Bug Chasers

I was perusing the blogosphere seeing how others are reacting to the shuttle disaster. Not yet (the West Coasters I follow are probably sound asleep). But stuff about the Drudge Report and Rolling Stone mis-reportage on bug chasing has taken me off on a tangent.

One of the interesting things about the internet is that I get to communicate with men into extreme kink. I've chatted with cannibals ("So, are you thinking a big kettle over a fire, or roasted on a spit?"), snuff ("So if you could do a bow hunt with any celebrity as prey, who would top your list?"), mutilation ("But after you've removed his arms and legs, there's not going to be a lot of ways for him to keep up his muscle tone that made him desireable as prey in the first place, right?"), nullo-slavery ("Are the hormones to prevent feminization easily obtained?"), and gift givers and bug chasers.

Gift Givers are gay men who are infected with HIV. They have sexualized the idea of infecting their partners. Their counterparts, bug chasers, sexualize becoming infected with HIV.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think that many, many HIV-positive men have at one time or another, to some extent, fantasized about purposefully infecting someone. And, I think that I'm probably not alone among HIV-negative men--who have a submissive streak, anyway--in that I've had fantasies of being forcibly raped and infected.

*****Note: Refrain from the cautionary emails to me. I have never, and I would never, act out these fantasies in any way that put me at risk of sero-conversion. Read on.*****

But I see chasing and giving as part and parcel of this larger family of extreme kink. The difference is that as far as HIV is concerned within the gay community, there is a depth of experience and horror. When I've raised the issue of giving and chasing while talking, for example, with someone who fantasizes about subjecting a hot body builder to a guillotine, the response has been, "Yo, that's sick. I'm not into that."

Long story short: although there's lots of this going on at the level of fantasy, there is virtually none of it going on at the level of reality. Not to say it never happens. There was a recent news item about a man in Berlin who consensually killed and ate another man, and is now being prosecuted for murder.

As fantasy, it's not difficult to understand where these urges are coming from. Let's begin with something benign and relatively vanila. Let's say you fantasize about shooting your load all over the face of the guy that's sucking your dick. Nothing wrong with that, right? As long as he keeps his eyes closed, ain't nuthin bad gonna happen there. But what's that about? What's running through your head as you're spewing the pearl jam? At some level, it's about dominance. It's hot because you're making him take it, and especially hot because he wants to take it. And perhaps even hotter if he doesn't want to take it, but wouldn't dare refuse you. Or can't refuse you because his hands are cuffed behind his back. He's your whore boy. Your boy toy. You own his sweet ass. He's yours, now wearing your mark. And he craves that submission. Whatever it takes, it's all about your pleasure. He's a thing. He's a hole. He's nothing to you. To do with as you please. To use and throw away.

That's ultimately what snuff can be about. The Top is looking for an extreme of control and domination. The bottom is looking for an extreme of submission, to the point of anihilation.

For men who fear these fantasies, who are tormented by them as by demons, there is danger. Repressed desires have a way of expressing themselves in strange ways. In the aftermath, someone is going to be pounding his head against the floor and asking himself, "What was I thinking?" But of course, it wasn't thinking that was going on.

The best way to avoid this is, of course, to invite your demons out to dance. Cavort with them. Get to know them. Then, they're marching to your commands.

Some of the best sex I've ever had in my life was with Special Guy. So hot. I hated the fact that we were two, I wanted us to be one flesh, to merge completely, to disolve into one another. I couldn't be close enough to him. I wanted to be inside him, as close as I could to him. And, I believe, he felt the same way. One day, when we were on Fire Island, sitting on a deck over-looking the harbor, getting drunk and watching the sunset, we started to talk, tentatively at first, and then with growing confidence, about our Deep Dark fantasies. One of us would describe a scenario, and the other one would respond, "Damn, that's so hot. Listen to this one."

It was intimate, hot, and incredibly healing.

Sex for us was a minefield, as we sero-discordant. We talked about the fact that it would be so hot if we were both 'on the same page.' And talking about it made it okay not to go there.

Dan Savage (http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3903/savage3903.html) is chiding HIV prevention educators who don't take a firm stand against this sort of thing. I guess I'd have to respond with Bill O'Reilly, "I want to go to a gay bathhouse!" The blogger at www.leatheradventures.com agrees. But here's the thing. Do you really think that the guy who is admitting to the HIV prevention educator that he's having fantasies about bug chasing is going to say, "Oh, right! I forgot about that. Thanks, Buddy!" when he's told that HIV is a really bad thing and that those fantasies are bad and wrong? That he's gonna walk out of the little room with two chairs and the condom-pushing posters on the wall never to be troubled by those fantasies again?

I'd say that it's a lot more complicated than that. And, summing it up with, "He must have a death wish" isn't particularly helpful either. Suicidal people want it over relatively quickly. Here's an interesting fact that got stuck in my flypaper mind at some point: before jumping out of a window or off a bridge, a myopic suicide will typically remove his or her glasses.

Here, I guess, is the 'take home message'... It's never ever a good thing to try and bury your fantasies. Or to encourage someone else to do so, under whatever guise. A repressed desire is your worst enemy.




Anyway. The President is getting set to address the nation on the shuttle disaster.

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