004 reasons why Joseph Dryden is the gay hero we’ve been waiting for

There are so many pitfalls when it comes to creating a gay character who is realistic, sympathetic and unstereotypical that it’s probably not surprising that most writers don’t even bother trying. With Joseph Dryden, the first gay Double-0, Kim Sherwood shows everyone how it should be done.

The following article contains spoilers for Double or Nothing, right up to the ending.

This article is also available as a podcast, wherever you get podcasts

Fiction is full of bad gay characters. I don’t mean just bad guys who are gay, although there are plenty of those. Above all, we queers have mostly been represented by people who are not very nice. The examples that spring most readily to mind in the Bond series are From Russia With Love’s Rosa Klebb (a bisexual aromantic in the novel, a lesbian in the film), Diamonds Are Forever’s hand-holding assassins Wint and Kidd and first-time-assuming Silva in Skyfall.

Collage copyright British GQ

There was a time when we would accept any gay characters - however numerous their faults - because we didn’t have much choice: we took any representation we could get. Among the more questionable characters in Bond, we’ve had Goldfinger’s coded lesbian Pussy Galore, powerless against Bond’s ‘magic penis’, at least temporarily. If we’re being generous, we could say that her hooking up with Bond was anomalous: one of those times in our lives when we surprise even ourselves in being attracted to someone who wasn’t ‘our type’. Anthony Horowitz went with this idea in his continuation novel, Trigger Mortis, having Pussy resuming her Sapphic calling.

On the gay male front, we’ve had a few stereotype-reinforcing ‘sissies’. Notably, the hotel manager in the film of Moonraker and Q’s assistant Fordyce in the 1967 film of Casino Royale.

Before Ben Whishaw’s Q (coded as gay from Skyfall and finally outed with a subtle choice of pronoun in No Time To Die), Bond’s allies were rarely queer. And even if they were, their screen time was brief. Poor Henderson in the film of You Only Live Twice, played by gay actor Charles Gray, gets stabbed through a paper screen, just as things are getting interesting.

Brass-rubbing enthusiast Hilary Bray leaves a memorable impression despite having only one scene in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, although this is probably because we get to hear the voice of Bray actor George Baker dubbing George Lazenby for a further 40 minutes.

Whether they are good guys, bad guys or somewhere in-between, at least no one could say Bond’s queer characters are boring. But so many gay characters outside the Bond series simply fall short.

When I use the phrase ‘bad gay characters’, I’m referring to all of those characters who just aren’t very well written.

There are undoubtedly many challenges with writing a realistic gay character. How do you possibly reflect all gay life, in its rich variety, in one character?

I’m going to focus on the particular challenge of writing gay men here, which has its own nuances. Although a lot of what follows often applies to representing other queer identities.

Gay men can be anywhere on the masculine-feminine spectrum (as, for that matter, can straight men), so where do you locate your character? How do you resist making your character’s sexual orientation their defining feature? Yes, sexual orientation is important, but it’s not everything. How do you avoid the stereotypes that still surround many gay men, particularly their reputation for being sexually promiscuous and fearful of intimacy? How do you resist the social pressure to kill them at the end, or at least make them desperately unhappy?

Double or Nothing gets all of this right from the off, providing a template of sorts, a model for other authors seeking to include gay characters in their own stories. Here are four things the book absolutely nails in its treatment of our first gay Double-0, Joseph Dryden.

001. Dryden’s outing to the reader is not a big thing but it is still A Thing.

You never stop coming out. Even when you’re in a room with someone who you are almost certain is not going to hold your sexual orientation against you, when you’re on the cusp of outing yourself (again!) it’s highly likely that you will feel a burst of adrenaline. Perhaps perversely, it’s almost a comfort when it does kick in. But then the familiar consequences: the increase of heart rate, a speeding up of the senses. Fight or flight. Plastic our brains may be, capable of forming new neural pathways, but many gay people find this is a hard-wired bit of neural programming, the result of years of going through the same thought process: worrying what people are going to think of the whole of us because they may not like a fundamental part of us.

