One personal motto, words I live by, is a quote by James Clavell:

“How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”

A bit morbid perhaps, but the man has a point: now is all we have, now is beauty or pain you will never see or feel again, just as you’ll never swim in the same river twice. Tomorrow is a hope that may or may not be rewarded.

That, in a nutshell, is why I seroconverted; not by accident, a matter of deliberate choice, at a time and place of my choosing. Bugchasing is the generally used term, inadequate to the questions behind the act, the borders it draws and choices it makes possible or necessary.

The only accidental factor common to us all at this writing, in 2014, is the one of living in the era of the virus; there was a time before, presumably there will be a time after. The question it poses today is how much power we give it, how broadly its dominion of fear is allowed to extend; to what degree we let it wither what love we may find, to cripple our souls.

Not for me. The stereotypical condom break, or a youthful indiscretion gone awry, some meaningless accident were for long, too long, all I saw in my future. Long before I took up what we, inadequately in my view, now call barebacking. The implication is of the practice as something new, therefore in need of new language; it’s not. Raw is a default to the historic norm. Normal. Two men using antiquated birth control does sound rather odd, doesn’t it?

So I pre-empted the inevitable, and still jack off to the memory to this day. I traded a slightly longer life for one shorter but painted in more vivid colors.

My answer need not be yours, but it is simple: I have sex with no protection for either party, receptive sex mostly, am HIV+ as well, and those, my kind sir, are the terms of engagement. If you don’t like them, by all means and Godspeed, this not being a negotiation, go find some other man to fuck. My life, on my terms, by my rules, Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense.

And I know there’s a price to pay, nothing worth having is ever free. Meanwhile I savor the sheer gorgeous beauty of every day. Almost continually I discover something new and dazzling here in this greatest of cities, in the unmapped landscapes of the soul, in the wonder that is the male body. I don’t have sex nearly as often as people believe – call it the marriage penalty – when I do, it tends to be spectacular. If it’s public, about even odds there, likely something more, a spectacle. Think theatricality with a chemical booster shot.

Some people treat sex as mystical, a sacrament of sorts, or in the inverse as a form of statistics, almost an athletic competition; this number of loads taken or given, that figure of inches, yards or nautical miles of dick they’ve had. I don’t, nor need to after having won a competition like that decisively, but mainly because numbers don’t matter. The wonder of male flesh, of another body as near as can be, mine in that moment as completely as mine is his, I find always fresh, a new form of beauty under heaven, unique. No two are alike. Once is usually it for me; I don’t as a rule fuck my friends, or befriend my fucks.

But enough philosophy, let’s get to the fucking, shall we?

Saturday's man and myself wound things up by pounding ass after extended mutual chem piss swap, some of which somehow leaked all over the rubber sheets; thought I'd seen it all, done it all, but nope, never been fucked in a puddle of the warm chempiss I’d just fucked into a guy. It was glorious. So the weekend was already a success halfway through, new things discovered after decades of man on man sex, fifteen years or so of them raw in New York. You’d think no debauchery could possibly be new. I went home, crawled into bed with my husband, to sleep and with luck to dream.

Sunday dawned in quiet contentment, bright blue air as far as the eye could see, the metropolis a silver field, steel flames under the new sun. I had a date, if that’s the right word, one I expected to be a matter of some delicacy; the man in question a lovely human being in my brief experience, nonetheless a new acquaintance made in unfortunate circumstances. I’d see him that afternoon, and to be entirely honest, had no idea of what to expect. Started out haltingly, a bit awkward as we sniffed each other out; so to break the ice and because it’s what’s done, we helped ourselves to what seems to be the illicit refreshment of choice these days.

Slammed crystal meth, that is. Astonishing really how widespread the practice is these days in greater pigdom.

Slamming crystal two days in a row is not normal for me, let alone habitual; but given the perceived awkwardness (likely extant only in my head), not a bad way to move things along. By experience the first rush is hole-with-ears time for yours truly; my host meanwhile had or rather has cheekbones like something carved on Olympus, attractiveness factor high and definitely well within fuckable range, so I’d probably blow him, a little of this, a helping of that, we’d fuck for a while and then (as it ever goes) chat about the world at large. These things do have a certain established and comforting routine. Meanwhile, let me go suck that dick.

