The rulers of the Philistines
went to her and said, “See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of
his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue
him.
--Judges 16:5
I’ll
be the first to admit that I get inspiration from some very odd places. Getting inspiration from the Old Testament
isn’t odd or unusual in itself, but I think it’s a little more unusual for it
to serve as inspiration for a sweet, feel-good gay Christmas romance.
I
hadn’t intended on writing anything for Dreamspinner Press’s Evergreen
anthology, but inspiration happened to strike.
While I was trying to brainstorm some extras to offer the readers of my
webcomic, one reader suggested doing a spoof of Samson and Delilah. I decided that it would be a good time to
brush up on the actual story of Samson, so I read the bible verses and checked
out Wikipedia and a few other sites as well.
Rereading the story reminded me of how I always used to feel about
Samson.
Samson
has to be either the stupidest or the most ungrateful man in the bible.
God
gives Samson this amazing gift of strength.
Then he meets Delilah, and Delilah says to him, “Tell me the secret of
your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.” Samson says that if she ties him with seven
bowstrings, he’ll lose his strength. And
Delilah tries it. It fails, so she asks
him again, and he lies again. And again,
she tries it. And then—because he’s “sick of her
nagging”—Samson tells her the truth: if she cuts the seven braids of his hair,
he’ll lose his strength.
Keep
in mind, every time Samson told this lady how to get rid of his strength, she
tried it—and he knew that she tried it.
So why would he ever tell her the truth?
This is why I think he has to be either incredibly stupid or incredibly
ungrateful.
All
throughout the story, you can see that Samson is kind of an entitled jerk,
although I’m sure that wasn’t anything unusual at the time. Heck, it’s still nothing unusual. But when I read the story, I really felt that
Samson was so spoiled by his gift from God that he took it for granted. After his strength was depleted, the
Philistines blinded Samson and put him to work, but I believe he’d been
metaphorically blind his entire life.
This
was the unlikely inspiration behind Lucky, my Christmas novella, and if you
look closely, you’ll notice a hell of a lot of references to Samson’s story
while you read. At the time I wrote the
story, I’d also been reading a lot about racism and classism and privilege, and
it made me realize just how blind we often are to the gifts and blessings that
we’ve had all our lives but didn’t necessarily have to earn.
And
that’s where Martel Heller comes in.
Martel is the main character in Lucky, and for seven years, he’s had the
privilege of being able to pick and choose the hottest dates because he happens
to have these dreadlocks that make him really attractive. As a result, he’s pretty shallow, and he’s
used to getting exactly the type of guy he wants. But when he has to cut his dreads, his luck
seems to magically disappear. Like
Samson, he feels disabled by the loss.
But this loss might be just what he needs in order to open his eyes and
see clearly for the first time.
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