Saga: Let's talk about sex...

“I won’t feel guilty.
No matter what they’re telling me.
I won’t feel dirty and buy into their misery.
I won’t be shamed cause I believe that love is free.
It fuels the heart and sex is not my enemy.”

~ ‘Sex is Not the Enemy’ by Garbage

Martin/I were having a blast playing opposite our newest character, Ben. He was like a badly needed blood transfusion for our game. Barb’s characters in the past may have been sexy and complex, but outwardly they were chaste and innocent. Ben blew the doors off her other characters. He screamed “LOOK AT ME” with every breath and action. In fact, Ben’s initial contact with Martin was to invite him to a rave – Ben, being the smooth operator he is, had four supermodels on his arm at the time. It was so unlike Barb to create such an openly sexual character like Ben. I was intrigued and wanted to play opposite him as often as possible. She seemed happy to oblige and for a short while we were in gaming bliss.

But nothing good can last forever…during this time, Martin was also involved in a darker sub-plot regarding a local vampire clan. The Prince of the City, Raithe, was very ‘taken’ with Martin. He used his supernatural powers to seduce him and in one scene (which I had written out in story-form) Raithe finally kisses him. (Sorry…blame Anne Rice and too much Queer As Folk) This chain of events leads Martin to become obsessed with having that kind of power over another person. Still, he doesn’t want to become one of the undead to possess it. So in a sudden and much unplanned twist to our story, I decided that Ben would be the perfect person for Martin to play mind-games with, using the powers he did have at his disposal.

Back in our main storyline, Ben had been badgering Martin to come “play” at his place. As it turns out, Martin had to abruptly leave the rave Ben had thrown because he and Simon were trying to save someone from a nasty fate…they failed miserably. I had initially decided against going to Ben’s ‘orgy’ (for a lack of a better term) since it really didn’t seem like Martin’s scene, but Barb would not let up on Ben’s interest in getting Martin to show up. It was a very curious sensation to be in that position – usually my characters were the bad influences in our stories! (LOL) This was my window of opportunity! So Martin decides to go…and in the midst of one of our most adult oriented games, I let Martin try his hand at seducing Ben.

The whole thing between Martin and Ben was nothing more than innuendo and lingering looks, but I felt really happy with the outcome of our gaming session. Still I must admit that I was really surprised the next morning when Barb wrote me a follow-up email about the night’s previous game and asked if Marty “had fun fucking Ben”. Here I had thought I had been oh so subtle! We both agreed that it was probably one of the most fun nights of gaming we had in a long time.

For the next few weeks we gamed regularly – we were busy with several storylines, especially one involving a big trip to Russia (all the characters minus Ben – who was not in our pack - would be involved in it). Ben and Martin were not really supposed to meet up again until after we returned from that saga, but I was having too much fun with him to wait that long. So I initiated another “date” with Ben and his favorite gal before the big trip. Their afternoon rendezvous at a hotel was slightly more eventful (and fun) than their first encounter. I couldn’t deny the obvious chemistry between Martin and Ben. Martin was on cloud nine around Ben and it only made the misery in the rest of his life more profound…I realized he hadn’t been happy in a very long time. Their budding relationship confirmed my decision that Martin should say goodbye to Kali and explore other options.

Martin and Ben’s relationship took me by surprise. As I mentioned before, I didn’t plan for this to happen at all. Martin was never interested in a person of the same sex before and I never imagined he would be. Still, when this storyline came along it didn’t feel weird for me. The man-on-man idea never repulsed me…actually it was just the opposite effect! I took their interest in one another for what it was: curiosity, lust and obsession shared between two people. Gender played no role in my thinking. I guess that is why I can be an advocate for the GLBT community – I see such things as a matter of the heart/brain, not what is below the belt. I honestly feel that you can fall for another person regardless of their gender and/or your “normal” sexual preference. It is the person – not their anatomy – which captures your heart. That was the case here - Martin fell for Ben because of who he was. Ben complimented him (and challenged him) as no other person had previously. They shared a natural attraction to each other – their genders being the same was just a new twist to the usual mating ritual, but it didn’t have to be a road block if they chose to consider it a non-issue between them.

When Barb lived in Ohio, she seemed much more open-minded. She took me to my first gay bar in fact. Back then I wasn’t the advocate I am today, but even then when it was all shiny and new to me, I had no hang-ups. Being cooped up in conservative, rural America seemed to have rubbed off on my “alternative girlfriend” however. Although Barb never rejected Martin’s advances upon Ben, she finally admitted that she was having a hard time writing about sex and in specific those particular scenes involving Ben and Martin. She blamed her own hang-ups about sex itself – but I started to question that when she never mentioned “discomfort” when it came to man and women scenes. I asked her why she would even create a character like Ben if she didn’t feel comfortable in his skin…but I never got a satisfying answer. She said she liked the direction of Ben and Martin’s storyline, but asked if I could write out the bulk of certain scenes (so she wouldn’t feel ‘icky’). I should have put the breaks on then and there – and had I not been so invested in their relationship, I often wonder if the result would have been different in the end.

But I didn’t listen to my gut, instead I did as she asked and wrote out much of Ben and Martin’s interactions in story-form. As a result, Ben became less and less Barb’s character and more mine. She applauded my writing, saying I was playing Ben as she would have, and giggled happily over their more outrageous adventures. I thought we had found a nice safe middle-ground to our dilemma, but it was actually setting the stage for a lot of future problems. This was actually the beginning to our end.