Time and again I've been told that, for a boy, my face is enviously free of blemishes.
There is the occasional pimple, but it never grows too big or stays too long, and afterwards the mark swiftly disappears after a few weeks of washes in warm water.
I've used the same soap for sixteen years; the same salicylic acid cream since puberty.
It has always seemed to me that, in the facial department, at least, I've been spared a certain sense of humiliation, for though people may not judge you for having acne, they certainly take note of it.
We live in a society that prizes those who exude purity, and thus can be defiled. Sometimes, when I hear of the insecurity that those around me go through, I feel I've been saved from being infected by a plague of a kind, that I am very much outside of the feelings that are being depicted there, on the other side of it.
So when my friend, on behalf of his friends, asked if I, the only openly gay guy in our grade, was interested in having each of them ejaculate on my face, I wasn't exactly surprised.
You don't plant seeds in land that is already sown with weeds: my pristine visage was the equivalent of a field of grass recently plowed.
What good could semen do to a face that was already corrupted?
I was deeply touched by the offer, after leaping over the prospective disgust.
In my prior experience with semen, I wasn't a fan.
For myself, even, semen was something to be rid of right away, flushed down the toilet.
And in the case that I had become the toilet of another, expected to swallow the load, I did so with irritating reluctance--which I thought would anger the guy to the point of allowing me to get out of it--but it didn't matter if I was committed to the part, as long as I fulfilled my duties.
It left an acidic aftertaste at the back of my throat long after.
I was clear about what I would and would not do: suck but not swallow.
You have to draw the line somewhere if you have any regard for self-respect, if you want to have some dignity at the end of the day.
I didn't like to be used unless I wanted to be used.
In short: I have standards.
I liked sexual activity, but I was picky about who I would do it with and what I would do when I was with them.
You, too, can make choices like this: these are the things no one ever teaches you, and it is why some people go a long time making bad decisions and doing things they in their right mind wouldn't do if they had known they didn't have to go through with them.
It is okay to say no when you do not feel comfortable doing something and the potential fallout of the person whose advance has been rejected is a sign that person is not good for you.
Perhaps because my spirits were low, and the prospect was bright--all of them frequented the gym--I said yes to having my face used for their purposes.
When I arrived at the home of the richest of the men, they were all sitting on sofas in the living room, there were six of them.
Whatever conversation had gone on before I arrived died.
Now I was the conversation.
It made me feel powerful, in a way.
One of them, the one whose house it was, instructed us to go downstairs. I was the last one, had to close the door behind us and make sure it was locked.
When I was off the last step, stepping into the light of the spotlight overhead, I heard the sound of a movie playing on the television. As I advanced the porno came into view.
Again they were sitting on sofas, though these ones were worn-in, the ones that had once been used upstairs I assumed, but this time their hands were in their pants, playing with unseen things.
None of them dared to look at me.
"You can sit in the centre," said the boy whose house it was, who had asked me to come, who was not, oddly, touching himself. As I made my way to the centre of the room, before the TV, and lowered myself on my knees, could feel all of their eyes on me.
"I'm ready," one boy said.
"Me, too," said another.
They got up and teetered over to me with their pants at their feet.
One of them placed their hand on my forehead and titled it back.
I looked at my masters from below.
"Close your eyes you fag," he said.
After I closed my eyes I heard one of them say:"He really does have nice skin."
Another: "Too bad."
Then I felt warm globs of cum fall over an eyelid and then a cheek be shockingly splattered, as though by bird shit.
They didn't need any help to get where they needed to go; what they needed was a receptacle to take the excess, to be witness to the revelation that was their orgasm.
I was to take on their waste, to be grateful for the unpaid labour entailed.
"Can I have a tissue," I asked, my eyes beginning to burn.
"Sure," one said, pausing. "When we're done."
They broke out into laughter: I was wrong: I was not the conversation: I was the punchline.
One by one they approached me and deposited their load, sometimes in the same places so that the original could not be distinguished.
My face had become a melting pot of cum.
The woman on screen finally climaxed, squirting, it sounded like, all over one of her lover's chests. It was the only orgasm that I'd heard that day, but I'd felt the result of so many.
At the end my friend came with a towel, watched as I wiped all their cum off my face.
"Why didn't you cum," I asked.
"Because I care about you," he said.
I thought it was sweet, at the time, because it was only belatedly, when I was on my way home, that the fact that he'd spared me another load did not exclude the fact of his pimping me out to his friends.
I showered when I got home, washed and moisturized my face, and as I ate my dinner my mother looked at me for a while.
"You're face is glowing," she said. "It looks brighter. Did you do something different?"
I touched my cheek, thought about it, and was both embarrassed and pleased when I realized that the semen had had a positive effect on the look of my skin.
"No," I told her. "I didn't."
She put the fork in his mouth and used her teeth to slide the food off of it.
"Maybe you're sleeping better," she said.
When I was back in my room, looking in the mirror, I saw the subtle difference my mother remarked upon.
I would do anything to maintain the flawlessness of my face, I thought.
I called my friend and asked him when the next time his friends would be free.