bearbandit

Surely now we need to specify heterosexually married...

That's why medicine is never 100%: I have no reason to think that my viral load has shot to infectious levels, but there's always the chance, even though I'm as close to 100% adherent with my meds (needing pain meds makes it easier to remember when meds are due!) that my virus might have developed a resistance to one of the drugs, leading to its proliferation and taking me into the infectious bracket. But despite that, it's necessary to remember that, contrary to much of the fiction on this site, it's actually quite difficult to get HIV, even from someone with a high viral load. Yes, the chances increase as the viral load rises, but it's never a certainty. Speaking as someone who isn't into gifting (call me selfish, but I just don't want the responsibility for someone else's life) as long as my last viral load was undetectable, I'm as confident as anyone can be that I'm not infectious.

Thank you, fskn, for mentioning the smaller window in France: although in the UK we use the 72 hour limit for PEP, there is evidence that the efficacy of PEP falls quite dramatically after 48 hours. If you need PEP, get it as soon as possible, even if it means an expensive taxi across town in the middle of the night: the sooner the better...

I'd add here that a poz guy with an undetectable viral load is probably a safer bet of you don't want to get pozzed than a guy who tested negative even within the past few months: you don't know what he's been up to since and he could have picked up HIV since his last test. Around where I live guys seem to think that testing once every year or two is enough, which it isn't. The only sexually active non-monogamous people who can be sure of their HIV status are people who've got it. As a general rule if someone has a viral load of 1,000+, they're infectious. The European PARTNER study, looking at HIV transmission between couples where one is poz, the other neg, defines "undetectable" as below 200 (clinic vary between 20 and 70), and the only seroconversions they've seen on that study are where the neg partner has played away from home.

I'll happily go either way, though more inclined to bottom with some guys and top with others (and more inclined to bottom these days). I see humiliation as a fetish in itself which may or may not be involved in the sort of sex I'm having. Hell, even when there's humiliation involved I can feel proud of myself that I can take or pride in my boy that he can.

It's not my hole that's the slut - it's me... I nurture and give my inner whore what he wants

Ouch! When I was doing John's interferon injections I used to jokingly threaten him with trying the needle out on a car tyre first... (he hated needles and joking was the best way to relax him for the injection) And your English is excellent, by the way

You should be using universal precautions, ie thoroughly wash hands, then wear latex or vinyl gloves for everything else. The syringe can go in the ordinary rubbish but the sharp should go into a sharps bin. It's good practice not to attempt to re-sheath the needle in case of injury to yourself. Not that anything would happen with a vitamin, it's good practise because once they know you're managing those injections, they'll possibly in future ask you to do others. In the UK those precautions are considered perfectly adequate. Health care workers who have HIV regularly do injections. I have to admit that when John was alive I used to do his interferon injections without gloves (though obviously with freshly washed hands).

