Bondage always implies domination, but not necessarily S/M. Some men like the sweet agony of being tied up and then subjected to a long blow job to which they can respond only with groans; or to having their body licked and caressed until they’re mad with pleasure; or to being fucked in the mouth or in the ass while they writhe, unable to do anything to stop the action. Other men prefer being the dominator. They like nothing better than to handcuff their partner or tie him tightly to the bedpost or bed board to feel complete control over him; the domination can then be teasing, gentle, or rough. When it is a part of S/M sex, bondage is an extreme dramatization of the master- slave relationship: The master is in such total control that obedience is no longer an issue. The thrill for the slave comes from his being completely dependent on the master (and the complete trust this dependence signifies). What to use in bondage? Women and some men prefer softer ties—silk, satin, chamois, any material that is completely pleasurable to the touch. Others prefer leather thongs and wear them wrapped around their neck (or a dog collar) when they go out at night, as advertisement and inducement. Still others use anything handy— telephone and electrical wiring, bedsheets, towels, metal and plastic police restraints—just as long as it fits into the roles being played. The biggest turn-on, and conversely the biggest problem, in bondage is control— and the lack of it. While the master’s control is crucial and indeed desirable to some degree, the exact degree of control ought to be decided upon in advance by both par- ties. This will keep the bondage a sexual turn-on and keep it from becoming a dangerous, frightening experience.
There’s a character in War and Peace who never realizes how beautiful she is. Her most dazzling attribute is her glance, her wonderful spiritual eyes, but when she studies herself in the mirror, her eyes go dead. She becomes rigid and disapproving—and she remains in ignorance of what everyone else knows, that she is the woman with the beautiful eyes. Many people fail to perceive their looks clearly. We all carry around in our heads a sketch, if not a finished painting, of how we appear, and too often the sketch is unflattering. Sometimes the sketch may be redrawn along more attractive lines if we’ve been cruised heavily in the streets. But the next time we are ignored or rejected, the sketch turns into a caricature. Not everyone goes through these agonizing fluctuations in self-esteem about his body, but there’s bound to be some correlation between the way people react to your body and the way you regard it. If everyone tells you that you look terrific, you’ll begin to believe it — at least until the next time you face a mirror or have to choose some clothes or decide whether to grow a goatee.
The HIV is transmitted by “body fluids.” The fluids are blood, semen, and (to a lesser extent) saliva. It is absolutely certain that the HIV can be trans- mitted by blood, mostly ass-fucking. It is less certain to what extent semen (or precome) ingested during oral sex can transmit enough of the virus to cause infection.
Piercing body parts has a long history. For example, Caesar ’s bodyguards were said to have worn nipple rings as a sign of their virility. In ancient America, the Maya and other cultures practiced ritual piercing. Sculptures show cords studded with thorns being passed through the tongue or penis. This was a religious rite related both to fertility and penitence. Seventeenth-century buccaneers often pierced their ears and wore a gold piece, sometimes a coin taken from the treasure hold of some hapless galleon that had fallen captive. Each earring commemorated a ship the pirates had helped capture. German U-boat sailors during World War I also marked their “kills” in this fashion. Piercing is but one form (albeit the most common) of body decoration, a practice that also includes tattooing, scarification, and more lately, branding. Devotees of piercing explain that it is like tattooing, whose practitioners treat the human body as a canvas upon which colorful art is etched. In piercing, the human body serves as an armature to which metal sculpture is attached.
At some point in almost every gay encounter someone will probably offer his partner a blowjob. This is nothing more or less than sucking cock, not as foreplay, but as a complete sexual act, including orgasm. The gay blowjob is naturally the preferred method for quickies or when there is a danger of discovery, but its attractions are by no means merely functional. As a prelude to anal intercourse, as the same in the duet of soixante-neuf (see Sixty-Nining), a good blowjob (which despite its name does not require blowing) is the ideal technique. Until recently in many European countries, blow jobs were virtually unheard of between men and considered demeaning—they were performed only by women and usually only prostitutes. In the older and non-Judeo-Christian cultures of the East and in societies of Asia, Africa, and South America, blowjobs are acceptable for everyone regardless of gender. Cleopatra of Egypt, for instance, is reputed to have sucked off one hundred Roman noblemen in Rome in one night, and a thousand Roman soldiers back home, but this is probably exaggerated. It’s difficult to say how it happened, exactly, but the United States has become the blowjob capital of the world: Men from all over the world vacation here, often traveling across the country to experience the superb technical prowess of American cocksuckers. The gay blowjob is also the preferred and sometimes the only method of sexual contact of some men. Guys otherwise indifferent and even hostile to gay sex will, on occasion and in the right mood, eagerly look for or at least accept a blowjob from a gay man.
A good blowjob should be a pleasure rather than a task. And it can be pleasurable for the one sucking as well as for the one being sucked. Few who have experienced the subtle yet complete control of another’s body and pleasure through his cock, and the thrill of carefully gliding that cock and that man to sexual fulfillment, consider the experience “demeaning”—or “passive.”
