Gay sex is no walk in the park.

Last night I went for a long, romantic stroll with my new man, along the riverfront in the pink and purple glow of twilight. In a tiny park next to the highway, out of sight of the evening joggers and dog walkers, he grabbed me and kissed me with a sly little laugh and a twinkle of mischief in his eye.

When we got back to my place we had dinner, then lay on the couch and watched a movie, wrapped in each other's bodies. When the movie was over we kissed and he warned me that it was 10pm and he had to go home for an early start in the morning. I persuaded him to lie down with me for a while on the bed so that we could talk. We talked and kissed and caressed each other. We decided that he would leave at 10.30pm. We kissed some more, harder. We became entangeld in each other. 10.30pm came and went. He sighed and muttered "Oh fuck it", and had torn my clothes off within seconds.

At 11pm we were both exhausted and naked with our heads hanging over the foot of the bed.

We talked for a little while longer... and it possibly wasn't our best conversation. You see - and this will no doubt raise a chorus of "OMG ARE YOU INSANE!?" - he'd asked in the final moments of sex if he could come inside me, and I'd said yes. Once he'd blown his load and we'd both collapsed gasping back onto the bed, I became aware of the alarm bells going off inside my head.

Normally I'm scrupulous about safe sex, on the limited occasions that I actually get to practice sex at all. But my relationship with this guy has developed so fast, and with such a unique level of feeling, that I've let my guard down. Up to this point, in the four times we've had sex, he hasn't worn a condom but he's pulled out before coming. By the cold light of day that sounds like a completely inadequate gesture at "safe sex", but as we all know in the heat of the moment it's impossible to think straight.

I spent the next ten minutes grilling him about the results of his last STD test and his sexual history since then, hating the awkwardness of having to discuss it at all. His last test was two months ago (and clean, apparently), and his only sexual activity since then has been once with a stranger (non-penetrative) and once with his ex (with whom he wore a condom).

That's lightens the weight on my mind, but I'm going to have to insist on safe sex from now on. And get myself tested, of course, which will be a milestone I'd have prefered to avoid. Profound feelings of attraction don't prevent HIV. And given that I haven't taken a dump since then, I'm horribly aware that his cum is still inside me, allowing plenty of time for infection to transfer from him to me.

This cold dose of reality has also made me look at him a little more critically. I got his surname from him to create a proper contact entry on my phone, and despite the fact that both his first name and his surname are unusual I can't find any trace of him on the internet. No facebook, no professional associations, nothing. There's one person with the same name in Geneva, and another one in Houston who is actually a woman. I tried his brother, who has an equally unusual first name, and there was nothing there either.

In itself this is nothing - I'm not with facebook either and apart from my work nothing comes up about me in a google search. However in light of my epiphany about safe sex and bearing in mind what I learned about BN2, it freaks me out a little bit. When I see him tonight I'm going to make sure I see a credit card, or a license, or something that shows his name. Just to reassure myself.