My son and I don't approve of each other's lifestyles. I don't appreciate the fact he wears nail polish and has tattoos all over his damn body. He doesn't appreciate the fact that I spend more time at the gym than I do with him. I don't appreciate the fact that I've seen him in public wearing his girlfriend's clothes. He doesn't appreciate the fact that I have a wardrobe primarily consisting of designer polo shirts, khakis, and blue blazers. We each see the other as over the top, though we're at opposite ends of the spectrum. He feels my revulsion at his antics in public should equal his revulsion at mine.

I've tried to explain to him the difficulty of obtaining any level of respectability as an artist in Lexington, Kentucky. When the walls of various clubs, restaurants, and homes are your canvases, people tend to refer to you as "that guy who paints the murals". People know who I am and what I do, but they don't necessarily respect me for it. I get paid a great deal of money for my work, but I have to maintain a certain level of professionalism in order to keep those commissions rolling in. Lexington has a ton of professional sculptors, painters, and craftspersons, all well known but living in poverty. I manage to do pretty well, painting walls. But it's one long horse and pony show working for the next commission, and I'll be damned if I'll fuck it up by playing "temperamental eccentric artist". I don't need that and my customers don't need that. They tell me what they want, and I give it to them. If they want to pay me $200 an hour to put seven layers of glaze on a wall in various shades of white, that's what I do. If they want it to appear a herd of elephants is storming into the room, I can do that too. I'm good at what I do and proud of it. If I have to appear respectable in order to get the work, I don't see that as a problem. Chance's mom also must put on a professional face to meet the public, so it's only natural that our only son would strive to appear as wigged out as possible every time he leaves the house.

He doesn't seem to mind my sexual preferences. I know he knows I'm gay. We've just never discussed it. There's never been a need. He'd prefer not to hear about it, and I'd prefer not to tell him. It's none of his business who I fuck, and it's none of my business who he doesn't fuck. He's never been overly fond of my various live-in boyfriends, but I can't say I've ever really approved of his choice in friends, either. We tolerate each other in the way fathers and sons have tolerated each other over the centuries. We're fairly good friends to each other, but we don't get involved with each other's lives any more than necessary.

Don't get me wrong. I love my son Chance more than I have ever loved any human being. That boy has been the center of my universe from the moment he was conceived. He knew his mother and I would never work things out long before I admitted to myself that it was men who flipped my switch. He was a typical child of divorce, supportive of both of us without taking sides, forcefully cool and unaffected by the whole thing. All his friends' parents had been divorced and remarried and divorced again before Janice and I split up, so I guess he just saw it as an inevitable part of growing up. As an adult he seems to have a real fear of commitment, but I guess that's only natural. He won't commit to graduating from college, he won't commit to a major when he is enrolled, he won't commit to attendance of any social function when I need him there, he won't commit to a relationship, and I'm well aware he won't even commit to a sexual preference. I honestly don't think he's gay, or even bi. I think he just doesn't want to commit to being heterosexual.

In a town the size of Lexington, everyone knows everyone else's business. Nowhere is that more true than in the gay community. The entire gay universe centers around two bars downtown (one live/leather, one disco), three adult bookstores, two public parks, and any men's restroom on the second floor of Fayette Mall. Gossip is the safest sex of all, and rumor spreads faster than the clap. We know who's dating who, who's cheating on who, who's good in bed, who's average in bed, who's well hung, who's a whore, who's looking for yet another husband, and who's a prick tease. If you go home with someone new on Saturday night, the entire male community will be discussing it over brunch the next morning.

There is a substantial lesbian community as well, but they aren't nearly as shallow as we are and therefore aren't nearly as much fun. The only decent dike bar this town ever had closed down ten years ago, when most of the clientele checked into rehab together and moved their weekend socializing away from The Hidden Door and towards Gay AA. They play baseball together, have cookouts together, hold feminist discussion groups together, direct theater together, sing in choruses together, and basically run the entire fucking town. Their hard work allows men like me to concentrate on developing my physique instead of my brain, and to concentrate on college boys instead of college classes. I can enjoy taking pleasure for pleasure's sake, knowing my city is in the competent hands of lots of horsy girls in blue jeans and a handful of severe lipstick lesbians. They don't hang out with the boys, and we don't get in their way. It's a perfect example of how well the world will run once straight women kick all the straight men in the balls and reclaim their place as rulers of the universe. Dyke trumps Queen.

I try to mix at the straight bars early on Friday and Saturday nights. There are great business contacts to be made, and it helps me remember there are lots of decent straight people in the world. Some of my best friends are straight. And all the best clubs are on the same strip of Main Street, within walking distance of each other. But come 11:00 p.m., you can stand on the corner and see the exodus of pretty men from the straight bars to the gay bars - friends are great, but the bars close early around there and by midnight all pretense of socializing is forgotten. Everyone is looking for someone to fuck.

So I've been aware for over a year that my son has a reputation as a prick tease. Word gets around. I know he's experimenting with his own sexuality as a form of rebellion against mine. It's just his way of acting out. But as far as I know, he's never actually had sex with any man (and in this town, any number of viscous queens would love to be the first to inform me if he had).

Knowing my son as well as I do, you'd think nothing would surprise me. It scared the shit out of me to walk into my loft on Saturday morning and have a message from his mother telling me Chance had been in a car accident the night before. Her recorded voice informed me he had spent the night in the hospital, was now released and on his way home, and wasn't I supposed to have dinner with him, how could I let that happen, and where the hell had I been all damn night? Shit.

