Butch and Nasty at College

I had been working on drafting an experimental short story that could go horribly wrong as it crashes and burns before completion.

Butch and Nasty are new college roommates without having known each other previously.

Nasty thinks Butch is an effeminate scrawny shrimp but attributes that to Butch growing up without a dad. Thus, Nasty attempts to mentor Butch on being masculine. However, Nasty doesn’t know that Butch is trans.

As trans issues are usually discussed focusing on the perspective of women or the trans person, I decided to explore the perspective of a dude who was unknowingly assigned a trans roommate. Does his opinion or privacy matter? What happens when he learns?

This isn’t an advocacy piece to be either team Butch or team Nasty, but instead a Rorschach test for the reader as to whether they can overcome their prior team selection in the culture war to empathize with the contrary character.

Thematically this would be like several of my other stories saying that openness and honesty are the foundation for building trust in a relationship. In this story, trust is violated, so the relationship ends.

Nasty is a fun character to write as he says and does funny and outrageous things as guys do when together without a woman around to tell them to behave and watch their language. Meanwhile Butch is an emotionally driven & conflicted character who grows under Nasty’s brutal mentorship.

This story would be another example of my habit of taking naturalistic or diverse tropes then subverting expectations by having the story focus on volition, aspects of virtue, and accountability.