When Gay Men Have Straight Sex… [NSFW]
When Gay Men Have Straight Sex …
-or- why my guys are more like real guys than the stuff you read in m/m romance.
I’ve done it now. Angels of Mercy won’t be an easy read for the chicks who dig their man-on-man (-on-man?) love action. There’s a cardinal rule there that gay men don’t play on the other side of the fence.
Only, after being around the block as much as I have – and I’ve really been around the block so much I can give muthafuckin’ tours and sell shirts and shit – I know that gay doesn’t always equate to GAY with a big ol’ pink triangle and a rainbow flag. Men are far more fluid when it comes to sex. They won’t talk about it honestly with others if they know they can be identified – but in the course of my Human Sexuality class I took last semester we ran a world-wide sex study and the results were rather enlightening (well, more so for the class than myself). Mostly because the survey was completely anonymous. No tracking, no cookies, no way to link it back to you as the participant. So I think we got really refreshing responses. It turns out that across the over 600 respondents from around the globe, the spectrum of gay vs. straight ain’t so lopsided as one might think. In fact when we added up the queer populace it came damned near EQUAL to the total self-identified straight population within the sampling.
Read that again so it’s clear to you all – THE QUEERS (LGBTQAI, etc) WERE DAMNED NEAR EQUAL IN NUMBERS TO THEIR STRAIGHT COUNTERPARTS.
A little man on man action never hurts…unless its done right.
In my past I’ve bedded enough “married straight men” to know that straight doesn’t always mean what it says. DL much, guys?
Honestly put (and this is NOT news, ladies and gents): GUYS LOVE TO GET THEIR ROCKS OFF.
And don’t let all that straight boy bravado fool you – a gay boy will do just fine if there’s no pussy to be had. Just callin’ it as I sees it. And believe me, I’ve seen plenty. Sex positive here and all that rot.
So my literature work is not genre romance. It just isn’t. I never really saw that it was. I mean, I think it could be embraced by that audience, but they are so deeply entrenched in their own genre dogma that they often rail against stories that don’t fit into their nice and tidy rainbow box.
Well, as a fully fledged GAY man, I know that the world is a whole lot grayer than the black and white everyone likes to classify things into. We all like tidy little boxes. Well, human sexuality is not so fucking tidy.
And neither are my boys.
I’ve known gay men who have sex with women on an on-going basis. The difference is they can’t emotively connect with women beyond friendship. Men, on the other hand, turn their little heart crank in 0.065 seconds flat. They become a puddle of emotional goo if a guy begins to woo them. Therein is the difference, sweet cheeks. That emotive quotient that is added to the sexual mix between gay men and their male lovers.
It’s no different than the ‘gay for pay’ adult actors who want to earn more money by doing gay porn than they ever could doing straight porn work. They may get all the pussy they want doing straight porn, but the real money for the men is on our side of the fence and they’ve figured that shit out. And the guys in gay porn who are gay are stretching the boundaries of what gay men look and “act” like (though I grouse at the word “act” when it comes to anything gay – I am only using it here because of the commonality of how many use it in the sex work industry).
Colby Keller is one such man that I admire not only for putting himself sexually out there (which, let’s face it, takes REAL BALLS to do that – and believe me, Colby’s got ’em – and then some!), but also has a brilliant mind and a real sense of aesthetics in art and literature. A man I can really admire with all of his sex-positive stuff going on that makes it oh so sexy to watch in a man. He’s hella sexy and that ginger status only adds fuel to the fire in my book (just sayin’).
But I digress, that’s not what this blog post is about really.
Colby Keller and all of his auburn glory
What I did that many readers of M/M Romance genre might take offense, was organically developed in the way that my story needed to evolve. Angels is about choices gay men have to make to try and eke out some happiness in their lives. Some of those choices go epically wrong. Horrifyingly so. Especially within the context of organized/team sports. They (the jocks) have a script that they have to go by to be a fully fledged member of the “club.” Even if there is no literal script to run with.
Angels of Mercy – Volume 2: Marco
My protag, Marco Sforza, in the second volume (Angels of Mercy – Volume Two: Marco) is just such a young man. He knows he is in love with the out, but shy, gay boy on campus. But he is also painfully aware that the big bright shiny spotlight that follows him everywhere on campus is not what will bring the love of his life into his arms. He knows that there are other factors at play here. He knows he has to “play the game” so he can play the game (of football, in this case). Marco’s good at what he does. His stats are some of the top in the nation for high school athletes – especially those who are eyeing a college career, if not a professional one. Marco knows he is going to be scouted as he gets to college level playing. But that only serves to put an added layer of pressure to be one of the guys.
