I started reading romance—full-bore (eh heh), graphic romance—when I was eleven or so. At that time, I’d come off a science-fiction and fantasy YA kick and moved to historical adventures of all stripes, and from historical adventures to historical romance. My upbringing was such that there were precious few secrets of life at that age, so the graphic contents didn’t “bother” me all that much. I knew what sex was, how it was (generally) done, and had somehow come to the subconscious conclusion that all that was perfectly fine, in my limited experience with life.
During one of my strays back to science-fiction/fantasy, I picked up Anne McCaffrey’s initial Dragonriders of Pern trilogy—Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon. This is notable for two reasons: 1) “Oh! Oh! I want to be a dragonrider!”, said my imagination, and 2) it marked my first real run-in with same-sex pairings in the written word—in, most pointedly, a way that fundamentally drew my attention.
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