in with a baller. This one has her own views, stands her own ground and doesn't five a damn if I like it. I like it" (224). And when we get inside Iris's head, we discover that her main goal in life is to not end up relying on a man, as her mother has for most of her life. She and her cousin have "always been afraid of ending up like our mothers—depending on a man for everything, taking his scraps" (908).

Iris DuPree's relationship with Caleb Bradley isn't about taking his scraps—at least at first. Despite being an economically privileged white college boy, Caleb spent time and effort to woo the reluctant Iris, and they've been dating for almost a year. But readers with any knowledge of how abusers operate is likely to pick up on the clues Ryan drops that Caleb is not as great a guy as he seems. He prefers Iris to wear her hair a certain way, gives her clothes that he wants her to wear, and is prone to angry outbursts on the basketball court when things don't go his way. And he's definitely not excited about Iris's post-college career plans, plans that will likely take her away from him.

Entitled Caleb proves to be a master manipulator, and Iris, despite her reservations, ends up living with her boyfriend soon after Caleb enters the NBA. And since West has also been drafted, Iris and West's paths end up crossing and recrossing, brief conversations with West serving as welcome respite for Iris from an increasingly tension-filled relationship with Caleb.

A relationship that, by the end of Caleb's first professional season, turns verbally and physically abusive. But a relationship that Iris can't find her way out of, at least at first. Ryan does not shy away from depicting the violence that Iris experiences at Caleb's hands; there are multiple scenes of both assault and rape on the page. Such depictions are likely to be deeply triggering for many readers. And for readers who are immersed in rape culture (as are we all), it can be difficult to read such scenes as solely violent when rape has so often been presented as an erotic experience in popular culture. Not at all what the author intended, I'd guess, but still, hard to escape.

Why then did Ryan choose to include such scenes? What purpose do they serve? Is is possible to tell the story of domestic abuse without showing on the page the violence that lies at its heart? Is it empowering or disempowering for those who have been abused to see similar abuse depicted directly, rawly, without a veil? What about for those who have not experienced such abuse themselves? Does seeing such violence depicted on the page make those who haven't been victims more sympathetic toward those who have? I don't think there are any easy "yes" or "no" answers to such questions; each reader will have to decide for themselves whether to pick up Ryan's book knowing that such scenes are included.

What I can say is that I wholeheartedly applaud Ryan's inversion of the racist image of the white woman endangered by overly sexualized black man, an image that has played out over and over in American popular culture since the end of the Civil War (see D. W. Griffiths' 1917 film Birth of a Nation for just one example; see Martha Hodes' White Women, Black Men for a historical corrective). While the majority of sexual assaults in the United States today are intra-racial (victim and perpetrator are of the same race), we cannot say the same about the past; Americans tend to repress and erase the long history of white male rape of enslaved black women during our country's long embrace of slavery. Ryan's choice to make her domestic abuser a white man serves as a pointed reminder of this often forgotten history.

ARREST RATES ACROSS PRO SPORTS TEAMS

Infogram

Through Iris, Ryan also makes pointed comments about the way our current society continues to look away from the violence perpetrated by men against women, especially when those men are in positions of power (professional athletes, rather than plantation owners) and the women they abuse are women of color. Once Iris figures out a way to free herself and her daughter from Caleb, she doesn't choose to press charges against him:

"Other athletes outed as abusers are fined and miss a few games, only to be back on the court, back on the field in a few weeks. I'm not trusting my life, my daughter's life, to a system that favors men just like Caleb. I've seen the so-called consequences we have for domestic abuse, and I need more than that."

What she needs is a guy like West, who throughout the story serves as a vision of hope for what a future with a kind, caring man might be like. But Iris never asks West to rescue her; in fact, she turns to her cousin, and to her great grandmother, not to her potential good guy lover, to help her recover emotionally in the wake of her trauma. West may be the idealized prize at the end of the struggle, but the hard work of recovery is one best undertaken with sympathetic female supporters, Ryan suggests.


Ryan is adept at giving readers the "big feels," a vital skill for any romance writer (see West's swoon-worthy declaration to Iris: "If you were mine, Iris, there would be no doubt what position you'd hold in my life. You'd be center. I'd play you at the five."). But she's also just as good at getting readers to think hard about the big issues, issues that American culture would often prefer we ignore: domestic violence; racial identity; the gendered aspects of privileged and power. It's this combination—big emotions and big ideas—that make Ryan one of the most provocative authors writing romance today.


Photo credits:
Basketball bar: DHGate
Pro sports arrest rates: Vocativ

Kennedy Ryan

Long Shot

A Hoops Novel (#1)

indie-published, 2018

Romancing the Balikbayan: Mina V. Esguerra's KISS AND CRY

Due to my travel schedule, I completely missed watching this year's World Figure Skating championships, one of the few sporting events I usually carve out time to take in. I made up for it by moving Mina V. Esguerra's Philippines-set skating romance Kiss and Cry to the top of my reading pile. It's an unusual skating story, and not only because it's a winter sports story set in a country without a winter. Instead of focusing on the tension of competition, Esguerra's story is about adjusting to life after the days of competition are over.

Thirty year old Calinda Valerio, the most lauded figure skater in the Philippines, has won her share of gold-medals: in the All-Asia Games, at the Winter Southeast Asian Games, and in her home country's national competition, Skate PH. Some people wonder if it was worth it, all the hard work and self-denial, given that she never made it to the Olympics. But for Cal, that doesn't matter:

Samantha Cabilles, Filipino figure skater

Sometimes a thing wasn't meant for you but damn you wanted it anyway, didn't mean you'd stop trying. Never mind if you had to knock on more doors and need to work so much harder. Sometimes even years at it wouldn't be enough and the next thing to do was to help make it easier for those coming in after you. (Chapter 2)

Now that her own amateur career is over, Cal is "making it easier for those coming in after her" by working as a choreographer, both for individual skaters and as creative director for Manila's Six 32 Central ice rink. For her past and current work, Cal is being honored by being included in a Manila society magazine's video feature, "30 Most Accomplished in their Thirties."

As is 32-year-old Ramirez Diaz-Tan, a leading member of the Filipino national hockey team. Despite sharing the same main rink in Manila for training and games, Cal and Ram haven't spent much time together in the past ten years. Not since her parents and coach insisted that the budding friendship between their twenty-something selves would take Cal's focus away from her skating, and forbid her to date him—or anyone else. As Ram describes it, "It was over before it started; Cal rightly chose skating over him, and managed to live an accomplished life, congratulations." He got the privilege of being her first: the "First Guy Calinda Valerio Was Not Allowed to Date" (Chapter 1).

