BootmanLA

That's not unusual. For the first few months after initial infection, VL goes way up, because the body doesn't yet know how to fight it (as best it can). Over time, VL decreases, not to undetectable levels (on its own), but to a point where infection, while certainly possible, isn't all that sure a thing. If left untreated, HIV will eventually overwhelm the immune system, which usually brings on multiple health problems, up to and including organ failure and death. In any event, however, the question from the member was about stopping and restarting meds. Given that (apparently, based on your profile) you aren't and never have been on meds, I'm not sure why this is relevant in any way.

As PozBearWI pointed out, you said "boarders" (a synonym for tenants). Possibly you meant "borders" but spelling counts and it's hard to know for sure what someone means, if he's using different words than the ones he may or may not mean. Where are all the jobs? Unemployment is running about where it was under Trump's first three years, which omits the disaster of his fourth year, where the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.8% at one point, thanks to his mismanagement of the COVID crisis. That, the resulting collapse in prices for fuel and other commodities, coupled with a crippling of the supply chain as a result, threw out all sorts of economic consequences that were left for the Biden administration to fix. Interest rates are high because all that screwing up Trump did set into effect massive inflation as the economy began recovering. Unfortunately, raising interest rates is one of the few things the government CAN do to slow down inflation, by making it more expensive to borrow. And note that another reason we ended up with an economic mess is that Trump kept demanding that rates go lower and lower - which of course was great for his personal bottom line as someone who borrows other people's money to lose in risky construction deals (like his hotel in DC), but low interest rates also meant that lots of people's bank accounts paid almost nothing in interest. (Again, that didn't bother Trump since he operates almost exclusively on credit and seldom has two nickels in the bank to rub together). As for Harris and the border: that was not her "job". The VP has no job, really, except to preside over the Senate. Biden named her his "point person" to keep tabs on what was happening at the border but she had no legal authority to do anything about it - that's a constitutional limitation on the office, and it's idiotic, frankly, to blame her for not exercising power she didn't have. Your "10 million" number is fanciful. That may or may not have been the total number of people who attempted to cross the border, but are you completely unaware that most border crossers (about 78%) are apprehended and returned? Are you aware that of those who are caught, the majority are on their second or subsequent attempt? (That means even if they all had succeeded, which they didn't, the total would have been far less than 10 million. That apprehension rate is more than double what we had back during the early GWB administration - because between his term and Trump's, the US SMARTLY deployed ways to monitor the border (including more agents, infrared cameras, drone surveillance, heat sensors, and other means to detect people attempting to cross). We'd already raised the apprehension rate dramatically - but Trump, believing in symbols over substance, promised a "big, beautiful wall" that "Mexico will pay for". They paid zip, zero, nada, and Trump's wall is already falling over in places because like most of his work, it was cheap and shoddy and for show, like his fake gold toilets and his fake everything else. But go ahead, kiss up to the serial fraudster who's already (a) settled the Trump U fraud case for $25 million, (b) settled the Trump Foundation fraud case by agreeing never to serve on a nonprofit board, ever again, (c) had his companies found guilty of criminal fraud, (d) been found personally liable for business fraud committed through his companies, (e) been found liable for sexual assault and for defamation of his assault victim - twice, and (f) has dozens of state and federal criminal indictments pending trial as we speak. Buy some of his "gold" sneakers or whatever other trash he's peddling to grift you gullible fools out of your EARNED money to pay his legal bills, despite the fact that he's supposed be "really rich". It's just funny to sit back and watch y'all make fools of yourselves, except that there's a serious risk that this charlatan may once again be president.

It should not have developed a resistance (the proper term) to that particular med simply by being "off" the med. It's possible, but it's not inevitable. It's much more of a problem to be irregular about the medication - taking it for a few days, skipping a few doses, taking it again. Now - if you go off for 4 months and then re-start, even if the same med is effective, it may take a good while (as in a few months) to bring your VL down to an undetectable range again. And there IS a chance - again, not a great chance, but... - that the medication will be ineffective, or less effective, than it was before. *Fortunately*, there are several good medications out there, and if it turns out you HAVE become resistant to one, there's a good chance another will work.

