Chem sex gay xxx party
They were happy to be photographed, so long as their faces weren’t in there so Google couldn’t determine which faces were in the photos. There wasn’t anything particularly special about it. As I was shooting them, it really seemed like a normal fact of life. You might expect there to be a bit of frenzy and anticipation As a matter of fact, these guys were not very worked up about doing the drugs. They actually fetishize the vein itself and get really turned on just by looking at an armful of veins. They’ll see someone with veins that stick out and think whoa, that’s a good one for administering a drug. Heavy crystal meth users like looking at really thick veins. During the administering of crystal meth, the rest of the body gets forgotten and all the focus is directed exclusively to the veins in the arm. I think the clenched fist, slightly out of focus up front, is quite telling. I used a low depth of field and zoomed in on the needle going in. Once the drug is in your system you become only focused on yourself: When can I get my next fix? How can I maintain my high? You get greedy and very selfish. In a way, Spike says, they are separate pieces of work, compiled in an album intended for people to better understand how gay and bi men are injecting chemicals to distort their sex lives.Ĭombined, the photos explore the entirety of the chemsex roller coaster - the passion, loneliness, confusion and despair - while simultaneously exploring fetishes around thick ‘healthy’ veins (which Spike calls “vein porn”) and cruising Grindr for days before hastily corralling fragments of a shattered psyche.
#CHEM SEX GAY XXX PARTY SERIES#
Nine black and white photos in the chemsex series were taken over the course of a year. What will it do to already hyper-horny gay men? Drive them tap into deep, primal, male sexual desires, Spike says, and actually reprogram the brain to hunt for risky sex (or be hunted, as the case may be), like strung out monkeys. “GHB will make a nun horny,” an attendee explained at Spike’s exhibition in London.
And then an abrupt realization, often followed by severe paranoia and depression.” Emotional: “A total break from reality which creates a false sense of intimacy.Physical: “I’ve seen guys who were super grizzly muscle bears whittled down to nothing.”.Psychological: “It literally makes people crazy by inducing panic attacks.”.And how exactly it does so is multi-layered:
As a result, the “ party and play culture” has destroyed gay scenes in cities around the world, Spike explains. It’s risky because chemsex significantly raises HIV and hepatitis C risks, since slamming party drugs with shared needles = disinhibition and unprotected sex. I consulted a friend of mine who runs a gay men’s health clinic in London who said, ‘You’re messing with a dangerous subject, but no one else is doing it so you should.’” I looked around and realized a lot of people were injecting crystal meth around me. “Something a bit more heavyweight than just getting off on the images. “I questioned whether there was a link between fetish photography and political activism,” he says. Which is why people have come to fetishize it - and why Matt Spike wanted to capture it.Ī self-described “fetish photographer,” Spike says he’s drawn to leather mostly because of the submissive/dominant relationship, but had grown tired of taking ho hum BDSM sexy portraits. (And from the drug addict’s perspective, was the best thing.) As I learned then and as I’m wistfully reminded of now, being injected with drugs can be a sexual act in itself. But he regularly injected me with cocaine which, from the dopamine’s perspective, was the next best thing. Granted, I’d never been fisted, but I did fall in love with a drug addict in 2011.