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Books and Bareback Love

Jonathan Seipp

    I read so few books that when I finish one I feel queasy. It’s like I watched something die when I could have done more to help it.
    I buy a lot of them, I’m just the sort of person who takes months to finish a book. In my dorm room, scattered amongst the bookcases there are dozens of novels containing bookmarks in various positions. When I look at those novels I meet the prospect of an undiscovered country. I would hate to wake up one day and look at my bookshelf like a map with all its blank spaces filled in. I feel weird when I think about it. In truth, I can’t tell if my behavior makes me a sort of person or if it makes me a freak. Over time I’ve come to look at people as beings comprised of kinds. That makes it easier to assume I belong somewhere, even if it isn’t here.
    If I’m the kind of guy who only finishes a book every few months, I’m also the sort who has anonymous sex with other men. Tonight is particularly indicative of my kind because I’ve just done both.
    He was ten years older than me. He lived by himself in a townhouse with no furniture. The walls were dark and his bedroom floor was covered with wrinkled dress-pants. When I asked him what he wanted to do he said he wanted to give me whatever it would take to get me back again. That might have bothered me, but I was young and attractive and he was past his prime. I was used to it: I had done this sort of thing a lot.
    The floor was populated by self-help books about becoming a successful realtor. As he pulled me onto the bed, he didn’t turn on the lights so the gaudy covers were hard to read.
    The sex was fairly easy. I thought he’d be overly aggressive but he wasn’t. He kept his lips open the whole time so I would kiss him. It made him look like a fish. As he began to undo my pants I noticed that his lube wasn’t meant for condoms. Most people aren’t scared of HIV like they used to be but I was. As I silently resolved to only bottom if he wore a condom I knew that if he bottomed I wouldn’t want a condom either.
    That was exactly what he wanted. In the heat of it all I told myself that I probably already had HIV. This time wouldn’t make a difference. He felt amazing and it all seemed to matter less while we were doing it.
    Afterwards he looked at me the way they usually do. It was the same look I had given my ex-boyfriend the first time he didn’t use a condom: guilt festering into loneliness. I sat up. As I picked up my pants I saw a used copy of How to Make Your Up-Turn in a Down-Turn World.
    He asked me to save his number. I nodded, but I’d already decided to never see him again. I wondered if his silence meant that he could sense the pity I felt when I looked around his apartment. He’d be insulted if he knew that I had sex with men like him to see how lonely this lifestyle would become. Stepping outside, I wondered if he used to do the same thing.
    As I left his apartment I felt an intense urge to finish reading my books. I deleted his number and when I got back to my place I picked out a book and ordered a pizza on my cell-phone.
    Earlier that day the phone had awoken me from a nightmare. I don’t even remember the dream. I missed being able to wake up from a nightmare and put my arm around my ex-boyfriend while he slept. All my nightmares were about being forgotten, so doing that always made me feel better. In the past four weeks I’d had a nightmare almost every night.
    I started to read. After two hours, I read the last page and I was left with the same emptiness I’d felt when I pulled out of him.
    I looked over my shelves of books. I decided to leave them untouched. It was a fleeting thought that referred to men and book alike. But after two minutes I threw away the pizza box and grabbed another one. I did it because, as any idiot knows, there’s always another book.

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