BootmanLA

The remaining chapters may never have been written. A quick look through this forum will turn up hundreds of multi-part stories that were abandoned partway through.

When you say "gone" - do you mean "profile deleted"? Or do you mean "no longer responds"? Those are different things, and may have very different causes.

Not my pets, as I only have cats and they would be inclined to jump onto us in the bed (claws out). I've had sex in other guys' rooms when their dog was in the room. Caused no issues.

That's where you should have kneed him in the balls hard, twice, and then thrown all his clothes out your front door.

First, some specifics regarding my situation (since you asked how others handle things): I'm in an open relationship that has been open from day one - in fact, I met my partner when he was in town visiting a mutual friend he'd come to play with. We both continued to play with the mutual friend (and others in his circle) so it has never been an issue. Now, for general advice, followed by specific advice for you: It's always better to set out the terms of a relationship when it first develops into anything even approaching serious. Certainly before anyone moves in with the other person, certainly before either starts declaring themselves a couple. It doesn't have to be explicit down to every last detail, but if an open relationship is something you want, you need to make that clear up front. That way, nobody's in the position of being the victim of a bait-and-switch. It's a little late for you for that, apparently. Moreover, she's imposing strictures on you that are, shall we say, kind of controlling. You can have sex outside the relationship, but only when "we" (meaning "she") needs to spice things up? Your outside needs are limited by her drive? Which suggests if she decides she doesn't really want you sleeping with other guys, you won't get to. I'd lay odds this is more about possessiveness (she doesn't want to chance losing you to someone else who has something she can't give you - a dick and balls) and so she's foot-dragging to keep from worrying about it. So I'm going to suggest you make it clear to her that this is something *you* need, at some point, and while you are amenable to deferring it for a limited period until any concerns about you being invested in this relationship, that can't and won't go on forever - not only is it not fair to you, but it's not fair to her. You don't have to set a deadline, but at the same time, you should make it clear that X point - say, a year from now - is long enough for her to get used to the idea. And if she can't cope with that, it needs to end. If she actually doesn't want you sleeping with men, and you feel that's something you are not willing to give up for the rest of your time together, then you aren't the man for her and she's not the woman for you. Much better to regretfully part as friends than to drag it out and have the relationship deteriorate to the point where you can't stand to be near each other.

Valid point, although even with kidney disease there's some qualification. The big driver among diet-related kidney disease is Type II diabetes (which can often be controlled by pretty inexpensive medications even if your diet remains *somewhat* crappy) and high blood pressure (which, ditto). Doesn't mean changing your diet isn't a good idea - it is - but if you diagnose someone with diabetes or high blood pressure early on, you have other inexpensive treatment options that can counteract them and avert kidney damage. And I think that's what makes the big difference between HIV infection and most other chronic health conditions: the latter almost always develop over an extended period of time and there are reasonably cheap ways to deal with them. The former is the result of a specific infection at a specific time, and as soon as it takes hold, you're locked in for life. How we choose to live with them, of course, is another story.

Wrong. Dead wrong. No matter who you are, you ALWAYS have the right to say no, and if someone persists after you say no, it becomes rape. You don't have to say no - you're free to convince yourself you have "no" choice - but that's bullshit. NOBODY has any "right" to anyone else's body for sex, period.

To be fair, though: I don't think you can quite compare the two. Once you have HIV, unless you're one of the very few nonprogressor unicorns out there, you're stuck with expensive treatment, every day, for the rest of your life in order to stay alive. Drop the treatment, and you can pretty much guarantee an early death. For someone who converts at, say, age 22, that's decades of life that would (theoretically) be gone. By contrast, disease from a bad diet is much more gradual, and it's something that can be managed considerably less expensively than HAART. And it's possible to reverse even years and years of bad eating habits and repair some of the damage done to your body by a bad diet; that's not an option with HIV. Not saying one or the other is worse - in fact, my point is that you simply can't compare them. It's not even apple and orange; it's more like cloud and rock - so different that comparisons fail.