The 2017 Philippines national hockey team after
winning the SEA Games gold medal

Ram emigrated to the US with his family when he was ten, and now holds dual citizenship. He didn't make the adjustment to living in the States easily, though; at 13, his family sent him back to spend the summer in Manila with his uncle for being, as he describes it, a "bad Filipino son" (Chapter 8). But while back in the Philippines, Ram took up hockey, and has kept coming back every summer since to play. He's grown so skilled that he's spent twelve years playing for the Philippines' new national team.

But traveling back to his country of origin each summer to play hockey is becoming increasingly hard to do, given the need to hold a steady job back in the States. Taking eight weeks off every year to skate competitively in another country—it's not something most employers are ready to accept. And so Ram has made the tough decision to hang up his hockey skates; this will be his final competitive season.

After meeting Ram again at the "30 Most Accomplished in their Thirties" photo shoot, Cal is eager to try out the things she was never allowed to do when she was younger and focused on her sport—and to do them with Ram. Shocking her parents and former coach by introducing him as her boyfriend is just one of the things on the to-do list she proposes to her surprised but willing former almost-boyfriend. Even the news that he's headed back to the States in only three weeks, with no plan of returning anytime soon, doesn't discompose Cal. Catharsis and closure are what she wants, not a happily-ever-after. Her parents and coach were wrong to take her choice away from her, as they didn't from her brother; she knows she wouldn't have moved to the States and abandoned her skating just to be with Ram, even if they don't. And she can prove it—by not doing it now.

Ram and Cal's second-chance romance is light and playful, not overwhelmed by the bittersweet. One of my favorite moments, during a discussion of whether Cal would have derailed her skating career if she and Ram had ignored her parents and tried to make a go of it all those years earlier:

"Because they made it seem like the worst thing for me to do, at the time. That if we got together and this happened, I'd suddenly want to quit. When I decided to retire, I tried it out—I dated, I had sex, and sort of... checked if dicks demotivated me."
     He hadn't laughed so much while in bed with someone and he wasn't stopping yet. "And what was the verdict on dicks?"
     She shrugged. "Um, they're just dicks?"
     "I'm sure they'll be sad about that."
     "Oh, come on. They performed well, okay."
     This woman. Only she could say that and make it sound like a disappointment. (Chapter 10)


But even in three short weeks, a sort-of-pretend-boyfriend situation can turn into something surprisingly important. And Ram and Cal find themselves facing some tough choices, choices that, unlike the one that was forced upon them as teenagers, they'll have to make for themselves.

Esguerra writes with a Filipino audience, or at least, with those familiar with Filipino culture, in mind; the book contains quite a few cultural references that as an outsider I had to look up to catch the full meaning (EDSA; Ibong Adarna; longganisas and kesong puti and other Pinoy food). But the book's storyline and romance arc are as accessible to other English-speaking readers as any penned by an American writer. And Esguerra's story has the added benefit of reminding American readers, especially those whose fears of outsiders have been exacerbated by current anti-immigrant rhetoric, that the United States isn't everyone's holy grail. As Ram himself reminds Cal:

     "You said that whether we had something or not shouldn't change what my plans are."

     "Yes, it shouldn't."

     "But it can. Maybe it should. Why aren't you asking me to stay?"

     .....

     "No one asks someone to stay here. Especially when they've got a way out already. You know that don't you? It's just not done."

     "You don't think we can question that too?" (Chapter 21)

Photo credits:

Samantha Cabilles: Flickr

Philippines Hockey: ABC-CBN Sports

Mina V. Esguerra

Kiss and Cry

Six 32 Central #2

Bright Girl Books, 2019

Romancing the Rings: Olympics Romances by Rachel Spangler and Tamsen Parker

With the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Olympics taking place today, a post on Olympic-set romances seems more than in order. Luckily, many romance authors have penned and published love stories set against the backdrop of fictionalized winter sports competitions in celebration, several with clearly feminist themes.

My favorites to date are by lesbian romance author Rachel Spangler, and erotic romance writer Tamsen Parker. Spangler's a new-to-me author, while Parker's an old book friend, and I've enjoyed reading their stories this week in preparation for the real-life athletic contests to come.

Spangler's Edge of Glory features two athletes who belong to the same athletic association—the USSA (United States Ski & Snowboard)—but who have very little else in common. After a long and successful career in the upcoming sport of snowboard cross, thirty-year-old Corey LaCroix is spending as much time fending off questions about retirement as she is training for the upcoming Olympics. The sport's become far more regimented, far less free-spirited than it was when she she was a carefree 18-year-old winning her first gold medal, and she's wondering whether her own freewheeling days of hearty partying and sleeping with any woman eager to fall into her bed are—or should be—behind her, too.

Like the sport she loves, Corey has a reputation for being laid back and rule wary. A happy likable jokester, Corey's always been able to charm anyone who crossed her path. But she has her work cut out for her when twenty-five year-old Elise Brandeis, Ice Princess of the ski slopes, arrives to train at the "Lake Henry" New York Olympic training center the summer before the next winter games. Spending a year off the slopes after a knee-tearing crash has Elise chomping at the bit, ready to begin serious training again. And she's determined nothing—especially not a cocky, undisciplined, court-jester of a woman like Corey LaCroix—will distract her from making the Olympic team.

Spangler crafts a slow-to-develop romance, as these two opposites gradually become friends before they test the waters of sexual compatibility. Although lines like these—"Elise's droll comments probably put a lot of people off, but [Corey] didn't mind having her chops busted by beautiful women. She preferred sass to sycophants any day" (Kindle Loc 1324)—made this reader more than willing to hang in there and watch the sparks fan into flame.

Spangler's true gift as a writer is her strong, nuanced character development, creating both primary and secondary characters that move far beyond the feel-good human interest bio stories we get during the typical television Olympic broadcasts. Though it's obvious from the story's start that wound-too-tight Elise could benefit from a bit of Corey's sheer joy in life, friendship, and competition, it never makes Corey the key to Elise's salvation; instead, Elise learns from her coach, from an upcoming snowboarder, and Corey's sister and trainer, as well as Elise, that being a world-class competitor does not mean you can't have any friends, and that joy, not anger, is what sustains a person through the long haul of a bid for the Olympics.

Corey's self-explorations are more bittersweet. Always one to live in the moment, she finds it nearly impossible to even consider what her life might be like if she's no longer is able to—or has the desire to—compete, never mind make plans for that inevitability. After a career built on risk-taking, can Corey really give it all up? And if she does, what will she have left?

Can two highly competitive women at two very different places in their athletic careers, forge a relationship that lasts beyond the highs (and lows) of the Winter Games?

