Poz Dataloungers

Great sex. May 1991. Decent.

Every poz person on grindr is “undetectable”

I got it from a blood transfusion.

6 years ago, bad sex, dude lied about his status. I still should have used a condom, but it pisses me off once in a while. It was my responsibility to be safe, but the lying pisses me off

I'm watching THE GIFT on Tubi now.

R4, were you the bottom?

Yeah, he also said he didn’t cum in me but I could tell he did. What a dick. So fucking stupid on my part though! So fucking stupid! Can’t really dwell on that shit though.

You could have sued him! How long after the fact did you discover your status?

A guy at the bar we met at told me he was poz about a week later. I seroconverted later that year

Jesus Christ, r9. How bad was it? Were you getting fevers and rashes? Did you bottom? What an asshole.

R7 What a piece of shit. There are real psychos out there.

I'm sorry to hear that, r7. Not being judgmental but just a serious question, were you inebriated when you had sex with him?

Yes I was! New Years Eve! I guess the silver lining is I knew it was possible I was infected. I got tested every 3 months until I finally tested positive. I was able to start meds immediately and have always been undetectable with the exception of converting. My immune system is relatively in tact for now. I was young, drunk, and too trusting at that point in my life.

The More You Know....🌟

[quote] in tact

Which is so much better than out tact.

THE GIFT (2003) was about 2 bugchasers and in the end they both seroconvert. Kenboy took nearly 60 POZ loads one night at his birthday orgy to make sure he finally tested positive.

Just read that both died in 2017 so I suppose it worked out well for them in the end.

They interviewed a few POZ guys and 3 of the 4 had already gone into cardiac arrest due to the meds. Does this still happen? Have the meds advanced enough where it doesn't take such a toll on the heart?

It was a typo r15, kindly fuck off

R16 I sat next to one of the world's preeminent HIV researchers on a flight once. She talked about abacavir and how dangerous that drug is. Otherwise healthy HIV positive men were keeling over from heart attacks. She only mentioned abacavir, not other retrovirals, but I'm assuming others carry some cardiac risks.

I got it during a year of crazy sex on meth about 15 years ago. It's weird how a drug makes you just not care anymore. All you want is sex because you use sex as a replacement for intimacy and love.

Thankfully I sobered up and am managing well.

R16, although bug chasing existed, it certainly wasnt an epidemic that the media made it out to be.

I kind of understand it. People were just sick of the whole "safe sex all the time or else you might die" narrative. Once they got HIV, they no longer feared getting HIV.

Many people who seroconverted would comment that they suddenly got support and a sense of community the minute they seroconverted. They just wished the gay community would offer those things to people who are HIV-

There was some HIV researcher at NYU would gave HIV to a number of men. He could claim he was negative when he was, in actuality, poz.

I only know because an acquaintance told me that's who he got it from. A thread long ago brought out comments from others he had infected.

Any others out there who know details of who this guy was?

Snowflake, perhaps you need to go back outside and read the fucking sign over the door.

It's what we do here.

Meth makes you want to have sex? Can someone explain this? I’ve heard that a lot of Meth heads are Poz. What exactly causes people to sleep around? To get more meth?

This thread will end in tears.

Interesting to be desired again as a daddy after many lean years. You guys don't care that I'm poz and will happily bareback (I"m undetectable and they're on PrEP)

Pretty amazing that we're routing this horrible plague.

[quote] I’ve heard that a lot of Meth heads are Poz.

yes, Meth is coming back. With PrEP, while it may be preventing HIV transmission, it is definitely spreading other STIs

Being poz used to be a amazing for sex--all I wanted without fear.

Now with PrEP, everyone can do it.

Low information gay shut ins are still fascinated by The Gift - a provocative shitty doc about a couple of suicidal mentally ill people in a little bizarro fetish world that existed 2 decades ago.

If those 2 freaks died in 2017 it is because they wanted to have a horrible disease and kill themselves with it. In fact anyone poz in 2001, 2002 when that "gift giver" scene even existed, could have been on tritherapy.

