BootmanLA

I respectfully disagree. Many people, especially before they have much experience, do NOT "know what we are". That much should be evident to anyone who's ever dealt with someone just coming out. I know people who *think* about getting fucked who do not, in fact, "want to get fucked". I think about things all the time that I do not, myself, want to do.

THIS. "Use your words" fits so, so well here - if your friend doesn't know what to expect, he should use his words and ASK. Yes, it's probably the case that his "date" is actually just a meet-up for sex. But that's not definitely the case. I've had guys that I've talked with for an extended period of time, where it was clear we were into each other (as much as one can be, online), and we ended up with an actual date that followed up with sex that same night. That might be what he's thinking. But whatever the case: he's clearly thinking sex is on the table. If your friend doesn't see it that way, he should probably make it clear, to avoid anyone's feelings getting hurt.

I will add this: Leaving aside all the contortions of life caused by the pandemic, in the United States at least, for the past 30-40 years we've been edging towards having less and less free time to pursue old-fashioned concepts like friendship hangouts, especially as we become more and more urbanized (and this is the case for both straight and gay people). For instance, young adults used to be able to live fairly close to their workplaces, even if not in ideal housing. In big cities, that meant you could get on transit and be at work in 20-25 minutes, and home in about the same. In smaller cities, it was a 20 minute drive or so. As housing costs have skyrocketed, in a big city young adults need to live 3 and 4 to an apartment that's 90 minutes outside of work by transit. In smaller but booming cities, affordable housing has come to mean a suburb with an hour's commute each way by car on days when there's no breakdown or other traffic issue slowing down the journey. All the funky places that used to be affordable close-in have been gentrified far beyond the budget of the young adult. They may have to work a second job (or lots of overtime) just to make ends meet. Increasingly, employers require a significant overtime investment each week for professionals, too, which further limits available time. Then, too, a lot of people have significant time commitments for things like exercise/working out, sometimes just to keep themselves sane. Even if all these things don't happen every workday, they average out to a lot. Add an 8-hour workday, half an hour for lunch, 2 hours for commuting, half an hour of exercise, an hour of second job/overtime, maybe an hour and a half combined for morning shower/prep/breakfast and evening dinner/relaxing, and you're already pushing against the available time after allowing 8 hours for sleep - before you account for any errands, cleaning, laundry, or whatever else might fill a typical day. Modern life is exhausting. And the number one driver of that is housing costs - both in terms of creating the need for overtime and second jobs (which suck up time) and the commuting required to find a place to live affordably. If we solved the housing issue, the return in terms of leisure time would be astronomical. Then maybe people would have time to make friends and do things with them.

Except it's not, RawTop. The CDC *acknowledges* that it's being used this way. But right on the page you cite, it says, clearly: "This type of use is not currently part of CDC’s guidelines for PrEP use, which still recommends daily use for those at risk for HIV. Taking PrEP once a day is currently the only FDA-approved schedule for taking PrEP to prevent HIV. When taken as prescribed, PrEP is highly effective for preventing HIV." I'm not sure how much clearer "not currently part of CDC's guidelines for PrEP use" could be. And it says, point blank, that daily dosing is the only FDA-approved schedule - and WHEN TAKEN AS PRESCRIBED - which means daily, because any other use is off-label - it's highly effective. I'm not saying it's useless - obviously, there's evidence that IF you take it exactly as the off-label guidelines say (at least 2, no more than 24 hours before sex; and 24 and 48 hours after sex) it has a good track record. But that glosses over the reality of a lot of gay sex: -guys who decide on the spur of the moment to have sex, and take the pills right before, without giving them time to start taking effect; -guys who concurrently are using IV drugs; -guys who have 3 or 4 hours of sex during the "bout" of sex and then misjudge when to start the 24 hour and 48 hour doses; -guys who know the timing but still miss-time one or both of the follow-up doses; -guys who have additional sex during the same period but do not alter the dosage schedule; and so on. The point is that "on demand" has far more potential failure points than daily does - especially since taking it daily isn't tied to the frequency or amount of sex you're having. In fact, if you have sex more than a couple of times a week, you're actually putting MORE PrEP meds into your system than if you just took it daily and maintained a steady level, because of all the days you have to "double dose" before sex. I get the point that "on demand" is better than "never". But the studies show it's effective, though not as effective as daily dosing, even if taken exactly on the 2-1-1 schedule; it's got more avenues to fail; and for a guy who's reasonably sexually active (sex 3 times a week) he's taking higher doses of the drug than daily would provide. At one time, when lots of insurance in the US didn't cover it, I could understand wanting to conserve pills. Now that it's required to be covered with no copay, it's a no-brainer to use daily for almost everyone.