I will add, now that it's two days out: yes, I had a reaction (achiness in the injection site - which is still there; exhaustion that set in about 30 hours after the shot, but which is now gone). Was it significant? Yes. Am I still glad I got the vaccine? Absolutely. Two days of feeling a little under the weather in exchange for effectively no chance of getting hospitalized if I contract Covid-19, and a chance of contracting it that approaches zero? That's a no-brainer.

Upvoted for the affirming language instead of the feminizing putdowns. I'm neutral on the trimming/shaving parts. 🙂

Oh, I accept that people are different and they're free to be as different as they choose. I personally find arrogant men to be lousy fucks and worse people, but that doesn't mean I don't accept them as they are. I just choose generally to not associate with them. I do, however, call out bullshit when I see it, no matter whether it's coming from an arrogant ass or otherwise. When a person makes post after post after post all emphasizing what a masculine person he is, and then actually writes - with no indication of self-awareness - that he doesn't "need to make a big fuss about it, it is noticeable enough so I don’t have to “prove” my masculinity", all I can do is chuckle.

And yet here you are, bragging about your "1000% testosterone" level - and making similar posts far and wide throughout this forum about what an incredible, masculine, dominant top you are. I think the last statement in your post includes more than you let on.

As a general rule: sex therapists suggest that if particular stimuli bring out an effect or behavior you want to discourage, then avoid those stimuli. So, for instance: if watching particular types of porn makes you want to get fucked and you can't get hard, then STOP WATCHING THAT KIND OF PORN. If being with guys who are bigger, beefier, more muscular makes you soft and want to get fucked, STOP HOOKING UP WITH THOSE KIND OF GUYS. Find what DOES turn you on and get you hard to stay hard, and focus on that. If that's porn with twinks getting nailed hard, watch that. But at the same time, don't jack off excessively - edge a lot, but don't let yourself cum. Build up some stamina for staying hard, and get used to not being all "cum fast and done". Then, hook up with a twink like the ones you like seeing get fucked, and -surprise - I'll bet you get turned on watching his reactions.

And for what it's worth, I had my second shot today (Moderna - thank you Dolly Parton).

Except that the number of "severe side effects" cases are vanishingly small. To date, in the US alone, nearly 150 million doses have been administered. To date, somewhere around 5 people PER MILLION vaccinated have had a severe reaction. I don't know *anyone* who's been "ridiculed or ignored" for having a severe side effect. The people who are being ridiculed and ignored are the ones screaming that this is some sort of poison or a secret means to inject biochips into us for the government to track us.

Which is why I said there's no excuse for being rude about it. My point is that your original post seemed as much to be condemning him for not accepting PrEP usage by a man topping him as an adequate substitute for a condom, as it is condemning him for his "high and mighty" attitude. The latter is defensible on your part; the former (to the extent it's there) is not.

Toxic masculinity cleanup on Aisle four.

I'd suggest starting with a sexual health doctor, who's more likely to have seen similar issues (and since sex seems to be the proximate cause). If he (or she) feels you should see a colo-rectal specialist, a referral is then easy to get. FWIW, my HIV doctor serves as my primary care doctor, generally speaking, because I'm already seeing him twice a year, and so he's in the best position to monitor my overall health. He's also very attuned to issues that can come up with my HIV medications, so when my kidney function seems off, or my cholesterol runs high (all of which are tested for in my blood panels), he can either deal with it or send me on to a specialist. For someone who's not positive, that may not be as workable a solution (I suspect most sexual health doctors have busy enough practices testing for and treating the general panoply of STI's, and aren't in a position to take general care of a patient's health - especially for ones who only show up when they've got syphilis or gonorrhea or whatever). But for those of us who are HIV-positive, your HIV doctor is almost certainly a good general resource and he can make referrals for things he's not as well-versed in.

My first thought is that this is a guy worried not only about HIV, but also the host of other STI's that can be transmitted by non-condom sex (and yes I know there are some STI's that condoms don't protect against). Someone who insists on condom sex may well be just as concerned about those. It could be that he has a wife or girlfriend and needs to be super-careful about bringing home any unwanted ride-along visitors. Doesn't excuse him from being rude, of course. But guys have a right to insist on condoms (and guys have a right to decline to fuck someone who insists on condoms).