These 2 twats could have taken tritherapy when they got HIV but obviously chose not to.

The purposely set out to make themselves suffer and to kill themselves and used fetishized sex as the method. They could have easily chosen cliff cliff diving. Or injecting themselves with deadly bacteria, etc etc etc.

Freaks.

Carry on, twats above, as if that old story has anything to do with 2020.

Actually a poz friend says he has a FB who keeps saying he wants to be pozzed. I think it's more a meth-driven fantasy talk than reality.

Although my poz friend cums in his FB all the time, the FB has never sero-converted. Of course, my friend is undetectable and the FB is likely on PrEP

Early 80's, from a crazy hot "Marielito", he gave me real cocaine and fucked me raw. I ran in to him a year later and saw he was sick and I knew I had it. I remembered "flu-like symptoms" after we met. I thought it was from doing coke and not eating.He was a coke head. I saw that the people who were dying were the heavy drinkers and druggers, I stopped everything but weed. I'm sure it's helped me stay alive all these 30 plus years. Never been hospitalized, never had to stop working for long. The drugs work great. Everyone on medication IS undetectable. There are effective drugs to attack the virus at every stage.

Ignorance and self-loathing were co-factors along with cocaine. I did not know ANY out, gay person. I drove to the big, main library to research the topic of homosexuality and EVERY single book made reference to; perversion, suicide, alcoholism, deviance, depression. Not one positive comment. I grew up in a social environment of "all fags should be killed", I thought I deserved AIDS. I also didn't think I was gay because I wasn't interested in hair, make-up, decorating or flowers.

You forget there was not ONE normal type gay person who was out, even Elton and Martina were "bi". Truman Capote was a freak to me. Liberace and Paul Lynde NEVER came out, to my knowledge. Not that they were normal. I'm just saying, we had no role models.

Ellen came on tv in 1997

What's a Marielito?

If I had come out and started being sexually active any earlier, I would have become poz.

I remember craving love and acceptance so much that I would have done almost anything. If a guy asked me to bareback, I would have if he found me attractive.

Thankfully, I came out a little later (late 20's)--by then, we know HIV was spread and I was older and wiser.

Many Europeans don’t have the receptors to contract HIV. Others catch it easily. It can also come to down genes.

Too much cum can kill.

You forget there was not ONE normal type gay person who was out, even Elton and Martina were "bi". Truman Capote was a freak to me. Liberace and Paul Lynde NEVER came out, to my knowledge. Not that they were normal. I'm just saying, we had no role models.

You sound like you still have issues

Don't get me wrong, but I like poz guys. They are most often living their life with heightened perspective. And all the ones I know are sensitive when dating a negative man. Not appreciative - there is no need for that. But more honest about a lot of things. HIV is either going to open or close you to deeper intimacy and trust.

I got it from my first ever sexual partner when I was 19. It was back in 1981 so I really had no idea it even existed at that point, it was just a rumor that some gays in big cities were getting some kind of gay cancer. I was from a small town, so almost no information back then, no computer, no internet. Like the other post above said, no gay roll models on TV or movies or public let alone anyone with HIV. How do I know I got it then? Because that first fuck ended up being my partner for 6 years after that. I was always monogamous so when we broke up, he started getting sick. I went to get tested, it took 2 weeks to get the results and BINGO! Your test came back POS.

He passed away a few years after that and his fucked up family made me do all the work for his funeral because they couldn't deal with it. All while I though I was going to be next. Well, by the roll of the dice, HIV meds came out just before I would normally have started getting sick. I jumped on them right away, joined experimental programs as a guinea pig just to get the drugs that might save my life and if not at least help others with the research. So, I am alive, healthy, undetectable, never been to the hospital for HIV related issues. I see a doctor for almost every other month it seems for one test or anther. Last one told me it's like a miracle I am alive. And he works in an HIV clinic!

