BootmanLA

I'll add: another reason for the ban on unaccompanied guests is there's a huge problem in the French Quarter with drunks urinating wherever the mood strikes. Despite the fact that the lower half of the Quarter (where most of the gay bars in the neighborhood are) is a largely residential area, people will just piss on people's doorsteps, windows, sidewalks, and wherever, because the place is full of 30 and 40 year old boys who can't manage their drinking and think they can just 'let loose' somewhere, figuring someone else will clean it up. Hotels don't want that shit wandering their hallways, for good reason.

For what it's worth, Kylerd, a huge proportion of the posts on this site boasting of sexual exploits are probably at the very least embellished, and sometimes complete fabrications. Every once in a while, people who've been around here for a while note some inconsistencies in the posts (a guy will post his first time was at 16, then four years later he'll claim his first time was at 12; or a guy will claim he's poz and toxic, then later say he's on PrEP, then later still he'll say he's undetectable). Unfortunately, it's part and parcel of (some of) the kind of people attracted here. Personally, I'm always suspicious! of guys! who can't type more! than 4 or 5 words! without throwing in! an exclamation point! along with! lots of "Oh! My! God!" and other crap like that. But that's just me.

and While I am not a moderator here, I think both of these are covered quite adequately by this rule, as articulated by RawTop: "Basically I'm banning anything that causes permanent, significant harm to individuals or significant harm to the community as a whole." I can't imagine anything that would cause more permanent harm to anyone than killing them. And as far as where that applies: "These bans apply to fiction as well as real life situations." I would interpret those two policies to prohibit posts about snuffing, regardless of whether it's fictional or not.

Most hotels, big or small, whether in the FQ or CBD, will be screening visitors if there is a front desk. You don't get in without either a room key of your own, or with someone who has one (and the hotel may or may limit the number of people who can enter at one time with a registered guest). So don't plan on having guys come in unaccompanied - and that's not just a "after 10 PM" thing, it's all day, every day. They aren't particularly interested in policing who you have sex with, or how many guys, but they do NOT want unaccompanied people wandering the halls, looking for open rooms, etc. Property crime is an issue there and nobody wants to add to that. The situation is not likely to be much better at a lot of the short-term rentals. You might luck out and find one that has a private street entrance that the owner isn't monitoring, but no guarantees on that. You'll probably have to pick up guys the old fashioned way, in person. For what it's worth, there is no "host hotel" for Decadence. The Bourbon Orleans frequently gets flagged as such, probably because it pays for some sort of sponsorship for something connected to Southern Decadence, but SD itself is a big street and bar party. There's no ticket to attend (individual bars will have cover charges, and some offer multi-day passes, but that's ordinarily only for the bars with dance floors). For the most part, people are out on the street enjoying themselves (not having sex in the streets, but open containers are allowed in the FQ), or in the bars - they're not likely to be glued to the apps looking for cumdumps in a hotel that they probably won't be able to get into anyway. It's just not that kind of event. As for eating and playing tourist and such: good luck, but I think your 2,000 calorie meal idea is unlikely to do you much good. Once the food has passed deep into your guts, you're going to get hungry again. Finally: I'll note that there ARE some parties - circuit type things - but the vast majority of Decadence attendees don't go. It's a street event, and most people are going to be out in the streets in the areas between the bars (or in the bars along those strips).

I think all the responses here pretty much conclusively demonstrate that yes, in fact, one CAN argue that a particular position is not "the best". This is yet another example of the kind of thinking that "Real X's do Y" or "The only possible best A is B". There are things which are facts (the earth is an oblate spheroid, the moon is made of rock and not green cheese, and so forth), and things which are opinions. We know what is said about opinions.

But just because SARS-CoV-2 and HIV are both viruses does not make them equal, in terms of risk, in terms of transmissibility, or anything else. The dots aren't connecting because there are no dots to connect. HIV is a is a retrovirus transmitted essentially exclusively through the exchange of bodily fluids, i.e. semen and blood. It's possible to avoid HIV infection by preventative medication which stops virtually any chance at HIV from infecting another person. And for the extra-cautious, condoms can provide another layer of protection (though obviously this site is primarily for those who choose not to add that layer). Even for those who abuse injectable drugs, using a clean needle every time is a way to reduce the risk down to near zero. Moreover, except for some very uncommon drug-resistant strains, treatment is available to manage HIV infection that is highly effective (albeit expensive). With treatment, HIV infection may eventually result in death but only after decades of life; scientists are cautiously hopeful that, in fact, it's possible to keep HIV at bay for a lifetime. SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus spread primarily through aerosol contact - breathing virus particles in from an infected person. Masks do an acceptable though not complete job of blocking much transmission, but there are no "behavioral" changes one can make, such as not barebacking or not doing IV drugs, that actually eliminate the risk. Because almost everyone has to come in contact with other people on a daily basis if life is to resume as normal, the risks are completely inapposite to HIV risks. Moreover, there is no known single treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection that works in the same percentage of patients as we have for HIV. Nearly 2% of COVID patients die, typically within a month. Even when HIV was at its worst with no treatment available, people lived for years after infection (albeit not knowing they were infected) before their health collapsed. In other words, these are two extremely different situations linked only by a single word: "virus". There is no logic to connecting "dots" that are not there.

