Or, how I didn’t become HIV-positive

This article by Kevin Moroso was originally published in Xtra Magazine as part of the Filling Station column.

So where did I leave off with my story about sleeping with a guy who had an undetectable viral load? Oh right, discovering how good sex was topping bareback.

Well, that continued and I discovered a few more things about myself, including that I really enjoy kink, especially domination-submission role play. I’ll leave how I got into that for another time, but it opened me up to a whole new world of sex play.

A few months later, I came across a kinky sub boy on a gay hookup app that I’ll name Kirk. Kirk was a younger guy, in his early 20s, and definitely knew his way around the Vancouver fetish scene — rubber, leather, piss, masochism, and of course he was very dedicated to barebacking as a bottom. There was only one problem: he was HIV-negative.

I’d been trying to stick to guys who were undetectable, since I could dip my dick in them without having to worry, but I’ll admit my dick was in the driver’s seat. If a guy was hot enough but HIV-negative, I resorted to the incredibly safe (read: notoriously unreliable) method of asking a guy when he was last tested.

We flirted for several weeks online, and by flirt of course I mean we talked dirty. How I was going to shove my used underwear in his mouth to gag him. How I was going to get him down on his knees and throat fuck him. How I was going to tie him up and flog his ass until it was a nice shade of bright pink.

And of course how I was going to pound his hole senseless and use him as my little cum dump.

You know, romantic stuff.

We had some trouble making our two schedules work but we finally had some time that would work for both of us over the Christmas holidays. We almost hooked up in the burbs (it turns out our respective families we were spending Christmas with were quite close) but we put it off another couple of days.

On the day we were to finally meet up and get down to business, he messaged me to cancel.

He levelled with me: “Kevin, I hate to cancel, but I was at the bathhouse over the weekend. Things got a little out of hand and I probably went too far. I’m a little worried cuz it wasn’t safe. I think I need to put off having any sex until I get tested and my results come back all clear.”

Needless to say, I thought that was a pretty good reason to cancel.

He told me the date he’d be getting the results back and I actually set a reminder in my calendar to get in touch with him that day.

A couple of weeks later, when that date rolled around, I sent him a message in the morning to wish him good luck.

He told me it’s probably all fine and he wasn’t that worried. A few hours later, I got a message from him: “fuck, I’m positive.”

This was the first time I’d heard from someone who’d just been diagnosed. He knew what this meant, medically speaking. He knew enough HIV-positive guys that he wasn’t freaking out about getting sick or anything. But he was still a wreck.

He was upset with himself. He then said “now I’ll never find a boyfriend.” I assured him that people are a lot more knowledgeable and open-minded than in the past, especially in Vancouver. I also reminded him that he’s into daddies and the fetish scene, a population that is not only less stigmatizing than the average gay but also has a high proportion of guys who are already HIV-positive. I tried to assure him that it will likely have little impact on his dating life.

Not long after receiving this news, I started to realize I just dodged a bullet.

What if Kirk hadn’t told me about his risky weekend at the bathhouse?

What if he hadn’t insisted on waiting until he got his test results back?

I know I probably still would’ve slept with him, no matter what shenanigans he had told me he’d gotten up to. And he would’ve been in the acute infection phase — a million copies of the virus floating around in every millilitre of his rectal fluids, just waiting to find a tiny abrasion on my shaft, or looking to travel into my urethra.

I know the early infection period is when people are at their most infectious. It would’ve been like rolling the dice — and probably only a single six-sided dice.

Kirk saved me. Yes, he’d put himself at risk. Yet he was incredibly responsible — he might not have protected himself but he darn well protected me.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least.

The results of a Vancouver study came out earlier this year on the pooled nucleic acid amplification test, the one Kirk took, with a 10–12 day window period. The study looked at the behaviour and attitudes of guys who had just been diagnosed positive. It showed just how seriously they took their diagnosis, how they immediately altered their sexual behaviour to ensure they didn’t pass on the virus to someone else, and how they wanted the virus to end with them.

We gay guys are a peculiar lot at times. We’re more likely to do drugs. We’re more likely to engage in sex that puts ourselves at risk for STIs, including HIV. Yet, despite all that a guy might do to put himself at risk, some sense of community is strong — self-transcendent values that make us look out for one another.

These values got us through a plague and they seem to still be around, despite the naysayers who think we don’t have that sense of solidarity any longer.