But it's not been an easy road, my family all thought I would die, and I had to realistically reorient my life as if that were the case. I used to take hand full of pills 3 times a day until it made me sick. I think at one point it was up to 16 horse size pills per session. I have to be very careful not to get colds and stay away from raw foods like sushi because its not safe for people like me. I have been vaccinated with almost everything they have. I don't do any drugs and maybe drink once or twice a month at most. And my career completely down the crapper. Cant do 10 hour days like most in my field because it will impact my health. Work Hard/Play Hard is not something I can do and has bit me on the ass the both times I disclosed it to my boss who wonder why you are not "a team player". One fired me by pushing me out of my job 1 month after disclosing my HIV status to HR. I tried to fight that but they had a team of 20 lawyers and I had only 2 guys on contingency. It ended in a stalemate and with me out of a job and no money.

But I am alive, and that is what matters. I would say I am generally happy. I have a partner who I have been with for 20 years so I never had to deal with a lot of the negative dating stuff most guy have to. I worked hard to stay alive, but luck was also a big part of it. Iv seen people die a lot younger than me and I sort of have survivor guilt. A few years earlier and the HIV drugs would not been around.

I loved having sexual with poz guys (with condoms) because they fucked like they had nothing to lose.

They brought passion and intimacy back to sex and they were so happy appreciative I would actually have sex with them while so many shunned them.

When U=U was known and PrEP came out, I let them fuck me without condoms, which was such a wonderful experience after so many years of shame and fear.

R37, I admire you.

R35. Define normal!🙄

R37, that is indeed incredible. Were you and your original partner vers? I know there’s a belief that most of the people who died were bottoming and those who survived were tops.

I totally get you R38. I’m HIV neg but used to have (safe) sex with poz guys too — after the initial stark staring naked fear of the first year of AIDS subsided I found the wasted bodies with shaved heads of the hot and driven boys very sexy. And there was real passion. Did they want to poz me? Of course! They presumed anyone out and up for it ‘had it’ or ‘wanted it’. Sad to say, I met very few who were inhibited by guilt over pozzing others. They were exiting Planet Earth very soon and morality was for the lucky who got to stay a while longer. One guy would drown me in nightsweats — he had the loveliest clammy body. I guzzled about 1,000 gallons of high viral load poz cum without effect (good oral hygiene). I’ll never forget one night at a fuck club at the height of the plague — all the boring nice boys stayed home for several years hugging their T Cells — but the boys out fucking were the boys with nothing to lose, and the boys like me whose sex drive was simply too great. And one night — it was a weeknight about 3am — this kid of the most astonishing pillow-lipped beauty with flawless ivory skin was getting fucked by all. I’ll never forget his open mouth and passion. Possubly a rentboy just off duty. But it was like peering at a Renaissance church alter with a Botticelli angel at the centre. There were no HIV drugs then. So all they could do was fuck the tears away. I used to go home and scrub myself in bleach! (I can just imagine the DL Marys reading this in horror. Fuck em. They’ll never know Dionysis.) I also remember there was a sticker on a wall from one of the early AIDS groups with a text poem of anger and hope — something along the lines of “We will overcome this dark night” etc etc. It was really powerful and visceral and I wish to God I’d got a copy because I’ve never seen it in any exhibition since. Just one of those pieces of ephemera lost like tears in the rain. There were also copies at Reception of an underground zine. In one issue there were clear plastic bags of poz blood. It was pretty grisly but they’d be collectors items today!

I’m curious about the resistance of Europeans genes to HIV. I had so much unsafe sex in the 80s and never became positive. I don’t understand why - but I honestly think my genetic makeup saved me. 100% Western European.

The HIV-resistant gene is very rare. The reality is that HIV is a very fragile virus -- according to the CDC, the risk for a single encounter of receptive anal sex is 138 per 10,000 exposures, or 1.38%.

If you had a lot of unsafe sex and didn't acquire the virus, you were likely just lucky.

[quote]How’d you get HIV?

Stupidest question ever. How the fuck do you think? Handshakes? Toilet seats? Doorknobs? Mosquitos? Airborne spray from a blood transfusion in an emergency operating room?

Or do you want a story rich with naivete or deception, with villains and innocent victims? Or maybe tales of cautionary imprudence?