This doesn’t do anything for his heart. It only denies him what he wants most in life – to have that boy of his dreams (Elliot) in his arms and in his bed day in and lights out.
But he chooses to “play the game” rather than give up the game he loves to play. So he finds a girl that he’s comfortable with. She’s a good fit for him. She doesn’t pressure him, she enjoys his company, she is everything he could want in a relationship. This is something that takes him by surprise. Something that he doesn’t expect to happen to him. And Holly, the girl in question, is easy for him. Not in a slutty girl way, but rather because he doesn’t feel put upon when he’s with her. This only serves to cloud the issue of whether he really is gay or not.
But each time he goes out with Holly, he finds himself back at that boy’s house, out back in the woods that surrounds his home, just waiting for any sign of the boy who still has his heart. Marco has some big choices to make in this case. He knows he needs to let what’s easy go, in favor of that much harder choice of what will feed his heart and his soul.
But then, there’s the added complication that he’s an hormonally charged teenager too. And despite what mothers and the girls in their lives, that’s never an easy thing to wrestle with. Hormones in a teen boy are massively and epically confusing to deal with. Part of me thinks this is why so many boys choose team sports – it is a way to direct that pent up sexual energy.
Holly has decided that Marco is the guy who will be her first. And for Marco, who hasn’t been with anyone in that way, decides that she will be his. So they have sex. Nailed to the fucking wall, kind of sex. Sex on steroids kind of sex because, as it turns out, Marco and Holly are very sexually compatible. Each one driving the other to new heights of pleasure. And to Marco’s surprise he actually finds he enjoys himself in doing it. It’s just easy, that way. And that is what makes everything so much harder for him.
But inwardly, he knows it’ll never be what he wants most in life so he let’s that slip away from him in favor of what he’s always wanted. But his time with Holly answers so many questions he has about himself. It gives him clarity so when he makes the conscious choice to set all fear aside and move in to tell Elliot (the boy he’s secretly loved) how he feels, he does it with real conviction, no longer unclear about who he is and what he really wants. No one can ask him: “Well, how do you know you’re not straight if you’ve never tried it?”
‘Cause he bloody well has, that’s why! And his boy Elliot, STILL came out on top!
Angels of Mercy – Volume 1: Elliot
Book one covers their relationship from Elliot’s perspective. It’s heady and very over-the-top romantic. Book two is Marco’s perspective on it all. But I wanted these books to be real character studies. I wanted the reader to know these boys intimately. Seventy percent of the books are inner-monologue. They are fashioned that way so the reader goes through this emotive questioning that all gay men go through. The struggle to answer that question of who am I and what does it all mean?
Gay men do have straight sex. It happens more than people realize. And the reverse is quite true too. Straight men will have gay sex (even beyond the “acceptable” practice of it being prison sex). Sexual fluidity is a far more potent place to write stories. Why? Because all cards are on the table, all bets are off.
The real stories can be told when nothing is guaranteed.
Let the gloves come off and start swinging… that’s my motto.
Some men just can’t wait… it’s all good.
It may not win me any points with M/M genre fiction readers. But I think they are, by and large (though not everyone, I’ll grant you), limited in scope of what are acceptable storylines. There should be no guarantees in the writing of these stories. Only then do we let our true creative sparks ignite and become the storytelling firestorm that they can be. Otherwise, we’re just swapping characters and occupations around and rehashing old ground.
So Angels is not a player of that M/M genre game. My boys won’t fit in tidy fucking boxes. I hope those readers give it a chance. But since one of my main characters (the jock in the relationship) has straight sex in it, I may have just lost that appeal for them. Too bad really, because I think it makes him infinitely more real and accessible. The experience defines him, gives him greater clarity. It also allows him to push for what he really wants without the need to put these characters on unattainable pedestals. Elliot does that for most of book one – Marco is a god to him. Only to have that smashed when it looks like Marco has strayed on the very same night Elliot does with another boy – but now I am getting ahead of myself. Best to leave that for when the books come out.
So yeah, broke a rule here for that audience. Maybe they’ll take a chance on it any how. I know that the readers who have groused about some of the positions I’ve taken and then previewed the first book found that I really did have something here that is a bit of a game changer. It is different than what’s out there. I am striving for real literature. Beyond genre. Beyond that sort of (IMHO) myopic rule set.
No guarantees.
No automatics.
No ‘they must not…’
Because they do. And they will, and I wouldn’t have them any other way.
Until next time …
SA C