So what happened to Kirk? Three days later he was taking meds — that’s right, diagnosis on a Friday, treatment on the following Monday. Thank our lucky stars we live in British Columbia.

We decided to put sex off. We agreed that we’d hook up when one of two things happened: he became undetectable or I got on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), whichever came first. Ironically, they happened around the same time. I owe Kirk a huge thank you.

Oh, and by the way, the sex was a lot of fun. And yes, his butt cheeks were more red than pink once I was through with him.

He wants to be dominated, but something’s off — and it’s not just my costume

This article by Devon Delacroix was originally published in Xtra Magazine as part of the Hard Labour column.

Should I be wearing a cape? Maybe some sort of tunic with flowing sleeves. I’d be more convincing with long hair, but I didn’t have time to source a wig. Military garb could have worked too and it wouldn’t have been hard to find. Why didn’t I think of that?

Pretty much anything would make me feel more confident right now than my standard jeans and tank top combo. But if it matters to the naked guy kneeling on my bathroom floor, I wouldn’t know. Even if I don’t have the look down, he seems content to believe I’m a merciless cult leader.

He’s probably in his mid-40s, slim with shaggy dark hair and a furry chest. He has a slight accent but I can’t tell where he’s from. He had arrived a few minutes earlier and I’d ordered him to strip. Along with my outfit, the location also feels wrong. Don’t cult initiations usually take place in a wooded glade or the desert, Not a suburban bachelor apartment with a pullout couch and a mildewed shower? Even though I’m having trouble buying the scene, apparently it’s working or him — he’s totally hard.

I’ve done plenty of Dom sessions; teacher/student, daddy/boy, porn producer/reluctant actor. But this is my first cult leader/inductee scene. In the end, Dom sessions are always about introducing some kind of power dynamic to sex. Limits are laid out. Safe words are established. Roles are played. This won’t be that hard.

Even though I know I can handle the Dom element, I’ve done a little research to get some ideas for dialogue. Based on an hour of Googling, his fantasy isn’t totally off-base. Cult leaders nearly always use sex to control their followers and modern-day ones often collect humiliating photos or videos (which is part of today’s scene) for blackmail if their followers try to escape. I’ve got a rough geography for the scene and some bits and pieces of dialogue to use. This isn’t going to be tough — based on his erection, my trick is definitely buying it, despite my less-than-convincing costume and environment.

After letting him kneel in silence for a few minutes, I order him to his feet and usher him into the shower. I turn on the water, making sure the tap is turned all the way to the cold side, and hand him a bar of soap. He starts washing himself down, already shivering under the icy blast. I leave him to squirm under the water for much longer than he needs to get clean, then abruptly turn off the tap and toss him a towel.

Once he’s reasonably dry, I order him out of the shower, guide him to the toilet and lift the seat.

“Now you can piss,” I say.

He’d indicated observed urination as one of our cult’s standard humiliation tactics, which probably means he’s pee shy. He stands holding his dick, still slightly erect despite five minutes in a cold shower. After a minute or so he finally gets a tiny stream going.

“Look me in the eye,” I bark.

He turns his head to me nervously, which immediately stops the flow of urine. I can tell it’s hard for him. But I maintain eye contact and finally, after a couple of minutes pass, he’s able to start again. Once it seems like he’s done, I instruct him to follow me out of the bathroom. Standing in the centre of the apartment, I grab his balls and squeeze gently.

“So,” I say. “You want to join us.”

“Yes,” he says, softly.

“And you understand that total loyalty is required.”

“Yes.”

“So today we will perform some tests. Depending on how well you do, you might be admitted,” I say. “You can refuse anything you don’t want to do. But that counts against you. If you don’t get a high enough score today, you’ll have to come back again. Understand?”

He nods obediently.

“Good,” I say. “Back on your knees.”

Once he’s on the ground I walk around behind him and start rifling through my bag to retrieve my camera and a small black dildo. I return and stand  in front of him, then order him to open his mouth and slide the dildo in.

“All right,” I say. “Now we begin the collection process. Any images I take will immediately go to your family and your boss if you decide to leave the sect. Do you understand?”

He nods continues starts slowly sucking the dildo as I snap pictures. He’s staring at the floor, but I instruct him to look into the camera. I don’t know if he’ll want me to send him the pics after, but we might as well make them convincing.