[quote] the risk for a single encounter of receptive anal sex is 138 per 10,000 exposures, or 1.38%.

Forgive me, I’m dumb, but what does a single encounter mean? Having sex only once, or just once with a particular person? I’m guessing this is a statistical thing. I’ve just never really understood it. Again, forgive me ignorance.

BRW, what’s the rate for topping?

R46, it means that the chances of contracting HIV from a single instance of receptive anal sex with an infected partner is just 1.38%.

Other CDC estimates:

2. Insertive anal intercourse — 11 per 10,000 or 0.11 percent.

3. Receptive Penile-Vaginal Intercourse (woman’s risk) — 8 per 10,000 or 0.08 percent.

4. Insertive Penile-Vaginal Intercourse (man’s risk) — 4 per 10,000 or 0.04 percent.

5. Oral sex, whether receptive or insertive – chances are low.

So, do that 1.38% math for me. I'm shit at math. Except for addition.

138 people out of 10,000 people is 1.38% R48

Thanks, Rose.

Wow - I’m shocked how low the chances are for male receptive sex! Really!?

[quote] the risk for a single encounter of receptive anal sex is 138 per 10,000 exposures, or 1.38%.

That's the chance of getting HIV from a single random encounter, not specifically an encounter with someone known to have HIV

[quote]5. Oral sex, whether receptive or insertive – chances are low.

Bullshit!

[quote]That's the chance of getting HIV from a single random encounter, not specifically an encounter with someone known to have HIV

Incorrect. It refers to the probability of acquiring HIV from an infected source.

R42, howd you stay negative?

r54, that's the risk of getting with one encounter. With repeated encounters with the same person (or other HIV+ people) the risk goes up quickly

Basically, like this:

I just tested neg and I start prep tonight. I’ll wait about three weeks then have my first bareback experience. I don’t want to have sex, I want to make love. I want to make love like a man, to a man.

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮^^^ For Christ’s sake, just fuck.

Make love all day and night R58. Swim baby. Be dirty and sexy and crazy.

Even if I was on PREP, I'd still want condoms used.

For cleanliness alone.

R61, if you have a high fiber diet and take showers, your ass should be good.

R62, I was actually thinking more about walking around with some load leaking out of you.

Well it all started when Laguardia became my home base for my employer Canadian Airlines in 1976. I stepped off the plane after tending to the first-class cabin, I was excited and on my way to Fire Island !!!!

[quote] [R42], howd you stay negative?

Because I never drank, never did drugs, and I was never ever ever stupid. Most people act stupidly at some point. That’s the simple truth. Living a great life demands passion and generosity, but it also demands a steel will.

R65/R42, if you're not a troll, the things you claim to have done are the dictionary definition of stupid (and certainly stupider than drinking or taking certain drugs):

[quote] I guzzled about 1,000 gallons of high viral load poz cum without effect (good oral hygiene). I’ll never forget one night at a fuck club at the height of the plague — all the boring nice boys stayed home for several years hugging their T Cells — but the boys out fucking were the boys with nothing to lose, and the boys like me whose sex drive was simply too great. And one night — it was a weeknight about 3am — this kid of the most astonishing pillow-lipped beauty with flawless ivory skin was getting fucked by all. I’ll never forget his open mouth and passion. Possubly a rentboy just off duty. But it was like peering at a Renaissance church alter with a Botticelli angel at the centre. There were no HIV drugs then. So all they could do was fuck the tears away. I used to go home and scrub myself in bleach!

It's still amazing the number of gay men who are hooking up non-stop pre-Prep that never got anything. Even still today. Others - boom, HIV! It's nuts.

r60 I knew someone who used to say stupid shit like that. Is your name Tony?

[quote]that is indeed incredible. Were you and your original partner vers? I know there’s a belief that most of the people who died were bottoming and those who survived were tops.

Nope, I am actually a total bottom. I know, a cliche. My partner was mostly but not always a top when I met him.

