I have been living in the Bay area since 1962, originally born in Peoria, Illinois. Midwest values, family oriented, farm boy and born again Christian, I was saved by Jesus at age 7, and have been attracted to men probably since the day I refused to suck on my mom's nipple at age 3 -- she had inverted nipples so that made things difficult.

My dad wanted to move out west and we had to decide whether we were to go with him or not, I wanted to stay with my mom who also wanted to stay but she kept the family together and we moved with him. Eventually California became an amazing place of freedom, but early on this outgoing, gifted, energetic 10 year old boy was very insecure, afraid and secretive because there were secrets only he kept. I was the kind of kid that could have relationships with a lot of these "in crowd" people one on one, but as a group I didn't ever fit in anywhere. I liked girls a lot actually and they liked me. I remember in junior high some of the hottest girls on campus in Castro Valley would say stuff to me like "god, you're not like my boyfriend" and that felt great. They liked me because I would listen to them and I paid attention to things that other guys wouldn't and they were yearning for someone to pay attention to them and I kissed in a different way than all those other boys. Kissing is so important god...

Then my sophomore year of High School I felt strong sexual tension between my best friend and I. Of course, I was scared to death that anyone would find out I had any attraction to him, but I did. We would flirt a lot and I always thought it was his way of making this blossoming geek boy feel loved and cared about and in truth he admired some of my ability to actually follow rules and do the right thing. Then there was a tour of bible schools that our church would encourage us to go to and he and I were roomed together alone. We were kidding around one night about jacking off, he kept making the bunk-bed shake as if he was jerkin off and I said you know if you keep screwing around like that I'm gonna come down there and grab you. Well of course he did it one more time so I jumped out of the top bunk and landed on the floor to see him laying on the bed with the covers off and his cock rock hard looking at me as if saying, "I dare you." I instantly got an erection but I was so scared that I immediately moved to hide it and hid away from the possible experience. I found out years later that he had had experiences with guys and was actually very interested in experimenting with me; I just could never take that risk back then. It's so funny now because I'm exactly the opposite, I love taking those risks, particularly with someone else who is willing to take that risk with me.

Starting to play with meth is what broke me of that fear. Up until I was 50 years old, even through a lot of crap in my life, I was always the "good" guy. It was two months after I broke up with my third relationship, with a guy who slammed crystal actually, that I decided I wanted to try it. I had met somebody I think on gay.com or something like that, maybe it was craigslist.org...anyway, I knew that he partied and I was planning to party. He asked me if I slammed and I said "yea", I had never done that and I wanted to experience it so I lied to him basically. I found out later that he was really pissed off at me because I had lied, he would not have hit me otherwise. So funny because I'm exactly the opposite, having taken some training I'd rather be with the person who is going to try it for the first time so that they do it properly.

I loved it, I didn't just like it, I loved it...I loved the rush, I loved the feeling of anything is possible, I loved the ability to connect, I fell in love with that guy....we fell in love with each other maybe only for 2-3 hours but it was 2-3 hours of being in love more than with any other man and that happened over and over again. I'd say even if only 50% of my experiences were all that it was cracked up to be or what I'd hope they'd be it's still pretty good odds compared to what I hear other people have experienced. So it's one of the reasons why I don't, at least at this point in my life, have the intention of quitting my use. I wanna quit using if and when I don't want to use any more. I also don't want this drug to fuck up my life; I don't want to lose friends that really matter to me because of it. I mean you can lose friends for other reasons or gain friends for other reasons but I don't want this drug to be the reason I lose friends and it's a pretty impactful kind of drug so I have to be careful with it.

I'd be lying to say that it is not tough to manage, it's tough to manage more because I've made some pretty good play friends where we can re-create some wonderful experiences with each other. Especially in my situation with the daddy-boy thing, it's not uncommon to find a young guy that will really be attracted to me and just be enthralled by the fact that I'll get high with him, fall in love with him and have a sense of being daddy's boy. It's hot, connected, loving and intense as well as dangerous and risky with some dominance playing the role with each other always in the context or the illusion of being in love.