I'm not sure why a bathhouse should be necessary to bottom, even to bottom bareback. Surely there are other tops in your area who are barebackers. For that matter, if you posted a personal ad somewhere or updated a profile on "the apps" to note you're a top looking to lose his bottom cherry, raw, you should have your pick of takers. Substances may be more of an issue - you do you, but lots of guys prefer to play with others who are in the moment and can make informed decisions. And at least some bathhouses don't let you bring that shit in. It happens, clearly, and some guys fuck themselves up before they go, but they're not especially thrilled with it. Especially since if the guy OD's, it puts a real crimp in business while everything's shut down for an investigation. And if you're worried about what you'll feel for your first time, definitely don't "relax with substances". You won't know how it actually feels, only how it feels filtered through drugs. And if you HAVE to have drugs in order to bottom, maybe bottoming isn't your thing.

Thanks for the clarification - no worries or rush, I just was curious as to what happened, as I'd obviously posted in it somewhere along the line.

Mind you, it's always *possible* on a smaller ship that the gay group has booked the entire ship and coordinated with the cruise line to have nothing but open-minded, if not openly gay, staff crewing the cruise. But I wouldn't count on that, particularly on any ship that has a passenger capacity over, say, a thousand.

Theory 1 is possible. The topic (not sure which forum it was/is in) was titled "poz tops at a bathhouse" and what I assume is the thread or topic number is "41193". A search for that thread and/or the thread number comes up empty, so I'm going with "hidden/removed." Theory 2 doesn't seem as likely because it's not just the one post I can't find; the entire thread seems to be inaccessible. A glitch is also possible. I'm not *particularly* worried about it. I was just confirming whether there was a block specifically against me participating in that topic, and if so, was that a moderator's action or were users able to do that. As long as it's not something ordinary users can do to "seclude off" sections of the site from others, it's not a big deal.

I'll add a little more info here: 1. The guy says he's detectable. That covers a WIDE range of HIV levels - anything from just barely detectable up to full-blown AIDS and toxic. The closer he is to the undetectable end of the scale, the less risk there is with you on PrEP. 2. If this guy knows you've ever expressed even a slight fantasy about being fucked by a detectable top, he might be bullshitting you just to see if you'll give in to that fantasy, thinking he's detectable when he may well not be. I wouldn't count on that, but it's something to consider.

For you, perhaps so. The OP stated RATHER CLEARLY that he didn't want the risk. Trying to convince others to take risks they've already clearly expressed that they're rejecting is a pretty shit move. I certainly hope that's not what you're saying.

Let's look at this mathematically. First, it doesn't matter, in one sense, HOW many bottoms you fuck; if none of them happened to be HIV+, then you aren't going to get HIV, no matter what. It's not a penalty that's levied for crossing some threshold of sluttiness. If you fucked, say, 800 guys, but only 50 of them were poz, that means 750 of those encounters were zero risk and don't count. Second, since the advent of modern HIV treatment (where a single pill containing 3 or 4 medications combined is sufficient to keep a viral load undetectable), it's probable that the majority of HIV-infected individuals are undetectable and, as we now know, essentially incapable of infecting others *as long as they remain undetectable by taking their medications on a steady basis*. That means you could fuck truly UD guys bare till the cows come home and still be at almost zero risk for HIV. The only ones you'd need to be concerned with would be the ones who are poz and NOT undetectable. Third, you were topping, exclusively (?), and the risk to a top fucking an HIV+ bottom is at least an order of magnitude less than the reverse. Estimates are that a negative bottom having sex with a positive top has about a 1 in 70 or so chance of infection, while a negative top fucking a positive (and infectious, not undetectable) bottom has about a 1 in 900 chance of becoming infected. Being uncut increases those odds, yes, but still not anywhere near what a negative bottom faces from a non-UD positive top. So while there's probably some element of luck involved in your case, it's not really all that surprising. That said, PrEP is still strongly recommended. The element of luck may have only stopped you from getting infected on, say, a handful of cases, but if that luck ran out, there's no going back. Count your blessings, stay on PrEP, and enjoy yourself.