For R35. R40

nor·mal /ˈnôrməl/

adjective 1. conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected. " Similar: common ordinary customary conventional expected everyday regular average plain simple

As in, NOT a rhinestone covered singer,outrageous writer, flamboyant celebrity or the world's best tennis player. That's what I mean by normal, you virtue-signaling, pedantic twits?

R70 seems a bit “touched”

Undetectable

soundless, it crosses a line, quiets into a seed

& then whatever makes a seed. almost like gone

but not gone. the air kept its shape. not antimatter

but the memory of matter. or of it mattering. it doesn’t

cross my mind now that it whispers so soft it’s almost

silence. but it’s not. someone dragged the screaming boy

so deep into the woods he sounds like the trees now.

gone enough. almost never here. daily, swallowed

within a certain window, a pale-green trail on the tongue

the pale-green pill makes before it’s divvied among

the ghettos of blood, dissolves & absolves

my scarlet brand. ritual & proof. surely science

& witchcraft have the same face. my mother

praises god for this & surely it is his face too.

regimen, you are my miracle. this swallowing

my muscular cult. i am not faithful to much.

i am less a genius of worship than i let on.

but the pill, emerald dialect singing the malady

away. not away. far enough. for now.

i am the most important species in my body.

but one dead boy makes the whole forest

a grave. & he’s in there, in me, in the middle

of all that green. you probably thought

he was fruit.

Do antivirals have a lot of side effects?

Not like they used to R73. When they first came out guys had to take a hand full 3 times a day. Side effects included constant nausea, diarrhea, kidney stones, being tired all the time, poor sleep, loss of body fat in the face arms and legs and more serious things like heart attacks and death. Today however, if you were to go on meds assuming you catch it before it turns to an AIDS diagnosis you could be on one or two pills a day with minimal side effects.

Long term effects are really unknown because the guys who first started on meds are the first gen to do that. Out of the long term survivors, a lot experience bone loss younger than normal, so instead of breaking a hip at age 70, age 50 is more common. But not everyone gets that, just depends on what drugs you were on. So ultimately its not a good idea to be reckless about getting HIV because pills exist. You make regret that once you have to deal with side effects and no other options to choose from.

The good news is, the drugs work. If you turn positive today and took your meds religiously and took care of yourself you can most likely live to a normal age based on your family genetic history. But if you are tweeking every weekend or binge drinking a lot, then they wont save you.

It’s fascinating how fast we went from HIV being a death sentence to something we can control. I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to eradicate it with a vaccine. It may end up like cancer which they still can’t make disappear without surgery and chemo.

[quote]It’s fascinating how fast we went from HIV being a death sentence to something we can control.

Are you kidding?

It took 15 years. That's almost a generation.

I hate that euphemistic moniker “Poz”. Makes it seem like HIV is no big deal.

“Click your heels together, and start walking. In Wizards of Poz, our Dorothy is a wide-eyed hipster dream in gingham cut offs, just just his journey to “follow the undetectable viral load”.

#wecouldbewizards

R72 For the love!

The poem at R72 is wildly beautiful and inventive. i love it.

I concur r81! For the love! I’m speechless

Yes of course. I posted it with love. That only someone could understand. I didn't write it, I can only share it with you, R82. Love and compassion and poetry are frowned down on here. but this small thing was meant for you...anything can be made beautiful. We shouldn't forget.

[quote] It took 15 years. That's almost a generation.

Sorry, I meant to say that it’s amazing we are where we’re at now regarding HIV. I know it took a long time. I just remember all the reports of gays dropping dead in the 80s and early 90s as a kid. Freaked me out.

I’m also impressed with how relatively quickly we found what is almost a cure. If you had asked me in the late 80s when a cure would be found, I would have said 2020+. When the drugs cam out late 90s, I refused to believe they would work long term. By early 2000s when it was clear they did, I was still in shell shock. Took a while for it to sink in that it really wasn’t a death sentence anymore. Possibly the greatest achievement I’ve witnessed in my life.