Dump your bag in the hall, and come into the living room. The playmat is already down , there's porn on the TV, a near-empty glass of juice by the settee and a few cans of beer. I'm wearing bike boots, a pair of jeans and a black vest. "Get your shirt off and kneel down" As you do so, I open my jeans, pull my jock aside and pull out my dick, already half hard and dripping with precum. I wipe most of the precum over your face then push my stiffening dick into your mouth. I let maybe half a pint of piss go. It takes you by surprise as you expected to be sucking on it not drinking, and you spill some of it down yourself. "Stand up". I grab you by the back of your neck and pull your pissy mouth to mine, letting your tongue explore my mouth as I explore yours. At the same time I'm undoing your jeans. As they drop, I pull away and spit into your mouth. “Get rid of the rest of the clothes, grab a couple of beers and sit down.” I lean back on the settee so that when you sit next to me you're half leaning on me with one of my arms around you. You catch on and open the beers, handing one to me. I haven't bothered fastening my jeans again. "Right, we're going to watch a little TV while we fill up again. You're going to feel how I've been feeling waiting for you: you'll be keeping your hands off your dick... no need to rush the beer, we've got plenty of time." You settle back against me, sipping your beer, watching a muscle bear getting it up the arse. I see your dick begin to twitch and strain which is when I start playing with your nipples, gently at first but increasing the pressure. I can see you making slight but obvious thrusting movements with your hips as though you hope that will relieve some of the pressure on your dick. "Put your beer down and get these boots and jeans off me". While you're doing that I get rid of my vest. You move to take my jock, but I stop you, pulling your face into my crotch. There's a faint smell of piss and you can see the pre-cum leaking though it. "Get it nice and clean and then I might think about taking it off." You're sucking my dick through the jock, occasionally moving down to my balls (I love having my balls sucked). You keep inching towards me until I can feel your dick against my leg. Instead of pressing back I pull away, grab a cock strap and fasten it around your dick and balls. I can see the veins standing out even further. You make a lunge at my dick, but I push you over onto your back, grab your legs behind your knees and push them back towards your chest exposing your arsehole. I spit a couple of time and move in with my tongue, at first going gently around the hole, the pushing in slightly, before returning to licking around your arsehole. I loosen my grip on your legs and you get the message holding them up while I start working harder on your arsehole, alternating spitting and getting my tongue in as far as I can. I take a moment to get rid of my jock. I take another lunge at your arsehole, getting my tongue in as deep as I can, aware of how my facial hair is scratching at your arse. I move up a way, and you feel the head of my dick against your arse. I run my dick over your hole, watching how it moves, then watching your face for that pleading look that says I need that now. I reckon that there's enough spit and precum that we won't need lube, so I gently push in. Sure enough, your arse moves automatically opening to let my dick in. I push in further and lean over the backs of your thighs lowering my face so that by the time I'm all the way in you start licking at my beard and 'tache. You realise that that frees up your hands to play with your cock. All the way in now, my balls against you, I thrust into you a few times and then pause. There's almost a questioning look on your face I start to let go, my piss flooding into your arse. I can feel your sphincter gripping my cock, your whole arse tightening around me as I fill your guts with my piss. I'm pushing in seriously now, feeling my piss dribble out over my balls, feeling your balls banging against me as you wank harder. I'm holding your ankles up in the air, letting you concentrate on your cock, while I'm staring right into your eyes, holding my cock as deep as I can inside. I see the change in your eyes, feel the subtle change of rhythm in your wanking as you get close. "Go on..." I've been close for a while, but now I go for it, pulling almost all the way out before pushing in deep, feeling your arse grip my cock, not wanting to let it go. Suddenly it tightens, and you groan as you cum all over your belly. A couple more strokes and I'm with you trying to push in even deeper as my cum mingles with my piss in your arsehole. We stay still for a few minutes each catching his breath, before I withdraw, lean over your belly, lick up your cum and move up to kiss you... After a while my dick slips out of your arse and I stand up, indicating that I want you standing too. I pull gently on your balls and ask "you need to piss yet?" When you nod, I crouch down and take your dick in my mouth - nothing. "What are you waiting for? You can have it back later..." Slowly, hesitantly you begin to piss and I swallow most of it, letting a little trickle down me, through my beard and onto my chest. Then I notice your arse leaking: "into the bathroom and dump that lot." I listen to you shitting out the piss and cum as I lie back on the settee, watching the porn again. My legs are spread wide and I've got a beer in my hand. You take the hint, sit between my legs and pick up your own unfinished beer. For a while we sit in silence, drinking, while onscreen the same muscle bear is taking it from someone else. You start taking little chances, rubbing your head against my balls, occasionally turning to suck on them. I stand up pulling your head up to my dick, beginning to get hard again, and start pissing into your face. You don't need telling: immediately you've got your mouth on my dick sucking the piss out. My flow weakens and comes to a stop. You try to take advantage of the situation by starting to suck me, but I push you away. "Time for that later. Now sit down, drink your beer and watch tv." Back in the same position, you sit on the floor between my legs. Between swigs of beer, you divide your attention between the porn and my cock and balls. You're so intent on what you're doing you don't notice that in between the beer I've also got through a litre of fruit juice. It's going through me fast, and next time you try to get my cock in your mouth, I pull you round, so you can take my cock again. This time I let myself get fully hard as your mouth works on my dick, tasting the sweetness of my precum, playing with my PA, before plunging down, then coming back for air while you play with the head of my dick. Before long you're working on my cock like you're trying to make me cum, at which point I grab your head and let go with another load of piss. When I've finished, you try to continue sucking me but I pull out and direct your face down to my balls. At first you're licking gently but when I push forward slightly your start sucking them, sometimes just one at a time, sometimes taking both in your mouth. I pull back a little and you get the message that I like a bit of pressure there. "Lie down, face up..." Reluctantly, you let go of my balls and lie down on the playmat. You start to raise your legs as though I'm about to fuck you again, but that's not what I'm after. Instead I sit on your face. Instantly, your tongue is out working around my arsehole, probing it, sucking at it. I pull your legs up further and with my upper body firmly against your belly get my tongue into your hole. It's still sloppy from earlier and I can feel the pressure of my body lying over your belly cause you to let go little trickles of piss. It's time... Before you can figure out what I'm doing I’ve moved round and I'm pushing my dick into your hole and fucking you hard. The little trickles of piss you were letting go become spurts. I hold in as deep as I can and just a little movement on my part, the pressure on your bladder is too much and you're pissing all over yourself. When your stream of piss ends your hand moves unconsciously to your dick. I'm fucking gently now as you establish a rhythm. Then I pull out and say the single word "knees". You struggle up and as soon as you're in position I push into your mouth. "This time you're going to make me cum... but when you get close yourself, keep yourself on the edge." This time you've learned a bit more how I like my cock to be sucked, paying a lot of attention to the head, playing with my PA, and only occasionally taking the full length. Meanwhile I lean down and start working your tits. Your sucking rhythm changes and I see you dick stiffen as I put more pressure on them. You're working my cock harder now and I can feel the inevitable begin. "Don't swallow." I let go of your tits to hold your head in place while I hold it still to fuck your mouth as I cum. As I cum, I'm pushing deep into your mouth, with each stroke getting a little shallower as I fill your mouth. I glance down at your dick: rigid and your hand barely moving. "Stand up." I position myself in front of your dick "Now go for it." Three, maybe four strokes and I feel your cum sqirting into my mouth, the last couple of spurts falling short and landing in my beard. I stand up and kiss you, mingling our cum together, at the same time giving your tits a last hard squeeze "That's for missing at the end..."

