Writing What I Don’t Inhabit

Research, humility, and the awkward path to portraying male/male intimacy as an AFAB author.

Writing male/male sexual interaction as an AFAB author is a strange blend of curiosity, research, humility, and occasional absurdity.

It’s a craft that often feels less like “writing what you know” and more like “writing what you are determined to understand well enough to do justice.”

Because the truth is: I don’t have the lived, embodied reference points that many cis gay men take for granted. I don’t instinctively know how a body moves in that context, how certain sensations register, what feels intuitive, awkward, pleasurable, or vulnerable.

I have to build that knowledge deliberately, piece by piece, like assembling a model from scattered parts and hoping the finished shape resembles reality.

That process is rarely elegant.

It involves, yes, watching gay porn videos with a notebook brain instead of a voyeur brain. Not for titillation, but for mechanics. Angles. Hands. How bodies align. Not that I don’t sometimes get distracted.

What looks effortless versus what clearly requires adjustment. The way hips move. The way one partner supports the other’s weight. Where hands land when someone is bracing themselves.

How long things realistically take. It’s research that feels vaguely ridiculous and deeply necessary at the same time. You’re pausing, rewinding, and thinking, Wait. How did he get into that position without dislocating something? You’re not watching fantasy.

You’re studying choreography.

Thank god, I was a dancer in my younger years.

Then there are the queer male friends, the absolute unsung heroes of this process. The ones who endure questions that no one expects to be asked in casual conversation. The ones who are patient enough to answer things like, “Okay, but realistically, what happens first?” or “Does that actually feel good, or is that just porn logic?”

And then there’s Google.

My Google history would raise eyebrows in polite company. Searches that read like someone trying to reverse-engineer intimacy: how does it feel, what angle, how long, is this normal, does this hurt, how do men communicate during sex without words, what actually happens when… It’s not glamorous research. It’s clinical. It’s awkward.

It’s filled with forums, medical explanations, and firsthand accounts from strangers who don’t realize they’re helping an author avoid writing something wildly inaccurate.

Because accuracy matters.

Not in a sterile, technical sense, but in an emotional one. Male/male intimacy in fiction isn’t just about what goes where. It’s about how two men navigate vulnerability in bodies that weren’t necessarily socialized to be vulnerable in that way. It’s about the tenderness, the negotiation, the humor, the care. The small adjustments. The whispered check-ins. The trust required. Those are things you don’t learn from anatomy diagrams or porn.

Those come from listening. From absorbing stories. From understanding that the physicality is inseparable from the emotional context.

And as an AFAB writer, there’s always a quiet fear humming underneath the process: What if I get this wrong? What if I accidentally write something that feels artificial, or worse, like an outsider’s fantasy rather than an insider’s truth?

That fear is what drives the obsessive research. It’s what pushes me to ask the uncomfortable questions. It’s why I never assume and always verify.

There’s also a layer of empathy that grows out of this effort. Because when you have to learn something this deliberately, you become hyper-aware of the care required to portray it respectfully. You’re not writing from entitlement. You’re writing from study, from listening, from gratitude toward the people who share their experiences so you can do the work well.

And strangely, that distance, that lack of innate familiarity, can become a strength. It forces attentiveness. It forces intention. It prevents laziness.

Every movement, every touch, every reaction is considered instead of assumed. The scenes aren’t written from habit; they’re written from thought.

Still, there are moments where the whole process feels mildly unhinged. Sitting there thinking, I never imagined this would be part of my writing life. That my creative process would involve cross-referencing anatomy, consulting friends, and analyzing adult videos like they’re instructional manuals. That I’d be muttering, “Okay, but realistically ….” to my screen.

But that’s the reality of writing outside your lived experience with care.

It’s messy. It’s awkward. It’s deeply human.

And when it works … when a reader says the intimacy felt real, tender, authentic … it feels like all that strange, meticulous effort was worth it.

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