I’m happy for the poz community, which has worked hard to try to prevent stigma and isolation from overtaking those who are diagnosed

I always tried to be safe and didn't allow cum in my body so I'm negative. I wondered if my European DNA helped with that gene mutation ccr5 so I found the site below included a specific test to see if I had it from a spit test. I don't, so I guess I was lucky and my safety prevented me from getting it. I don't see anywhere on their site that they still offer that test.

Wow - thx R87. Good info.

Based on this thread I had never heard of "The Gift" (I heard of the concept through QAF, but thought it was fiction) and I watched it last night on YouTube. Based on what I read here, I thought this took place in the 90's, but these guys were my age in 2003. It was absolutely shocking that they would do this to themselves after having witnessed what the prior generation went through in the 80's. We had the education and we were old enough to know what happened/prevention, see very sick men on TV before there people even knew what it was. I had good sex, but definitely was always scared even w/ condoms. Then to see them that one guy take 100 loads in Palm Springs for his bday.

I think the advertising, which they discussed in the film, is all wrong, still at R79. These guys were looking for a community and to fit in, which I get. But of all the ways to try to fit in, it was horrifying. Also, I had no idea that literally all of the men in the support group who knew better as well as the young guys all died of heart attacks from the meds. What a really sad film. I'm so glad there are new men for the men here who are positive.

Meds, not men. I am typing like shit ^^^

I am suspicious that "all men shown died of heart attacks due to the meds" even the first gen tritherapy. Their hearts probably gave out due to drug abuse and loss of will to live.

[quote]The HIV-resistant gene is very rare.

I lived in NYC in the late 70s early 80s... had sex constantly. Unprotected of course. The baths, the whole 1970s scene. My BF died of AIDS and we had sex all the time.

Me? Negative. How I dodged that bullet I'll never know. I never did drugs. I guess that was a help. But I wonder if I'm just resistant to the virus.

Same here R92. Makes no sense - had unprotected receptive sex but remained negative, so random but I’ve always thought I must be resistant. Not that I was going to risk it after the fact.

All 4 of the men in THE GIFT passed away?

Where did you see this?

I knew the 2 main subjects had but not heard any updates on the four.

[quote]I wonder if I'm just resistant to the virus.

Very, very unlikely. Like one in a million have that gene. Not every gay man who was sexually active had AIDS back then. You happen to be one of the lucky ones who never got it.

HIV dose not live very long outside the body, and even if guys were POS and fucking you raw, that's not a grantee you will get it. Not like the common cold. You would also need to have some kind of tear or cut inside your anus where his cum would come in contact with your blood system and have time to mingle.

[quote] I just tested neg and I start prep tonight. I’ll wait about three weeks then have my first bareback experience. I don’t want to have sex, I want to make love. I want to make love like a man, to a man.

Finally, someone with the flair for writing who can replace Barbara Cartland.

I felt bad for the young dude who infected himself and got sick immediately in The Gift. It’s his own fault, but a lot of young gay men look to the gay scene as their compass and are woefully misinformed.

There was a pozzing hook-up forum website way back when created by a guy - I think his moniker was PigBottom or some such - that devised all the slang: Bug Chasers, The Gift, Gift Givers, etc. I forget the url. It would be archived on Archive org. It all began with a piece of short-fiction called 'The Letter' which was about an invite to a pozzing party. There were some very very serious people on there, (including a lot of amoral 'Gift Givers'), and some extraordinary posts. This was long before protese inhibitors, so wanting to be pozzed, or doing it to others, was - for want of a better word - hardcore. I suspect that's where the sad young guy in the documentary The Gift who wanted it got his mind bent, and scored the hookup that screwed up his life.

[quote]I just tested neg and I start prep tonight. I’ll wait about three weeks then have my first bareback experience. I don’t want to have sex, I want to make love. I want to make love like a man, to a man.

Hail MARY full of grace!

R98 I think this is what you hate taking about. This is some twisted shit. These people have to be on meth, mentally ill or both. 😵

*talking

You realize R100 those post on there are about as honest as what you see on the DL right? No one is taking 20 cum loads in a single night or whatever else fantasy shit they are saying there.

No, that's not the site. That's a fairly recent one. This was waay back in the day. I recall now that part of the url was "onramp".

