I enjoy being caressed,
the feeling of fingertips over my body —
my back, my waist, the soles of my feet,
between the firmness of my glutes
and my sex.

I enjoy feeling the pressure of a body,
gentle, without affliction,
holding itself just before the pain.

I enjoy pressing my skin against theirs,
sharing temperatures,
like the nursing of a calf.

I enjoy the taste of raw flesh,
the open air,
and naked laughter.

—

Vanity implies some sort of void
a lack of reality,
From the Latin vanitas,
it presupposes a hollow—
an emptiness within.

A space of possibility,
a vacancy
behind the shimmer of illusion.

They conjure up the emptiness inside me,
paint with names, colors and warmth
the face behind the veil.
I become the vessel of their longing.

And I, with them,
spin my own illusion,
chase my own red thread.

Sex can be
a deeply solitary act.

Vanity also means “the perishability of worldly things”.

—

Vanity also means to submit.
Tell me who I am, tell me what to do.
Surrendering to the desire of the other,
to be possessed by their gesture.

And then—
to buck,
to resist,
to rear up,
to overturn it all.

I do not wish to be tamed.

Shine on me,
and I will reflect back
all that my body rejects.

—

There’s something about the edge—
the threshold between one state and another.
Surrendering.
Barebacking.

The vulnerable—
the possibility of harm,
of contamination,
of pressure blooming into bruises,
of the other becoming necessary.

The sodomitical vertigo
of offering my flesh to the Great Other.

It’s a bit addictive,
to shatter the glass of illusion
and inhale its smoke.

…it’s led me to extreme places.
I’m sure you can imagine.

—

But what I truly enjoy is something else.

There is a poem by Ioshua that writes:
He told me: do whatever you want
and I cared for him.

I find it tender,
I find it a kind of tenderness that might have to do with love,
but mostly with play and childish roughness.
A stage between two foreign bodies, often strangers to each other,
that even though it could give in to the violence of the world
–because the world is filled by abuse that tries to penetrate us from every direction–
makes an effort not to.

I underline effort because it doesn’t always work,
–We are creatures drawn to pain–

and because penetrations can be thoroughly enjoyed, lol.

Conrado.