Bear in mind there are many models for polyamorous relationships, none of which is intrinsically superior to any other (or to monogamous or open relationships or to being single). What matters is that you two - and any additional partner(s) you bring into your relationship - all understand and agree on how the relationship is going to work. For instance, I know of triads where there's a dominant guy (not in the BDSM sense), who has a husband as well as a boy, the boy being primarily attached to the dominant (sort of like a junior husband). I know of triads where all three partners consider each other equals in all senses. I know of poly situations where there's a core married couple, and each partner has one or more other partners of varying descriptions - One such couple, one husband has a boyfriend in addition to his husband, while the other husband has a pup/boy, The husband with the boyfriend goes on dates, occasionally, with the boyfriend, who nonetheless knows the husbands are primary to each other; the pup/boy is strictly there for fun and play, and neither of them live with the couple. And so on. What matters is what YOU two want. For instance, if you want three equal partners in the relationship, how would you plan to handle things like spousal benefits at work, where likely only the worker and one of his partners is likely to be recognized? If you two own a house, and you bring in a third, are you willing to sell him a partial interest in your home? Will his contributions to the household count towards equity in what you all jointly own? There are a lot of questions like this that will come up if things get serious, and you probably ought to consult a gay-friendly lawyer with legal experience in such relationships, if for no other reason than to be aware of the things you should be watching for.

THIS. A thousand times this. When a guy says he wants to "impregnate you" and "make him part of you forever", that could just be generic bare-fuck talk, or it might be that he's coyly telling you he's poz and is hoping you convert as a result of sex with him. Without passing judgment on that - you really, really need to know what the score is. 1. Assuming you're negative, and you want to remain that way, and you want to bareback, you should be on PrEP. Actually, because it takes a while to become an effective shield against infection, you need to be on it well before you have bareback sex. 2. And if you're NOT on PrEP, you need to get over any shyness you might have about asking, point blank, what his HIV status is.

I'm like you in that I generally prefer to be alone, but there are times when it's not only nice, but advisable, to spend time with others. While I'm fine with eating lunch alone almost anywhere, and I'll eat dinner alone in anything no fancier than a Chili's, I just don't like to eat out for dinner in a nicer place. For starters, it takes almost as long to take my order and serve me as it would for a table of two, but the server's going to make less because the tab is lower. I also am fine with reading on my phone or working an electronic crossword puzzle in a casual place, but not so much in a white-tablecloth kind of place. Having a dinner companion makes it possible to pass the time waiting in conversation. I also enjoy birding, but that sometimes involves a few hours' drive to a good (often remote) location, spending time observing, and heading back. Having another person who shares my interests along - to split the driving, to help spot something good in the trees, etc. - is a great thing. So in one sense, the answer seems to be - look for others who share the interest where you want company, and do some open-ended inviting - "I'm thinking of checking out the new billiard hall on 4th soon - feel like coming with?". But even if you find someone whose company you enjoy (and it's reciprocated), bear in mind this will likely end up as a casual friendship - the kind of guy you call when you want to do something fun. And bear in mind, a friendship based in a shared activity isn't necessarily going to lead to a friendship where you can just hang out doing nothing. If what you're looking for is a deeper sort of friendship - the kind you can call when things are NOT going well, and you just want someone who'll tolerate you being morose for a bit and cheer you up with a fun lunch and/or movie - then you may need a different approach. There's nothing wrong, inherently, with "fair weather" friends - the kind who are happy to spend good times with you, but who don't have the available emotional bandwidth to help you through less joyous events. But the friends who do - or at least, are willing to make that bandwidth available to you - are fewer and farther between.

