A Queer Story
Part 1: Reflections on the Asshole

(Part 1 of a 6 part story)

I had not drawn any purposeful pleasure from it for twenty years. The last time I let someone enter had been over ten years ago, and this was a sacrifice made in the name of love. In the summer of 2006, other than the obligatory wiping that occurred two or three times a day, my asshole was basically a stranger to me. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I saw it. Since some experimentation during adolescence and the aforementioned love sacrifice, ours had been a very utilitarian, “exit only” sort of affair. I never imagined we’d reconnect in any extraordinary way, but as I would soon learn, crisis does indeed bring you closer.

The company I was working for at the time had sent me across the border to Montreal with the purpose of exploring a potential opportunity. Montreal in the summer is a delight, especially when your employer has rented you a luxurious condo in old city. On a Friday night, before heading out for dinner, I filled the huge spa tub and hopped in for a relaxing soak. I took note that my nails needed trimming and faced the alarming truth that age can bring hair to places you’d rather it didn’t. It was in this superbly relaxed inspection that my fingers happened upon my anus only to discover that something wasn’t quite right. The skin there felt thick and sort of bumpy, not at all the way I remembered it.

Jumping out of the tub, I ran to the bathroom mirror and contorted myself in such a way that I might be afforded a good look at the area of concern. No such look was possible, I soon concluded, without at least another decade of yoga or an undesired dislocation of one or more joints. Not to be thwarted, I grabbed a small mirror from my travel bag and headed back to the brightly lit bathroom. I hoisted my left leg onto the countertop, further aided the spread of cheeks with my right hand, positioned the mirror with my left and bent forward for the view. It was hideous. Rounded, irregular, fleshy growths of varying size adorned what I’d thought I so carefully guarded. Recognizing that these looked much like the genital warts which I’d seen on posters at my local STD clinic, I had two immediate questions: Why did I have genital warts on my asshole? And would these come to grace my dick as well? I stood in that peculiar position, staring at my ugly anus several times that weekend before finally calling on Monday for an appointment with my dermatologist upon arriving back in the states.

I considered myself well-educated in the arena of sexually transmitted diseases. As a very sexually active gay man who came of age during the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, I had two absolute rules governing the nitty-gritty of my sexual behavior: 1) Never take a cock (shrouded or not) up the ass. 2) Never let a guy cum in your mouth. Not for a moment did I believe these rules were armor enough against the realities of transmitted microscopic threat. So far, I’d already suffered the humiliation of crabs, the misery of syphilis, and the burrowing of scabies (this last one not even requiring direct contact). And I knew only too well that genital warts, herpes, hepatitis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and HIV were always possibilities. I accepted that while these microbial realities existed, so did my endless, raging appetite. Abstinence seemed a fate worse than death, and the very idea of oral sex with condoms seemed somehow an affront to all that was pleasurable in the act. I remained satisfied to practice my version of risk management. In short, I willfully gambled. With the exception of HIV, I understood that most of these infections could be cured outright (at best) or well controlled (at least). The consensus seemed to be that HIV was passed most efficiently to the recipient of unprotected anal sex, and most of the literature suggested a very minimal risk was involved in giving oral sex, especially if ejaculation didn’t occur in the mouth. My hope was that my two steadfast rules would protect me from a good portion of potential infections, most especially the big HIV. Twenty years and several hundred partners into my gamble, I was still testing negative —an enormous relief each and every time.

My dermatologist, a woman precisely half my physical size, asked me to lay face down on the exam table. An intern spread my ass cheeks and held them askew while she examined my anus with a combination of eyes and fingers. Cheeks returned, I came up to a normal sitting position and listened to the diagnosis. She told me the structures in question were called condyloma (a.k.a. warts) and were caused by infection of the area’s epithelium with one of the many strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) known to cause such growths on the genital and perianal regions. After this matter-of-fact delivery, she changed her tone to that of a sour, forty year old virgin and did all but wave her finger as she interjected her very assuming opinion.

“This is yet another reason why you shouldn’t have intercourse without a condom. You know, most cases could be avoided if people would use them.”

“Thanks for the warning, doctor, and while I hate to disappoint you, I haven’t had a penis so much as hover around my anus for over ten years.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s generally how this happens.”

I was almost shocked by the dismissive tone and insulted into aggravated silence by the fact that she clearly didn’t believe me. I remained silent while she asked me again to position myself on the exam table so that she could access my condyloma bejeweled, presumably penis-hungry asshole. A solution was applied which caused some burning. This, I was told, would destroy some of the condyloma, and indeed, after the solution sat for some time, she clipped some of the withering structures painlessly away before instructing me to get dressed and exiting the exam room. When she returned I was handed a prescription for a cream called Aldara and instructed to apply it to my anus every other night before bed until she saw me again in four weeks. The cream, she explained, would activate an immune response in the area and possibly stem the growth of additional condyloma.

“But what about the ones that are already there?”

“Well, we’ll talk more about those options next visit. The good news is that most of these infections clear completely within about two years. For right now, I just want you to treat with the Aldara, and please be careful out there. It’s a good idea to abstain for now, especially from anal sex, so you don’t risk spreading the infection.”

“Doctor, I wasn’t being dishonest when I told you I’ve had no receptive anal intercourse. If these warts were on my genitalia, I wouldn’t be so surprised, but my anus has seen no genital contact, I swear.”

Again the tone and eyes of doubt. “Well you picked it up from somewhere, and there are strains of the virus which seem to favor the perianal region.”

“Could I have acquired it ten years ago?”

“That’s super unlikely. There is an incubation period, but it’s a couple years max. Most people clear it on their own in that same time. The majority never even develop the condyloma, but a certain percentage do.”

“Will it spread to my genitals?”

“Usually it’s one or the other, unless of course you pick up a strain favoring the genitals.”
There was a kind of emphasis placed on this last utterance which pissed me off to no end. While I could detect in the mix a genuine concern with my health, the overwhelming note was judgment, and it smacked of the assumption that gay men were reckless vectors of disease. Was I angry because a medical professional seemed in the sway of a gross cultural stereotype, or was I angry because I felt the stereotype, like all, had some basis in fact? Maybe I was pissed off at the biological reality that sex can lead to illness, even death?

I filled the Aldara prescription at my pharmacy and was hit with a co-payment that nearly resulted in my fainting. Every other day for four weeks, I applied the most expensive skin cream known to man over every square inch of my anus. I had no sex of any kind. I kept appraising the situation using the small travel mirror which I now kept handy. After four weeks, my asshole looked neither better nor worse, and I really didn’t know what direction would be embarked upon next. I felt aesthetically repulsive, even though no one could see the condyloma unless they spread my ass cheeks and zoomed in for a look. Would I have to bear this unsightly curse for very much longer?

read Part 2: More Than a Woman's Burden

by R.H.K, a man in Philadelphia, PA, age 38