Gifting

Ryan stood five foot eleven, or “six feet on a good day,” as he’d say. Broad shoulders braided with a cornucopia of muscle and smooth, preened, milky skin—free from tufts of coarse body hair thanks to thrice-weekly waxing appointments at Carefree, Hair Free! in the heart of Northalsted, AKA Boystown.

Chicago wasn’t always home. He grew up in a cloistered, banal, middle-class household on the outer rim of Seattle, in a town called Bellevue.

Life was good. Simple, but good.

His parents were mildly disapproving of his “decision” to be gay, and when he told them two days after his sixteenth birthday, his mother (a lifelong member of the local Lutheran church) quipped, “So long as you don’t tell your grandparents, they’ll blacklist you from Midnight Mass.”

Like he gave a shit.

He’d already blasphemed by exchanging blowjobs with a Filipino understudy priest in the confessional booth on numerous occasions, and their next tryst was days away—this time at a local park after dark. Father Petrie had grown suspicious due to the freshly cleaned scent of pine on the velvet seats each time the pair parted ways.

Still, he nodded to his mother in measured agreement, such was his placid demeanor—at least in public, in view of his family.

The world beyond Bellevue beckoned, and with a college degree in hand, Ryan landed a job in public relations shortly after the pandemic. The blistering, bustling pace of Chicago brought forth countless opportunities to meet men in less than a hot minute via dating apps like Grindr and Scruff.

*

He’d lost count of his sexual body count by now. As a self-proclaimed “best of both worlds” versatile connoisseur, men of all positional preferences were on the cards.

So, too, was the spectre of possible HIV infection. He’d never come across anyone who looked visibly sick, nor known anyone who’d passed away from late-stage AIDS, but he knew it was still out there, permeating every corridor of the community.

The groundbreaking pre-exposure prophylactic medication Truvada, a medicinal mainstay among the pretty and promiscuous populace on the scene, never worked out for him. After numerous attempts at on-demand dosing, the laundry list of side effects, including intense nausea and occasional vomiting (in public, how uncouth), crossed his tolerance line.

Condoms were his only barrier between himself and a lifelong bloodborne infection. He hated wearing them; he hated his casual partners wearing them. They stymied intimate connection, and for a lad who’d been starved of a sexual smorgasbord back in Bellevue, he craved skin-on-skin human intimacy.

Ryan wanted more. He deserved more.

The option of rolling the proverbial dice of inevitability enticed him. Instead of fearing a positive HIV test result at his next STI screening with Howard Brown Health in two months, could he embrace it as a cathartic release?

“Stigma is the worst part about being positive,” his co-worker Alex had told him during a late lunch a few months back. “I take my meds, I exercise, I feel fine. I still fuck just like a negative guy. It hasn’t stopped me from living large.”

Ryan scoured countless profiles on his hookup apps. Instead of filtering out HIV-positive men, as per usual, he became hellbent on finding the very same potential partners he’d shunned until this turning point.

Only they could give him a peace-of-mind panacea.

One profile caught his eye like a magnet. It didn’t have a display picture, only a headline in capital letters:

JOIN OUR RITUAL

We're looking for guys who know how to party. We call ourselves The Twelve, we're all positive. We meet at Steamworks every Tuesday night @ eleven, SHARP!

*

Ryan almost turned around once he'd reached the discreet Steamworks entrance. Not because of fear—he’d crossed racier thresholds before—but because the place looked so… damn ordinary.

The world-famous sauna sat wedged between Plaza 32 Condominium (an investor-owned vacant apartment building) and the Rainbow Crosswalk on W Aldine Avenue, which at this hour wasn't exactly buzzing with crowds. Its frosted windows glowed like a subdued aquarium.

No neon. No pulsing music. No edgy signs. Just a discreet black awning and a laminated sign listing bathhouse rules.

Once inside, Ryan felt the air shifting immediately. Warm. Damp. Scented faintly with eucalyptus and bleach from industrial-grade disinfectant. A curated quirk in a place like this, he figured. The front desk attendant barely glanced up.

“ID?”