[quote]No one is taking 20 cum loads in a single night

You've obviously never encountered the meth scene. Those guys with their legs wrapped round the back of their necks like crazied monkeys, are just hollow-eyed bottomless receptacles. Ten, twenty, whatever. They go for days. I saw one guy just this weekend take four or five guys (I wasn't counting, but it was a lot) in succession in just half an hour. Wham, wham, wham. Yep, it's back to crazy time for a small whacked out pool. They're busy breeding the Next Big Thing for all of us.

R102 I know a guy who got high and took well over 20 in a bathhouse.

NYC used to have BB sex parties, mainly for poz guys who fuck with abandon.

I had a friend who got into that scene as a way to deal with turning poz. He rationalized it by believing he had gotten what he feared all his life and now nothing could stop him from having tons of BB sex. His stories were wild —lots of drugged out poz guys doing things you can only imagine.

It took about a year, but thankfully he snapped out of it, got off the drugs, and returned to normal life. Unfortunately many of his acquaintances from that scene started to inject drugs and spiraled out of control, losing their friends, jobs, etc

way too often a BB 🐖 on scruff or grindr will post that he's taking loads at some hotel

R106, nowadays with PrEP, that could easily be a person who's negative

The HIV ‘Bug Chaser’ who changed his mind after a friend's boyfriend died "because the virus became drug-resistant."

R108 how thoughful of the guy....He stopped when he realized he might die.

R105, a couple years ago a friend shared this fascinating blog he discovered chronicling this one man’s addiction to anonymous sex at NYC parties, clubs, bookstores, etc in the first decade of the 2000’s. Initially he has trepidation about barebacking and meth but he indulges and gradually they become his preferred sexual modes.

Ultimately he seroconverts and it makes me wonder how common this individual’s trajectory is among the pre-PReP generation of gays that grew up fearful of sex but viewed HIV as somewhat of an inevitability. A lot of his choices read as amoral, maybe even nefarious, but I still have a great deal of sympathy.

As someone with autoimmune hepatitis that is now under control, the fear of contracting viral hepatitis and being that sick again has kept me from being unsafe despite being on PREP. If you are ever that sick, you learn how precious your health is—and how gambling with it over a cheap fuck is not worth it—especially if you have to work to survive.

So the general consensus here is NYC gays are BB HIV POS Whores. Got it.

I'm a Pozzielounger

r110 thank goodness blogs are so over and everyone has to get there thoughts down in a few characters for Twitter

I think this thread has been good. I’m negative. But like most gay people, at one point in our lives we have had unprotective sex.... glad that there has not been a lot of judgement on this thread

The judgment about unprotected sex belongs in the same category as the anti-abortion right wingers. If every accidental pregnancy was an HIV diagnosis, we would think about it differently.

R110 - fascinating, well written blog. Thanks for the link

Gay run AIDS organisations and drug companies share a lot of the blame for the feel-goodism and eroticisation of being Poz. The constant positive reinforcement they sought to offer to poz people (including those appalling advertisements in gay magazines, with poz couples frolicking in the sunshine like it was just Coca Cola), and the refusal to state the blunt truth that being poz could be a devastating existence even with drugs, contributed I think to the vulnerable seeking the illusion of inclusion and love and thrills in bareback sex.

I kind of understand the fetish. After spending your whole life in anxiety every time you have sex, it would be interesting to not worry about it and have sex with abandon. War fatigue. But I’ve accepted I’m going to my grave without having raw sex.

R118 I am Poz and have a AIDS dx and almost died. There is no devastation in my life I take my meds and go on like so many people who have a chronic condition. The only people who have trouble had issues before they converted. So shut up unless you are Poz too. You want to talk about feel goodism? Let's talk about all the fat people who have diabetes from poor eating habits, and the diabetes commercials that are so "feel-good" that they show all the fat people frolicking around and never mention that type II diabetes is largely from obesity and sitting on their asses. No, it's about SEX with HIV and we have a problem taking about sex especially gay sex. Remeber, your mother was a barebacker and you can't be sure she didn't screw around either in that "monogamous" relationship with your Daddy.