You can love whomever you want, but disagreeing is silly because the poster stated objectively true facts. Vance DID whine about being fact-checked during the debate - millions of people saw him do it - and Trump DID bail on a 60 Minutes interview because they wouldn't agree to not fact-checking him, a demand his campaign made. You can disagree with facts, I suppose, but that doesn't cast a flattering light on your observational skills.

I don't consider it evidence of anyone's moderation. Perhaps the problem is that you are imagining why we welcome endorsements from the Cheneys so that your imagination can fit your narrative. As any Democrat worth his salt will tell you: the Cheneys do not agree with the Democratic Party's stance on pretty much anything (except same-sex marriage, given that one of Dick's daughters is a married lesbian; Liz was initially opposed to same-sex marriage but has come around). But they, and we, agree that Trump is an existential threat to democracy in this country, especially with a Supreme Court determined to give him immunity for almost anything he does as president. And the point we make is that if someone as conservative (in the true sense of the word) as Dick Cheney or Liz Cheney can accept and endorse Kamala Harris over the senile rapist who'll let the worst of the worst take over the government permanently, then we happily accept their help, and hope we both live to argue policy another day. They don't buy the idiotic rhetoric that Kamala represents a communist plot to destroy America or any of the other garbage the right and its idiot supporters are pushing.

Based on what little I know of such tests, I think it's negative. That said: the packaging almost certainly contains instructions on how to read the test, right?

That is, in fact, a distinct possibility. Not necessarily likely, but... even 5 to 10 loads is A LOT to get over one night, especially if you're doing it in a private location (hotel, whatever) and not a sex club. On the plus side, you're young, and (it appears) reasonably fit, so that's going to attract the attention of guys in a way being, say, 40 and not as fit would not. But even with that, the hottest guys can have "bad nights".

Everyone has his own preferences, of course, but I still find that kind of dismissal offensive. Just say no thanks, and move on, instead of acting offended that ermahgawd someone OLD hit on me.

Then that makes some sense - it's likely your body never had to fight the actual infection itself for very long, meaning your immune system was probably pretty strong - so when you went off meds, it was able to keep your viral load low for an extended period.

Most people aren't "always...on the ready" to take a cock/cocks. Cleaning out is something you shouldn't do just to be "on the ready". It's one thing to do it before attending a sex party, or even before a "date" where sex is likely. It's another thing to do it on a regular basis just in case the opportunity arises.

I can't give you practical advice on how to pull it off. I hope you can - even though I'll also tell you that a huge portion of the tales you read on here (and elsewhere) about people doing this sort of thing are pure fantasy. What I can advise you on is realistic expectations - understand that no matter how much planning you may undertake, circumstances may screw things up. Tops are going to flake, either because they never intended to show up, because something better came along, because they're strung out on substances and forgot, or just because they didn't feel like it. Planning it for a special day, like a milestone birthday, adds to the potential for disappointment. What you don't want to do is turn into the cumdump equivalent of being a bridezilla, determined to have her perfect day exactly how she wants it and where anything going wrong sends her into a rage (or worse, a depressive spiral) that ruins any positive associations with the day. Good luck!

There are probably a thousand definitions of love that people on here could make, and I doubt that any one of them is necessarily "the" way to define or describe it. But I'd say it's the feeling that you'd be prepared to sacrifice an awful lot to keep this person in your life simply because you'd rather have them in your life than not have them, even though you're perfectly capable of living without them. I'd note that it requires a certain level of maturity and self-confidence, too - otherwise you could be talking about an infatuation or some disordered form of attachment ("I can't imagine what I'd do if he left me").

Not that I disagree with your general, overall point of negotiating an open relationship early on, but... And not that I want to disparage any choices you've made that work for the two of you (seriously!), but... I don't see the need to yuck other people's yum, so to speak, for agreeing to rules that both can live with, like "playing together only." That's not my rule, but for some people, that's what it takes to be comfortable with openness, and if that works for both of them, who am I to tell them it's "neurotic shit"?

If you don't mind the question - were you tested regularly and caught the infection early (and went on meds soon after)?