In contrast to Spangler's long contemporary Olympic romance, Tamsen Parker has penned not two, not three, but five short Olympic-set romances. The length of these Snow & Ice Games books is far shorter than most of the romances Parker has written in the past, which makes for a sometimes frustrating experience for readers familiar with the fully-developed plots and characters of her earlier work. But publishing a series of books that feature not just heterosexual couples, or just gay couples, or just lesbian couples, as market forces typically demand, but one in which, as in real life, all three types of couples play leading roles, is well worth celebrating, even if one might wish to spend more time luxuriating in each couple's story.

For me, this week's installment of Parker's "Snow and Ice Games" was On the Edge of Scandal, the third book in the series. It's one of the three hetero romances of the group, featuring a woman hockey player who is growing increasingly frustrated with the obnoxious behavior of her long-time boyfriend. Brody's come to the Games to support college senior Bronwyn, even though he didn't make the men's hockey team as he had hoped to. Which Bron knows is "super sweet. It was. What's less sweet is that I feel like he wants me to hand him a goddamn cookie for it every time I see him" (Kindle Loc 45). Brody spends his time mouthing off in the stands ("She's not bad for a girl, right?"), calling Bron "Winnie" (a nickname she hates), and getting pissy and demanding when he's not allowed in the Olympic Village to sleep in Bron's bed.

All of which drives Bronwyn's Olympic coach, twenty seven-year-old Asher Levenson, to teeth-gnashing. Especially because he's been fighting off a stupid crush on Bron for the past two years. During the regular season Bron may play for BC, not for the BU team he coaches, but even crushing on a competitor is a no-no. Never mind on a player he's in the middle of coaching.

Ash, unlike privileged, attention-hound Brody, understand that Bron has to make her own decisions, even if one of those decisions is putting up with a romantic partner who doesn't grant her half the respect he knows she deserves. And so he doesn't interfere, even when Brody pulls him into a pissing match over Bron.

But when Brody's small slights and minor betrayals transform into one major, and very public, mistake, Ash is hardly crying in his coffee when Bron finally gives Brody the heave-ho he deserves.

But dumping a guy you've been with for eight years leaves a big hole a person's life, a hole that only grows larger as the tension of the SIG games increases. Ash promises to give Bron whatever she needs in order to get through this difficult time, and keep her, and the team, on track for the gold. How can Bron confide that her go-to form of stress relief has always been human contact?

Parker does fabulous work in the first third of the novel showing how a smart, competitive young woman can convince herself (or be trained by gender expectations to accept) that a boyfriend's sexist treatment is just par for the course: "If I were the bitchy and vindictive type, I could point out that while they may not be bruisers like he is, the people on those buses actually made their SIG teams, so maybe he should shut up. But I'll be good, be nice" (323). I especially cheered after reading this line, one of the few times in a romance novel where the word "feminism" isn't used as a straw-man whip to chastise the behavior of a romantically-inclined woman: "His sexist ranting pisses me off, but I don't have time to lecture him on feminism. Again" (140).

Olympic Village sex is safe sex: 37 condoms per athlete handed out
to the 2018 Winter Olympians, according to South China Morning Post

The latter parts of the story are more complicated, featuring as it does a growing romantic and sexual attachment between a player and a coach. Many a reader (and many a feminist) might find such a relationship problematic. Parker, however, takes the stance that while such rules may be be designed to protect girls, they can also function to infantilize adult women, policing their sexual choices in a way that is equally beholden to patriarchal norms. As Bronwyn tells Ash after he apologizes for "taking advantage of her" during a mutually-instigated kiss:

"You know, I'm really fucking tired of dudes telling me what I should do. I don't mind it on the ice, because you know what you're talking about and I trust you out there, but in here? Do you really think I'd be here if I didn't want to be? Do you think I would be lying in a bed with you if I felt like you were manipulating me? I don't. If anything, I feel bad because you're probably feeling guilty for betraying your professional moral code." (1367)

I'm really interested to hear other readers' thoughts on the way Bronwyn and Ash's romance plays out, in public and in private. And responses to the other books in Parker's series, which may not be as overtly feminist as On the Edge of Scandal, but which are just as deliciously readable.

What are your favorite Olympic-set romances?


Photo credits:
Snowboarder: Ski-BUMS
Skier Julia Mancuso training: Wall Street Journal
BU vs. BC women's hockey: SBNATION
Olympic condoms: Cosmopolitan

Rachel Spangler

Edge of Glory: A Romance

Bywater Books, 2017

Tamsen Parker

On the Edge of Scandal

Snow & Ice Games book #3

SMP Swerve/St. Martin's, 2018

GETTING INSIDE the controversies: An Interview with Serena Bell

Contemporary romance author Serena Bell is ringing in the new year by launching Getting Inside, the first book in her Seattle Grizzles series of football sports romances. The book features a heroine with the most stereotypically gendered male of jobs: she's a professional football coach (linebacker coach). RNFF talked with Bell about this untraditional choice of profession for her heroine, and other controversial aspects of her unusual sports romance.

SB: First of all I wanted to say, Jackie, thank you so much for doing this interview. I love this blog and the way you tackle identity issues head-on and fearlessly, and I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about Getting Inside's release here.

RNFF: Thanks to you, Serena, for agreeing to be interviewed, and for talking about the controversial aspects of this book. First, I'm curious to know, where did you get the idea to have a female professional football coach as a protagonist?

Dr. Jen Welter, coaching intern for the Arizona Cardinals

SB: When I first started working on this series, the NFL hadn't yet hired its first female coach, Kathryn Smith (hired by the Buffalo Bills in January 2016), but it had hired its first female coaching intern, Dr. Jen Welter. I found myself fascinated by her, and I wanted to bring some of both her triumphs and her struggles to life on the page.


RNFF: How did you balance the need to portray the difficulties faced by women entering a predominantly male profession with the need to write a hopeful story (a requirement of romance)?

SB: Writing romance is always a tricky balancing act in this regard. On one hand, readers pick up a romance for the fantasy—the pleasure of getting to spend time in a world that's simpler and less stressful than the one they live in. On the other, if you decide to write about a controversial topic (like women in men's sports), you have a responsibility not to gloss over the difficulties of the real people who are struggling to make their way in a far grittier and more nuanced world than romance. My goal was to split the difference as best I could.


RNFF: Early in the novel, your hero, Ty (a linebacker on the Grizzlies' team) uses the "women are a distraction" argument to justify (at least in his head) his opposition to heroine Iona's presence on the coaching staff:

As soon as I lay eyes on her, I get this fierce, almost painful rush. It's just the aftereffect of going toe-to-toe with her over O's job. That's what I tell myself. Not about going toe-to-toe with her in a completely different way. Actually, there's no toe-to-toe in the video siege firing through my brain. Every other conceivable position though. This is exactly why women don't belong in the PFL. Because all this shit in my head doesn't belong in the PFL. (341)

How have women in football and other male-dominated professions countered such arguments?