That's true. But it's the minority, the other people, who have to be considered as well. Specifically, those who didn't consent to be filmed in the first place, or even if they did, with the understanding it was for no one else's eyes. Sometimes those were lies (by the recording party) from the start; other times, after a bitter breakup, the recording party violates the conditions of the limited consent given. There's a hole here, too, as the courts have acknowledged: distribution - even downloading - of child porn contributes to the problem too, because as long as the demand is there, and there's a mechanism to supply it, the supply will be found. I'm not sure I agree with the anti-child porn activists' claims that "every time that image/video is downloaded/viewed, the child is re-victimized" (I'd say the victimization is pretty complete as soon as the act(s) are done), but as long as people keep distributing the videos, there will be demand for people to make more. I'm not sure how best to stop this, but the idea that you can hunt all of them down - that they aren't going to keep popping up to meet the demand - strikes me as naive.

I don't think it's quite that simple. MC, Visa, etc. (the associations/networks) make millions or billions from adult online sites (everything from videos to dildos to slings to... whatever). They'll never back away entirely from handling charges related to adult content and merchandise - it would be too costly. As noted, there *is* a growing perception of a problem with non-consensual porn, actual obscenity (as opposed to ordinary pornography), human trafficking to produce porn via prostitution, and other actually shady activities. I'm not going to venture a guess as to whether those activities constitute 0.0005% of "adult" transactions, or 75%; the bottom line is that it doesn't take much of a scandal involving one of them to financially destroy a legitimate business associated with them. That would include amateur video posting sites where "revenge porn" ends up, child porn, bestiality, etc. How *sincere* opponents of those activities are is also irrelevant, for the real-world consequences. It may be true that "Mothers Against Revenge Porn" are actually against every form of porn under the sun, but it's still impossible to defend a site that allows revenge porn to be posted without engaging in a reasonable amount of diligence in making sure all the "performers" in the porn are fully consenting. And the card networks understand: if they're targeted for facilitating that kind of commercial transaction, it's going to cost them massive amounts of unrelated business. So they're cracking down - as noted, they're not ruling out processing cards for porn online, but the places that supply it will have to adhere to stricter rules about documenting consent by performers, the way they already have to for age. And that's going to hit the amateur sites the hardest, because the video that John and Tom shot of themselves (and friends) while fucking at P-town or PigWeek is the least likely to have that kind of record keeping.

There's a lengthy piece on the New York Times website, but it's presumably behind their paywall ([think before following links] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/monkey-business.html) - I have a hard time keeping track since I subscribe there and to WaPo. This one is shorter, but more likely publicly accessible: [think before following links] https://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monkeys-the-concept-of-money-not-long-after-the-first-prostitute-monkey-appeared/

The problem is not that the banks don't recognize the money-earning potential of such sites. They do. But the banks are parts of large, big-target conglomerates, and bad publicity is toxic for them. "The former guy" wasn't the target of mass protests against, say, sex trafficking, and so the banks lending him money didn't have to deal with twenty state attorneys general conducting "investigations" of the bank, calling attention to what they were financing. At least not for years. Once it became widely, publicly known that Trump was a huge tax cheat and that DeutscheBank was facilitating that, you see how fast they started cooperating with investigators and cut Trump off from further loans. (And years before that, the main branches of DeutscheBank had already done that, with his current loans only authorized by a private banking subsidiary that wasn't as closely watched by the central offices.) All of which is to say: once you get the big banks involved, whether it's to borrow money for expansion, or to help conduct an IPO, or whatever, the rules - both written and unwritten - change.

The only thing I'd add is that a vaccine may carry with it its own side effects just like PrEP does - perhaps not the same ones, or not in as severe a form, but still.

Updated information: the parade (which normally runs on Sunday afternoon of Decadence weekend is officially cancelled. The block party on Rampart (not sure if that means the one by the Phoenix (Rampart at Elysian Fields), or if there was another one in a stretch of Rampart along the French Quarter, but I suspect it's the former) has also been cancelled officially. Several other events are also listing as "cancelled". That doesn't mean the streets will be empty and the bars deserted, but I suspect attendance will be down significantly.