A few things to note: 1. The way it was in really, really big cities like NYC, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, etc. was not typical of how things were in the rest of the world, or even the rest of the countries involved. The vast majority of people - gay and straight - lived in places where there were not only no leather studs cruising the streets, but gay bars were still under constant threat of being shut down as public nuisances, and that was BEFORE HIV/AIDS hit the community. In plenty of "liberal" cities, gay bars still had door buzzers with someone watching on a CCTV camera from inside, only letting in people who appeared to be "safe" to let in. I didn't mention San Francisco because although it was also a very liberal and liberated city, it's actually not a "really big" city. The SF Bay area is large and has a huge population, but the city itself - where the gay community was based - is not all that large (less than 47 square miles) and the city population was only about 700,000 people in the mid 70's. 2. Once HIV/AIDS hit, things changed, rapidly - in many places, bathhouses were shut down, public cruising enforcement stepped up, and much of the "goodwill" that we'd enjoyed as a byproduct of the Sexual Revolution era evaporated. That didn't stop people from going out to bars, etc. - but there was a pall hanging over everyone, as this unknown disease/killer was out there and for a few years, at least, we had no idea what it was or how it was doing what it did. And even when science became sure it had to be a virus, there wasn't a test available to even determine if one had been infected. Once there WAS a test, results from those willing to be tested indicated that in some of those large cities, fully half of the gay male population was HIV+. At a time when there were no medications that could even slow the virus down, much less repress it to undetectability. And for many years, the alt-weeklies in those big cities (which were the only form of mass communication in the gay community anywhere close to "real time" were full of obituaries, every week, of members of our community dying. 3. You say you were "unlucky" to be born so late, in 1999. If you'd been born in, say, 1960, making you 20 in 1980, and you'd lived in one of those big cities, by today you'd very likely have been dead for more than 30 years. That's the reality.

Here's the question: you say you have a "pretty decent relationship", but there's not a lot of detail in that. Do you see yourself wanting something long-term (like, years and years) with this guy? You say you "recently found yourself in a relationship" - but you're not acknowledging your agency in this at all. And you're offering him (in a way he doesn't seem to grasp is an actual offer) two choices: either have more sex with me, or I'm going to cheat. Given that you're not getting remotely enough sex for what you want in a relationship, why not tell him there's Door #3, which is breaking up so you can each find someone more suited to what you're looking for? Early 30's is not too old by any stretch of the imagination to find a new partner whose libido is going to align with yours (or who will give you the freedom to align other people's libidos with yours). Cheating is sometimes - but not often - the best option for staying sane in a relationship. But it's much more likely to be the best option when the relationship has been there for years, especially if disentangling the relationship (children, jointly owned/leased property, etc.) would be a major headache. This one is way too "new" a relationship to jump to that kind of calculus. End it - or at least tell him, you're out the door if either more regular sex or opening things up doesn't happen.

There's not a lot of research on this because generally speaking, having people stop medications that are working to manage a chronic condition just to measure when that condition becomes problematic is pretty unethical. Especially when doing so can eventually lead to the condition becoming unmanageable at all. But in general, based on what people who report deliberately quit taking meds and who get tested have experienced, a person can become "detectable" ( within a month. That doesn't mean the person can transmit HIV; "undetectable" used to mean less than 200 copies of the virus per ml of blood (at which point transmission is essentially impossible), but "undetectable" now means less than 25 copies per ml. As a result, one's viral load could grow from below 25 to 200 - an eightfold increase - and still be mostly incapable of transmitting HIV. Moreover, even at just over 200, that doesn't mean infection of another person is likely. It's not that the human body can't fight HIV on its own, to some degree - it can. The problem is that HIV has the ability to infect cells that the human immune system can't eradicate - essentially, its own immunity factories inside the body - and so those cells keep replicating HIV over and over and over, and the immune system can't stop that process. As long as a potential HIV infection is cleared before it infects those cells where the immune system can't fight it, the person is unlikely to contract HIV. That's why high VL individuals are more likely to infect someone (because the level of virus is too much for the body's normal immune response to tackle completely before it reaches, essentially, permanent status in the person's system). It would take longer for someone who quits meds, then, to have a good chance of infecting someone else, because it will take some time (again, not something that ethically science could test and measure) for the VL to reach that point.

