Trusting in Rubber: Performing Boundaries during the AIDS Epidemic

Abstract

Ripping the little square open with my teeth, stroking your ass with my spare hand, way down low, the rubber squeezes out of its wrapping, is rolled, lovingly, tremulously onto the straining mass of your cock. In Canada it's safe without, but this ain't Canada, it's New York, and God ain't on our side. No one to trust in up there, in that space beyond spaces. Down here your cock fills the space of my mouth, the space of me folds into the edges of you. Not quite, between us is a second skin. Between... us... the taste of latex. Between us the metaphor of rubber.