Ryan slid his license across the counter with fumbling fingers. Why was he so nervous all of a sudden? The man scanned it, nodded once, and returned it along with a plastic wristband, a locker key, and a folded red towel.

“Locker room is down the hall. Showers to the left. If you plan on jumping in the spa, make sure you wash yourself beforehand. I'm running low on chlorine. Have fun.”

Have fun. Two words. So casual. So absurdly insufficient for his reason for being here.

Ryan speed-walked into the locker room. He could overhear casual, low-key conversations amidst the metallic thwack of bite-sized locker doors opening and shutting with intention. Men of every shape and decade moved with practiced ease, unselfconscious in varying degrees of undress. No one stared. No one lingered.

No one seemed to notice he was even there.

Ryan found his locker number. Opened it. Stared at his clothes for a second too long. This was it. No more hypotheticals. No more scrolling profiles at 2 a.m. No more rehearsing arguments in the mirror about autonomy and stigma and choice. He undressed methodically: shoes, socks, shirt, jeans, underwear.

He wrapped the towel around his waist like armor and headed toward the stairs leading to the second floor, where the cruising areas resided. How would he know who "The Twelve" were? He never saw any face photos, nor body ones.

Steamworks unfolded in layers. Corridors gave way to lounges, then to infrared Finnish saunas, then darkened abodes playing big-budget porn films on widescreens. They looked like dim alcoves bathed in amber and blue. Music pulsed faintly through seen-it-all walls, more vibration than melody. Pop songs mostly.

Bare bodies drifted past him in waves—some alone, some paired, many forming opportunistic courtship for the sake of pure pleasure. Ryan pretended like he knew the law of the land; he didn't want to stand out as an amateur in this constructed wilderness of raw confidence and innuendo.

A group of three well-built men, arms linked and overly chatty, strolled past him toward a double door in the distance. They seemed like they were regulars, confident yet casual. "Hey, can I join you guys? Are you part of The Twelve?" Ryan whispered.

"You've got a keen eye" one of them said. "You're here for the ritual, I'm guessing?"

"Yep! Where are the others?"

"They're waiting. Tonight, we only have you. Some nights, two or three, and other nights nobody heeds our call."

Ryan followed them with gusto. Not in robes. Not in formation. Not in anything theatrical. Just twelve men occupying a private lounge near a water fountain, spread across hardwood benches and leather couches in some constellation of concupiscent hedonistic divinity. Their attention shifted subtly when he arrived.

One of them (more youthful, closer to his age, with a well-trimmed ginger beard) stood to greet him. His calm and cool, cyan-colored eyes reassured Ryan.

“You're here for the ritual, I'm assuming?”

Ryan nodded.

“I’m Marco.” They shook hands.

The other members of The Twelve were lazing on leather couches, sipping their beverage of choice. This was clearly some VIP room. Many of them were draped across one another in skin-to-skin proximity, wearing only a towel like he was. Conversations drifted in fragments: gym routines, bad dates, a Netflix documentary someone had half-watched. Mundane, domestic, aggressively normal. This wasn’t some fringe subculture operating in shadows. This was routine.

Ryan's gauntlet began without announcement. Marco's hand gently placed upon his shoulder, followed by an oath echoed close to his ear.

“And so we begin, the first of your gifts.”

Ryan nodded, and the playbook followed.

Marco was gentle. He pressed his lips to the nape of Ryan's neck, gently kissing as he lubed his penis with slow strokes. Ryan began easing back but inadvertently stood on Marco's unusually large feet as they both chuckled. The sex was pleasurable; Marco certainly knew what he was doing. He climaxed with an elongated exhale and slowly pulled out.

"You're such a beautiful guy. Have fun tonight, Ryan."

The second was louder, with the vibe of a chest-beating dominant top. The third joked nervously beforehand and then fell silent once his deed was done. This was a coalition of connection, intimacy, and taboo. Time began to loosen as animalistic heat accumulated. Ryan floated between each man with speculative surrender, folding headfirst into the pattern taking shape: greet, consent, receive.