SB: They've countered the argument by being good at what they do, by showing over time that they're an asset, not a detriment, to any organization. And that's what Iona does for Ty. She's steady, she's present, she's effective, and in the end, that's what convinces him, far more than any verbal argument she could present. Which is why, of course, it's so critically important for us to get more women into more roles we don't expect to see them in; it's the best way to change the kind of outmoded thinking that Ty's early musings represent.

RNFF: The first turn in Iona and Ty's relationship comes after a joint radio interview, during which a broadcaster insults Iona and Ty defends her. Iona gets angry with him, telling him she doesn't need defending. But then Ty says he would have defended any coach, male or female, and Iona thinks, "I suddenly realize that I'm being a great big douchebag" (946). Can you take us through your thinking here, regarding what's sexist and what's not?

SB: In my mind, the show's host is absolutely sexist—his blindsiding Iona (which, by the way, wouldn't really happen in sports radio; I took artistic license) with an assault on the viability of female coaches is just plain wrong. Ty may be operating out of some assumptions that he needs to revisit—the idea that Iona needs his protecting—but I don't see his motives as suspect. Iona is encountering one of her own blind spots; she's so used to being armored against the men in her life that she responds defensively to Ty's desire to protect her. Knowing Ty and Iona, I suspect she will have to tell him to "back off" more than once more in their lives together, and he will get better over time at letting her fight her own battles. And vice versa. I can see her trying to fight his battles just as easily as the reverse.


RNFF: A couple of Iona's observations struck me: First, "Pro sports are this country's hardest meritocracy, with the possible exception of the armed forces. If you make it this far, you must be good enough—it's true of players, coaches, staff—male or female." Second, "the worst sexists are aging off, and the players are so young, so most of them are used to the idea of women in positions of power. And a huge number of them grew up in single-parent households run by mothers, so the notion of a woman who calls the shots doesn't faze them." I couldn't help thinking these observations were more wishful thinking than reality, especially in light of the recent ascendance of Donald Trump. Do you believe they're true? Who was your source?

SB: Both of these observations came via a journalist friend who spent a good portion of his career in locker rooms and on sports courts and fields. His point is that—exceptions aside—pro athletes are just that, pros, and their overriding goal is to win. Everything else is just a distraction, including gender (which may be the myopia of male privilege, but I still found it be an incredibly interesting observation). He said that for most pro players, if a coach can make them better, that's all they need to know.

Now, we all know that's not how it plays out systematically. There are still almost no female coaches in pro football (or in other male-only pro sports). There are still far too few black coaches and black quarterbacks in pro football. And for sure, there is still an enormous amount of intolerant language, behavior, and bullying in pro sports—on both the player side and the fan side. I chose to focus in this book on individual positive behavior, because my primary goal was to normalize the idea of women with key roles in men's pro sports. I want readers to end up cheering for Iona's strength rather than seeing her as a victim.


RNFF: Bringing up the issue of race in pro sports leads right in to another controversial aspect of your book: you are a white author, while both of your protagonists are African American. Talk about your thinking around that decision.

SB: Around seventy percent of NFL players are men of color, and from the beginning, I knew I didn't want to write a series that suggested otherwise. (As I side note, and to reiterate a point I made earlier, this doesn't mean that positions are fairly distributed by race, something that needs to change). I struggled with feeling like it wasn't my "place" to write this story, or that I'd be taking an #ownvoices opportunity away from a writer of color. But I am hopeful about the "abundance" behavior of the romance market: the more readers encounter books with thoughtful portrayals of characters of color, the more of those books the market will demand.

RNFF: Controversy #2: workplace relationships. Falling in love on the job is a common romance novel trope. But many readers have trouble if there are uneven power dynamics involved (if one party is the other's boss, for example). In your story, your heroine, Iona, is a coach, and your hero, Ty, is a linebacker who plays under her. When they first meet, Ty is instantly attracted to Iona. He knows, though, "if she's anyone who has anything remotely to do with the team, she's off limits" (137). But by novel's end, both still retain their jobs even after they have gone public with their romantic relationship. Take us through your thinking here, about why this is a HEA, rather than a potentially squicky ending.

SB: For me, it has everything to do with the real way power is distributed in a relationship. Power is complicated. It can come from physical size and strength, from someone's position in the career hierarchy, from someone's privilege within the larger society, and from a lot of other sources. The reason the ending isn't squicky for me (squickiness is, of course, 100% in the eye of the beholder) is because when I look at the way power balances out between Iona and Ty, neither of them holds an unfair amount of it.

RNFF: Controversy #3: the "balls" issue ;-)  In an RNFF post from 2014, titled "The Anatomy of Courage," I used your book Hold on Tight to discuss why using the word "balls" as an image of courage might be problematic. And early in 2017's Getting Inside, Ty observes this of a fellow player about whom he was worried: "I grin. He's got his balls reracked"(125). Tell us why you think it's important to use such language when portraying certain male protagonists.

SB: I don't think it's essential. I think another writer might make a different decision, to give Ty a totally genderless set of language around courage. That said, it seemed pretty clear to me, given the freedom—one might say abandon—with which Ty discusses his, erm, "equipment" in this book that he'd locate male courage in his balls. I wanted him to feel credible as a guy who spends his time in locker rooms, even if he's also a guy who wouldn't tolerate, in a million years, the notion of a locker room as a place where hate belongs.


RNFF: So, what's up next for this series? Will you be tackling any of the issues about race in pro football that you mention above?

SB: You'll be hearing more about the Grizzlies! Calder's book is up next, followed by two more books about some of your other favorite characters, too. And I'd love to tackle more of the issues around race—particularly equity in coaching and quarterback positions—in future books.

Thank you again, so much, for the great questions and the space to think and talk about these issues!


RNFF: Thanks, Serena, for stopping by. I'm looking forward to seeing what develops next in this series. Given the stats in the "Gender Equality in Radio" graphic above, might I say that I hope a female sports talk radio personality might feature in a future Grizzlies romance?






RNFF readers: What are your thoughts about any/all of the above controversies? Do they make you more or less likely to search out Bell's book?









Photo credits
Jen Welter: Washington Times
Gender Equality in Radio: Visual.ly
Workplace relationships: Careerbuilder.com via Brandon Gaille

Serena Bell

Getting Inside

Loveswept, 2017

Switching Sexism's Gender? Nell Stark's THE PRINCESS AND THE PRIX

If someone handed me a romance, telling me it was about an aggressive, hard-partying, womanizing race car driver with a troubled backstory who reforms after falling for a shy, brainy philanthropist/princess, I'm pretty sure I would hand it back with a "thanks, but no thanks." Alpha-hole heroes turning over a new leaf just because they've found true love with a good girl storylines typically do not have much in the way of feminist moments to celebrate.