Perhaps no other word in the area of human behavior is used with such imprecision. First let’s talk about what bisexuality does not mean. In the classical culture of ancient Greece and Rome, many adult men were bisexual in that they were married to women and had adolescent boys as lovers. This arrangement was probably responsible for some of the great epic and lyric poetry of Hellenic times. There was always an age difference between the males, and the older man had to play the “active” and “masculine” role in intercourse. If he wanted to play the “passive” or “feminine” role (he wanted to get fucked), he became an object of ridicule. This kind of sexual arrangement is generally considered pederasty (sex with adolescents) and should not be confused with the sort of bisexuality we want to discuss. Similarly, we’re not talking about sex between men who are normally heterosexual but because of sexual deprivation (in prison, say) turn to one another. Nor would we call a man bisexual who has sex exclusively with men although he is capable of great emotional intimacy with women. We do not subscribe to Freud’s theory of bisexuality, that everyone is bisexual at birth but at a certain point is unconsciously forced to choose either heterosexuality or homosexuality. Freud, like many of his age and culture, believed that the only correct choice was heterosexuality.
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Huh! What’s going on here? It’s “bear code,” a highly developed lexicon of the personal and physical characteristics of a gay man who identifies as a “bear.” The “bear movement” began in the mid-1980s as a rebellion against the dominant gay culture, which overwhelmingly idolized chiseled gym bodies as the standard of gay male beauty. Trim, neat, and well-styled haircuts characterized the most visible gay men then—and now—while the predominant gay body, as featured in gay magazines and in porn videos, displayed full heads of hair, a neat little bush of pubic hair above the cock (with balls shaved), but no hair at all on the chest, back, or legs. An unshaven chest or back, an evident tan line, or love handles were viewed by many gay men as signs that one simply didn’t care about one’s appearance.
In the “good old days” (i.e., a few decades ago) before the AIDS crisis, no visit to another city was complete without checking out its best-known “tubs”—Denver’s Ball Park, Beverly Hills’ Club 8709, and San Francisco’s Ritch Street Baths were the equivalents of the Rockies, the Hollywood sign, and the Golden Gate Bridge as must-see spots. Baths or bathhouses (known in Europe as saunas) were one of the most popular meeting places for gay hunks, and one of the few places where gay sex contacts were, if not guaranteed, at least expected. Which was pretty much their undoing. During the mideighties, political forces both within and outside the gay community decided that bathhouses were loci of unsafe gay sex contacts. Compromises were attempted in some cities: Literature about AIDS was strewn all over the bathhouses’ public areas, and machines selling condoms and spermicidal lotions were placed next to those selling Dr Pepper and Sprite.
In a small town there may be only one gay bar. If you go to it, you’re making an open declaration of your homosexuality. The straight townspeople may see you entering, and the gay clientele will immediately recognize you. The bar itself will probably be more chummy than sexual. There will be a regular crowd night after night, joking and socializing, and the atmosphere is likely to be warm, permissive, and lively. In smaller towns and cities there may only be one bar catering to gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transgendered people. continue reading…
Gay bareback fucking without a condom – is the single most dangerous gay sex contacts there is (see Dangerous Sex). As a method of sexual gratification, it’s as old as recorded history. Until the arrival of AIDS, gay men never used condoms when fucking. In fact, pulling out before you came was considered rude. Until the mid-1980s, condoms were deemed kinky, a sex toy among gay men (see Condoms). The AIDS epidemic caused a change in our way of having sex. As of December 2000, 775,000 people in the United States had been diagnosed with AIDS (the figure for HIV disease is much higher). One-half million have died (see HIV Disease). The worldwide statistics are even more alarming. Since we know so much about the transmission of the virus, fucking someone without a condom is equivalent to two men playing Russian roulette with each other. Younger men seem to be more attracted to barebacking. Perhaps these risk-taking men haven’t watched the slow death of lovers and friends after such gay sex contacts. For them, AIDS is history, like their learning about the Vietnam War. It’s simply not in their experience, as it is for an older generation of gay men. That’s too bad, because it’s a statistical certainty that some of them are going to pay a price — the diagnosis of HIV disease. It would be a mistake, however, to look at barebacking only from a moral perspective. Recent research informs us that emotional problems influence a gay man’s sexual behavior, including his contribution in transmitting the HIV. Depression is the main culprit. Gay men who are depressed, including both acute and chronic depression, are far more likely to participate in unsafe sex (see Depression; Safe Sex). Men with impulsive personalities, especially excitement seekers, are another category of psychologically impaired gay men. They generally describe themselves as “spontaneous,” a claim that is untrue. A man who is spontaneous can make voluntary choices about his behavior; an impulsive man cannot. Both depression and impulsiveness can be effectively treated by both medication and psychotherapy. If you have a friend who is endangering his life by barebacking, ask yourself whether psychological problems might be the cause of these gay sex contacts. continue reading…