You know people have asked me "haven't you had that kind of experience when you were not high?" and I'll say you know maybe that is one of the struggles I have with it, it's that I have not... I've had wonderful relationships even somewhat healthy at times but I have not had that kind of intense, passionate, in love experience. I think there was a point when I started to experience that while high and thought, "well damn, I can't get it in real life so why not have it in fantasy life," and that decision was a conscious one. It's kind of ironic though because this last weekend I got together with a friend of mine that I've known for a couple of years now and we're both very attracted to each other, he's 28 and I'm 54 and when we're together it happens every time. However he's coming from a position of using pretty much all the time and I'm coming from trying to use one or two weekends a month and not more than that, which has been somewhat of a struggle. What can be tough is missing opportunities to have sex with others that I desire to pnp with. You know, you meet someone who is hot, they are ready to go but I can't because I work or it's not my "weekend" to party around, which seems to happen more often than not because many guys have a more flexible schedule like they don't work, or they're on disability, self-employed, etc.
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
<!--[endif]-->Anyway this last weekend my friend and I actually made love a couple times where he was high and I wasn't and I'd never done that before but I found myself able to almost physiologically recreate some of the sensations I have when I slam with him, it was bizarre! I've done this sometimes, there's been a couple of times where I would slam with water and the guys I played with thought that I had slammed crystal and I would get dry mouth, I would begin to sweat, my heart would start racing, my gut would tense up, my asshole would get hot and my cock would get hot just like it would when I slam with crystal, it was remarkable. Well this time I didn't even fake slam. We took that daddy-boy thing and started running with it and the turn on, the buttons were there, they were being pushed...so this morning we were even talking about how we had this amazing experience and he said he'd never been able to be with someone like that who could keep up with him who wasn't high. I had gotten high on Friday and had great time and I decided to stop and didn't slam for the rest of the weekend. Over time of managing my use this way it has become imperative to stop by Saturday night, not Sunday night because Monday morning would be a bitch times 15, if I delayed my slowing down point.Sometimes this is VERY hard to do. It is also harder to slow down/stop partying once I've started, especially when others have no reason to stop, or an underlying desire to have you disregard responsibilities and commitments you've made to others. When Monday rolls around though and I have stopped when I set my goal to stop...I am fine, I get some sleep and I feel good.

I didn't start off that way though. My surroundings are what got me to decide to change. I was living out of a truck, I had lost my job, I was pretty much slamming if not everyday pretty much every other day, I was doing as much as an 8ball a week, often sharing with someone, different sex partners all the time and I was overwhelmed all the time. Depressed when I wasn't slamming, trying to stop for two days and get some sleep...I think the longest I went without sleep was probably about a week and I actually maintained ok compared to what I've seen other people do. I've never had to struggle with the psychotic stuff, lucky that way, paranoia, obsession...I just didn't have the same psychosis that others have so it didn't scare me. I didn't like my surroundings you know and I didn't like the fact that I didn't have the money flexibility I once had so I just decided that I had to cut back for my sanity so that I wouldn't be overwhelmed all the time and have this sense of hopelessness and never getting anywhere.

I was always so fearful of things before using. Meth took the fear away. You know I've talked to a lot of guys who I see at group who say that there are some good things that have come out of their experience with meth and there are many of them who say "I hate it, I wanna be away from it...it was the worst thing I ever did, don't ever start." You know I understand that and I can understand people feeling that way about it but that is not my experience and the truth is you know I really go for what I want now with people sexually for example that I would not have dreamed of doing before because the worst that can happen is the person says no and that doesn't mean that I am bad or undesirable or whatever it just means that the attraction is not there. The other thing is that there are so many opportunities and experiences that when we look back on our lives now we know that it was there and we're the ones who turned them away because we're afraid. One thing that I love about my freedom now is that I am taking much more thought now about who I am, of what triggers me to do things. You know I don't shoot by myself, I don't do it if the other person is not doing it, I don't like to do it with somebody who is on the fourth day of their binge and I'm just starting out, I don't like to do meth with people who aren't into and interested in the same type of sex and thoughts and taboos that I'm into. It's not that they are bad people; it's just that we're not a match.

I learned a lot about managing my use, hydration, eating and resting...all that through Stonewall.  I learned that through Stonewall and the Speed Project...actually there are three harm reduction places that I learned that from, one of them is in the East Bay. Things like staying hydrated, things like beefing up and getting sleep, things like resting if you can't get sleep, things like quantity of use -- cutting back on the quantity and still having a good time, things like learning how to assist people to use properly and carefully and to inject with less likelihood of wounds and abscesses. All of that has done a lot to help me reduce the negative effects that can come from partying and create good experiences.