But what if that aggressive, partying, womanizer happens to be a woman? Well, I might just have to reconsider...

Lella Lombardi, the only woman to score
points during a Formula One race (1975)

Thalia De'Angelis's life dream has been to race on the Formula One circuit. The result of a British racecar driver's one night stand with dancer at an American club, Thalia has spent most of her life being ignored by her father, and more than a little angry about it, too. She's also angry about being passed over, yet again, for a promotion from the GP2 circuit to Formula One:

Conventional—and therefore misogynistic—wisdom demanded she maintain a positive attitude and keep on keeping on. she had at first believed, and then catered to, that wisdom for years. By now, she was sick and tired of it. No one told men to suck it up and be patient. They were tacitly and explicitly encouraged to be downright aggressive in pursuit of their goals. To suffer no fools and show no mercy and take no prisoners. Why should she behave any differently, just because one key chromosome had an extra leg? (Kindle Loc 92)

So it's hardly surprising that being asked one too many times by reporters about her male teammate being given the spot on the Formula One team instead of her, despite his second-place finish in the overall GP2 rankings, Thalia's temper explodes:

Look. Terrence Delmar is not a better drive than me. He's not even close. His instincts are all wrong—he's too loose when he should be running tight and too tight when he should be running loose. Ferrari hired him for what's between his legs, not what's between his shoulders....
     "Are you suggesting that Ferrari is a chauvinist organization?"
     "Suggesting?" Thalia laughed into her mic without humor. "No. Asserting, yes." She stared out over the murmuring crowd. "I'll probably lose my job over this, but it's true. And it's not just Ferrari, either. The glass ceiling is alive and well in Formula One. Women have the ability to drive at the highest levels. We're not there because the owners and team managers—and even some of the drivers—don't want us to be." (121).

"Grid Girls": The Cheerleaders of Formula One.
As Alix describes them: "The gird girls were objects to be
consumed, not subjects to be conversed with. That was the
problem, Alix realized—that the girls were content to be
repeatedly objectified. It was their occupation, not an
occupational hazard. (1064)

The reporter goes on to ask Thalia how she thinks the misogynistic culture of racing can be changed, a question to which Thalia has no good answer. Thalia's not really into being an advocate for women's rights: "she didn't want to be some pretty, quasi-famous chess piece in the struggle for civil rights. She wanted to push the boundaries of speed" (168). But her chances of doing either seem pretty slim after she's fired for her post-race outspoken words. Thalia drowns her sorrows at the after-party, drinking and picking up a grid girl for another round of energetic, no-strings-tied sex. Just like the majority of the men on the racing circuit do.

Her Serene Highness, Pomelina Alix Louise Canella of Monaco, knows all about being a role model. The least attractive, and most well-behaved of Monaco's royal siblings, Alix has spent her life serving her country, in particular by supporting charitable work. Having just completed her degree in public health, Alix is on the brink of establishing her own charitable foundation, one focused on empowering women in rural communities in East Africa. So when she meets Thalia at a wedding, then watches her race, Alix immediately recognizes that "Thalia's position in such a traditionally patriarchal sphere seemed like a golden opportunity from which to demonstrate gender equality" (842). Especially after Thalia wins a place on another racing team, a place driving not on the GP2, but on Formula One.

Thalia has participated in charity appearances, but only because that's part of her job, a means to an end: "If she were being honest, she rarely thought of anyone except herself and her own goals" (1181). When Alix challenges Thalia about her aggressive behavior—slugging a fellow driver after he "accidentally" nudged her off the racetrack—Thalia confirms her distaste for being a figure of social justice: "I like to drive fast cars and fuck fast women and drink too much and watch the sun rise before I sleep. That's who I am. I'm here to win, not to be a hero or make a point" (1453). Not even Thalia's attraction to Alix will make her change her hard-driving ways.

Does a professionally groundbreaking woman have a duty to be a positive role model, to act squeaky clean, to never get in trouble? Are Thalia's hard-partying, womanizing ways really "scandalous"? Or is that judgment "completely a product of the pervasive double standard that denied women the same social freedoms as men"? (1512) Is Thalia breaking feminist ground? Or just reinforcing male chauvinism from her position of power?

And can a woman who has no desire to be a role model even have a chance of making a romantic connection with a princess whose life has been entirely focused on working for the greater good?

I love that Nell Stark is able to ask such questions in the midst of a wonderfully appealing opposites-attract love story. And that not only bad-girl Thalia, but also unselfconfident Alix, are both given chances to change and grow as their friendship, and later their physical attraction and romance, develops. The Princess and the Prix may be a fairy-tale romance, but it's a romance that packs a surprisingly feminist punch.


Photo credits:
Lella Lombardi: Wikipedia
Grid Girls: Drive Spark

Nell Stark

The Princess and the Prix

Bold Strokes Books, 2015

The Gender Politics of Football: Miranda Kenneally's CATCHING JORDAN

A quick but heartfelt "thank you" to all the RNFF readers who recommended Miranda Kenneally's YA romance Catching Jordan as a good feminist sports read. I finally pulled the book to the top of my "TBR" pile this holiday weekend, and spent an pleasant, thought-provoking evening reading about several key months during the senior year of teen quarterback Jordan Woods. Catching Jordan can be read as an inspirational, aspirational story for teen girls, but what I found myself most interested in was the insights it offers about how boys police, and self-police, their own masculinity, particularly in the setting of sports. And how constructed such masculinity is, given the relative ease with which female Jordan fits herself into that setting.

10-year-old Abbey Johnson of the Harmony Longhorns
Pop Warner team

Despite being a girl, Jordan's been the quarterback of her small Tennessee town's football team ever since her Pop Warner days. It's not the fame of her father, though, an NFL quarterback himself, that's won her her the positions of both QB and team captain, but her own far-above-average skills, both as a sportswoman and as a leader. She can throw a pass farther than her older brother could, can run an offense in her sleep, and knows just how to "keep [her] players in line," taking them to task when they fail at their responsibilities, but also offering encouragement to keep their spirits high (1). All of her teammates (none of whom are female) treat her like one of the boys, rarely calling attention to her sex. And no one laughs when a call comes from the University of Alabama, one of the U.S.'s top football schools, informing Jordan that a recruiter is coming to watch her next game. Jordan not only wants, but expects, to continue to play quarterback with the boys once she hits college, an expectation with which her teammates quite obviously concur.