A private liturgy. A sacrilegious ceremony of unspeakable shame to the outside world, but here? It was gospel. An anti-cure for a virus that'd terrorized and traumatized the LGBTQIA+ community for decades.

At some point, he realized he was no longer only receiving, he'd flipped into insertive positions, giving as much as he'd taken. The empowerment begetting acts of self-destruction stimulated him. To Ryan, this felt like a communion of intimacy.

He needed a breather and dove onto the lounge with members of The Twelve contorted around him in varying degrees of nakedness and poise. His skin hummed, was this heaven? A familiar hand pressed a can of Red Bull to his lips.

“Drink.”

It was Marco, he sat beside him and patted him on the back. A genuine bond of some sort had arisen from such a formulaic sexual assembly line.

“You okay, bro?”

Ryan nodded. Then shook his head. Then nodded again. He was physically exhausted, sweat-soaked and open-mouthed, even his hair was dripping musk-scented moisture down to his decolletage.

“I don’t know what to feel.”

Marco smiled faintly. “That’s normal.”

“One more, the twelfth," Marco whispered into Ryan's ear this time, the warmth from his breath imbued the words with sacrosanct energy. "He's... a kingmaker of sorts. He's our founder, our leader. His name's Danziel."

Ryan stood upright and began to feel faint, his vision briefly marred by tiny, arrhythmic white dots as his now-damp towel slipped from his hands and fell to the floor. Tonight had been the emotional equivalent of a high-intensity interval workout, sex standing in for his usual HIIT session at Southport Fitness.

Danziel leapt from the lounge sofa to help him, grabbing his shoulders and massaging the back of his neck softly. "Whoa, just a low blood pressure spell, hey! Focus on my face, yeah? C'mon, let's get you somewhere more relaxing. I can already feel a ceremonious chemistry between us."

Hand in hand, they moved out of the lounge inhabited by the other members of this makeshift tribe, and wandered through the annals of Steamworks, smiling at passersby like they were old friends. Perhaps they were, to Danziel.

They entered a vacant room with a black single bed coupled with a lube dispenser on the right-hand side of the wall, and Danziel closed the door. The flicking of the latch signaled it was locked, and Ryan felt a second wind of vitality and energy.

He peered at Danziel through the blurred lens of bloodshot eyes. Danziel looked early forties. His freshly washed burgundy hair was tied up into a man bun, streaks of gray glinted beneath the blinding fluorescent bulb above the cubicle. His eyes were unnervingly steady. No blinking. No smile. No preamble to preface what comes next.

“You still want this?”

“Yes.”

Ryan paused, not because he was doubting himself, nor his reasons for wanting bareback sex with these men, his brain was subdued with post-coital endorphins, yet his body was revved for the final trial.

“Last chance,” Danziel uttered with a cock of his head to the side.

“YES!”

What happened inside was not dramatic. No crescendos. No theatrics. Just closeness. Breath. Weight. Heat. The slow, deliberate crossing of an implausible sensorial boundary. At one point, a sudden grief rose in Ryan’s throat—not panic, but recognition. Of endings. Of beginnings. Of something irreversible sliding perfectly into a place of worship. His temple was now bound to The Twelve.

Afterward, Danziel held him close to his chest. This wasn't romance, it wasn't intimacy, it was as if he was... invoking? As though he'd sealed something.

“Take care of yourself,” he said.

“I will."

Ryan showered longer than necessary, watching water bead and run down his skin, trying and failing to identify with mixed feelings of elation and sadness. By the time he dressed, the locker room had thinned. Outside, as he skipped home along W Belmont Avenue toward his share house near the North Branch of the Chicago River, everything looked the same as before.

He felt oddly at peace.

*

119 days of whetted anticipation passed. Ryan wondered if he had it. No night sweats had ensued, and he hadn't experienced any other symptoms of acute HIV infection (Reddit was his go-to source for information, of course).

He'd arrived ten minutes early for his midday appointment with Dr. Gladstone and took a seat in the warm, rainbow-painted waiting room, its walls washed in gentle bands of color that were meant to reassure. Seconds felt like minutes; minutes felt like hours. When was his name going to be called?!