So I immediately drive over to the shitty little house he lives in, in a terrible neighborhood, with his strange little black friend, only to find him making out on the couch with some guy I had tricked with the prior week! My whole fucking life passed in front of my eyes.

I tested HIV positive eight years ago. I'm in excellent health, other than a few minor problems caused more by the drugs I take to control the virus rather than by the virus itself. No one knows, other than my doctor and his staff. Some AIDS activists think it's cowardly not to wear your status like a banner, and frankly, I admire those who do. But I choose not to tell anyone because I don't want my family and friends sitting around waiting around for me to die. And that's exactly what happens. I've done it myself, several times. My best friend Greg told me he had AIDS, and I waited three years for him to die, rather than enjoy the life he had in those three years. My roommate from college survived pneumonia in the first big wave to hit New York City, but I waited nine years for him to die. That's just how it is. You can't help it. Once you get the terminal diagnosis, people naturally start waiting for you to die. If I came out with my HIV status, the people I love the most would start treating me differently, like I was suddenly fragile, or broken, or already dead. I'm not putting my family through that. Not until it's obvious, and even then I should have plenty of time left to say goodbye. Right now, I'm too busy saying hello. Goodbye comes later.

We each have our own definition of "safe". I've never admitted testing positive to any lover, but I always insist that I very likely am positive, based on past high risk experiences. We set boundaries together based on that. I would never intentionally pass this virus on to anyone. But I also believe each of us is responsible for our own health. I knew exactly what I was doing when I got this virus. I don't blame the person or persons who passed it on to me. It's my body, it's my fault. I can live with that. But I'm not telling people what's running through my bloodstream just so some fucking religious nut can shoot at me or have me jailed, or some size queen I tricked with at the fucking porn shop can come back to sue me later. It's my body, it's my status, and it's my choice to keep it to myself. But if some stranger I pick up in the park wants to take the risk and suck my dry, I'm not objecting. If some trick doesn't have sense enough to wrap a rubber around my cock, I have to assume I'm not the first person to visit that hole unclad. If that makes me an immoral or bad person, so be it.

But this guy sitting on my son's couch with his legs crossed to hide his hard-on really threw me. He's hot. I've seen him around, but we'd never got together until the week before. I was cruising the peeps late Wednesday night and he followed me into a booth. Things got wild fast, and both of us had our pants around our ankles in no time. He turned away from me and backed into my crotch, taking my cock slowly up his ass. He wanted me, I wanted him, and no one mentioned a rubber. Short guys turn me on anyway, and this kid was fucking beautiful. I whispered in his ear I was about to come, but rather than pull away, he arched his back and pushed me in deeper. It didn't take long before he was coming on the wall and I was coming up his ass.

When a piece of ass that fine is laid before you, you don't stop to discuss safe sex. You fuck it, you get off, you thank your lucky stars, you pull up your pants, and you go home. The last thing you expect is to find the guy making out with your only son three days later.

"Christ, Dad, don't you ever knock?" Chance and the trick were both obviously embarrassed to be caught in the act, even if they were still fully clothed. From the light in his eyes, I could tell I had not arrived a moment too soon. I know that look. It's about two minutes away from naked. Been there, done that. But I was at a total loss for words. What was I going to say, "excuse me son, but I may have infected your friend here with a deadly disease earlier this week and therefore you may want to reconsider sleeping with him"? Shit!

I turned around without saying a word, pulled the door shut behind me, and sat down in one of the cheesy plastic chairs Chance has decorating his miniscule front porch. I couldn't leave and let them pick things up where I'd walked. But I couldn't explain to him why he had to leave this boy alone. Chance didn't know what he was doing. But this trick has been around, and would easily take advantage of Chance's innocence. I see it happen all the time. Hell, I've done it myself. Young guys are all about intensity. So long as you keep things passionate and out of control, they're hooked. Young guys like to be swept away. This trick was very close to sweeping my son away, and I wasn't about to let it happen. I took a few deep breaths to clear my head, stood up, and knocked on the door.

"Come in" called Chance, without much enthusiasm. I walked in as the trick stood and said to Chance "I guess I better be going, I'll call you later" and quickly ducked around me and out the door, avoiding my eyes. Thank god.

Chance was obviously pissed, but couldn't really vent at me without opening a topic of conversation he and I both didn't want to discuss. Instead, he slowly lifted his foot to the coffee table, to show me the cast on his toe. "I guess you heard, I broke my toe last night. That was a friend, stopping by to make sure I was all right."

"Where's Jeff?" I asked, for lack of anything else sensible to say. I don't really approve of Chance living with Jeff, but I admit that screaming little black queen is probably the most stable thing in my son's life. The house is always clean, my son is well fed and happy, and he can get through to Chance on a level I can't.

"He brought me home from the hospital. Doris took him on some errand. They should be back soon."

I sat down in the single beat-up chair across from the couch. My head was still spinning. A lot had happened since I walked in the door at 8:30 this morning. I'd only slept a few hours, after going home last night with an old fuck buddy and playing out some fairly tame but hot leather-sex fantasies.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine, dad, really," he answered. "It's just a broken toe and a few stitches in my head. They kept me overnight for observation and gave me some pain medication, but it's not nearly as good as what they were giving me last night..."

"Are you in pain?" I asked, concerned.