Becoming Ben Monaco (Part 3)

Kid Leopard agreed with marcwrestler, I was BG material. We chatted back and forth on GF and Yahoo! Messenger which I had discovered to be a preferred, albeit dated chat system that the wrestling community had adopted. He liked the pictures; he thought I had a good look. He was interested in having me go down to the US for a shoot they were going to have in early February, more specifically in their Florida location.

Two emotions took over my life from that point on: excitement and fear. Excitement was the obvious one; I was, after all, going to forevermore be labelled a BG East wrestler and meet others who already were. Fear was also present in my mind though. I was going to do something that was greatly unknown to me. What if I wasn’t that good on camera? I mean I had acted on camera before, but this was not the same thing. What if I wasn’t hot enough?

Nevertheless, KL had given me the green light. I was all clear for arrival on their end. I still wasn’t sure I was going to do it though. I still felt unsure and unready on many levels. How could all this have happened so quickly for me? From unknown and inexperienced to pro and paid in a matter of months? I needed advice before I gave BG East my green light.

I needed an outside ear. I went out to supper with my best friend and planned on telling him all about this. He would be the first “outsider” to get a glimpse into this part of my life. I waited until he came back to my place after the meal to tell him. He was staying over at my place that wintery night. We crashed on my bed and chatted for a while before I made a big coming-out style announcement to him. I blurted it out and waited.

“That’s so cool” was his enthused reply. He told me I had nothing to be nervous about when it came to this. Sure he didn’t quite understand it all, he wasn’t in any way turned on by it, but he was supportive. Like he said, I was passionate about it; I loved it, so that was good enough for him. As long as I was happy, he was happy for me. That’s all that mattered. And as for filiming, he told me he would hate me if I didn't go!

That conversation took a load off of my mind. It made me feel less worried, but I still needed to know if technically I was ready for what was going to come. KL kept in touch and was asking me for updates on whether or not I was going to go down. I told him I was still thinking about it and getting some things in order up here in Montreal (mainly time off of work).

Marcwrestler caught wind of my hesitations and decided to call me one afternoon. We talked a lot about the whole thing. I shared my fears, my anxieties about the whole process and my worries about my training. He told me everything I needed to hear. He comforted me, calmed my nerves and actually got me really over the edge. The fear ceded and excitement won in the end. I was sold. I was going. I confirmed with KL that same afternoon that it was a go on my part.

Still, there was work to do.

I met up with marcwrestler as often as my work cycles would allow me to for more training. I insisted on learning as many new moves as I could so that I wouldn’t look like a complete novice on my first venture with the company. It was intense, it was a lot of information, but after a few weeks of meeting with him, I had mastered a fair amount of moves and was well on my way to feeling confident enough for BG’s taping.

I hit the gym harder than ever and worked not only on my routine, but corrected certain problems with my nutrition. I laid off the fast food and liquor while focussing on slimming down, something that KL had requested I do as much as I could before my visit southward. I also placed my request for time off from work which was promptly accepted.

With the appropriate arrangements made, I finished my last work cycle, booked my tickets and flew down to Florida to have my first adventures in this new aspect of my life. Things were about to get very, very interesting…

Becoming Ben Monaco (Part 2)

The rest of the summer brought me to Quebec numerous times for work and so I was able to indulge my fantasy a little longer each time. It was becoming a routine even. I’d text Tank from the train to let him know I was on my way; he’d be at the hotel within a half hour ready to pick me up. He’d have a coffee waiting for me in the car just the way I liked it (two creams, two sugars). We’d grab a bite to eat or he’d already have food waiting at his home. We’d hop in the hot-tub, make out, get out, wrestle and cuddle until my return to the hotel (since I always had to work the next day).

Things were wonderful. I had a wrestling partner who showed me the ropes. As all good things must come to an end though. The summer ended and I found the trips to Quebec City were becoming fewer and farther between. By October I could barely land a single Quebec trip in my schedule at all. I went from going almost 3 times a week to suddenly going once every 4 weeks. Tank had allowed me to explore a new side to my sexuality and I was eternally grateful, but I now longed for more. I couldn’t get by on having a single match within a month. I needed to get into wrestling with guys in Montreal. I needed to bring home the passion and fun that I had experienced in Quebec.

I turned towards my computer, as I had for many other wrestling-related inquiries before. I was always a bit of a tech geek. I grew up playing video games constantly. But where to go for wrestling? It just so happened I had long known of a site called bearhugger.net which could provide a starting point. The site had a limited personals section on it, but I figured I’d give it a shot. I soon joined the ranks of headless-photos on the site. Most men, given the specific interest we shared, preferred to keep their identities hidden…or at least, limited. A few messages went left and right, here and there but not really with much result.