Though she's been playing since elementary school, Jordan hasn't always been entirely consumed by football, and by its male culture. Back in the seventh grade, Jordan was "okay friends" with future cheerleader Kristen, until Kristen laughed at one of her football teammates when he asked her to a school dance. After convincing the rest of the team to boycott the dance in retaliation for Kristen's slight, Jordan finds herself the focus of middle school girl wrath—"Kristen told everyone that I'd boycotted the dance because no guy would ever want to dance with me." Because I was taller than all the guys... and huge. Ugly (139). After this cringe-worthy incident, Jordan wisely decides "being a guy was better, because none of my teammates would ever say anything so horrible to me." (139). An insight that proves correct; Kristen continues to diss Jordan, calling her both a slut and a dyke (behind her back, of course), and accuses her of sleeping with any number of her fellow teammates. Part of the guy code is having the back of a teammate, and Jordan's fellow football players have never insulted her by making cracks about her sex life or her sexual proclivities the way Kristen does.

But if Jordan avoids cattiness of the stereotypically feminine by "being a guy," she also has to embrace many equally objectionable stereotypically masculine qualities, qualities based on insulting the feminine. Objectionable at least to this female reader, although interestingly Jordan herself doesn't seem to see them as problematic, in large part because they're considered the norm in the culture in which she spends most of her time.

Photo by: Malc Stone

For example, Jordan takes it for granted that men should be "masculine" and shouldn't display any feminine qualities. As she suggests in this explanation for why she's never dated:

     It's not that guys aren't interested in me, because they are, it's that most of the guys I know are either:
     1. Shorter than me;
     2. Pansies;
     3. On my team;
     4. All of the above (10)

Her most common insult is the gender-based "pansy," and when members of opposing teams insult her (most often by calling her a "dyke"), Jordan knows the best way to respond is to call said opponents' masculinity into question: "The only girlfriend he'll ever have is his right hand" (61). To be a successful male is to have and control women; to be unable to attract a woman is to be lacking as a male. Jordan unthinkingly accepts, and reinforces, the positioning of women as objects, men as actors, that forms a central part of male culture.

Jordan not only accepts, but sometimes even polices, her fellow teammates' masculinity. In fact, when we first meet Jordan, she is doing just that:

"He catches the ball, spikes it, and does this really stupid dance. Henry looks like a freaking ballerina. With his thin frame and girly blond hair, he actually could be the star of the New York Ballet.
     "I'm going to give him hell for his dance" (1).

Sam Henry's "dancing" may be objectionable because it leads to penalties, but it's also problematic because it hints at the feminine, something that is anathema in the context of the male-oriented football team. Recognizing this, Jordan feels it her responsibility as captain to tell Henry his actions are out of line.

Jordan also had little respect for any of the other girls at her school, lumping them all into the same "lame girl" pot as she's placed her nemesis, Kristen. For example, when Jordan comments about the missing Henry that "he's probably sleeping with Marie Baird right now," another teammate, JJ, opines, "She's a damn nice piece of ass." Jordan responds, "Don't be such a pig, JJ," but her own eye rolling, never mind her own positioning of Marie as the object of Henry's actions, suggests her rebuke of JJ is halfhearted at best. (114). And later in the book, during a co-ed game of truth or dare, when JJ dares the annoyingly feminine Kristen to "go into the kitchen and make me a steak and mashed potatoes, woman. Medium-well, please. Steak's in the freezer!"  Jordan initially protests, saying, "You chauvinist pig," but immediately ends up laughing when JJ and the rest of the boys start in (125). Interestingly, Jordan doesn't notice the reaction of the other girls in this scene. Jordan seems largely unaware that her embrace of the masculine code comes at the expense of viewing other girls not just as different, but as lesser than, the boys.

But Jordan can't entirely escape her sex, no matter how much she adheres to the guy code. She may be six feet tall, may weigh 170, but she still has breasts and a vagina. And having said body parts means she's fair game to other men beyond the accepting confines of her team, with their sexist insults such as those tossed at her by her older brother's best friend, Jake: "Not only can I teach you math, I can teach you math in bed, Jordan. You know, I'll add the bed, you subtract the clothes, you divide the legs, and I'll multiply" (29). As Jordan remarks, "This is standard Jake Reynolds behavior, so Mike [her elder brother] does the typical rolling of his eyes as I say, 'Charming' and shove Jake against the dishwasher" (29). Neither Jordan nor Mike tells Jake that such language or behavior isn't allowed in their home; to upbraid Jake for the sexism of his comments would be to reject not only Jake, but the larger culture in which all three move, a culture that is built in part upon regarding girls as inferiors, as object for their use rather than as people to be treated with respect. Jake's comments position Jordan as outside that culture, but Jordan refuses such positioning by responding with the acceptably masculine response—a verbal insult and a physical show of force. To do anything else would be to accept Jake's placement of her as outsider, rather than insider.

Others want to position Jordan as feminine, too, particularly the recruiter from Alabama, who sees her not as the perfect quarterback, but rather as the perfect fundraiser, daughter of an NFL star that she is. Jordan expects some action shots when the recruiter asks her to pose for a charity Alabama calendar, and is surprised, and more than a little put off, when she discovers that she's posing in full makeup and stylized hair, with only an oversized jersey and a pair of short shorts for a uniform. Especially when some of her younger teammates begin to position her as that dreaded feminine object: "You look smoking' hot, Woods!" (115). Only the intervention of her closest friends on the team stop the others from "disrespecting" her by positioning her as feminine object (116); first, when they block her from view, then when they distract them by offering a "show" of their own, a mocking inversion of the feminine beauty show Jordan's been asked to perform: "[JJ's] extra weight flops around as he struts up and down the sideline with his jersey thrown over his shoulder.... I crack up when JJ calls out, 'I'm ready for my photo op, Jordan!'" (117). But Jordan herself never openly objects to the way she's being treated; "I'll do whatever I have to do to play ball for Alabama" she tells herself, even while it feels "so wrong" to be positioned as object, not actor, by her fellow teammates.

                  (or other women)

The cover copy of Catching Jordan suggests that Jordan's main conflict will be "keep[ing] her head in the game while her heart's one the line"—can she both have a boyfriend and be the leader of her team? Especially when said boyfriend is her new second-string quarterback? But the real learning curve for Jordan has as much to do with recognizing how both her embrace of football, and her desire for a boyfriend, has placed limits on her as it does with balancing her seemingly conflicting roles as masculine team leader and feminine girlfriend. Only when Jordan realizes that being treated like "an equal" is what she most values, and begins to understand that girls deserve the same respect as do boys (at least until they prove they're not worthy of it), can she find the courage to reject the sexism with which the Alabama recruiter treats her, as well as the knee-jerk rejection she herself has been practicing against all of her female classmates.