Many fictional depictions of comings out present this as a Big Moment. And it is a Big Moment for many of us. The first time… second, third, two hundred and twenty third time we utter the words “I’m gay” can make us feel like the world has shifted, a little, on its axis. Over time it gets less momentous, although there will always be a specific context which makes us feel like we’ve only just emerged from the closet. If I’m with strangers, particularly in a very masculine environment, with no queer-identifying people around me, I become more guarded about my sexual orientation.

We first learn that Double or Nothing’s Dryden is gay not long after we’re introduced to him, at the end of Chapter 6. After Moneypenny has briefed 004 on his mission to find out what villain Bertram Paradise is up to, Dryden asks what she needs him to do. Moneypenny prevaricates a little, perhaps sensing that she’s about to cross a professional/personal line. She begins coyly, bringing his “old friend, Luke Luck” who is now working for Paradise, into the conversation. Dryden holds his breath before he goes “loose through his body, a mental shrug.”

This doesn’t have to be a gay thing. We would all tense up if someone brought up a former lover, especially if that someone was our boss. But at this point, Dryden isn’t sure if Moneypenny does know they were lovers. Moneypenny isn’t one to beat around the bush for too long: “We can do the surprise portion of the conversation, if you’d like. Or we can just get down to it.” After Dryden crosses his legs (a sign that’s he’s getting defensive or trying hard not to appear defensive?) he confesses that “Luke was more than just my friend.”

Although there is a degree of uneasiness here, we’ve moved on significantly from the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture of the Intelligence Services of the past, memorably alluded to by Samantha Bond’s Moneypenny in Tomorrow Never Dies.

In grand Bond tradition, and to make sure that there is no ill-feeling between Moneypenny and Dryden, the chapter ends with some playful banter centring, as it often does with James Bond himself, on a sex organ, but here given a gay twist. Moneypenny tells Dryden to check in with Q to “make sure everything’s in working order,” meaning his neural implant… and perhaps something else. Dryden takes the offered bait: “I didn’t know Q leaned that way.” The joke about Q’s sexual orientation only gets funnier when you find out later on they* are not a human being but a quantum computer, so presumably they don’t have any leanings.

Crucially, it’s Dryden himself who makes the gay joke. He’s not inhibited about his sexual orientation now it’s out in the open with someone he trusts not to hold it against him.

002. Dryden shows us that homophobia can make us stronger

Of all the challenges Dryden has overcome, feeling comfortable about his sexual orientation may be the least of them. Because of his wartime experiences, we are told he likely suffers from Operator’s Syndrome, which makes him hypervigilant. Although his sexual orientation is not explicitly the cause of this, it’s something many gay men can connect with. Like many gay men who cultivate relaxed exteriors for the benefit of onlookers, Dryden is a different story beneath the surface. His fight or flight mode does not take a lot to be activated. Although Sherwood tells us this is “the legacy of being a killer since he was sixteen years old” it is analogous with the experiences of many gay men (and queer people in general), many of whom develop a form of hypervigilance. This is something I explored at length in my queer re-view of Quantum of Solace. In short: we’re constantly on edge because homophobia is always a possibility.

One of Paradise’s entourage, Yuri, is rampantly homophobic. When Dryden prevents a young maid from being assaulted by Yuri, the henchman tries to save face by telling Dryden “You are not my type. Put on a skirt, then maybe I close my eyes.” Dryden’s come back is the kind of thing we wish we’d all been quick-witted enough to say when being on the receiving end of homophobic abuse: “I don’t think you closing your eyes would make you any more attractive.”