As I've said elsewhere: that "hot" lasts for a few minutes. The results last for a lifetime. It's not for me to say nobody should chase or nobody should get pozzed, but it's a life-altering, irrevocable decision, and doing it because it seems "hot" seems to me extremely.... short sighted.

Reporting is not the same thing as up/down voting. It's not done with the same tools and those "reaction" actions do ZERO to report a post that is a problem. Reporting is done by clicking the three dots in the upper right corner of a post, which creates a message that's sent to the moderators about a post on which you have concerns. While there may not be a moderator logged in at the moment, he'll see that report as soon as he logs in, and can deal with the post if it is in fact problematic. THAT is what the site management encourages - and anyone can report a post that's problematic, if I'm not mistaken. Reactions - that is, upvoting, downvoting, thanking, or otherwise indicating one's opinion of a post - does zero for reporting. It simply records your opinion, and that opinion is factored into the poster's reputation, but it doesn't cause the owner or moderators of the site to do diddly squat. I love people who make a post, respond to someone else's comments, and then flounce out declaring the matter closed as far as they're concerned. That's the antithesis of discussion; maybe your lack of understanding about the difference between reactions and reporting, between discussing and declarations, is part of why you're running into problems with the site.

Counterpoint: assume, for a moment, that relatively new users could react to, say, 100 posts a day. What you're likely to see, very quickly, is Person A making a post that Person B dislikes, and Person B then creates 5 or 10 throwaway accounts (easy to do with as many web mail services there are out there), and uses each one to downvote 100 of Person A's past posts. In minutes, Person A's online "score" (for lack of a better term) gets trashed. Most of the restrictions here (not being able to send private messages at first, for instance) are the result of past abuses. And nobody's saying you need to use your allocated posts to "downvote" people first, then upvote afterward. In fact, I would think that itself is a sign of someone who's not actively trying to fit himself into the community. If a member finds so many posts objectionable that his first instinct is to downvote far and wide, maybe the site's not a good fit for that member.

Here's the thing, though. While not arguing against requiring generics when they're efficacious, sometimes it's more cost-effective for an insurer to run a small loss on a given patient to avoid much bigger losses down the road, especially when it comes to group insurance. Keeping the guy from becoming positive and the thousands of additional dollars that will be required annually for his treatment may be worth not making any profit along the way - because once he's positive, you can be pretty sure he's going to hang onto that policy if at all possible for the rest of his life. Additionally, the group insurer's PBM may have negotiated a much, much cheaper rate on the medication in exchange for having all that business, so what would cost you or me $1,500 a month may cost the PBM $500. It may still not make the particular patient profitable, but it can reduce the loss considerably. And realistically, in any particular group plan or population of individual plans, there are going to be a handful of patients who cost the insurer a lot of money and a lot who make them money that, added together, makes them profitable. It's how insurance works, as I'm sure you know.

I downvoted this post solely because the title/topic line is so lame and useless. At least give people an idea of what kind of "question" you're going to ask. Jeez.

Here's something I would note: The ship carries a maximum of 5,600 passengers. Per the website linked above, the "poz cruise" group is limited to 200 people. That means it's NOT the case that this is going to be a sex fest of a trip - I'm sure there will be some going on in individual cabins, but with the overwhelming majority (>95%) of the potential passengers NOT being part of this "poz party" aboard, I would not expect there to be much of a "breeding fest" vibe to the ship-sponsored or ship-endorsed activities. Rather, I suspect this will be a small subset of the passengers hanging out together (probably with group dining, for instance, and placed together on land-based activities, for instance). There will be families and children on board so I doubt the crew would react well to, say, passengers wearing a t-shirt with a donkey on it and the words "Breed my Ass". Not that it won't be a lot of fun, presumably, for those so inclined to go. But have reasonable expectations.