Chemical boys. The fear of loving Grindr's time

Dialogue of Katya Parente with the journalist Andrea Mauri

Today's guest is the journalist Andrea Mauri. In addition to collaborating in several newspapers, he has been working for several years in Rai, and, in addition to this he has published several works, including his latest work "Chemical boys - Confessions of chemsex " It is his latest work, created with Angela Infante and published by Ensemble Edizioni (2020).

Let's start talking about your latest book “Chemical guys. Chemsex confessions ". Why write it with four hands with a counselor (Angela Infante)?

The project "Chemical boys" He could only be born thanks to the contribution of Angela Infante and his work as a counselor at the Policlinico Tor Vergata in Rome, infectious diseases. Angela knows how to listen to the stories, and she met many boys, males, who told her about their experience of Chemsex. Often in the shadows, often as a marginal activity.

The chemsex phenomenon is growing, and we cannot pretend that it does not exist and that it does not concern the LGBTQI+community. That's why the idea of ​​launching an invitation to those who were willing to come out in the open was born, to tell the story of Chemsex, knowing that I would have been, unrelated to the dual and protected relationship between the patient and the counselor, to collect the stories and Transforming them into stories to take outside, thanks to the essential role of narrative and its strength to break through the lives of others, even those who are light years away from the experiences told.

What impact have chemical drugs in homosexual relationships? And why would two consenting adults need such "incentives"?

First of all, it should be noted that the chemsex concerns males who have sex with other males, using specific substances such as based cocaine, crystal, mefedrone, GHB, according to the official definition of Chemsex coined by David Stuart in 2001. These substances amplify Sexual pleasure, but they have nothing to do with the other drugs that improve performance by working on the erection. Therefore, the two elements should not be confused.

Often those who decide to participate in the chemsex meetings (which can also last whole weekend, without interruption) want to explore new pleasures, new sexual sensations never experienced before. There is also an inclusive factor of these chill, what Chemsex meetings are called. Those who participate tell you they do not feel judged, to be welcomed even if they do not have a body responding to the required aesthetic canons, even if you are too thin or too fat, too low or too high. You enter a protection bubble, which helps to enjoy sexual pleasure without paranoia. However, with this playful approach, over time an addiction to sex or substances can develop.

This does not necessarily happen. There are guys who make Chemsex and are able to keep the situation under control, and claim to have fun without problems, but the risk exists, we must be aware of it, and therefore it is appropriate to work on the reduction of risk, first with information brochures and precise indications On the nature of the substances and their effects on health, and then, in extreme cases, work on the reduction of damage.

Therefore the phenomenon of chemsex is a complex phenomenon that we must know, like every human phenomenon, and that does not make sense to put our heads in the sand and pretend that chemical sex concerns only a slice of the population.

The book thanks to which I met you is "Mickeymouse03". Is virtual reality a resource for relationships, or is it sometimes a game of mirrors?

We have now learned that both can be. I always repeat that dating apps do not live their own life, they are not animated and thinking beings. We are humans who use them, and it depends on us if we do it well or badly.

There are no good and bad apps. If we put ourselves in the real intention of knowing someone, these tools come to help us, and I think of how many people the apps have reached in these years, people who perhaps, due to distances or for shyness, had difficulty meeting other people.

If, on the other hand, we put ourselves in the immense ego, the pleasure of feeling the architect of the fate of others, choosing or not choosing someone from the long list of profiles, here we are wrong everything, that we will be destined to cultivate a solitude that will never find solution, because it will continue to feed on our selfish behaviors. Unfortunately I know that this last trend is prevailing, and therefore we must not let our guard down.

Drugs, virtual reality. At what point is the world of homosexual relationships?

Homosexual relationships are only one aspect of the human consortium. I would speak in general of relationships between human beings. There is no difference.

I'm sorry not to be optimistic on this point. I do everything in order not to lose optimism, but on the relationships I have the impression that we got bogged down. I speak from my point of view, I am not a sociologist, and I don't want to replace the experts on the subject. I notice that we have difficulty listening to us, listening to ourselves and others, leave aside the neuroses that occupy the mind for too long, and understand what we want and others what they want to tell us.

If we do not treasure this information, which are useful for improving each of us, we risk losing the ability to empathize with the other, and to close ourselves in fictitious worlds built on our ego.

More generally, are you really afraid of personal relationships?

This is what I was saying before, the fear of the other passes through the inability to see the other as a resource and not as an enemy. If the others are those who always wait for the right time to care, then we will never build clear and peaceful relationships. We will end up feeding violent drives, which we will no longer be able to control.

Are you working on some new work?

I wrote a still unpublished novel, where I wanted to explore the theme of the differentity of the bodies. In a society that conveys the message of athletic physicists, at present, of always healthy people, where disease and death have disappeared from daily narration, what happens to those who do not correspond to these canons?

I tried to tell the love between a dancer, therefore a man with a perfect body, and a lame. Compliance and differentity come into contact, they infect, and an interesting new result comes out.

Waiting for Andrea's new literary adventure, whose theme, for reasons that will now be known to you, it's particularly up to me, we thank him wishing to him good work.