You know I am taking the time to really look into what I am doing to my body, how I'm doing it, what the dangers are, what the dangers aren't, what myths are there because there are plenty of myths. There's a lot of gained confidence around what I'm doing, again going back to the same issue around not having fear, not being afraid and I think before early on when I was using I was doing a lot, but very fearfully, afraid of somebody hitting me and missing, fearful of somebody giving me bad stuff, fearful of having a dirty needle, I was afraid of everything. Now when it comes to it I'm not afraid of very much and that's not just true with that, it's true with much of life as well. I'm still afraid of being alone and not having someone in my life and that speaks to the issues of how I feel about myself and why I feel the way I feel about myself but those things are less fearful then they were before. I think sometimes we close our eyes and shield our own view of ourselves because it hurts too much or it's too much work to deal with issues we don't like or we don't want to face up to. I think when we give up hope, which can happen especially when depression is involved, I think that not having hope or the belief that there is something to live for and that life will get better, those are the things that can drive you to seek pure pleasure.

So where I am at now, if someone were to ask "do you plan to use for the rest of your life?" I think I would say probably no but I mean I'm lucky I'm HIV positive and I'm still not on any meds, my numbers are great even with my meth use. I believe that part of what I am working on now is the first step to manage meth in my life, which I have been able to do pretty well. I have a good job, I love my work and it doesn't impact my work for the most part. I've learned that there is not a lot of evidence that relationships built on the premise of slamming crystal together last for very long. Although I have a couple of friends who have done it pretty well or at least they make me believe it but for the most part I don't think it happens. I think my ultimate goal will be to scale it back to a point to where it is just a blip on the radar screen, you know?

This idea of managing my use was something that my family and friends detested to hear me talking about it, saying it or hearing it but it was something that made so much sense to me. So I didn't have much support at first but with time I eventually started to meet people who believe that managing use is possible and when you see them living what they believe then you think oh my god, maybe I can do this. That experience has kept me from being 15 years older physically than I am now and living on the streets somewhere to being somebody who is free and allowed to move forward in their life and actually anxious about making some real dreams come true like writing books, playing music, having a partner -- I see those as real goals again.

It has shined a searchlight in my life on the real areas that I need to keep working on and taking the searchlight off of my slamming crystal; I feel a freedom that I really haven't felt most of my life. Most of my life I made decisions based on what would make other people happy and how they would like me or not like me. I don't make those decisions as much any more, I make them more now based on what is it that I really want, what do I want to do and what's more genuine in terms of how to give myself to people.

In my opinion, if you tend to be a person that becomes scared, paranoid, obsessive compulsive or bipolar and you struggle with these emotions mentally then be careful because it won't do a whole lot to make things better for you, I would say. Now there aren't a lot of people that know themselves that well to know when those things are true so those people are probably going to make some mistakes and struggle if they start using. However if it's something where they have to do it because they want to explore then make sure that you do it with somebody who really knows what they are doing and is going to be honest with you and genuine with you about what their experiences have been...it's just so hard with this drug because the reason so many people do it is because it makes them feel good and to relieve a pain of some kind in any sense of the word. There are some people with physical pains, ailments, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain and meth becomes one way for at least a short amount of time to get rid of that. So if you weigh your emotional stuff out and you decide that you're going to have an adventure, then...call me...no I'm kidding, then umm I would say...if you had a list of probably the top 5 things to keep in mind, I'd say hydration is number one.

If your body has fluid in it, you can sweat if you need to sweat, which cools you off. You can (if you shoot) keep your veins full of fluid and you can keep your motor (which is your metabolism) lubricated which is important because it's running at a faster speed than normal rate. You're also less likely to have any serious side effects or even abscesses, so I would say that is number one. Having a clean needle every time is very important if you're going to shoot, I think it's also important to have good quality speed, if you find medium quality and you are able to figure that out before buying it...don't buy it, don't waste your money on it, have a test of it before you buy it if you can and you'll learn what's good and bad for how you want to use it. I think sleep is really important too, at least rest...people can go for 2, 3,4,5,6 days and before you know it you wonder why you are seeing double, or why they are talking about things that really don't make sense, can't remember to keep their eyes open when driving and get into a car accident or can't remember where their car is. Nutrition is important because you can take care of your body with some vitamins, protein bar, a banana, yogurt...what I do is freeze grapes because then I get cool water from the grapes and some nutrition too, of course if you have sensitive teeth be careful. Safeway's version Ensure is awesome...it's only 5 or 6 bucks for a pack and that's a meal that you would miss and if you miss 5, 6 or 7 meals in a row then people wonder why they have cramps or your arms are tingling or whatever because you don't have any fuel left. Yea you can lose weight that way but trust me it won't be a good thing...and please just CUM quickly don't hold it off thinking "if I cum it's all over for me" that's bullshit, when you're high especially with the rush, just cum and you'll be able to cum more often and more quickly...it'll just happen so do it...don't be afraid!