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About two years ago, Gray was in the Castro at a client's home, and they were sitting on the couch, drinking beers and talking about death. The client had lost quite a few gay friends to AIDS in the '80s, and was himself HIV-positive. Gray had lost people to AIDS in Thailand. In bonding over their losses, "I became really attached to him," Gray says. In fact, he often became attached to clients, and sometimes had a hard time continuing to charge for sex he liked.
Gray wound up performing oral sex on the client on the couch. They then took a shower, where foreplay continued. The client pissed in Gray's mouth, then carried him to the bedroom. The naked men began rubbing their genitalia together, and Gray liked it very much. He felt a strong connection with this man.
Then something changed. Although there was no discussion, the client was seemingly making an attempt to penetrate him. Was he really going to do it? Gray felt paralyzed. He said nothing.
The client inserted his penis — without a condom — into Gray and had sex with him, which had the potential to expose him to HIV.
As an HIV-prevention counselor for the city of San Francisco, Gray obviously knew better. He knew he was supposed to speak up. But he couldn't. "You always think that when you are raped, you'll be like, 'Fuck you. Get off me,'" he says. "I was thinking, 'I have to do whatever this guy wants me to do, and then I'm out of here.' My body did me a favor, and I kinda floated out."
A couple of days later, a still-paralyzed Gray talked about what happened with a friend, who insisted the encounter had been rape. Gray determined that he needed a post-exposure prophylactic — a kind of morning-after pill that fights HIV contraction. He had a 72-hour window in which to do so.
On the third day, he broke down crying at work and had to explain to his boss that he believed he was raped, and might have been exposed to HIV. His boss — a queeny gay man — said, "Honey, this is serious," and sent Gray to a clinic, where he took an assortment of medications. "I puked a lot," he says. "It feels like shit."
Gray says he tested negative for HIV, and feels extremely lucky.
Afterward, he began to reevaluate his feelings about a lot of things, including HIV and sex work. He had always hated HIV, to the point where he wished it were a person, so he could punch it in the face. He once believed he wanted to have sex with someone who was HIV-positive without a condom as a way of standing up to it, as if to say "Fuck you." But after the incident and having to confront fears of actually contracting the disease, that fantasy seemed dangerous and stupid.
Although Gray continued doing sex work, he found himself feeling withdrawn.
"I stopped having sex for free," he says, and then quickly adds, "Even though sex is never free." He moved in with his mother in Anaheim, and worked as an HIV educator in a prison. He stopped talking about sex outside of his job, and for about six months he stopped having sex altogether. Most mornings, he swam laps, which became a kind of escape. He still swims almost every day, and also gives swim lessons to kids and the disabled. He also turned to faith: He is devoutly Catholic, and still goes to Holy Redeemer in the Castro every Sunday.
As for the client, Gray never talked to him again.
A couple of months ago, Gray — seeking some cash and maybe a thrill — placed another sex ad on Craigslist. That same client answered. Although Gray isn't sure whether the man knew whose ad he had responded to, he let it be, and says he wishes him well.
That shrugging off seems to be part of a larger pattern for Gray, who has a hard time thinking of anyone as his enemy, or standing up for himself. He says he's always felt close to vulnerability, and seems intent on allowing others to control his fate. That is, apparently, all a part of the beautiful risk.
"It was a healing experience to know this man," he says of his alleged rapist. "It was really interesting."
At the Center for Sex and Culture on the night of June 4, the packed house was baked in body heat. Just as it had been the previous night, San Francisco's first sex worker art performance, Formerly Known As, was sold out. Attendees sipped Tecate and brown-bagged wine, and those who didn't get a seat procured impromptu floor mats.
The first act involved two sex workers who had reworked biblical hymns into sex-work theme songs. Other standouts included an animation sequence by former professional diver Scott Upper revolving around a set of disembodied shark jaws and projected on a screen, and "The Pornographic Imagination," a doleful song by a Satanist in a sportcoat who called himself Christraper Sings.
With two acts left, emcee Kirk Read took the stage and thanked the audience. "This is like church, in a way," he said. "We're listening to each other."
"Hallelujah," someone cried.
"Our next performer," Read continued, was Stephen Gray. "He's a good Catholic boy ... and I believe he's a Fulbright scholar. I have very high hopes for this young man."
Gray took the stage and disrobed. When he was finished, he stood proudly as a man with no penis, and the audience burst into wild applause.
"This is a piece that I wrote about a man who was and still is a very special client," he said. "It's called 'Jimmy Inside Me.'"
Gray read confidently, sometimes shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and taking care not to go too fast or too slow. The story wasn't exactly straightforward, and although it documented the night he was penetrated by his HIV-positive client, it also wove in Gray's emotions, memories, and dreams, including his androgyny and his obsession with his father. "I will always be in between the masculine and the feminine, like a channel, where blood and sweat and cum once flowed," he read.