One who took a chance on me was a local who went under the name Loserboy and who happened to be the site administrator. Our first match was improvised and rather than being pro-oriented, it became very much submission oriented and for sport. Whereas my match with Tank was more sexual, this match was more about skill and technique. Evidently, with my limited experience, I was completely outmatched by this supposed “loser” who handily handed me my ass on a silver platter in submission after submission. He did however take the time to teach me several holds along the way. A strange thing he did tell me afterwards though: “You’re not a beginner. You’re a beginner on paper, yes…but some of the moves you used, some of the things you did in the match…you’re not a beginner”

This was an encouraging thought. Though I had never explored this side of myself in my younger years, somehow, unconsciously perhaps, I had absorbed skills through observation. It was great to hear someone tell me that there was a future for me in this sport in some odd way.

Not long after having met him, I was whisked off to Ottawa for a few work cycles. Again, the site, though limited, yielded some fruit as I encountered another lovely and skilled gentleman in Ottawa. He was tough. Incredibly tough even. His body, even though roughly the same weight as me, was made of steel and concrete. Nothing I threw at him in submission style seemed to have any impact at all. In submission wrestling, he proved to be invincible. He seemed to have a penchant (thank God) for pro and more erotic fare. So despite my disadvantage on the physical side of things, he allowed me a slim victory in our mostly pro-style match. Again, post-match, many words of encouragement and compliments on my physique, style and attitude towards the sport.

Eventually, having exhausted the supply of potential opponents on bearhugger, I decided it was time to move on to a new site. This time, my attention was drawn to a fairly popular website called Global Fight. Global Fight, or simply GF for short, followed the same principles as bearhugger. GF took things to a more global level however, spanning countries and territories that bearhugger had not yet. After all, they had been around longer and had gained notoriety online for years. I joined their site with the same moniker as on the first.

Time went by; new matches came and went with some other less-mentionable opponents. Still, with each one I learned to hone my skills and technique, even when I was on the wrong end of an ass-whooping. By the end of December 2011, I had had a fair share of matches with guys from both sites. I had also begun to focus more on guys in the Toronto area. Toronto had a sizeable pool of fighters when compared to the rather bland and sluggish crowd I had encountered thus far in Montreal.

A particular little stud from Toronto caught my eye at one point…a profile named marcwrestler. What exactly caught my attention? Well, for one, the sheer amounts of matches this guy had had over the years. Whereas I thought I was pretty good for having had a handful in so little time, this guy had hundreds upon hundreds of matches under his belt. He was one of the most popular profiles on GF and seemed to have even encountered some of the BG East boys in private matches! Needless to say, I was impressed and very fortunate that this guy lived in a city in which I spent many nights a month.

After a few initial failed contacts due to some travel arrangements of his, we finally managed to meet up towards the end of December. Funnily enough, upon meeting him in person, we made the connection that we both spoke French fluently since he was originally from just outside of Sherbrooke. He was short, stout and knew a good thing or two about wrestling. We had our first match one night in my hotel room in Toronto (as had become the custom for me when seeking a match abroad). He was every bit as talented and skilled as I had assumed he would be. During the match, he had a camera set up bed-side to take auto-timed pictures of our match. One thing bothered me though as the match progressed: I felt he wasn’t going far enough in most of the holds he had put me in.

We finished the match with nothing but compliments for one another. I mentioned to him what had bothered me though and was amazed that he was convinced that I was suffering immensely in his holds. When I revealed that it was all acting, he was flabbergasted. He insisted that we retry some of the moves we had just done. I obliged happily. His amazement seemed without end. He looked at me with this strange look in his eyes, a mysterious glare I had not seen from other opponents before…Before he could finish packing his things post-match, he cracked and finally asked me what he had been longing to for a good while: “Have you ever heard of BG East”? “Well of course,” was my reply, “which gay-wrestling fan hasn’t?” which was quite true. They were after all the producers par excellence of gay-wrestling themed videos. But he didn’t stop there. He proceeded to ask me if I had ever contacted them about wrestling for their site.

This stopped me dead in my tracks. Me? BG East? Was this guy insane? Why the hell would I ever dare to contact them with such a suggestion! Their guys were supermen, gods of wrestling, the stuff of fantasy and legend. How could he think even for a minute that I could compare to those gorgeous studs that littered their roster? Yes, I’ll admit that my gym work had been showing more and more. I’ll admit that all the matches that I had been getting managed to tone my body even further. To go so far as to suggest that somehow I had reached the status of BG boy in this guy’s mind…It was almost blasphemous to me to even consider it.

He continued to suggest that despite my protests, I was the right kind of guy for their site. If I contacted them, he thought that they would reply with an invitation to film for them. Still, I protested. I had only been wrestling for a few months, I knew nothing of ring wrestling, I barely knew anything of mat wrestling. How could I dare? Yet he continued to push me to give it a chance. I still said no. Finally, he asked “let me send them the pictures of our match tonight to prove you wrong”. He explained that he knew the producers personally and had the information to contact them. He insisted that I let him try where I refused to do so myself.

“Fine” I said, “send the pics and we’ll see what they say” with a hint of disbelief that this would lead anywhere. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? Kid Leopard would look at my pics and reply with a simple “no” and that would be that. I was preparing myself for that moment in my mind. There wasn’t going to be a positive response, it was impossible. There was no way they could expect me to be the caliber of their current or former fighters.

Little did I know...