If we could separate guilt and religion and societal norms from medical and biological situations, life would overall be better. Sex is a tremendously strong biological drive, right up there with eating and sleeping. Gay people, at least past generations of gay people, grew up with tremendous amounts of unnecessary guilt and shame over their sexual activities and shouldn't get a continuation of that sort of torture from their fellow gay brethren. It's all well and good to talk about bad and good choices when it comes to sex, but biologically we are not built to think deeply and analytically every time the possibility for sex arises. There are a million types of hormones and pheromones saying, "DO THIS RIGHT NOW!". The norm for thousands of generations of our ancestors was unprotected sex, so it's not "unnatural" to consider bare sex the optimal form of sex. Unfortunately, bacteria and viruses and even insect life have found the combination of temperature and moisture associated with sex to be ideal for multiplying themselves, and long before HIV, humans were finding out that sex often came with unpleasant consequences.

One historic response to that reality is repression of sexual expression. Women, although vulnerable to rape, could and did often act as sexual gate-keepers, limiting their own exposure to potential bad consequences of sexual behavior. However, that in itself has never been sufficient to stop any microbe from getting around because the sex drive is so very powerful. I'm very glad that the poster above said, "your mother was a barebacker". ....because that really puts the whole issue into context.

Most men, when given the option, are relatively promiscuous. (Straight or gay). Women demand monogamy, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it, because child-rearing is really a two person job, so most straight men, over time, organize their priorities, balancing the desire to be with many women, (but striking out often), or having a fairly reliable source of sex more or less available on demand at home. Gay people didn't previously concern themselves with monogamy at all because their was no child-rearing involved, thus it was always a matter of choice for them.

I guess I worry when I hear or see judgmentality creeping in to conversations about disease. Nature tells us in no uncertain terms to want sex. The natural way to have sex is bare. We are men, and have at least an impulse towards promiscuity. It's sad that the reality of HIV and some of the other diseases out there means that we feel we need to opt to have less sex or no sex, protected sex or no sex, and to idealize a monogamous way of life that may not be particularly natural to many of us. Even though those options represent the realities that we face, it doesn't mean that the people of the past 40 years who didn't consistently choose the safe option behind door no. 3 were bad, crazy, mentally ill, unstable, stupid, irresponsible or any other adjective, although some of them might have invited those labels to themselves for other reasons.. In fact, many of them were acting far more "naturally" and in accordance with their natural drives than their critics.

you state your case very well r121, but I only take issue with irresponsibility, Our choices affect others, and condom use is not 100% a self-impacting choice. (In some ways aAkin to flu shots, although it's far from a perfect analogy.) And we, as gays, have the opportunity to be smarter and do better, and avoid the circumstance that created a fecund breeding-ground (literally) for new viruses and a possible new wave of deadly infection.

[quote] Remember, your mother was a barebacker and you can't be sure she didn't screw around either in that "monogamous" relationship with your Daddy.

I'm clutching pearls!!!!

[quote] Our choices affect others

Eating as much as we do also affects others. Your subsequent health condition will affect your family. Your health condition will affect tax payers too.

It's just natural to think mainly of oneself. Certainly we have tries to you condoms, but millions of years of evolution are working against you

R122 you are full of shit -fecund breeding ground my ass, more like the Chinese who start all the diseases like SARS etc. Gay men didn't start HIV, it started in Africa when someone butchered and ate chimps. Heteros are the main ones in Africa who get it , gays pale in comparison. Another self-hating faggot you are. The let's talk about all the antibiotics that are feed to animals we eat. I just saw that on TV. It was a straight who brought resistant gonorrhea to the UK btw. You hate yourself. Go stick your hands in boiling oil.

People actually think black Africans had sex with the apes and - my good friend who is very educated believes it. Just a racist belief.

Likely there was just blood exchange. No one had sex with monkeys

“Hey everybody! Guess WHAT??? I’m POZ!”

Wow r125 anger issues much? Oh, and what’s that on your lip?

Well I’m PAAS!

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