And once you've found one party you get to hear about others...

Six months without a drink next week (yes, I dare to think in the future now!) My liver is sooo grateful

The truvada penetrates deeply into many tissues, including all the ones liable to comes into contact with HIV as a result of taking loads containing HIV. That's why you have a "pre-loading" period when you start with truvada (7 days for anal sex, 20 days for vaginal), and top it up daily to keep the drug at optimal levels within your system. It takes HIV about 3 days to establish itself inside a new host, which is why the cut-off point for PEP is three days: after that point HIV is there and unmoving. To be honest, your question demands greater knowledge of the maths of probability than I have ever had (but then I have difficulties with my credit card). The way I understand it is that tenofovir is one of the fastest drugs at lowering the viral load in someone with HIV and emtricitabine is more of a detail merchant, picking up the little that tenofovir didn't get. Both drugs interfere with the virus' replication by inhibiting the production of the enzyme transcriptase in different ways, with transcriptase being essential for HIV to get itself into the DNA of a CD4 cell. So truvada creates an environment inimical to HIV's reproduction. It's not a case of one drug molecule for each HIV particle. Even if it were, the guy taking loads would die of exhaustion before exhausting the drugs. Where the maths comes in is in the possibility of drug failure (which is pretty damn low providing you're taking it as prescribed) and/or the possibility of of getting fucked by someone who <a> has a high enough viral load and <b> has virus that's resistant to both tenofovir and emtricitabine. Way more people have had to come off one or other drug because of side effects rather than resistance as resistance is pretty rare. The drugs don't come with a "good for protection against X poz loads per day" sticker... Sorry, that's as far as I can take it. Are there a microbiologist and a mathematician in the house?