Jordan still has a long way to go, feminist-wise—she still finds it all too easy to insult her fellow male football players by questioning their masculinity, for example, and the narrative doesn't suggest that she's at all aware of how sexist such insults are. But she has taken a small step in the right direction, a step for which she is rewarded by finding a love interest who can both light up her oh-so inconvenient hormones and respect her for for her less-than-conventional life goals. A fitting end to a sports romance which calls attention to the sexism underlying male sports culture, even while celebrating the strong team bonds such culture can foster.

Photo credits:
Abbey Johnson: Orlando Sentinel
Pansy Project: Gay Star News
Men still see only an object: Male Vegan Feminist

Miranda Kenneally

Catching Jordan

Sourcebooks Fire, 2011

Office Romance, Feminist-style: Regina Hart's FAST BREAK

The boss/secretary romance has long been a staple of the category romance. In such books, a plot event leads the rich and powerful alpha male boss, formerly oblivious to the longstanding crush harbored by his hardworking female underling, to suddenly see the beauty behind the brains that have kept his office running at optimum speed. Inevitably, true love follows.  U.S. Department of Labor statistics report nearly 4 million Americans are employed as Secretaries or Administrative Assistants in the United States; I'm guessing that a large majority of them are women. So it's hardly surprising to discover that the boss/secretary romance continues to flourish, even in our post-feminist age. A woman dating her boss recasts the prince-marrying-the-commoner Cinderella fairy tale in modern dress, the tale of marrying up clothed not in ball gown and glass slippers, but in power suit and pumps.

What happens, though, when the gender roles are inverted, the boss cast as a woman, the underling as a man? Rather than satisfying fantasies of upward mobility, stories such as Regina Hart's Fast Break, the first title in her Brooklyn Monarchs basketball series, instead explore the line between professional and personal identities, the power associated with gender roles, and the ability of couples to forge new ground rules when the old givens about work and and home are no longer in play.

Jaclyn Jones, famed as the WNBA's "Lady Assassin," has just returned from grieving the death of her grandfather to take a full-time role as General Manager of the Brooklyn Monarchs, the New York City pro basketball team she's inherited from him. She's not happy with the decisions the teams' two other co-owners have been making her in absence, particularly their decision to hire an inexperienced new coach. DeMarcus Guinn may have won NBA championships as a player, but nothing about him suggests that he knows how to transform a losing team into a winning one. In the opening scene of the novel, Jaclyn blazes into the former NBA star like a house afire, dissing his coaching ability and demanding his resignation. But even while he keeps his temper, DeMarcus refuses to give this cantankerous woman what she wants.

It's not Jaclyn's attraction to DeMarcus that leads her to change her mind about him. It's hearing that he's tendered his resignation to her partner, Gerald Bimm, after Gerald informed him he hired him to lose. A losing season will guarantee that the owners of the arena where the team plays will opt out of their contract with the Monarchs, freeing the team to move to another city. Realizing that DeMarcus wasn't in on Gerald's plan, Jaclyn urges him to come back, drawing on their shared love of their home city, Brooklyn, and the team's longstanding links to the community. He agrees, but that doesn't end the conflicts between them.

The two have very different ideas about how to run a team. Jaclyn believes a coach needs to get to know his players personally, so he can "make the best match of their personal ticks against [their] opponents" (112). DeMarcus has no intention of playing shrink to any of his players—"I'm a coach, not a priest" (113)—and suggests it's discipline, not touchy-feely stuff, that will bring the team out of its losing slump. Since DeMarcus is the coach, Jaclyn cedes his right to run the team his way, although over the course of the season, she challenges DeMarcus several times to reconsider his previous assumptions.

DeMarcus has a more difficult time allowing Jaclyn to make her own big decisions, particularly after the two add a romantic relationship to the professional one they already have. The arena's owners put up the arena for sale, and as no new owner is likely to want to keep the Monarchs as a tenant, Jackie knows she has to put up the money to purchase the arena herself. DeMarcus wants to offer his financial help, even knowing that the league would likely not approve a coach holding even partial ownership of a team's playing field. He also doesn't want to tell her about players disrespecting her or him because of their personal relationship. But she finds out anyway, and tells him never to keep information relevant to her job from her: "I need to know everything that involves this team, whether it's the condition of the training facilities or tension between players and coaches. As head coach, I expect you to tell me. Immediately. I don't want to hear about it from the media" (192). DeMarcus's reading of her words shows that he recognizes that, as her boss, she has every right to make such a demand: "She wasn't flexing her authority or exuding her charm. It was a matter-of-fact statement that nevertheless didn't leave room for negotiation. 'You're right. I'm sorry.'" (192).

But DeMarcus's protective instincts are hard to rein in, particularly when Gerald Bimm, the other team owner, threatens him: unless DeMarcus starts losing, Gerald will leak rumors to the press that DeMarcus is a secret drug user. Jaclyn has too much on her plate, Marc reasons; she doesn't need to cope with this mess on top of everything else. He can protect her from Gerald by handling it on his own.

Of course, Marc's decision blows up in his face, and he and Jackie are left struggling to deal with the aftermath of not living up to his promise to Jackie. What finally brings them back together is more symbolic than a model of an egalitarian relationship worked out in specific detail, but their agreement to merge the personal and the professional depends upon their recognition that love will not magically make their disagreements in their roles as owner and coach disappear. It will take continued work, and respect for each other's areas of expertise, to forge a relationship that allows each both the authority and the autonomy both need in order to find fulfillment, not only in their careers, but also in their personal lives.

What other romances have you read that invert the typically-gendered boss/employee dynamic? Do they do so to explore gender roles and the gendered dynamics of power? Or do they end up re-inscribing traditional gender patterns?


Photo credits:
I love my secretary/boss mugs: Dreamstime

Regina Hart

Fast Break

Book #1 in

The Brooklyn Monarchs series

Dafina, 2011

Gay Romance and Professional Sports: Sean Kennedy's TIGERS AND DEVILS

Romance novels have long been fascinated with the hero as professional athlete. From Susan Elizabeth Philips' Chicago Stars footballers to Rachel Gibson's Chinook hockey stars, Jill Shalvis's Pacific Heat baseballers to Erin McCarthy's NASCAR drivers, the celebrity athlete has a long history of dominating not only the sports page, but the contemporary romance bookstore shelves. The professional athlete has a hefty leg up on the hero competition, at least as far as traditional masculinity goes: competitive drive, ambition, aggression, and the dedication to a single goal are all required to excel at sport at the professional level. And let's not forget the amazing physical shape most professional sports stars are required to maintain, a level of fitness that proves not only aesthetically appealing to readers, but one that many books suggest translates into the most desirable sexual stamina and prowess. Thus the reader of the sports-hero romance can eagerly anticipate what's in store, masculinity-wise, before s/he even turns the first page.

