risk management

How Scared Must I Be After 10 Seconds of Unprotected Glory Hole ‘Fun’ in a Sex Club?

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Matt Siegel previously wrote about visiting a SoCal sex club for an editorial assignment. In Part 2 today, he shares what happened when he decided to stick around … and enjoy the menu. (It is graphic and includes visual descriptions of sex. Potentially NSFW.)

Why do my gay brothers insist on referring to sex as “play?” I play with children and puppies. Giving a blow job is not some whimsical, innocent action. It is work, that’s why the word “job” is in it. Blow, Hand, Rim—they’re all jobs and I am employed full time in Accounts Receivable.

As part of my dedication to journalistic integrity and ethnography, I choose to take Glen up on his offer to “stay and play” at the sex club. I decide to participate.

In low-risk behavior, of course.

Is anything “low risk,” you ask? Well, name your risk. For me, HIV is the risk I’m trying to avoid. If you’re trying to avoid herpes, Gonorrhea Pearlman (Cheers reference), syphilis, warts, chlamydia—everything is high risk unless you’re in a latex body suit. And then you run the risk of chafing. For all of the ambiguity surrounding the risk levels of various sexual practices between men, can we agree that receptive anal sex without a condom runs the highest risk for contracting HIV? (Fine: Receptive anal sex without a condom while sharing needles runs a higher risk.)

I feel duped. I had not signed up for anal sex. I thought there was an understanding: glory hole = blow job.

The never-ending corridors of sex clubs would be a great place to power walk. Old queens could lace up their Reeboks and head down to the local encounter establishment at 5am for a few laps. I can only troll these corridors so many times, passing the same faces over and over again, without wanting to throw in the cum rag.

I select a man and follow him into the adjoining glory hole.

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I pull my dick out, put it in the hole, and this random goes to town on it. There is a hastily built partition between us so I can kind of see his head bobbing, but mostly look up at the ceiling like I’m at a urinal. He seamlessly transitions from blow job to hand job. Like a child on their first plane ride, my dick is never left unattended. Out of nowhere I feel the warm sensation of my dick in an ass. I do not have a condom on. I look down at the hole and see his ass pushed against it and when everything clicks in my head, I pull my dick out like it’s on fire.

My instinct is to wash my dick off immediately. Is that the “right” thing to do? I’m not sure. I just know I want him off of me. I feel duped. I had not signed up for anal sex. I thought there was an understanding: glory hole = blow job. And if there is going to be some anal going on, there’s usually a pause in between the blow job where they hand you a condom or ask if you wanna fuck them. This man did it all so gracefully. He must have been on roller skates.

I immediately began calling friends to seek reassurance. “You’re fine,” they all told me recounting stories of the many people they had topped without protection. Of course most of my friends have had syphilis two or three times. My concern was HIV. I knew that while it is possible to contract HIV as the inserting partner, it represents, as the Centers for Disease Control says, “substantially less per-act risk” than if I was the receptive partner. Also, the brief duration of the sex means less exposure time. I was in his ass for maybe ten seconds. But what if he had just taken ten loads in his butt right before me? Glen’s words from earlier in the evening rang in my head: I don’t want anyone getting sick on my watch.

I tried not to think about it over the next day and a half. The damage, if any, was done. Or was it? I remembered an HIV counselor telling me about PEP, Post-Exposure Prophylaxis also known as Post-Exposure Prevention. The Center for AIDS Prevention Studies explains on their website there may be a window of opportunity in the first few hours or days after exposure in which the use of Protease inhibitors paired with other HIV drugs may prevent HIV infection. The CDC even recommends PEP for some health care workers after needle-stick injuries and other occupational exposures. So why haven’t you heard of PEP? There is a great deal of controversy regarding their effectiveness and perhaps most compelling, whether the availability of these drugs will lead to an increase in high-risk sexual behavior. A study by the San Francisco PEP Project actually shows a decrease in high-risk sexual behavior after PEP.

PEP is effective up to 72 hours after possible exposure and I was at 48 hours. It was a Sunday and the gay health clinics were closed so I decided to go to the hospital to get the meds. I first explained the entire story, sex club and all, to the leery nurse who snidely responded, “Oh, so you had no idea you were going to have anal sex?”

God, grant me the serenity not to rip this woman’s face off. “That’s right,” I said. “I had no idea.”

After sitting in the waiting room for 90 minutes with a scarf over my mouth and nose (a homeless man had shit his pants), I was able to see the doctor. He told me that they usually reserve these drugs for high-risk exposure, which mine wasn’t. The chances of contracting HIV as an insertive partner were 1 in 1,000, according to his numbers, but he agreed to give me the drugs if I wanted them. How could I not take the medications if there was any chance of contracting HIV? A month of taking 5 pills a day with a few weeks of diarrhea and nausea is surely worth evading a lifetime of being positive.

My 28-day regimen ended a few days ago. I’m infinitely grateful these drugs were available to me. Like a teenage hoodlum going to visit prison for a day, I feel a sense of being scared straight. The first two weeks I was ill. I needed to line my underwear with a ShamWow just to be safe because even the most seemingly innocent fart could turn into a levee break.

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Two of my HIV-positive friends had a bet as to when I would finally crap my pants. They would answer my phone calls: “Did you crap your pants yet?” On top of the physical discomfort, there was the shame I experienced at the hospital when the nurse clearly didn’t believe my story. I felt like just another reckless homo in her eyes or maybe I was just projecting my own shame. I think of this experience as a minute look into what it’s like to live with HIV. Of course I had the luxury of avoiding some of the most torturous emotional aspects.

I didn’t have to live each day waiting for the other shoe to drop, wondering if I would make it to the next milestone. My dear friend, Mark, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and was told he would die in two-to-five years, used to live his life in seemingly mundane milestones. He remembers wondering if he would live to see the 105 Interstate to LAX be completed. The traffic-clogged freeway was finished in 1993. Mark is still here.

I didn’t have to agonize over whether or not to tell loved ones. Even if it’s an easy decision not to tell your family — you don’t want to upset them; you don’t want them to treat you with kid gloves; you don’t want them to abandon you — there is the isolation of braving the disease on your own. It still surprises me how many of my HIV-positive friends withhold their diagnosis from their families regardless of their bond with them. Not wanting to worry mom is the most common reason I hear.

I didn’t have to experience rejection by a romantic or sexual interest due to my HIV status. My HIV-positive friends unanimously agree that their status significantly affects the chances of finding a partner in an already limited pool of suitors. In the mid-90s, a man asked my friend Mark if he was “okay” before they had sex. When Mark pressed the man to elaborate, the man answered, “You know, do you have the Heebie Jeebies.” We laugh about it now, but it’s no different than the well-meaning person who asks a potential partner if he is “clean.” How does that leave the HIV-positive person feeling? Dirty, damaged, and tainted.

I find myself examining the correlation between risk and responsibility. It seems logical that the more responsible one is, the lower the risk of contracting diseases. I own my decision to engage in sex at the sex club. Did the venue itself heighten the risk?

Glen, the manager, says sex club sex is safer.

But, shit, anything could happen to do your dick in a glory hole. Forget diseases, the person on the other side could be waiting with a machete. And then I think about those hot serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and how I would have definitely gone home with him back in the day.

Perhaps there is no such thing as low-risk, anonymous sex. Even if it’s not anonymous, condoms break, people lie. Sex is no game. Don’t call it “play.” Healthy, low-risk sex in 2009 is hard work.

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