Super-infection or re-infection, where two different strains combine to produce a strain with combined mutations of both strains, is so rare that in a world population of 34,000,000 PwHIV, it's reckon to happen maybe two or three times a year. If someone's on successful ARV treatment (in the UK we tend to use HAART to refer to the "second generation" drugs like old-style ritonavir) then they aren't infectious as it's estimated to take a viral load of at least 1000 to establish an infection, and the "success" point of ARV treatment is achieving a viral load less than 70 to 20, depending on the lab your clinic uses. Well below the infectious point. I'd note that in the PARTNER study, where they're looking at magnetic couples they define "undetectable" as 200 viral particles per millilitre of blood. The only serconversions that have happened there have been after the negative partner has played away from home. Think of the success of PrEP and how rare (and doubtful) the very few seroconversions have been. Someone being treated successfully for HIV not only isn't infectious, but they're also on a kind of "super-PrEP": Guys on PrEP are taking just two ARVs (tenofovir and emtricitabine), where as for successful treatment the general rule is three ARVs, from at least two different drug families. Truvada (the drug used for PrEP, though there are others in the pipeline) offers its protection through two nukes: treatment using truvada a protease inhibitor or an integrase inhibitor (the commonest class outside of the various nukes) as well. So a few loads containing HIV don't stand a chance. Personally I have no problems with taking a load from a guy with a high viral load because even though I'm on salvage therapy, I know that the drugs I can take are more than enough to deal with a different strain. If you think that bareback parties are a recent phenomenon, you're mistaken: I was barebacking in the eighties with other poz guys (then it was a sense of "nothing to lose" because there was only the one drug available) and continued until I ran up against old-style ritonavir, one of whose side effects was akin to chemical castration. Please note that ritonavir was re-formulated in the 00's and the dose greatly reduced, so its only side effect of note now is causing problems with lipids (high cholesterol) and blood glucose levels. Managing STIs is more important for guys who are poz because they can cause more problems than usual, and can help HIV along, meaning that your viral load can rise and your CD4 drop (it's not uncommon for someone to get HIV along with gonorrhoea or syphilis, the latter being the one that helps HIV along the most). Basically, the way to deal with STIs is to have regular checkups: in the seventies we used to reckon on every three months and more often if you'd hit lucky, as well, of course, at any point when we thought we might have picked something up or got one of those bloody phone calls that started "I've just been to the clinic and..." In the UK, STI checks go along with HIV checkups. You health care provider sounds somewhat judgmental to me (well, I know my HIV doctor wouldn't have phrased it that way!). Normally, you'd expect to be non-infectious once the chancres have gone and the penicillin has done its work, but he's right about the cumulative effects of syphilis. It puts a massive strain on everybody, poz or not, and is all the worse because if the initial stages manifest inside your ass, you're not going to know about it. If I had a penny for every bottom guy who's not discovered he has syphilis till it's progressed to secondary... Would that Vaseline worked as your mate suggests! Frankly, he's living in cloud-cuckoo land. It might coat the ass (that's what it's meant to do in this context), but with the slightest disturbance from even a finger, assuming you managed complete coverage in the first place, and there's a gap a mile wide as far as microbes are concerned and the vaseline, getting churned up as you get fucked, is actually going to help the microbes stay in contact with the lining of your ass. Vaseline went out of favour as a lube in the seventies or earlier precisely because it made clap etc easier to get. I strongly advise you to go for the every three month (or less) checkup route, and stick to lubes other than vaseline. You might want to tell this to the guy who told you about it...

Think of your favourite fantasy sex, give the other guy(s) a name (or not - it's your fantasy), think of how it starts, and just type what goes on in your head. Polish can come later. Hint: keep your dick in your pants and see how wet they get - that's your measure of how well you're doing. Write what gets you off - somebody else will get off on it... Once you've finished go over it all again, edit it where necessary, put it into paragraphs and when you're happy post it (and then have your wank!)