There was a similar thread recently elsewhere on this site. The one thing I'd suggest is tempering your expectations. Unless it's a really small ship such that 100% of the passengers are adult gay men AND the crew is expecting it, it probably will NOT be a "bathhouse vibe" where sex is going on all over the place. For starters, remember that sanitary regulations will prohibit that in most public areas - including all the dining areas, any entertainment areas like onboard casinos, shops, etc., In fact, I would suspect - I could be wrong - that on such cruises, actual insertive sex is actively discouraged in any public area, especially if the ship is not, as I noted, 100% full of gay men. (Most "themed" cruises on larger ships tend to only be for a portion of the passengers, though the organizers may reserve some sort of public space for a private event for "members only" for one or more nights of the cruise.) Now, inside individual cabins? I'm sure plenty will go on, even on balconies that have some side-to-side blocking of views. But I suspect there's a list of rules about what you can do where, and while the crew may not enforce them with an iron fist, I doubt you'll be allowed to fuck poolside or fist someone in one of the nightclubs.

Nor did I say there was. I said that was the problem with *opioids*, as should be clear from even a cursory reading of the quote you made. I have no problem with someone challenging what I write, but I do not take kindly to people inventing things, pretending I wrote them, and then shooting them down.

It's true that money was the driving factor with opioids, but not because of bribery of regulators. They were developed to meet a legitimate need (pain management) while concealing evidence of their heightened addictive properties from medical professionals. The regulators approved them for those legitimate needs. The problem was the addictive nature combined with pushing physicians to prescribe them for almost any sort of pain issue. Last I checked, there was no legitimate medical need for poppers. I'm not for banning them because I'm not for banning most recreational drugs, but there's literally no comparison to be made with actual medically useful drugs.

True, and I think that illustrates the point well. The thing to remember, though, is that the "odds for any one particular draw" may be the same, draw after draw, but the "odds that you will never draw the red marble" over a long run of, say, 1000 draws are not the same (and not saying you're suggesting they are). Of course, with the marbles, we're talking purely random draws. Sex with non-UD poz men, by contrast, doesn't work like that. A poz, non-UD top with a pretty large cock and a PA who likes to fuck hard slamming hard and deep from the get-go has a greater chance of pozzing a negative bottom (because of the increased likelihood of bleeding) than an average-sized guy who's not so rough, for instance. If the top's viral load is extremely high, either shortly after infection or if he's advancing into AIDS, the odds of converting from *that* sex act are higher than the odds in a sex act where the guy's not UD, but has a moderate viral load. All of which is to say, I'm not disagreeing with you, but the 1 in 71 number is an average, and for any *particular* prospective sex act with any *particular* top, they might be much higher or much lower.

I think it depends in part on how you define the term "ghosting". When I first heard the term, it seemed the agreed-upon meaning was something like 'ceasing contact and not responding to someone you'd met in person and had both indicated an interest in seeing one another again in the future.' With that as a definition, it seemed clear that ghosting was, indeed, bad behavior. But it seems to have grown to include any gap in contact, no matter how little you've been communicating, even if that communication has strictly been through an app. And I think that's more weight than the word can carry. TallSlenderGuy's point above about how there's no ghosts when people are face to face may be true in one sense, but consider: back in the bar cruising days, I'm sure at some point everyone hit on a guy for a while (or got hit on), realized you just weren't that interested in him, and wandered off to talk to others. People understood what that meant and didn't need a special term for it. I'm sure there are some who think once you've expressed interest (or even potential interest) in someone online, you "owe" them some sort of closure if you change your mind (or worse, that having expressed interest, you're obliged to keep displaying that interest indefinitely). And I disagree. I've had guys flirt online, or flirt back, and then the conversation ends, and I understand that for whatever reason, he's not interested in further conversation, at least not now. And he's not obligated to do so. That - disappearing online and not conversing further - seems to be what a lot of complaints about "ghosting" seem to mean, and I just can't get worked up about that. Of course, if you make plans to connect (IRL or online) at a specific time, and the other guy doesn't show, and never apologizes or explains why he couldn't show, then that's a bad thing. But that's being stood up, primarily; the ghosting is incidental and subsequent to that prior bad action. (These are the situations ErosWired seems to be referencing, and I agree that it's crappy behavior, but it's more the standing up that bothers me.)

I had a notification that someone quoted me in a post in a particular topic. But when I went to check the post containing my quote, I got the message above. I assume, unless it's a system error of some sort, that someone has chosen to block my ability to view/respond in the topic. My question is: is that done by a moderator, or by the topic's creator (or either one)? And if it's done by a moderator, shouldn't there be some sort of notification explaining why? If it's done by the topic creator (it's been a while since I've created a new thread, so I didn't know that was possible), is that strictly up to the thread creator, to pick and choose which site members get to participate? I'm not arguing for or against any particular process or rule, but I would like to understand how that works.

