BootmanLA

To be clear: I agree, but I consider the rise of apps part of the shift away from bathhouse culture. In other words, the two broad factors I see are (a) the headwinds that bathhouses have faced externally - increasing rent, gentrification, HIV/COVID/Mpox restrictions, etc., and (b) the decline in demand because the product is no longer as broadly wanted as it once was. I think pretty much every reason for the decline can be grouped into one of those two baskets, even those not yet mentioned, if any.

Not necessarily. I'm unaware of any STI that has a 100% transmission rate. Now, some are highly likely to be transmitted, but even then, it's not a 100% sort of thing.

There is nothing new under the sun, as the saying goes. How common this is, of course, varies, but I don't think it's especially rare.

Not just larger than average, but older than average, meaning people who can remember the golden age of bathhouses (or people who knew people who remembered). Gays younger than a certain age - maybe 55 ish? - are less likely to have experienced any of that, or to have been close to people who did. Not that they don't exist, of course, but it wasn't part of their cultural upbringing the way it was for guys who are now, say, 62 or so.

Another point about down-ballot voting: those offices are often where the future good guys and bad guys in the big offices come from. The local town councilman makes a name for himself, then runs for mayor, then state representative, and so on, working his way up the chain. Supporting the good guys at the lower levels, so that they're encouraged to move up, and working to defeat the bad ones so they don't have a power base on which to expand, is important. I strongly second the idea of looking for an LGBTQ or other progressive organization and their endorsements, if you're not sure for whom to vote. State/local party organizations aren't always useful, and sometimes can mask other agendas.

And of course, words like "escorting" can be (and often are) euphemisms for plain old prostitution, meaning there's no actual distinction between the two except the name used in different cases. "Escort" tends to be used when describing slightly higher-end arrangements, whereas "prostitution" is more of a technical term covering both "escorting" (as described earlier) and street hookers and everything in between. Certainly from a legal perspective, it doesn't matter whether you are labeled "escort" or not; if you agree to perform a sex act for compensation, you're committing prostitution. People often try to get around this by insisting that the payment is for the company of the escort, nothing more, and if they choose to have sex in some form, that's a personal choice. But it's a lot harder to maintain that pretense when the cops discover rate sheets, etc. that cover more than just "company."

I think there are two broad groups of factors at play here (no pun intended). Certainly, all of the things mentioned thus far (COVID, gentrification, squandering of revenues, and long before these, HIV) have taken their toll. But in theory, none of those should be fatal to the business concept if it's sound. Virtually every other type of business shuttered temporarily by COVID re-opened; if gentrifying forces drive a bathhouse out of a gayborhood, there's always somewhere else, on the periphery, that's the "next place" that someone can develop. If it closes because the owners/managers put all the profits up their noses or into their veins, well, demand should result in something similar taking its place with leadership less beholden to "substances" (as they're euphemistically called). And while HIV shut down a lot of bathhouses originally, quite a few had weathered that storm and/or reopened with at least a token nod towards safer sex, even if virtually nobody was using the free condoms any longer. But I think what's really going on at the same time is a gradual shift away from that entire bathhouse culture, with it becoming a niche that can't operate sustainably in most markets. I'm neither saluting nor condemning that shift, just noting it. When I came out right at the end of the 1970's, it was pretty much every gay boy's dream to move to the big city and throw oneself into a life of readily available sex 24/7, especially at the baths, without having to worry about bringing people home or to a shared apartment or whatever. Due to decades of work pushing public acceptance of gays, an awful lot of those gay boys today want nothing more elaborate than a good husband to come home to. I think some baths will hang on for years to come. But I'd be shocked if we saw a net increase in their numbers in the US, at least, or in any given city here. I think they're like drive-in theaters: something many of us remember fondly, but still fully aware of their drawbacks. And I think what we'll see, before too long, is that a bunch of them are going to shut down simply because there just isn't the demand there once was, and the coming generations just won't have an interest.

