Barebacked

This piece originally appeared in RFD #138 (Summer 2009). For 35 years, the non-profit collective-produced magazine has chronicled the lives of faeries and rural queers everywhere. Available at many LGBT friendly bookstores, RFD is dependent on subscriptions to sustain production. Check out online content at www.rfdmag.org and subscribe here.


by Wow

12-23-2007
San Francisco
How do I trust?
How do I take responsibility for my actions?
The events of the past cannot be undone, nor will I be undone by the events of the past.

The air in the room was thick with sex. Men of all ages, shapes and sizes stripped and eager to be touched. Hands, mouths and limbs ready, warm and willing. The party in full gear from the get go. My hunger alive, I sought lips and tongues ready for the feast. Male flesh wanting nothing more than to be caressed, cherished, consumed—a fantasy come to life. I feasted and was feasted upon as I circled my mouth around a cock, another cock teasing my ass, both members hard. I was being driven to the edge of sensory overload and there were no brakes on this semi to self oblivion. "Fuck me," I whispered. "Can you take it?" he asked. "Try me," I replied. Wanting nothing more than to be stretched wide open, to feel the heat and pressure of his overlarge member inside me. "Fill me up," I implored. Feed me. I am insatiable, but try to satisfy. Coax me open, and stuff me with your sex, and maybe, just maybe, I will be filled and finally fulfilled. But no.... He teased, but did not fulfill, and so, still hungry, I waited and soon another came—shorter, smaller, but still hard and ready for the prize. His cock curved downward, a rare and curious attribute. Black hair, green eyes, virile—a combination I craved. Dark hair covered his chest. Strong arms wrapped around me. Unsheathed, he probed, found the center of my heated hole, and pressed his cock into me. Gasping, I waited as he entered me fully and, moaning, began to drive his engorged glans deeper into the dark, hot recess of my body. Eyes open. Eyes shut. Eyes all around us. Men of all sizes, ages, and colors sucking and fucking in sensuous abandon. "Oh sweet god! Hold me! Fill me!" I cried. Wrapped in his arms, his hands roving my body, I whispered, "Yesssssss." This is it. What I want. What I need to feel. Deep inside me. Harder. Harder still, until in a burst of ecstasy he cries out and shudders as he fills me with his semen. Lubed with sweat and precum, his body pressed tight against mine, I feel his arms around me as I grow hot and hotter. Sweat pours from my body. Bared. Raw. Naked and wet with passion. Suspended in that timeless moment, my cum erupts from my balls, cupped in his hand, and bursts from my cock. Howling into the pungent darkness, my mouth wide open, sounds of the beast pour out of me. Shuddering and lost, I turn to him. His dark form slips away, whispering words of thanks, and I am... alone again, adrift in a sea of confusion, wondering what I have done. His silence did not conceal the wasting in his still handsome face, nor the hardening of his stomach from the meds that keep the virus at bay. My silence does not conceal the knowing of my desperate desire, nor my confusion. The room echoes with the sounds of passion spent as I breathe deeply the dank air in this subterranean chamber. Willing my body to be free. Free from want. Free from dis-ease. Free from the blind desire that drives me to such overt acts of self delusion and abandon. I breathe in, filling myself with love. Breathing out, I pray for my well-being—our well-being. Wondering... how will this play progress?

12-24-2007
The Morning After.
Silent regrets. No shame.

Descending the stairs of the Victorian house in which I have slept, I ponder the night before. Why? Why risk AIDS for a fast fuck with a stranger? Why put myself in this perilous place knowing what I know? I wonder as I open the door onto the sunlit street, why risk years of illness for a moment of pleasure? Stepping out onto the street—Castro, a street known throughout the world for its easy sex—I am alone with these thoughts. Alone and silent. My body feels the cool air of late December as well as the noonday sun, warm and bright upon my skin. I see a man from last night's party who looks up and smiles lightly. We are comrades in sex, not friends. Nevertheless, I hear myself tell him my secret as I look into his eyes. He listens, does not smile, does not judge. His quiet is full of consolation. I feel released, released from the secrecy that left unspoken might have paralyzed. I feel more air enter my lungs. The confession prepares me for correct action. I will go to the city clinic and be tested. I will strive to understand my actions and redress myself with greater compassion. I will not be victim to my wanton desire. I will not be ashamed, but neither will I be cavalier about the foolishness of my actions. I will re-author my life. What my actions will mean for the future remains to be seen.

The morning after is bright and I am whole enough to see there will be many tomorrows. Knowing this, I see I am not alone so long as I choose communion with my brothers and sisters and my ancestors by whom I am inspired to continue to command the most caring, creative, brilliant life I can co-create, to weave my threads with trust and to aspire to truth. The web is dense. The web is strong. The web is ever-changing. This mysterious web of countless threads, this continuum of creative flow, the ebb and flow of all life. And now the journey continues....

1-29-2008
All results negative: STDs and HIV negative.
My hunger rearranged. I breathe in peace.

7-2008 / 4-2009
All results negative. Again, deep thanks

Re-reading these words in search of greater understanding, I am made aware of two significant matters. The first is my hunger for intimacy. Might I again take any substitute just to satisfy, for a moment, my craving? Most of the sex I have is with relative strangers in bathhouses or at sex parties. My compulsive impulses have often gone unchecked, with my ability to distinguish beneficial from detrimental behavior hiding offstage, out of sight. I recognize this as dangerous and obscene, smacking of addictive behavior. Second, I often feel ambivalent about life, an ambivalence I have known from earliest memory. I disturb my own sensibilities with these thoughts. I see how my deep sexual desire and cravings for intimacy combine with this ambivalence to create a recipe for disaster. I am currently taking greater precautions with my sexual intimates, but I am also very aware of how easily I might regress.

The counselors I have met with at SF City Clinic and at Magnet have been both caring and challenging. Their provocative questions and obvious concern for my well being have contributed significantly to my progress. Sharing this part of my life with my community adds strength to my resolve to remain healthy while simultaneously lending voice to a complex subject which affects many lives. I thank those of you who have taken the time to read this and welcome your thoughts.

I close by noting that in addition to pragmatic solutions I also turn to the more intangible, mystical energies I know to be present and available to we-who-are-willing to invoke them. As one who has witnessed the effects of strong intentions enacted in ritual, I close this story with a prayer or incantation:

Mother, Father, Light and Shadow of All Creation, I, Wow, call you in. Here and now I command the will and good sense to engage in healthy, loving, playful sexual activities with powerful respect both for myself and my partner(s) from this day forward and through all the days and nights of my life. I receive this blessing in a good way and for the greater good of ALL. And I thank you for this and better... here and now. Ashay. Aho. It is so. It is so. It is so.

[join a community forum regarding barebacking called "risky business" this coming monday in chicago. click here for more info.]