You could always write your own and let us all see what's going on in your mind

I'll admit to being riled by it: I thought it was lousy journalism (and said so to the author). As a long term PwHIV I found it depressing, as someone who does voluntary work with people who are newly diagnosed, I found it alarmist, and for people who are HIV-, well we've known for years that scare tactics don't work without a personal connection (of the sort where someone with HIV talks about the downsides of having it). Basically shameful clickbait...

Difficult question... and one that I think only you can answer. Certainly it strikes me that by your teacher's behaviour he was grooming you, but if you feel okay about it, then you feel okay about it. The age of consent is there as an average of where society thinks people are old enough to consent to sex. Some people, and it would appear that you're one of them, are capable of true consent earlier than others. It's a fair bet that most of us have met guys who are basically too immature even in their twenties (and possibly older) to be having sex. If you can look deep inside yourself and honestly say that you're fine with what happened, then don't worry about it. You're learning the hard way that many other people aren't as relaxed about sex as they would like to think they are, so maybe for your own peace of mind it's something not to talk about as openly as you have here, if you feel affronted by other people's reactions to your sexual awakening. I'm not saying that you should be ashamed of it, rather that as you've discovered, other people find it hard to deal with. The other side of it is the law. In the UK it would be difficult to stop the police from taking action if they heard your story, and what I hear in your message is that that's something you don't want. I feel very uncomfortable about suggesting that you keep quiet about what seems to have been an important, positive and significant experience for you, but on the assumption that Canadian law is similar to British law, that's what I would suggest. I don't think you're fucked up: hell, when I was fourteen I would have done the same had I had the chance. As it was I started fucking with guys two years before I was of legal age (it was 21 in those days). I used to smoke roll-ups and had a sticker on the top of my tobacco tin reading "Under 21? Homosexual? Break the law!" In British law that could be construed as conspiracy to break the law, so I could have been done for that. Basically people get very antsy about age of consent issues and to meet someone who considers what society construes as childhood sexual experiences to be simply part of his growing up makes them uneasy. I wasn't sure of the derivation so I googled your screen name: I knew i recognised it as Greek, but couldn't remember the story behind it, and again it suggests to me that you're comfortable about your experiences. It's society that's out of step - not you... You simply discovered sex earlier than most people. The only thing I would say further is to ask you (and everybody else who reads this thread) to be aware that under-age sex is a dodgy issue and while it's okay to talk about it as simply fact as you've done, any attempt to eroticise it is liable to cause trouble for BZ.

It's not unusual for your liver to show some signs of stress when you first start on meds as most of the drugs are processed through the liver (pretty much all the rest go out through the kidneys). With you just having started they're probably just being overcautious: they don't know you well enough yet to be able to see what's happening properly. For instance I always have below average platelet levels - that's normal for me, but a doctor who didn't know that would get concerned. Your doctors are still discovering where your baselines are and how you tick...