A few pages later, Sherwood presents gay readers with an even more empowering episode. Dryden feels Q – via his implant - directing some of his attention to burly gentlemen at the bar. Dryden isn’t sure why they are looking so intently at him and Luke, but he suspects it may be because he is the only black man around and he and Luke are the only openly gay men in the place. Brilliantly, Dryden and Luke are unapologetically holding hands over the table, something many of my gay friends still feel unable to do in public but which my husband and me do at (almost) every opportunity.

In her omniscient narration, Sherwood tells us that Dryden is “used to both” racism and homophobia so thinks little else about the onlookers until one of them flings at them “a slur Dryden would prefer not to translate or deal with right now.” It may be a racist epithet or a homophobic one or both – although Luke is white, it’s highly likely that the attacker would possess less then enlightened views about ‘miscegenation’.

While Dryden tries to downplay it, Luke isn’t having any of it. The two gay men incapacitate their homophobic attackers with ease, Dryden having to hold Luke back from hurting them even further, and possibly killing them. It’s difficult for a gay reader not to relate to Luke’s righteous anger and even bloodlust. How many times have we fantasised about being so physically capable that we could defend ourselves against anyone who dares to wound us physically or verbally, using our anger against the perpetrators?

The scene has the potential to stand out like a sore thumb. After all, barroom fights are pretty rare in Bond and, when they do, they always move the story along. See, for example the meeting of Pam and Bond in Licence To Kill’s Barrelhead Bar. What stops the Dryden bar fight being viewed as an exercise in wish-fulfilment for gay readers (not that I would have had any problem with that!) is Sherwood expertly weaving it into the plot. Dryden uses the fight to disguise his palming of a much-needed mobile phone. Most of all, like Pam and Bond, fighting together brings Dryden and Luke closer together. Much closer together.

003. The gay sex between Dryden and Luke is tender. And sexy.

Let’s just get this out of way now: there’s no such thing as ‘gay sex’. Everything gay people like to do, many less inhibited straight people do too.

[If you don’t believe me, try this peer-reviewed 2017 study funded by the Health Departments of 20 US cities which asserted that “Heterosexual anal intercourse (HAI) is not an uncommon behavior with 36% of women and 44% of men 25–44 years old in the United States reporting ever having HAI in their lifetime.” Even higher figures are reported in some UK-based research. The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (the world’s largest, most detailed studies of sexual behaviour) have found that that anal sex has become more popular among heterosexual people each time the study has been conducted. And don’t get me started on rimming, but if you’re interested, this Australian study from 2021 will help shatter some misconceptions.]

And yet, despite all this, there’s a common misconception that sex between two men is a world away from sex between a man and a woman, particularly when it comes to tenderness.

Now, gay people can be as animalistic as straight people in the bedroom (or bathroom, or wherever). But that doesn’t preclude being tender. In Chapter 17 of Double or Nothing, Dryden makes the first move and it would appear he’s immediately heading in an atavistic direction by “slipping his arms around Luke’s waist.” But before we’ve even started another sentence, the next clause has him ”pressing his face to Luke’s neck, searching out warmth, searching out home.”

The paragraphs that follow make it clear that Dryden and Luke are more than just hot under the collar for each other; they are woven into each others’ lives.

Sherwood economically uses telling details, like Fleming did, to make the scene both tender and erotic. There’s a reference to what happened years before, while on active duty, in “Luke’s tent” and how it made Dryden realise something about himself; a tantalising ellipsis. In the present, the nightmare-inducing colour of the bed sheets, a joke between the lovers, provides an amusing reason for resorting to using the floor.

If Double or Nothing was to be adapted for the screen, the Bond series’ first sex scene between two men would undoubtedly cause something of a headache. How much to show? How much to conceal? Sherwood doesn’t have that problem. Her sparingly chosen words give our imaginations everything we need. Tenderly true to life, the lovers come down from their consummation without feeling the need to reacquaint themselves with clothing.

Luke only reaches for his boxers when Dryden dredges up a painful memory, his nakedness not apparent until Dryden starts stripping back the years.