See the pinned thread above about why tube sites were deleting so many user videos. In a nutshell: they can't survive in the current environment.

Actually, not so much - it may be technically true, but practically speaking, it's not. For starters: when properly adhered to, PrEP is for all intents and purposes 100% effective against the vast majority of potential HIV infections in the U.S. (and in many other developed countries). Resistant strains exist, but they are not widespread among the poz community (thankfully) and just because a strain is resistant to one component of the current treatment regimes does not mean it can't be treated with other medications that use different components. There are several classes of components in HIV treatment, and there are multiple specific drugs within each category. So BrandNameDrug Alpha may combine compound 1 from class A, compound 1 from class B, and compound 1 from class C (think 1A1B1C). BrandNameDrug Beta may combine 1A with 2B and 3C. BrandnameDrug Gamma may combine 2A, 2B,1D. And so on - there's not an infinite number of combinations, of course; and it's the mixing of classes (ABC or ABD or ADE) that provides the wide-spectrum attack on HIV, with the particular drugs (1,2,3) within a class more or less effective in particular situations and with differing levels of side effects. What that means is that resistance exists but hasn't yet reached the status of a widespread, easily transmissible supervirus that nothing can treat. And until it does, PrEP (properly taken) is going to protect a person. The statistics are clear: it just works. The reason that guys engaged in risk behavior sometimes end up with HIV has more to do with how well they adhere to the PrEP regimen than anything else. So behavior that interferes with diligence with PrEP - like, say, drug use - is a far better indication of who's going to get pozzed than simply saying "bareback m4m sex will get you pozzed eventually".

I think the diplomatic thing to say is "We just aren't a match," and if they ask why, it's perfectly okay to say "Because I'm on PrEP and feel it's adequate protection for me and my partners, you want condoms, so I wish you luck in your hunt." There's the off chance you might educate the person into understanding PrEP better and he may turn out to be an enthusiastic bareback bottom for PrEPped tops. If he accepts your answer and moves on, no problem. Personally, I don't block people for simply not being what I'm looking for, unless there's something in the profile (like being a Trump supporter) that I don't even want to begin to address. In such a case, yeah, I block pre-emptively. Otherwise, I don't block people who aren't being obnoxious. But that's a personal choice, not something that everyone should (or will) find suitable.

If you stay on PrEP - and by that, I mean adhere to the daily regime, without fail - then yes, of course it can happen. It's well documented. But that means you can't get in the habit of missing doses on any sort of regular basis, and I would advise against one of those cumdump bathhouse visits if you haven't gone at least a couple of weeks, preferably more, without missing a dose. In other words, if you miss a dose on March 15, even if you start right back up the next day, don't schedule a session like that until early April, *just in case*. I'm basing that recommendation on the guidelines that suggest you're definitely fully protected after being on daily PrEP for a month. It's possible that your protection level from a missed dose may not matter after a week, if you otherwise take it every day, but you can't know for sure. So I suggest being certain you haven't missed a dose in a couple of weeks to be sure.

There is a lengthy discussion in the pinned posts in the Porn forum about the situation amateur porn sites are facing. You can find it at Although that discussion is about why thousands of videos were being deleted, it points out that the sites themselves are unlikely to survive.

Perhaps I didn't make my point clear. Of course power exchange is a thing. You yourself note that the bottom having control in such situations is well established. But the average newbie coming into these discussions here would never get that perspective from the hundreds of wannabe subs posting on here about how low they are and have no use except as a semen receptacle. YOU know that you have chosen that role - and that you're free, if you choose, to abandon it - because you understand power exchange. What I object to is the way actual power exchange works is mischaracterized by people who don't understand it - and who, in all likelihood, are wanking fantasists at best. And I wouldn't even care about that, except that many of these are the same people egging on naive bottoms to fuck without PrEP because - and this is my favorite - using PrEP somehow makes the sex not as enjoyable, not "real" sex. I've seen bullshit on here about how only poz people can "really" experience sex as it was meant to be. I do understand them. I don't disparage them for making that *CHOICE*. I think it's important, however, to acknowledge that it IS a choice. We all recognize the harm caused by crappy "abstinence only" sex education, by "homosexuality is an abomination" preaching, and so forth. While it's of a different nature, I think there's just as much harm in the message that bottoms - not just the speaker, but all bottoms - need to submit to the whims of tops no matter what, and I've seen enough guys fucked over by abusive "relationships" along those lines that I'm going to speak up and say: choose that if you want, but make it an informed choice, and not something you've been convinced is standard.