Wrong.

What few people know and only slightly more deduce from my carefully crafted public presence is this: there's a part of me that wants to shed the glittering façade, take a breather from the effort at least occasionally, and morph from dom to sub. It almost never happens; believe me, I’ve tried. In the shadow of my public front, secure behind the confident exercise of command, there’s a little boy with the scars of having been hurt a few times too many. He may have become an adult, grown that hard protective shell, polished it into a splendid distraction, it remains heavy. The right man could break through possibly, be a dom to the sub that’s in here somewhere, make the little boy feel safe. I wasn’t even sure what that would feel like, look like, just that I wanted it.

Good thing then that blowjobs aren’t apparently a particular talent. But over there are some restraints. Why not give it a go, role play time? Say, daddy/boy. Daddy I can’t tolerate, having lost my father as a child; all my masculinity wasn’t learned by paternal example, it was created by will on a foundation of pain. But something like a daddy, yes.

And so the games began; as a guest, I tend to oblige my host. Good manners aren’t optional in my world, and very much include ‘your house, your rules’, as binding in palaces as it is in tar shacks. Games meanwhile are games, that I find them a bit silly is no reason not to observe basic decorum.

Decorum in this case translating as lying tied up on a bed, legs suspended in the air, ankles secured by rope. A collar around my neck too, while he became Sir and I was designated to play Sir’s boy, one expected to be humble and obedient; not the arrogant pretty boy of noble birth, by right the inevitable center of attention in flashy clothes and the this-world-is-mine walk you need on the runways of Milan or London. Hard to swagger down much of anything when your ankles are tied halfway to the ceiling.

So there I was naked and bound, helpless and high, and halleluia, about to get my tail done. I’d liked him from the first meeting, mind you, sex was on the agenda, and so far, we were in unusual but still familiar terrain. It was a game, right, playing pretend?

And then something clicked, as if a switch had been flipped. It wasn’t a game or even play, required not acting, but becoming. I’d get fucked either way, but what if I gave in and went to that place he was leading us to? Surrendered to him? Could I trust him?

On pure instinct, I did. I became that boy, was that boy, wanted to be nothing but that boy, his boy, to visit for a while in a simpler world ruled by a will stronger and gentler than my own, to accept that will eclipsing mine. To give up control, because doing so was safe. The desire alone was intensely erotic, powerfully seductive, and where the mind goes, the body must follow. Into submission, not by coercion, by the greater power of desire.

Understanding came what being used really means, serving as the vehicle of another man’s pleasure. Being used requires being chosen. It is the immense thrill of giving pleasure.

Understanding came also that surrender is an embrace, not a defeat. It was a tender embrace, and he was ready. His mouth came down, breathed into mine, back and forth, breathing together as one linked organism. God gave life to Adam by the same act. His breath flowed into my lungs as his body was already penetrating mine, hard flesh gently probing, easing in, slowly going deeper and deeper still; less intercourse than taking possession. And I wanted to be taken, needed to be taken; no matter that he’s huge, and it hurt, for a while; the flavor of hurt the language terms sublime to distinguish it from pain. This was not bondage, degradation or duress; it was liberation. Tied up, shackled, I was free.

The gentleness of the act, the trust he asked for and protection he promised were overwhelming fact, something primal, elements of a hierarchy extant in half-forgotten memories of an older, feudal age of man, Droit du Seigneur. That thing I’d wanted for so long.

Call it fucking if you will, just know that the word is insufficient, too shallow, properly attached to the powerful man writing this; the boy is a different, gentler creature, was glad to know that use gave purpose, rendering a grateful tribute for the tender kindness of it all, led gently to a place he didn’t know. Not just an effect of the indescribable sensation of this living, breathing man, vital and alive on top of and inside me; he knew what I wanted, desperately needed, better than I knew myself. I gave him pleasure, I hope, he gave that scared little boy deep in me an opportunity to come out in the light of day. Not humiliation, but humbling? Absolutely.

I know that he climaxed, not whether he did so in me. One can only hope; it would be small payment for an experience beyond price.