Agree with all of your post except that meth is not an attractive problem at any age. Meth heads don't get a pass because they're young and (imagine themselves) pretty. They're still a mess.

I think part of the reason this is a perennial question is that there are at least two components to the sexual activity in question, which can be in conflict/tension with each other. Many experienced tops I know, especially the ones who are equipped larger than average, *physically* prefer a hole that's easy enough to enter without being so loose you need to strap a 2x4 across your butt to keep from falling in. The kind that with a little lubing and brief fingering, you can push right into. From a physical sensation standpoint, they don't want to try to keep an erection rock hard for the 20+ minutes it takes to ease a really tight skinny twink bottom open for a couple of fingers, then have to keep hard while you spend another 10 minutes easing your cock into him, all the while him trying to get you to go slower. On the other hand: *mentally* and *emotionally* there's something very appealing about a hot young stud boy with little experience offering up his ass for you to breed. The younger, cuter, sexier he is, the more it massages the ego that THIS boy chose YOU to top him, and all the better if you can get a picture of him impaled on your cock or sucking you to get you hard at the beginning. It's proof that you're still able to land the hotties. Some guys end up taking a stand on one side or the other of this divide. One group is the set of 45-65'ers who won't so much as look twice at anyone over 30. My perception (and it's just that, not some ironclad fact) is that they've become so enmeshed in sex-as-validation that they aren't interested in anyone who isn't a trophy. The other group is the set of tops who are blunt and say they aren't interested in anyone UNDER 30, because they want good physical sex and they're not interested in all the concessions needed for the novices. Such is life. Outside of very large urban areas, I think those kind of restrictions are likely to be quite limiting, but it's their choice to make.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the problem lies in the words 'when not sober'. Sex with people who can't manage themselves "on substances" is always tricky. Substances either mask over existing issues, or drag them out front and center and exacerbate them in ways that the substance user won't recognize when he's sober. So let's look at this: You're versatile. You want to top because you don't get to very much. He claims he wants you to top him, but then won't cooperate (and won't do it while sober so you can work out whatever's wrong). He also doesn't want you to top anyone else until he tops you, which he won't let you do. So you have to decide: he pretty clearly doesn't want you topping, period. He won't do what's necessary for him to be able to take you, and he won't let you top others until this non-existent, not-going-to-happen topping HIM occurs first. Can you live with that? If so, accept that you are versatile by nature but committed to bottoming in this relationship forever. (If he changes, great, but you can't ever, EVER assume he's going to change). If you can't live with that - then you have to decide whether to pretend to be satisfied in the relationship with all the other good things - whatever they are - and discreetly top elsewhere with other people, in order to maintain your sanity. But if you do, understand that you'll probably, at some point, get caught. Or else the sneaking around and so forth will take enough of a toll on the relationship that it's no longer worth it. Or you can leave him. Those, basically, are your choices. Figure out which way forward works best for you, but none of them are "I just know there's a way to make him change".

You can always try it and see how it works. Give the key to a friend you trust and make sure he understands the circumstances under which he's to return it (for instance, if you declare a medical emergency where you need to get something treated; after a predetermined amount of time - say, two weeks; if you give a code word that you promise yourself not to use unless it's a desperate situation). Make sure the first trial, at least, is long enough to feel the need to cum, but short enough that it's manageable. If you get through it well and decide you like it, you can repeat for increasingly longer periods of time. Note that being locked up may not mean you don't cum. It may keep you from getting hard, but I know guys who've had nocturnal emissions wearing one because their body reached the point it had to ejaculate, and did so. That may not be commonplace, but it can happen.

