Last month, I wrote about what a radical space in relation to sex might look like. I ended with the line, 'Who'd have thought a fucking empty, silent space might be the most radical space of all.' For some reason, following on from those thoughts, writing that piece and thinking about a silent, empty space, I started to think about the rooms and the spaces that I remembered having good or great sex in and what the atmosphere that surrounded that good or great sex was like. What does good or great sex feel like, what surrounds good sex?  

"I started to think about the rooms and the spaces that I remembered having good or great sex in and what the atmosphere that surrounded that good or great sex was like."

To clarify, when I use the term ‘good’ or ‘great sex’, I am really referring to my memory of it as still being erotic and still being a point of fantasy for my own sense of erotic pleasure and self-pleasure. I am not saying that the sex I engaged in was, in grand terms, perfect or great, or that anyone could learn anything from it or use my sexual memories as any kind of example. I am not recalling my sexual memories to prove sexual fantasies.

Far from it, some of my best sex took place in moments that are tinged with embarrassment or even shame; when I was smashed, or when I was making up after a huge fallout with one ex or another, or when I was having sex for money or causal, often anonymous sex. These are not necessarily memories I present as being proud examples. Looking back on my life, my history of addiction and my need, before transitioning for gender affirmation, there are many more experiences that I wish to forget and just a very few that exist within a purely romantic or loving relationship (in its widest context). I existed at the edge of personal risk for many years and my memories have to be harvested from my truth and not from how I wish it may have been, or I wish I could be seen. No matter how many times I watch Eat, Pray, Love, it is not my experience, although I've often prayed for love.

I remember going to a party once when I was much younger, in my early twenties. It wasn't a great party; it was a house party in a house that no one would have chosen to live in. I went with my partner at the time. Our relationship had been on and off for years. It was an emotional time-bomb of a relationship, fraught with violence, toxicity and spiralling addiction. But the intensity was incredibly sexual and damagingly hypnotic.

Arriving at the party, our relationship was most definitely in taut off-mode, we barely exchanged a word, only a few practical words that centred around us sharing drugs before we went in. I was used to this pattern of ours. When my partner disappeared it was something I knew would happen. I knew they would soon either be with someone else or looking for someone else. It wasn't an open relationship but perhaps it lasted for more than a week or two because we both fucked around.

I stood alone in the darkened space. I didn't know anyone. My drugs were settled in and were literally dulling and opening my senses at the same time. Inside I unfurled, externally I remained tensed. I found a doorway to lean against and started to slowly relax within its containment. I was addicted to heroin and crack cocaine, not really party drugs and often, if people asked what I'd taken I’d say, ‘I've just dropped a pill or two'. Even within my addiction, I still wanted to fit in. Heroin and crack cocaine set you apart, even in a drug context. I was already femme, fledgling trans and very much an outsider within the then, queer outsider realm. I didn't want my drugs of choice to set me even further apart. Even in that environment, different drugs are full of judgement and stigma.

I saw a face, just a face, a face which stared straight at me, eyes which fixed me in a stare, a stare that instantaneously spoke of sex. As the face moved closer, I became aware of the body attached to the stare; male, not tall, pale skin almost white, blonde hair and quite a deep pair of blue eyes. I don't think I have a type but I'm not sure they would have ever been my type if I'd had one. In the semi-darkness they reminded me of a creature that emerges from a place where light doesn't exist, a cave newt or a deep-sea fish. They stood across the hallway from me and stared at me unfurling yet contained within the safety of my door frame. I feel comfortable contained within a structure, I always have.

No words.

Not a single word was exchanged, my body loosened.

Something about the silence, about the intensity of desire on both our parts drew us together. It was instant and came out of nowhere. He came over and took my hand. I took his. We went up the stairs to an empty bedroom. It was risky; if my then partner had seen, he would have kicked off. That was the dynamic. My fucking around was expected to be hidden away whilst his more open fucking around shaped his behaviour, his movements and my reactions. I had never taken this kind of sexual risk before in that relationship, it was me stepping out of my given entitlement (or lack thereof) with regards to seeking pleasure.  

"My fucking around was expected to be hidden away whilst his more open fucking around shaped his behaviour, his movements and my reactions. "

  The sex was overwhelmingly delicious and not just because he was as sexy as fuck but because we never talked, not a word, even after we both came, we never talked. The room was dark and without detail. But everything was still and felt safe. It wasn't the drugs talking. I'd been an addict for years by this point. Drugs never took over. They just lingered under the surface of going cold. Props.

Neither of us asked about or talked about gender or sexuality, to this day I'm not sure where it came from or why it happened. When it was over, it was over, it was just sex and nothing more. I'm quite sure we left the room separately and I honestly cannot recall if I saw him again that night. It's a memory, a purely sexual memory that still, even now, twenty years later is heaving with eroticism. I remember his cock and the way his body moved into mine without any awkwardness or embarrassment, we just fitted together for the briefest of moments and then we parted. The imprint of our sexual perfection still lingers on my surface, although I have no desire to replay the moment. It worked and still has potency because it was a moment and not a routine.

It was just before my diagnosis and looking back, it feels like a perfect memory perhaps because of all that came after, the continuous need to talk, back then to tell, to say 'I'm HIV positive’. When I was diagnosed, it was with AIDS. I was diagnosed already ill. I hid from sex, hid from the difficulty of telling another human that I had the virus that was demonised across the emerging 24-hour news platforms.

Perhaps the sex was great because there was no emotion, no ties, or no connection beyond a sexual mindmeld, or perhaps it was the last sex I remember having that needed no words or risk management. Looking back, it seems wonderfully carefree, even with Class As coursing through my veins—a carefree time before my words, my labels. As I write this, I realize that, that was the time before feeling weighed down. Since my HIV diagnosis in the early 90s, I have never felt that I could do anything perfectly. I always felt damaged, like damaged goods that I would have to contain; my risk to manage. All around me for the past twenty-five odd years people have talked about ending HIV, stamping out AIDS and HIV, getting rid of the very thing that exists deep within my cellular self. Collectively, hearing that has become as stigmatising as the people who turn me down on dating sites when they find out I'm HIV positive. On one level, HIV has empowered me to live.  

" All around me for the past twenty-five odd years people have talked about ending HIV, stamping out AIDS and HIV, getting rid of the very thing that exists deep within my cellular self. "

  I freeze now when I think about sex because I want it to be perfect, I miss that person who existed before HIV. Unless you are HIV-positive and have lived through this epidemic, you'll never understand what the stigma really is. You might say the line, 'let's end stigma', but its meaningless unless you long to go back to a time before stigma ran your life. My life is a prisoner to the endless tendrils of stigma.

HIV and AIDS took away so much from me; it has taken away friends, lovers, a sense of being alive, but most of all, it took away easy, breezy sex, intimacy and touch. Yes, sex has existed in my life since, but not like it did before. Since HIV, there has always been and there still is a microsecond before touch, a microsecond in which I know that the world has told me thousands of times that I am not good for the world. That's stigma.