004. Dryden and his boyfriend don’t die (at least not yet)

Notoriously, Double-0s have a short life expectancy, so a gay Double-0 is doubly vulnerable.

The biggest pitfall of all when dealing with gay characters – and the one far too many storytellers still fall into – is giving in to the compulsion to kill them off.

Don’t get me wrong: there are many great gay stories which end with the death of one or more protagonists. And it's not that gay characters shouldn’t be considered fair game. But I often get the feeling writers bring gay characters’ lives to a premature end because they just don’t know what to do with them once they have given them a glimpse of happiness. No wonder ‘bury the gays’ is such a widely recognised – and lazy - trope.

If you’re going to kill your gay character, you should be really sure it’s important to the story and not just because of social pressure. Making gay characters disposable sustains the idea that gay people are not ‘as good’ as straight people.

Imagine the cumulative effect that reading all those downer endings has on gay people. Well, some of us don’t have to imagine it - we’ve lived it.

Letting a gay character live means the reader has to take a gay character seriously. If two or more men are in a loving relationship, we have to entertain the (shocking!) idea that gays can live happily ever after. Killing off one or more of them reasserts heteronormativity. The presumption is that the presumed straight audience will be able to relax because the world is back to ‘normal’.

One of my favourite gay stories with a happy ending is E.M. Forster’s semi-autobiographical Maurice, a novel in which two men get to live happily ever after. Quite shocking stuff for 1913, when he started writing it! But wait: Forster didn’t let it be published until after his death, nearly 60 years later, in 1971. He was concerned that his reputation would be destroyed if he released Maurice in his lifetime. Forster feared the happy ending would be viewed as far-fetched.

If you look carefully across the following decades, you can find the odd happy ending in literature and film. I was far too young to watch My Beautiful Launderette on its initial release in 1985. The love story between two men, a British Pakistani and a white former fascist, ends happily. But it’s one of few exceptions to the rule. Even now, the trope is alive and well – unlike so many ill-fated gay protagonists. Some of the most popular TV shows of recent years, such as Game of Thrones, Killing Eve, Supernatural and The 100 have all offed gay characters unnecessarily.

I’ll admit that I did spend most of my first read-through of Double or Nothing fully expecting at least Lucky Luke to meet a premature end, not just because he is gay but because he occupies a role often taken up by the Bond Girl. The ‘bury the gays’ trope extends depressingly well to Bond Girls, as Sam Rogers has explored.

In the final paragraphs of Chapter 45, it looks very unlikely that either Luke or Dryden will make it out alive. The action is both sadistically violent and touchingly poignant, redolent of Fleming’s passages where even Bond starts to suspect the end is inexorably near and he will need to make the ultimate sacrifice. In particular, it reminded me of the end of Moonraker, with Fleming writing Bond into a corner, making us think the only way Bond can destroy the villain’s evil hardware is to take himself out with it.

In this action-packed climax, as she does throughout Double or Nothing, Sherwood plays with our expectations. With Dryden and Luke trapped in the engine room of Paradise’s luxury yacht, she tells us Luke is “down”, with an enemy rifle aimed at his head. Sherwood makes us wait a whole 10 agonising pages to find out that Dryden managed to save Luke, who is not dead but is merely unconscious. This gay is far from buried and he takes his “turn” by rescuing Dryden, his lover-in-arms, in the nick of time.

With two books remaining in the series, I’ll be on tenterhooks the whole time, dreading the demise of Dryden or Luke. It’s not as if Sherwood is afraid of eliminating her main players, as anyone who has finished Double or Nothing will be very aware of by now. I have no doubt, however, that should 004 and/or his reignited former flame meet their ends, death will come with consequences. Sherwood certainly has what it takes to send a Double-0 out to die - but I’m certain she won’t kill Dryden on a whim.

[*Regarding Q’s gender: at the British Library event on Thursday 1st September, Kim Sherwood said Q could have any pronouns. She does not use any gendered language for Q throughout Double or Nothing.]