Cleanliness Is Next To His Harness

“I’ve worn a harness before.”

Most of my friends looked a little shocked. Especially the straight ones. In fact, a couple of the straight ones didn’t even know what I meant.

“You know, it’s like leather straps, and usually it crosses over your chest, and you usually see them with some kind of metal studs or spikes on them,” I tried to explain.

“Why the hell were you wearing that?!” someone asked.

“For fun?” I replied. “It’s actually a funny story.” I sipped my drink and began the tale.

It was about 5 or 6 years ago, and I was cruising profiles on some website or another. I saw a picture of a boy, mid-twenties, good body, wearing a harness. I started chatting with him, and asked him about it. He told me he loved them, that he owned several. I was intrigued. I’d never worn one before, and didn’t really understand the point of them. Also , I’d always thought they were for hairy leather daddies in clubs like The Eagle, but here was a this young, smooth guy wearing them in several pictures, and looking pretty good.

Finally HarnessBoy said “You should come over and try one of mine on!”

“Maybe we should meet for a drink first,” I replied.

A few days later we met for a drink at Pastis. I was surprised to find that in person he was even cuter then he looked in his online pictures, and more surprised when we started to hit it off. Soon we were connecting on a very deep level.

Me: I love hot food.

Harnessboy: Me too! If it’s meant to be hot, I want it piping hot!

Me: Exactly! Right out of the oven. And, if something is meant to be cold...

HarnessBoy: Ice cold!

Me: Totally.

HarnessBoy: Sometimes, when I’m drinking one of those 20 ounce bottles of coke, I get almost to the end but I don’t even finish it because those last few sips have gotten too warm.

I was thrilled. This was clearly a match made in heaven. In fact, I was so taken by this boy, that after our drinks I agreed to go back to his place. In Brooklyn.

Let me explain something: I don’t do boroughs. Call me a Manhattan Snob, call me crazy, I’ve just learned that bad things happen when I cross a river. Actually, that night may have been part of that lesson, among many others.

2 subways, 10 walked blocks and an hour later, we arrived at his place. It was nice, but I didn’t get much of a tour. He led me right to his bedroom. He opened the door, and immediately I saw it.

His bed was against a wall, and above it was a long, low shelf. At first I almost smiled, when on that shelf I saw a 20 ounce bottle of coke, unfinished, with a few sips left in the bottom of the bottle. But then I looked down the length of the shelf, and was horrified. Covering it, from one end to the other, were no less than 35 open, 20 ounce bottles of coca-cola, each with a few sips of warm liquid in the bottom. Quick math (which I hate to be forced into using) told me that even if he drank a whopping 5 bottles a day, some of those had been sitting there for over a week. My guess was many had been there longer.

I looked at him, with so many thoughts jumping to mind: I understand not finishing the bottle, I even understand if you’re drinking it in bed and go to sleep, and leave it on the shelf til morning, or even forgetting about it and going to work. But 35 bottles?! Over a week’s worth of disgusting warm backwash? Good god! Throw them out!

My next thought was: I need to leave. I need to just make up some excuse, tell him I’m not feeling well, and high-tail it out of the warm-coke-backwash collector’s apartment. Then I remembered. I was in Brooklyn.

I looked back at the wall of backwash. I looked at the boy. I looked back at the shelf. Finally, I sighed and said, “So where’s this harness?”

Excited, he quickly brought out two of them. The learning continued – I learned that they were heavy, cold, and could be very complicated to get into. HarnessBoy helped me, strapping the outfit around me, under my arms, around my waist. Finally, I looked in the mirror. Surprisingly it was kinda hot – I looked like a skinny, gay He-man. Then he put on his own. He looked at me expectantly.

I think he was hoping that putting on the harness would turn me into some crazy dominant master. That as soon as he strapped me in, I’d transform from Prince Adam to He-Man himself, throw him on the bed, and mount him like Battle Cat.

I’ve always been more of a Man-At-Arms. I really did think we looked cute in our costumes, it felt like Halloween. I asked, “Should we take pictures for myspace?”

He didn’t like that suggestion. So, he pushed me back on to the bed (Ow! What’s that buckle poking into my back!?) and laid down on top of me. Which was fine, until one of us tried to move. The metal rivets on his harness got caught in the metal buckles on my harness, and everything stated pulling and pinching and scraping. It was like teenagers with braces trying to kiss.

I was annoyed. Sex is supposed to be fun, and I wasn’t having fun at all. I got up, and made him take the harness off me. As he went through the arduous process of unbuckling and unstrapping me, I couldn’t help but look back at the shelf of grossness that I was trying to ignore. I realized with a sigh that it was really time for me to leave. And so I did.

After we had sex.

“WHAAAAAT?!” The straight friends I was telling the story to reacted with what seemed like horror, as they’d reacted to much of the story. “After all that, you still had sex with him?!?!”

“C’mon,” I replied sarcastically. “I was in Brooklyn!”