Before going out for the evening, I would begin the cleaning procedure and then take time to purposely sit on the toilet and strain for at least a few minutes. My hemorrhoids became worse. They began to protrude; my rectum prolapsed As a result, I bled every time I had a bowl movement. I understood that the presence of an open wound within my body left me highly susceptible to HIV transmission. Then, what I couldn’t comprehend was that another wound, a largely invisible one that had plagued me since childhood, was responsible for the precarious situation I found myself. But at this point, I had been intermittingly sick for so long, I was convinced I had already become positive.
From then onward, I joined the ranks of the fearless, the lonely and the inebriated, the supposedly negative bug-chasers, and those who were already infected. In these groups, the pretense of safe-sex was either totally absent or the atmosphere too agitated and hot for anyone to stop the action and rip open a condom packet. For the most part, the inhabitants of this world were serious about their sexual fantasies. The majority, like me, were men that had gone down every other path on the yellow-brick-road. We never found the magical dispenser of manly courage in the Emerald City. We couldn’t go home, so we railed against our brokenness and sought healing amongst ourselves.
If the all-important use of a condom during anal sex easily got lost in the euphoria of sex, so did the recommended application of the correct lubricant. Depending upon the location and situation, many gay men resorted to their own
saliva as an aid in penetration. With friction, saliva became dry and sticky and the digestive enzymes in spit felt as if they were eating away at the thin layer of skin in the anus. In addition, sometimes the beforehand practice of anilingus predisposes gay men to certain parasitic infections and a chronic diarrheal disease called
shigella. For awhile, I was unknowingly infected with a chlamydia infection of the throat – my only symptoms a low fever and a sore throat that I thought was a persistent lingering cold. After that, I contracted a horrible case of oral thrush and the pain was severe. It felt as if my tonsils were being continually baked in the back of my neck.
The most fanatical devotees were those who imagined becoming infected with HIV by a positive “gift-giver.” The utter impossibility of impregnation through gay sex left a subconscious feeling of lifelessness within all those involved. The replacement was the infusion of a charged particle within semen that could potentially penetrate the membrane of every cell. Subsequently, forever changing the recipient. This was the strange outcome of the less benign version whereby, as a young man, I attempted to reach totality through sex with other men. It never happened. Disappointed, there is a hapless quest for deeper meaning in gay sex or a further exploration of the extreme possibilities.