I’m not so tall, probably less than 5’6”, but I like to think reasonably well proportioned. The guy, Phil, who’d just rung my doorbell looked like two of me. An exaggeration, but a good six inches taller, and his bike gear making him look heavier set than me. He took his helmet off to display a perfect ‘tache and beard and an all but shaved head. Proof that hookup sites can work! I already had some porn playing on the TV and as I went to get his beer he grabbed at my crotch. Semi to rock hard in about a second. Looked like tonight was going to be fun. I was wearing boots, jock, chaps and harness. We sat idly commenting on the action on the DVD until he said we could do better. He stood over me and lifted me by my harness to my feet to give me a full-on open-mouthed kiss. If ever there’s anything that’ll get my jock soaked with pre-cum... I was torn between wrapping my arms around him as far as they’d go, and obediently putting my hands behind my back. The one thing we hadn’t discussed online was who was topping: we’d both felt that visceral “gotta have him, I don’t care how” and his lifting me like that settled the question. “In for a penny, in for a pound” I thought as I disobediently reached behind him to pull down the rear zip of his jeans. And of course, that’s when the doorbell rang again. “Stay!” he said, which covered the roles question neatly enough. I heard him lock the door and he re-entered the living room with another two bikers in tow. This we hadn’t discussed, but I wasn’t complaining. “Steve, meet Jim and I believe you know Ieuan... the four of us are going to have some fun tonight...” After shedding jackets, helmets and gloves. Jim stood in front of me and as he sank to his knees pulled me down with him. I automatically spread my legs and rubbed my dick against his rapidly hardening dick. Phil stepped between us and completed the circuit of the zip in his jeans. Jim had his dick, I had his arse. Ieuan stood back as though it was all a show put on for his amusement. I unzipped Jim’s jeans, left Phil’s ass and took Jim’s dick in my mouth. Then, missing the taste of Jim’s ass I was back up there until a hand on my back forced me down again. “Think we’ve sorted out who the pig is...” I heard another zip descending and very quickly there was an irrestible pressure at my asshole. He was already greased up (oh! to sniff and lick at the inside of his leathers!) and slid in easily – I’d already agreed with Phil that we’d both prepare and see what happened. Within minutes Ieuan was going for it – please not so quickly! – forcing me to work harder on Jim’s dick. As Ieuan began to cum in my guts he pulled me off Jim’s dick. Very quickly Jim had replaced Ieuan: my dick might as well have been pissing, the amount of precum I was pouring out. I remember moaning and all but screaming as Jim unloaded in me. “See Phil – told you we’d give you a nice sloppy arse to fuck...” Phil’s dick now... don’t think I’d ever wanted to get fucked as much as I did right then. He took it more slowly than either Jim or Ieuan, and reached round to pull on my balls. I wondered briefly how it was I hadn’t cum already: then Ieuan’s dick in my mouth to be cleaned, followed far too quickly by Jim’s. “Go for it, Phil!” There followed the pain/pleasure of one of the hardest fucks of my life. I was almost relieved when he came. After feeling his cum deep inside me, a new sensation: he was sucking all three loads out of me. My ass automatically went into spasm, squirting the cum mixture into his mouth. He pulled away and one of the other two went for it, only to be pushed aside by the other as Phil spat the collected cum over my face and into my mouth, only to suck it out again and pass it on to the others. “That’s it” I thought, but Phil rolled me onto my back, sat on my dick while the four of us swapped the last of the cum. Jim was facefucking Phil while Ieuan had several fingers up my well-used hole. I barely knew where I was when I was cumming inside Phil, his ass muscles squeezing every drop of cum out of me. Then that beautiful ass over my mouth, and me sucking my cum from his hole, swapping it around with Jim and Ieuan. I looked at the three of them, faces all wet with cum, and Ieuan said “Told you I’d get you a birthday present.” Me, I just hope it’s more frequent than annually...

Better than nothing, true, but the Netherlands isn't so large that people from outside couldn't travel to Amsterdam for the trial. But on a more global note, are we really so different in each differing country that we need to repeat the same piece of research over and over again? How many people are interested is, I suppose, something that could vary from nation to nation. Adherence figures won't differ much between countries: the older guys amongst us lived through the eighties and nineties and saw for ourselves what HIV can do, while the younger guys learn from us older guys what it was like. (And let's not forget that people are still dying of HIV disease, either!) What is it like to use PrEP: there are thousands of Americans who can answer that question, And a number of guys from the UK and other countries running similar trials, repeating the same work. As for price, I've just been reading the British HIV Association's draft guidelines for 2015 and they put the cost of PrEP at present (ie while both components of truvada are under patent) at £8000 per year as opposed to a lifetime care cost of someone with HIV disease as between £250,000 and £350,000. If this is the only way that PrEP is going to be available in the Netherlands, then I'm pleased for the Dutch that at least something is happening, but when it's been in use for several years in the USA with excellent results and the British trial was essentially ended early because the initial results were so good, it's such a waste of money to tread the same old ground again!

The scorpion tattoo was the predecessor of the biohazard, and is still used as a more discreet version of the biohazard. Of course it could still be an indication that he's got a lot of Scorpio in his horoscope...

I have a leather pride flag on my right bicep...

