"I adore bottoming," my friend pronounces as the downtown café fills up with the lunch crowd. Mere metres away lanyarded ladies in waist-creased skirts and running shoes, change purses in hand, look over and smile. Although I would love to believe otherwise, they have no idea what he just said, their facial muscles just joyfully reacting to the infectious intonation in his voice.
My friend and I have met up to discuss his trials and tribulations in getting off. He's a bit of a stud; he frequently hooks up online and has become a pro at it. He starts his online conversations with potential sex partners by discussing likes, dislikes, deal-breakers and turn-ons long before either person leaves the keyboard. My friend is also responsible. He goes for STI testing every three months, endures the wisecracks from one particular nurse at the STD clinic and makes sure he is taking care of his health so he can have a sexually adventurous life. Paramount for him is the use of condoms. Like me, he grew up already submerged in the age of AIDS. Rock Hudson was long dead by the time we began contemplating the power of our own jizz. We knew that cum could be awesome but it could also be deadly. With that in mind we entered our sexual adulthood with safe sex strategies in hand passed down from older lovers, mentors and brave teachers.
Condom use has never been negotiable for my friend and it was never an issue—until now. More frequently for the guys he meets online—some of them younger, some of them bisexual, some of them more experienced than him—condoms are arguable. This throws my friend for a loop. A tear begins in the lining of what he thought he knew.
Because of his allure, his sexiness and his persuasiveness he can get guys to wear a condom. But then one time he didn't. The guy came over, they played around and soon it was hammer time. He went to get the condom. The guy was reluctant and started giving cliché excuses. Finally he relented and put on a condom. They started going at it. My friend was already feeling off, having had to work to get the condom on. He looked back, pushed away and could see that the guy had taken the condom off.
Exits were pointed to, doors were slammed, texts were exchanged, emails sent and threats levelled. "Go get tested," my friend demanded. The guy initially refused, but eventually did so. Thankfully for both of them, he didn't have HIV or other STIs.
But that wasn't the only point. Trust had been broken, a violation had occurred. As a result he got sex-scared for a while, afraid to get back into the swing of things. Sex wasn't supposed to be a war, but there he was feeling like it was him against them.
"All guys do these days," he laments "is ask, 'Are you clean?' Then the other person is expected to answer, 'Sure, I'm clean, let's bareback.' I feel like I am the only one asking guys out there to wear a condom and it makes me feel like a freak."
I don't think he should feel like a freak. I think he should be given a medal for manning up enough to have the conversation about condoms. I suggest with every new partner, and with every new experience with a partner you've slept with before, if either of you sleep around, there should be a talk about condom use. Make a choice for yourself understanding the ramifications of your choice, about whether to use condoms.
The same day I had coffee with my friend I ended up going to another friend's house for a dinner party. I brought up the topic of condoms and the conversation turned to the word barebacking, a word used exclusively to describe condomless anal sex between men. "Why is it only called barebacking when two men have unprotected anal sex?" a friend asked. "We don't we use it when we talk about men and a women." It was the partygoer's theory that the answer is the culture is using language to distance homosexual acts, even if they are the same, from heterosexual sex and further othering sex between men.
Seemingly absent from conversations around condomless anal sex are issues of trust, choice, love, consent and the difference between the fantasy of porn and the reality of flesh. Barebacking has either been demonized as a one-way ticket to being HIV+ or vaulted as the holy grail of new queer sex. This seeps into our queer heads and we feel the collective shame the culture puts on us of our natural inclinations, our older-than-time desires. We're made to feel that what we do needs to be policed, sanctioned, protected. What affect does this have on the gay male psyche? On how we exercise our desires? On how we treat one another? We need look no further than my friend's recent experiences of hooking up to see the answer. We need to talk about sex. We need to talk about condoms. We need to decide for ourselves, with ourselves.
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