“That’s good,” I say. “Suck that dildo and . . . uh . . . show me how much you want to be in my cult.”

As a general rule with role-play, if you want your partner to be convinced of the scene, you need to first convince yourself. Right now, I’m not convinced at all. It’s a Dom scene for sure, but the whole cult leader/inductee thing doesn’t feel like it’s playing. I’m being too soft somehow.

Or maybe too harsh? How exactly do cult leaders treat potential followers? Aren’t they really jovial and open at the beginning? Am I doing this all wrong? Should I have done more research? Whether or not I’m convinced, it seems to be working for my client. He’s behaving meekly, doing exactly as he’s told. Maybe it’s all going better than I think it is. But now I’m worried I’m going to psych myself out and fuck the whole thing up.

He’s made his limits clear: no marks, no foot play, no scat. And he’s given me a fairly detailed back-story. So why am I doing so badly? Maybe I just need to switch things up. I order him to his feet and guide him to the pullout couch where I position him with his ass in the air.

“Okay, now take the dildo out of your mouth and put it in your ass.”

“May I have some lube sir?”

“Yes,” I say. “But you lose points with lube. Are you sure you want it?”

“Yes sir,” he says, slightly more assertive than he’s been up until now.

I grab a bottle from my bag, squirt a bit onto his hole and rub it in with the tip of my finger. He begins fucking himself slowly with the dildo, moaning each time it goes in. I need to start prepping to fuck him, so I quietly drop my jeans, remove my tank top and start playing with my dick to get it hard.

“Fuck yourself harder if you want to get more points.”

He continues, faster, but doesn’t seem any more enthusiastic.Maybe he isn’t enjoying this as much as I think he is. Is he just going through the motions because he’s here and he’s too polite to tell me I’m not doing a good job? Shake it off. Thinking about this shit isn’t going to help me now. I close my eyes and keep stroking myself.

Once I’m hard enough to penetrate him, I move behind him, pull the dildo out of his ass and hang it in front of his open mouth.

“Are you going to suck this for me?” I say.

He shakes his head.

“You know you lose points if you don’t,” I say.

“Yes sir,” he says, more direct than he’s been since he arrived. “I understand. But I’m not doing that.”

I toss it aside and slide a finger into his ass, which is still very tight, despite the fact he’s been fucking himself. I begin slowly easing it in and out of him, trying to get him to relax, but he’s still so tight. Maybe I won’t be able to get in. I try using a second finger to open him up and he moans.

“Are you gonna take my cock?”

“Yes,” he says, returning his previously more passive state.

“If you don’t take it today you definitely won’t pass the test.”

“I understand.”

He seems to be relaxing slightly. Holding his ass open with my fingers, I manage to penetrate him. Pumping slowly in and out, I can already feel my erection subsiding. His ass is like a vice, squeezing all the blood out of my dick.

“You want to join us?” I say.

“Yes!” he yells, as I continue to move in and out.

“You have to prove it to me,” I say. “Show me . . . uh . . . how good you are at getting fucked and then . . . maybe you can join my cult.”

I press my fingers into the space behind my balls to try to keep myself hard. It helps a bit, but I can tell it isn’t going to be long before I’m totally flaccid.

“That’s good,” I say, with a light slap to his ass. “Take that cock and show me you want to be in the cult.”

My lacklustre fuck technique doesn’t seem to matter. After about three minutes he comes and collapses onto the couch, breathing heavily. I slide the condom off and walk to the kitchen sink where I toss it in the garbage can and wash my hands.

After lying silently for a few minutes, he gets up, dresses and exits silently, leaving a stack of bills on the table next to the door. I flop onto the couch. Not exactly a shining moment in my escort career.

I pride myself on giving clients what they want, finding ways to unlock their desires and present fantasy scenes in a way that works for them. He’d probably given me more than enough information to do the job. But somehow, I didn’t manage to pull it off. I didn’t give him what he asked for. But glancing at the puddle of cum next on the sheets next to me, I realize maybe I’ve got it all wrong.

Role-play can heighten a sexual experience by adding a power dynamic to sexual contact. Here though, I think maybe it’s more of a cover, a way to protect himself from having to confront his real desires because they’re too scary. I guess both of us were lying to ourselves about what we were doing today.

I was pretending I was being a good Dom and he was pretending he wanted to get Dommed. But in the end, even though I don’t feel like I gave him what he asked for, maybe I still gave him what he wanted.