The guys saying that they're undetectable and on PrEP seem a little confused: if they're on PrEP, they have to be undetectable, in the sense that you have to be HIV- to get PrEP in the first place. If they're poz, then truvada alone isn't sufficient to maintain undetectability: there has to be a third drug from a different family, so my guess would be that they're thinking that undetectable and on PrEP is a less threatening way of saying that they're poz and undetectable, perhaps? One of the reasons for choosing truvada for use as PrEP was that it has an unusually long half life in the body (which is why the French are experimenting with "as and when" dosing (something that, frankly, makes me uneasy right now. But then I felt uneasy about truvada as PrEP in the first place and changed my mind. Anyway, a missed dose here and there isn't going to make a difference, even with people who've been round the block as many times as I have in terms og HIV drugs, they still reckon that 95% adherence is the target, which equates to one missed dose in three weeks for a once a day drug... It's more important to stick to the best adherence you can for psychological reasons than anything else so that you don't drift off and forget several days in a row...

I took my last drug holiday in 2007, after 18 years of medication. I can't deny that it's a great relief not to have to take the meds, and something of a surprise for some to realise that that "not quite right" feeling probably comes from the meds. I was of drugs for seven months and in that time my CD4 count went from an all time high of 880 down to just over 200, while my viral load went from undetectable to 65k. The numbers don't look too bad, but my average over the past few years had been around the 500 to 600 mark and my viral load had been consistently undetectable. I had my drugs changed when I started again, partly because of the possibility of resistances having developed in the absence of drugs when my virus had been undetectable for so long and was suddenly out of check, and partly because I'd developed diabetes as a result of one of the then-current drugs and previous drugs. It took me longer than expected to get back down to undetectable and to this day I reckon on having a blip pretty much annually. My CD4 count has never recovered, peaking out at 500 as a high point rather than an average. I also had an aids defining illness (my first in six or more years) a few months later. Cryptosporidiosis (wiki it) is neither fun nor curable, the only treatment being anti-diarrhoeal drugs and mineral/vitamin replacement as well as but bacterial replacement (the latter via live yogurt)... I rank that drug holiday alongside trying to walk my rottweiler in the snow with a dose of pneumonia in terms of stupid decisions. At least my partner stopped me from walking the dog, but my holiday was partially (I realised later) an attempt at passive suicide after the death of my partner. My rationalisation was that I was so wound up that adherence would be difficult to say the least and I figured that no adherence was better than sloppy adherence. Were I you, I would seriously question my motivation for a drug holiday: over the years there has been an incredible improvement in treatment, both in terms of efficacy and side effect profiles. And it's not as though taking a pill or three takes more than a few seconds (I now have four "pill events" a day: one includes my ARVs, the other three are to deal with the side effects and results of previous drugs - a total of about 25 per day). If your aim is to poz someone, you'll probably do more harm to yourself in the long run as today's drugs suppress the virus almost totally - I have on two occasions been told that my viral load is actually zero. If you're simply fed up with remembering to take the pills etc, remember other people end up in a worse position and you could well be pointing yourself in that direction by having a holiday. Basically, the disadvantages (possible resistance, further damage to your system by HIV) are nowhere near enough to compensate for a few short months of not having to worry about the ARVs. My personal advice is "don't do it!"

LKMike, your experience is exactly what I was warning about: the dog obviously thought you were below him in the pack order. Hell, he even made it clearer by biting at that back of your neck... What does a dog grab onto when a bitch is in heat? The scruff of her neck. As far as that dog was concerned, you were his bitch. As much as guys might get off on the idea, it isn't good for the dog: it spreads the behaviour around indiscriminately or specifically. And of course it's especially bad if the dog is around children at any point. Puppies have that particular smell to say to older dogs "hey, I'm just a puppy, I'm not a threat to you", but an older dog won't hesitate to knock back a puppy that's taking the piss. Next thing you know is you've got a lawsuit on your hands, maybe even a dead child. Because the dog was taught that it was equal to and above some humans. It's worth noting that bitches will uses the same humping motions to establish their authority over bitches lower in the pack than she is. Letting a bitch hump you leg or whatever causes her just as much mental confusion is it does a dog. And they don't call them bitch fights for nothing...