Dennis Bensie had lived his entire life practicing safe sex in the era of AIDS, so he was shocked to learn about “bug chasers” – people who seek out HIV+ partners to have unprotected sex with.
I’m gay, forty-seven, and single. Sometimes I like to have sex with younger guys.
I met a twenty-three year old guy named Jasper on a gay hookup app called SCRUFF. We chatted on our smart phones for a bit one Sunday night, then decided to meet for a quick drink. I assumed the drink was a mere formality. I had a strong feeling that he and I were going to have sex.
Jasper was well spoken and seemed very comfortable. He told me he worked a retail job downtown.
“What do you do for a living?” Jasper asked me over cocktails.
“I’m work in professional theatre around town,” I told him.
“Cool. What play are you working on right now?”
“I’m doing RENT at the 5th Avenue Theater.”
“Oh wow,” he said. “That’s the play about AIDS.”
“Yes it is,” I replied.
Jasper’s face lit up. “I loved that movie. I took an acting class in college. I’d love to play the part of Angel.”
BEDROOM EYES
The more Jasper and I talked, the more I liked him. I’ve dated all kinds of guys and I found him exceptionally sexy. He seemed to like me, too.
I’m hardly an angel. I used to have lots of anonymous sex in my twenties and thirties. Once I hit my forties, my sex life changed dramatically and I tried to focus on quality. I hoped to find a monogamous LTR some day. Yet when I’m not dating someone, I occasionally indulge in quick, safe hook-ups.
Jasper was about to be my third of only three hook-ups in 2012.
I became completely enamored with the young man in bed. He and I were quite sexually compatible: the right amount of give and take. He was an affectionate and dynamic lover.
I was lying flat on my back and Jasper was sitting upright on top of me. Suddenly he shifted positions and put me inside of him. It felt euphoric, but I wasn’t wearing a condom.
GUILTY
I’d never had sex with a guy without a condom. My generation just didn’t do that. I knew better than to have unsafe sex. The behavior was damnable …but it felt so damn good.
I was kind of mad at Jasper for taking the risk, yet I was too titilated to stop. The sensation of having sex with a man without all that latex was surprisingly pleasurable. The fact that it was so dirty and wrong made it even more sexy.
The sweet, young man and I intensely enjoyed our forbidden moment. Afterwards, we remained silent as we cuddled. I was still a little perturbed that we didn’t use a condom, but he gazed into my eyes like he had a schoolgirl crush.
“May I ask what your HIV status is?” he softly asked.
“Oh, you don’t have anything to worry about. I’m HIV-negative —No STDs or anything. I just got tested last March. You’re actually the first guy I’ve had unprotected sex with,” I proclaimed.
“Really? I assumed that because you have an extended belly, that you might be positive and on meds,” Jasper said.
“No …I’m just fat,” I viciously snapped.
That’s about the most horrifying thing a trick has ever said to me.
The tone in my bed changed dramatically. My affectionate lover had turned rude and cold as ice. We were both angry and barely said goodbye as he fled my apartment.
I saw Jasper’s profile on SCRUFF quite often, but I never messages him or saw again.
SAFE
My friend Seth Tankus was a playwriting student at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. He sent me a Facebook invite to the premiere of his senior thesis entitled Safe.
I went to the performance not knowing very much about the subject. It jarred me to learn that Seth’s play was about a phenomenon in the gay community called “bug chasing”: gay men who have sex with HIV infected gay men in hopes of getting infected. It dawned on me in the first fifteen minutes of the play that my trick Jasper was a bug chaser, and he assumed that I was what was referred to in the play as a “gift giver”.
Safe revolves around a young gay man named Sean and his sexual encounters with an older HIV-positive man named Rob. My mind raced with every line of the drama. I expected to see a little bit of myself in forty-something Rob. But it was a line of Sean’s that took my breath away:
“Sometimes I wish I could get it so that I could breathe.
Like… I can fuck whoever I want… whenever I want…
and I don’t have to worry about it at all because I have
it already. I can get AIDS and I can move on with my
life.”
The character of Sean was naive. He wouldn’t have even been born yet when three of my friends died of AIDS. I sat in my uncomfortable theater seat ironically listening to Safe and feeling vulnerable and damaged.
I was also ashamed of myself, because I identified with the bug chaser.
BARE(BACK) EMOTIONS
When I was young, I experienced a lot of confusion and self-loathing. Like the character, I felt like I just wanted to get AIDS and get it over with. Yet it wasn’t because I thought a condom was an inconvenience: I thought I deserved to die because I was gay. AIDS was a fag’s punishment. I spent the peak years of my sexuality afraid of getting infected and sentenced to die.
Yet, despite all my emotional conflicts, I always managed to practice safe sex …until Jasper. Although quite twisted, he had given me a gift: my first sensation of unprotected sex at forty-seven years old. I felt guilty because I loved it and never forgot how good it felt. I had fantasized every day about fucking a man without a condom since the night we met.
Sitting in the car by myself after the play, I continued thinking like the bug chaser in the play. The character was right: HIV and AIDS were not the death sentence they once were. I see a lot of HIV-positive guys on SCRUFF. They have a brotherhood all their own and there’s excellent care out there for those who need it.
But that’s no excuse for me to not protect myself. Thankfully, my attitude had changed over the years and I found a lot to live for. I was no longer ashamed of being gay.
I realized that a forty minute long play by my friend, Seth, had taught me a lesson. What happened between Jasper and I was wrong. I knew I had to go back to my original practice of playing safe and using a condom every time I had anal intercourse. I still hoped to build a relationship with a partner where it would be safe to have unprotected sex.
>Maybe someday I’ll get married.
GRADUATION
I ran into Seth a few weeks before his graduation from Cornish College of the Arts. I asked my friend, the playwright, the obvious question.
“I loved your play, Seth. I don’t mean to be rude, but are you …a bug chaser?”
He assured me that he’s HIV-negative and plans to stay that way.
“I try not to be too judgmental, but I wrote the play to give a voice to the whole concept of HIV and bug chasing. It really happens, you know.”
“I’m sure it does,” I said quietly.
I was very proud of Seth when he told me he got an A on Safe.
{To learn more about Seth Tankus’s play Safe or any of his politically – plays, visit him on his Facebook fan page or at: http://stankusloves2writeplays.blogspot.com}
Photo: HIV-infected T-Cell courtesy of Flickr/NIAID