The Face of Gay 46 (Cynnara Tregarth)

Posted on December 2, 2013

There’s an interesting phenomena about people watching. We look at someone and sometimes wonder “Is this person gay or straight?” Or we’ll look at them and say “Please, God, make it so this person is batting for my team, is available and finds me the Adonis or Xena I see myself as!” Or “Please, God, make this person straight because they just looked at me with lustful eyes and so aren’t my type.”

Sadly, this means we’ve overlooked something…that third option we didn’t consider because we don’t often give it much thought. Welcome to Cynnara Tregarth’s Face of Gay.

The Face of Gay 46 (Cynnara Tregarth)
The Face of Gay posts have been fantastic. They’ve been inspirational in so many ways. So, when Kris put a call out for people to write a Face of Gay post, I volunteered. I think part of this volunteering is be because of the wonderful authors and people I’ve met through the years who are part of the fantastic LGBT community in my regular life and here online. Plus, part of it is because of who I am. More on that later.

I am originally from the Midwestern part of the United States, though many people who read my writing will ask if I’m from Britain or from other countries. Trust me, I’m not. My early years have been framed by two major things in my life—reading and science fiction. I have to clarify the latter because science fiction came in the form of Star Trek reruns and then seeing Star Wars in the movie theatre. From a young age, I honestly believed people could be anything, love anyone, and win over evil because of my science-fiction love. Sci-fi showed me that with time and cool gadgets, progress in beliefs would happen. In that, I had no doubt.

I grew up in an apartment complex where my sisters and I were the only girls among a lot of boys. On one of our many expeditions of playing cops and robbers and other games, we discovered these boxes filled with magazines, magazines not necessarily appropriate for kids our age–the oldest among us was eleven. We found three or four boxes filled with adult magazines, mostly for men, but some for women. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like being shown what your body will look like when you’re older than by boys who are your age. It’s a bit embarrassing but at the same time, interesting sensations filled me. The boys gave me the magazines meant for women, telling me I’d want to see the ones with naked men, but I might not want to see the naked women. My friends, however, were not quite right. Which brings me to my admission, one that not many people who know me are aware of—I am bisexual.

It took a long time to realize when I used to watch Star Trek, I wanted the girls to kiss girls, just as much as the boys kissed the girls. I enjoyed seeing Uhura in her outfit just as much as any guy. When I saw Star Wars, I wanted to be the one to save Princess Leia, but I still wanted to be Luke Skywalker’s wife. I liked being around guys and girls and both sexes turned me on. Trust me when I tell you, it took many years to accept my sexuality because many people, both gay and straight, would joke about bisexuals needing to choose a side and stick with it. It makes it hard to come out and it makes it difficult to acknowledge you can actually love and enjoy both sexes. In fact, it’s one reason I rarely share with people.

I do lean more towards being with men than with women, and that’s because believe or not, women can make me uncomfortable emotionally. When I talk about being a geek, I’m not joking. I love my sci-fi, I love my tech toys, and for many of my guy friends, they do forget I’m a girl when I’m around. (I think it’s because I tell bawdy jokes just like they do.) But I do have a feminine side that needs to be stroked occasionally. I love boots. I enjoy crafts. But my major girl weakness is jewelry and my female friends know how intense I can be about it.

Even in my writing, I’ve discovered I often times feel more at ease being friends with my heroes than with my heroines. Yet, though I love writing hetero relationships and ménages (and I love writing ménages!), there is something I’ve wanted to write for a long time. I’ve written a m/m/f story and I’ll write more stories like that, but the one thing I want to write is f/f romance. In fact, of many LGBT romances, it’s one of my favorites. Which is why now that it’s gaining in popularity, I can finally indulge in writing stories for myself and for my daughter, who is gay.

That’s the other reason I wanted to write this post. My daughter is a beautiful young woman who is gay and I love her and I want to honor her choice to love who she loves. For me, loving someone is loving someone no matter what. Doesn’t matter what they look like, who they are, what sex they are. They’re the person you love. Those are the stories I love writing and they’ll continue to be the stories I write.

Yes, I’m engaged to be married to a man. Yes, he does know my sexuality. (He has suggested occasional threesomes for my benefit, he assures me.) He loves me for me—even when we both look at the same woman and smile. I am marrying him because he makes me happy and I love him. There is the fact he does indulge my kinky side, which is another topic for another day. But his acceptance of me is precious beyond price. Even now, it amazes me that he loves and accepts me. It makes being loved so much easier than it was as a kid so long ago when I couldn’t understand why seeing a woman naked was as exciting as seeing a naked man.

Being part of the LGBT community is not always easy. In fact, sometimes it’s hard because you’re not always sure you fit within that community either. But in the end, community, just like family, is what you make of it. Those within my family unit are people I love, cherish, and honor. Some are blood relatives, some are friends who I have known for a long time and love like they’ve always been part of my life. When it comes to community, sometimes, you have to step out and embrace it, allow them to see not only one side of things, but the very human face of being LGBT. I’m Cynnara Tregarth and I’m part of the face of Gay.

________________________
Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.