"Ryan Grevis?"

"Yep! Howdy, doc! Coming now, thank you so much for seeing me at such short notice."

The door to the office was already ajar, and as Ryan took a seat opposite the back of his doctor's computer, which was not usually switched on for routine visits, Gladstone began speaking astutely.

"Firstly, Ryan, the results from your blood panel weren't in our favor this time. You've tested positive for HIV. These days, many people live long and healthy lives. This isn't the end for you, and I'm sorry I had to be the one to break this unpleasant news to you."

Ryan's expression never wavered. He smiled politely and muttered some thank-you’s and I'll-be-fine platitudes.

"So, I'm healthy, fit. I probably don't even need to go on medication yet, am I right?"

"Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that, Ryan. Your blood tests show a very low white blood cell count; they're also referred to as CD4s. I ordered a genotypic resistance test to gauge which medications I can prescribe you, as all strains of this virus have varying degrees of resistance to antiretroviral therapy."

Dr. Gladstone held a printed copy of this new, unforeseen test result in his left hand. His wedding ring refracted an uncomfortable glare for one who knew his archetypal dreams of a white-picket wedding were implausible from a young age. Ryan fidgeted in the chair opposite Gladstone. He needed to hear the words that everything was going to be okay.

"I'm sorry. Your CCR5 and HLA markers, along with the viral sequencing, aren't good. The strain you acquired carries a rare combination of drug immunity."

"But I can still take one pill a day, can't I? My friend Tobias even skips a day and he's fine, as healthy as a horse. There has to be a super med or something, yeah?"

Dr. Gladstone shuffled slightly and placed the results flat on his polished desk.

"I recommend you seek out a good peer support group. A minority of people are in your position, and they're managing."

Ryan skimmed his results sheet. The soulless Helvetica font and bureaucratic structure felt alien. This couldn't be reality. Those men—The Twelve—seemed so fit and healthy. How could one (or more) of them be on a cocktail of potent, mega-dosed meds?! They never told him about drug resistance or low CD4 counts?!

"I'm going to prescribe four medicinal agents. Two will work to stop replication at the RNA level. One blocks viral assembly. One boosts the whole stack.

"It’s more than most people need, but if it keeps your viral load undetectable, then that's a win."

Dr. Gladstone handed Ryan a script for Dolutegravir, Darunavir, Maraviroc, and Ritonavir. The multisyllabic drug names frightened him. This couldn't be reality; inertia and anhedonia clashed inside his psyche, and as his throat tightened, his heart began pounding.

"Ryan? Ryan?! RYAN! Can we get some help in here? I have a patient going into shock. Two milligrams liquid Lorazepam, stat."

*

Weeks passed, or were they months?

Ryan lay idle on his couch, his glazed, bloodshot eyes half-focused on rerun episodes of Queer as Folk, his favorite television series as a young teen. The characters comforted him in nostalgic penance, particularly Brian Kinney, an alpha role model of liberation and sexual freedom.

Cashing in his last paid sick day for the financial year, his thoughts looped and lulled in rumination. The unrelenting realism of a new “this will quash my future” health-stricken chapter crushed him. Until now, young adulthood had been close to an idyllic journey.

Circumstance, bravado beliefs, and an abandonment of his own agency had brought him to this inhumane embankment of ruin. Tears welled and slid over his pale fingers, still flimsily holding the remote, like sap bleeding from birch.

Consequence is always cruelly ill-defined.

(c) Edward Swafford 2026

Author's Note: I'm a proud gay writer, and this story tackles taboo subject matter without a proverbial guardrail. It had to be written with force because fictional events in this story *actually happen* within the LGBTQIA+ community.

Bug Chasers: The Men Who Want HIV was produced by Britain's Channel 4 news network. It's arguably the most compelling (and disturbing) documentary on this subject.

Nothing in my story glorifies HIV or the act of deliberately acquiring HIV. Contrarily, my entry for the Ritual of Affection Challenge is a condemnation of such behavior.

Writing about issues few will is vital for awareness, social change, and understanding.

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