Nor the Leopard His Spots

Fanfiction
Title:	Nor the Leopard His Spots
Author(s):	M. Fae Glasgow
Date(s):	1990
Length:	30 pages
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Professionals/Eastenders
External Links:	Nor the Leopard His Spots
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Nor the Leopard His Spots is a Professionals/Eastenders story by M. Fae Glasgow.

The story was published in Pæan to Priapus #2 and is online.

Reactions and Reviews

My favorite is the novella-length NOR THE LEOPARD HIS SPOTS by M.Fae Glasgow, a Bodie/Doyle (PROFESSIONALS) story. Or perhaps I should say Doyle/Bodie, as it centers on Ray Doyle and his "coming out" to acknowledge his long-suppressed gayness. This story was refreshing in that it dealt with a man's confrontation with his essential sexuality, his internalized homophobia, and the consequences which a homophobic society imposes upon gay people. I weary very quickly with the stories which assert that, no matter how passionately slash characters may engage in sex, they're "NOT gay", they "don’t love other men, ONLY each other". This is a welcome change from that ideology.

Ray Doyle is exhausted from the demands of too many opereations and now he's required to go undercover in London. Unfortunately for his undercover role, almost immediately he meets someone he once knew very well - an old lover...I adore M. Fae Glasgow's fiction She writes extremely well: her characterisations are always a joy and there is a realism about her stories that I like very much. I'm not a big fan of Eastenders but this story is a contained universe within itself and tells you really everything you need to know.

I've never seen The Eastenders, so the appearance of those characters and their world--Doyle moves into the neighbourhood on an undercover op--isn't the draw for me here. Rather, I love this look at a depressed, fortyish Doyle who meets his only previous male lover when he goes undercover and decides to use the op to try out a gay lifestyle. His depression is due to his repressed desires and this mission seems a perfect opportunity to try to do something about them. His contact while undercover is, of course, Bodie, and Doyle's dallying shakes things up for both of them. One of the characteristics of MFae's writing I enjoy most is that she doesn't stick to a single dynamic for them in every story. Her many stories take her characters through the full scale of sexual possibility from straight het to completely gay and every shade of bisexuality and closeting in between. It also varies from story to story which of them has more ease in acknowledging his sexuality and/or his feelings, which of them handles it or can't, or both or neither and whether the sex or the feelings come first or together or later, for one or both of them. This story gives us the two of them travelling at different speeds, and the question is whether they're on the same road or not. With MFae, the answer's never really certain till the last page.