By definition, yaoi is homoerotic work created by women for women. This was more than a decade ago, before this type of “Boys’ Love” - known in Japanese as “yaoi” - was all over the place, and even seeping into the mainstream beyond anime in a practice known as “shipping.”The most well known instance of this happening in today’s pop culture is the “shipping” of two band members of One Direction, Harry and Louis who together are known as “Larry”.Ĭontrary to its name, “Boys’ Love” is not actually about little boys in love, but depicts high school or older males getting hot and bothered by each other.
Later, the anime about boy bands called “Gravitation” made its way to the States, and while it had its male characters kissing on-screen, I never became a fan: The fantasy, the cerebral aspect of this forbidden, oftentimes tragic, male-male idealized romance in text was what I craved. I never got into gay porn as a young teen, finding it too crude and obscene, but sexy words about drawn characters on a webpage always did the trick (at least for a while). I read late into the night (and possibly touch myself), as the two remove their pants and play with each other’s genitals. This is a flashback to one of the fantasies I was conjuring at age fourteen, at 2 a.m., when I should have been sleeping but was reading dirty fanfiction written by another teen girl about two male anime characters instead. When he finally (after weeks of angst!) kisses him, one hand on his cheek the other aggressively crushing his fingers, I clutch my heart to keep it from bursting.