Geoff, It seems to me that your biggest beef boils down to "people today don't want the same things I wanted when *I* was their age! What's wrong with them?" I'm sure that's an oversimplification, but to the extent it's valid, I have to say, it's awfully presumptuous to assume what you wanted then is what they should want today. When I came out in the late 1970's, the idea of a lifelong relationship wasn't even on the radar for most gays - not just because many didn't want it, but because society actively worked to prevent us from having it. A lot of people - even then - if you'd pressed them, might well have said "It would be nice if I came home to a bed that wasn't empty", even if the terms of that relationship allowed for lots of extracurricular fun, together or separate. It was just a lot harder to do except in the largest of cities. And again, not suggesting you were one of them, or should have been one of them; but your dreams and goals aren't theirs, and finding fault in that seems, well.... not a good look for someone. And yes, I get that part of this is tongue-in-cheek. But still: there's nothing wrong with finding random sex less meaningful or less attractive than something more committed and stable (or vice versa). They aren't "doing it wrong" any more than you were/are "doing it wrong". They're being true to themselves. One reason might be that today's parents are much more likely to be accepting of their gay kids than those of my parents' generation (mine were OK with it, but not the parents of a lot of my friends). Kids who come from households where they're loved and accepted as they are, are possibly more likely to want a household like that for themselves, while kids who get kicked out of the house or become permanently estranged from their families when coming out are less likely to look at domestic situations as something to aspire to. But I get it - conventionality, in any fashion, doesn't seem to be your thing. That's fine - really! - but it seems a tad defensive to attack how others choose to live their lives, confident you know better than they do what's right for them. Isn't that what the moralizing scolds who told you to get over that phase, that you could live a straight life if you chose to, were doing?

Oh I agree it'll be a wonderful thing to have available. I was just commenting on SmoothATLBttm's suggestion that chasing would go away. Anyone determined to chase (when there are people on PrEP) is going to continue to chase even if some of the PrEP folks switch to a vaccine. The chasers won't take the vaccine (why would they?) and I don't see it getting that much harder for them to get pozzed than it is already.

Not really. Look at Covid: There are tens of millions of people who are happy to risk getting Covid (and thus risk dying MUCH, MUCH faster than you will from HIV) rather than get a vaccine. HIV chasers will simply avoid taking the vaccine.

Because he did not say "I want to do X" - he asked *IF* he should do X. In other words, he asked for advice. Advice may differ, depending on who's offering it and their perspectives. This is not rocket science, to use an American English idiom with which you may or may not be familiar.

I'm aware.

Funny - though for the handful of people who might wonder "Could he?", the Zodiac Killer first struck two years before Cruz was born, and may (or may not) have stopped his spree before Cruz was born as well. (It's possible some earlier killings elsewhere in CA were also his work, but that further makes the point that this was long before Cruz was around).

It's funny to have a stalker so wrapped up in downvoting everything I post that he'll even downvote the advice to consult a doctor about something that the original poster is worried about. And amusing to realize how much I must be living rent-free in his head.

A few points: 1. Your doctor made the same point I did about sticking to the event schedule. YOU find it easy because you (apparently) are using it in conjunction with *dating* - something you plan ahead and can work into a schedule. It may come as a surprise to you but a lot of guys don't date - they just have sex, with whomever wants it, whenever the opportunity arises, and that occurs, not infrequently, without the 2 hour prep time needed. In large cities with sex clubs and bathhouses right in the gay neighborhoods where people live, it's not unusual at all for a guy to get horny and be naked in the club or bath within 15 minutes. 2. Your doctor also drove home my other point - that mistakes get made and the only way to stay safe, in those cases, is to realize it and take PEP. Which is great - I'm glad she's on top of that - but again, that's assuming the person isn't still high on whatever tweaking substance du jour he's on, and remembers when he took what doses and when he took a load, so as to calculate 24 and 48 hours after that. That's something you might never do - hurray for you - but again, there are plenty of guys who are not so careful. Which is why "on demand" PrEP - which I'm happy to acknowledge apparently works fine for YOU in YOUR circumstances - has a higher failure rate than daily. You seem to be misreading what I'm saying - perhaps because English isn't your primary language? - as though I were saying "on demand" never works, or is always a bad idea, or something similar. And I'm not. Nor am I telling you to ignore your doctor's advice. If your doctor has decided you're a good candidate for on-demand usage - and it appears she took into account the effects on kidneys, and knows you well enough to believe you'll be careful with your dosing - that's great. It shows she's doing her job well.