It's odd because in my case, it's the exact opposite. I'm more of a Cole Porter kind of guy in that respect - when it's too darned hot, my libido plunges. Come spring or fall, things skyrocket. Winter, it depends on the circumstances (maybe because winters here are so irregular, bouncing between a low in the teens one night up to a high in the 60's or 70's a few days later). There is a documented condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder - it's a type of depression that typically sets in somewhere in fall or early winter. It may be triggered by the shortening of day length and less sunlight, which isn't a stretch - we know, for example, that bird migration is mostly triggered by day length, or photoperiod. Even in species that migrate earlier or later in the calendar than most, it seems that when day length reaches a certain point, it triggers something in their DNA to alter behavior. I'd look into whether that could be your issue - there are treatments available, not just with medication but with other things like light boxes (exposing you to light that mimics sunlight, early in the morning, which seems to trigger chemical changes in the brain) and exercise.

Exactly. On one of the "apps" the other day, a guy from my general area (ie within 60ish miles, it is what it is down here) messaged me. The conversation was pretty disjointed (we'd leave messages for each other, and each took a while to respond, I get it), but he wanted to know what city I lived in, whether I was single or married, what I'm looking for, and whether I'm a top or bottom - ALL OF WHICH are clearly indicated in my profile. And after EACH of the first three questions, I responded "As it says in my profile, I'm...." By the fourth one I had just about had it. I asked him "You really didn't read a single word in my profile, did you?" He answered with "Yes" and a smiley emoji, and that's when I lost it. I told him "I'm just wondering why you keep asking questions that are clearly answered there. Where I'm located, relationship status, what I'm looking for, role preferences - all of that's in my profile, and yet you keep asking as though it all went over your head. Maybe some reading comprehension classes might help?" I'm sure that torched whatever opportunity for fun might have existed, but honestly, someone that fucking lazy is almost certainly a shitty fuck.

A few thoughts: Most beds in bathhouse rooms, unless they're custom-built, tend to be kind of low. There's no reason a sling couldn't be permanently mounted above the bed at the right height for an average (more on that below) person to fuck a bottom in, while still having room for sexual activity on the bed itself. The trick is to be able to raise or lower the sling, either to accommodate a taller/shorter top, or to get it out of the way temporarily for sex on the bed. Just bring four heavy-duty carabiner hooks, if the slings tend to be too low or too close to the bed. Of course, if they're permanently mounted and locked into position so that only a top from Pandora could use it, well, that's a sign of crappy attention to detail by the management.

Not only that, but while there are undoubtedly lots of "small town mothers" who hate LGBT people, they're vastly outnumbered by the "small town fathers" who do the same. American women in general, even small-town mothers, even in red states, tend to be more liberal on LGBT issues than their male counterparts. Which is why I say it's misogynistic; it's either saying women have more of a responsibility to be pro-LGBT than men do, or else it's ignoring that by far the worst excesses of anti-LGBT hatred come from men. And I'd argue that there are certainly small-town mothers in the UK (and elsewhere) who are as adamantly anti-LGBT as any in the US.

I don't know where you're from, but I think at best this is a vast overgeneralization based on paltry experiences and at worst a misogynistic thought that probably shouldn't have been expressed.

I'm not sure what your criteria are for saying she's "not Black". It's true that she's biracial - from a Black Jamaican father and an Asian mother. But in the U.S., especially speaking historically, that was certainly enough black parentage to classify her as "Black". Can you clarify why you believe she is "not Black"?

I think - and this really is just an opinion - that there's more than one thing at play here. First - it's true that they're not worse for you than cigarettes are. But the damage cigarettes do is gradual; you can't overdose on cigarettes even if you light one up as soon as you put out the previous one, because sooner or later you'll need to sleep, and that will happen long before any overdose could happen. Inhalants generally, though, can be the cause of an overdose. Second and related, one problem is that "poppers" aren't exactly a product whose quality (or even content) is verifiable, because there's essentially no regulation of them. They don't necessarily have ingredient lists on the label, much less proportions thereof. And while some older formulas of poppers (or their active ingredients, at least) have been banned for human use, that doesn't mean there's anyone checking to see if the poppers that ARE being sold are legal or non-legal formulas. Here in my own state, they're now illegal, period - basically every chemical formula that has been used for poppers is on the prohibition list, along with other inhalants (some of which have, in fact, caused deaths). So I think they're becoming one of those things - everyone knows some people who do them, but it's not exactly something people feel comfortable actively promoting.

My guess is that the layout of the building (ie the room dimensions) predate widespread adoption of slings in bathhouses, and they're simply putting them where they can.