From "pozlife:" 

Such a marvelous economy of words. 

-  ·  -

Let me introduce you to my longtime friend John, from Boston. He has a big dick. Very big. He cruises; parks, bars, bushes near bars, even hotel men's rooms on occasion. He gets lucky a lot, and tells me about it later: 

"He was   g o r g e o u s   -- a Spanish or Brazilian boy, said he went to Northeastern. And he had an   e  n  o  r  m  o  u  s    dick. But, OH!  could he suck! 

"How old was he?"  I ask voyeuristically. 

"20.  He wanted me to come in his mouth. I almost did.. 

"You didn't?"  I already know where this is headed, but I go there anyway. It amuses me. 

"No."

"Why not?"  I press. 

"Cuz he might have anything. How the hell do I know what he's got? The tone of John's response strives to be sincere, but I know John. He realizes that his logic kinda skips a track there, but he won't look at why. He lets them suck him, rim him, deep throat him, and he reciprocates (except for rimming), and he pretends there is no danger of "getting what they've got" -- until they want his come. I can never quite get him to tell me what the real reason is that he withholds. At this point our discussion of the tryst always ends. 

I have seen it often in other ex-lovers and casual partners; the guy topping me, while perfectly willing to put me through all sorts of acrobatics on the end of his cock, is curiously passionate about preventing me from keeping his come.  It was always as if expelling their semen into me made them vulnerable to me; as if at the moment of their total release they were in complete surrender, and defenseless. That's exactly what I wanted; indeed, I got it quite regularly from my second to last ex-, Kenny, but he is the ex- exception. 

Semen is powerful, even if only in our minds. Some of the young men from my past who were stingy with their come, were very uncomfortable with power, especially their own -- they had each been raped by an elder when they were very young. Very young. Like six or eight years old. Power for them was inextricably entangled within the concepts of harm, injury, and danger to themselves. 

A scene:

I'm 25, he is in his late teens. He's black and hot as hell. He's got my pelvis clamped between his hands and he's pumping his cock right into the center of my ass, into the center of me. And something is gathering deep inside him, somewhere behind and below his belly button, and he feels it coming and he knows that in just a couple strokes more, that vulnerable center in him is going to make a big connection with that vulnerable center in me, and it's all just too powerful and too scary and he stops it.  He pulls out and shoots his load on the cement floor behind me, in a vacant corner of the Worcester Center parking garage.  It was 1983. 

-  ·  -

I can't say I disagree with Poz's sentiments, but I certainly cannot say that I agree. Maybe it's just his tone; AIDS has made us arbiters over the intimacies of others, and that is clearly sick -- at least it is to me.  Under the badge of some imagined moral authority we presume to insinuate our Pop-culture attitudes into the private sexual activities of gay men. Bah-humbug. I'm not afraid of my come or yours, whether you call it poison or not; and I'm not afraid of your power, nor of mine. I can understand the heat some people feel around the issue of barebacking, but I equally understand the heat felt by aroused guests at a bareback party. 

I might like your body, and I might like you to do some push-ups on me while you hold my ankles by my ears. But if you are going to preach -- or worse yet, if you are going to keep your mouth shut and assent to the preaching of others -- then please do pull out. Then go away, and stay away.  I'd do as well having sex alone.