What happens, though, when the sports star turns out to be gay? Reading last week's Sports Illustrated cover story on NBA player Jason Collins, and the subsequent responses to its announcement of the unsurprising fact that a gay man can play and succeed in a "major American team sport" reminded me of the ways in which male/male romance novels and novelists have been exploring this issue during the past decade. Jason Collins may or may not be the first pro gay athlete (see reports in The Atlantic,  New York Magazine, and Role Reboot, just to name a few), but he's certainly not the first to come out in the world of romance: just witness Goodreads list of "Best Gay Athletes," a list featuring 151 romance titles and counting.

One of the most interesting books on that list is Sean Kennedy's Tigers and Devils, which depicts the fallout after Declan Tyler, a famous Australian Football League player, is outed by the press. The novel's narrator is Declan's boyfriend, the self-proclaimed "arty wanker" Simon Murray, who meets Declan after the injured footballer overhears Simon defending his play even while admitting that Declan can "come across like a bit of an arrogant prick." Simon, the director of the independent film festival Triple F, has been out to his friends and family for years, although his family has taken a "don't discuss, don't get unnerved" approach to his sexuality. Declan, more cautious and guarded than the outspoken Simon ("I tend to rabbit on a lot"), has remained in the closet. Because of his attraction to Declan, Simon is more than willing to keep their long-distance relationship a secret; intriguingly, it is Simon's best friend, Roger, who takes umbrage at the sacrifice Declan's secret imposes on Simon. But after photographs of them embracing after Declan's father is hospitalized are leaked to the press, the point is moot. Kennedy's novel explores how two gay men can conduct a long-distance romance in the center of the public eye.

Two threads in the novel strike me as interesting to consider from a feminist angle. First, the way that Simon's comic interactions with his friend Roger and with Roger's wife, Fran, often simultaneously assert yet call into question the fixity of gender roles. When Simon tells Fran that Declan has called to ask him for a date, Fran asks:

    "So, what are you going to wear?"
     I looked at her, wondering if she thought I had suddenly grown a vagina in the past five minutes. "Clothes."
     She sighed. "Men."

Later, when Fran and Roger arrive on his doorstep to offer pre-date moral and sartorial support, Fran dives into Simon's closet, sorrowfully noting:

    "Simon, for a gay man, your wardrobe sucks."
     I glowered. "We're not all fashionistas or gym bunnies."
     "You should be at least one of them." Roger shrugged.

Simon suggests here that his masculinity trumps his sexuality when it comes to his interest in clothing. Is his rejection of the fashionista identity a rejection of the stereotypes associated with gay male identity? Or a rejection of qualities typically associated with the feminine? Or both? Later in the novel, when Declan asks Simon to accompany him to the Brownlow Medal ceremony (honoring the "fairest and best" Australian Football League player of the year), the issue of dress comes up once again, when Fran and Simon discuss the denigrating remarks sports commentators have been making in the wake of Declan's outing:

    "They did say I would look good in a dress, though. Y'know, because I'm a girl."
     "There are worse things than being called a girl."
     "That's true." I shrugged. "They also called me the little lady."
     "Wow, so they're misogynistic and homophobic. They're trying to tick every box, what else is new?"
     "You're not helping."
     "I could go dress shopping with you."
     "Shut up, Fran."

When Declan takes him suit shopping, Simon initially chooses a conservative one, hoping to avoid drawing the press's eye. But Declan urges Simon to choose something comfortable, knowing that his lover is "not going to be comfortable if you don't go as yourself." Ultimately, Simon compromises, pairing the conservative suit with a more colorful shirt and tie: not masculine, not feminine, but just Simon.

When feminine and masculine roles during sex itself come up for questioning, however, Simon proves far less willing to be tarred with anything hinting at femininity. When an obnoxious guest at his brother's engagement party asks Simon, "So, you know how Declan is like this really hot, good, footballer player? And you're like some guy in theatre or something? Does that make you, like, the woman?" Simon completely loses it: "You're old enough to have gained some life experience by now to know that was the stupidest fucking question you could have asked me. Maybe you should know what you're talking about before you go shooting your mouth off." When he attempts to explains to his Dad what's ticked him off, Dad clears his throat and asks the same question, albeit with genuine puzzlement: "Are you?" In many other places in the novel, Simon as narrator works to explain what it's like to be gay to a presumably heterosexual audience, expecting their lack of understanding, but when anyone presumed to think him a "woman," he's too angered to make any such effort. "I'm a man, and he's a man. We're gay because we like men. Neither of us is 'the woman.'" Declan, too, takes umbrage at such assumptions, walking out of a radio interview when a DJ asks him if he's a top or a bottom. The novel doesn't delve into the reasons for both men's anger—is it because of the BDSM associations of top/bottom? Because of the association of submissive service associated with being a "woman" ("Yes, Dad. I'm the woman, When we go home I hand Declan his pipe and slippers, put on my apron, and bake biscuits for him to take to training the next day," Simon initially answers his father with his typical sarcasm)? Does claiming both a gay and a masculine identity mean a man must reject anything that labels him feminine?

Simon may take issue with being thought a "woman," but the novel's larger message is that accepting traditional masculinity's reluctance to discuss feelings can prove problematic, no matter what gender or sexual preference one embraces. When Simon worries about Declan's rejecting his sexual advance, "Men," Fran sighed, not for the last time in her life. "It's hard enough being a woman and dating a guy. I can't imagine how much worse it would be when there are two guys in the equation not communicating with each other." And when Simon objects to Fran's plan that Simon fly out to Declan's home turf to console him after he's injured, Fran initially chalks it up to his gender: "Guys are such arseholes," she mutters. But she quickly goes on to suggest that it isn't just his gender, but his personality flaws, that stand in the way: "There are two reasons you don't want to do it. You're lazy, and you're chickenshit.... We know you love us, but you like to pretend you're all aloof and unreachable. That's what makes you chickenshit. Getting on a plane will show Declan how you feel, and you'd hate to be that transparent." Simon can hide behind the excuse of gender, but if he wants to make his relationship with Declan work, he needs to acknowledge that gender is just a cover, not a cause, for his unwillingness to communicate openly with his lover.

The majority of the problems that cause problems for Simon and Declan stem not from the notoriety and even verbal abuse they receive as a result of their high-profile romance, but instead from their inability to share their feelings with one another. Declan's used to running at the first sign of trouble; Simon prefers hiding behind a mask of sarcasm and rudeness. But until each proves "woman" enough to overcome their communication problems and talk openly about their emotions—not only the happiness and love, but the anger and pain their relationship causes—can they reach the happily ever after romance holds out as its defining promise.


Photo Credits:
Jason Collins: Sports Illustrated
Brownlow Medal: Coaches Corner
Emotions cartoon: Mark Anderson

Sean Kennedy, Tigers and Devils.

Dreamspinner Press, 2012.

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