I'm going to reject the options presented, for the following reasons: 1. I agree that escorts and porn stars are sex workers, just as are cam girls, cam boys, guys with sexually explicit OF or JFF or whatever accounts, street hookers, and more. They're all involved in businesses (as workers) where sex (be it physical contact with the purchaser, or stimulation via imagery and/or sound) is part of the product or service provided. But I don't put sex work into the category of "degrading or dehumanizing" - it CAN be, but that's not inherent in the work. It's inherent in the society in which the workers live. 2. I don't think the second option describes all sex workers. Some do it because they're broke. Some do it because they like the supplemental income it can provide. Some do it because they're substance addicts and need cash to feed their habit. I do agree that people who judge sex workers are wrong, but I don't think it's always sour grapes; sometimes it's just plain old disapproval, sometimes it's resentment that they can't control other people's sexuality. 3. I'm not sure that there is an inherent difference between gay and straight people. Perhaps between the *typical* or *average* gay and straight person - the former probably has more lifetime sex and more partners than the latter, for instance - but I don't see gay sex workers as any sort of ambassador for the gay sex experience (except, of course, in the literal sense that a straight person can satisfy any curiosity he might have about gay sex acts by watching porn). I think gay people bringing home partners to their families, and integrating gay partners into families, goes much farther to show the world what's important about being gay - we're pretty much just like you - than anything else.

What I object to (to the extent I object to anything in this circumstance) is your repeated attempts to pigeonhole my friend, someone whom you don't know and only know a very, VERY few limited facts about, into some sort of "hole" that allows you to categorize him. I don't care why you're doing it; I just know that you don't know him, and you certainly aren't qualified, on the basis of the few facts I have mentioned, to opine on ANYTHING about his motivations, his introspection, his "transactionality", his taking life "at face value", or anything else. I brought him up solely to illustrate a point, and since you reject the point, you have been trying (unsuccessfully) to imagine your way into finding a slot into which you can place him that aligns with your viewpoint. The reason I call this navel gazing is that you keep describing things in terms of your own introspective experience. The idea that a person can actually be (a) very introspective and (b) not come to the same conclusions as you have about paying for sex, seems to be a non-starter. And in your life, maybe it's impossible for you to conceive of paying for it, because of your introspective outlook - but that's your life. Not his.

FWIW I don't dislike you, either - we may disagree on some issues (though certainly not all of them), but I don't move someone into "dislike" territory simply for disagreements. My default position on most people is amused ambivalence. But in any event, you're certainly correct in this case: whatever tension there might be in this case, it's not sexual in nature.

Thank you. I make a concerted effort in this forum to keep topics "on point" - it's a health discussion, not a "see how slutty (and UNhealthy) I can be" discussion. There are plenty of topics and sections of this site where people can wax poetic about their sluttiness, and while I roll my eyes at a substantial portion of the people who claim feats of depravity on a regular basis, if that's what they enjoy writing about (fiction or not), more power to them. But people come to this section to get accurate health-specific information. I want, as much as possible, to help them find that info.

OK, then let me try with less snitty of my own. Right here, you're assuming he hasn't thought about it at all, because if he had, he'd have come to the pre-ordained conclusion YOU already are assigning him. No. In fact, he's made clear to me that the negative feelings of being rejected and passed over were a lot worse than the idea that he was having to pay for it. As he put it, he could easily be so unappealing that he couldn't even get it for cash. But in any event, again, you're saying something "can only" have the effect you have determined it's going to have - no possibility that his experience may be different. Yeah, a guy might say that. And asking "Does your friend ever feel like..." is one thing. Declaring that "if he stops to think about it" (which suggests he's not capable of thinking it through for himself - presumably because his thought process must be messed up as he didn't come to the same conclusion as you), and saying X action "can only" have a particular effect isn't asking a question. It's telling him how he should feel. Again, maybe he values the physical contact more than he values whatever "sense of self" you seem to think is more important. And yay! that it's more important for you. Just.... don't assume what's important to you is important to everyone. And yet again - because his introspection produced a different result than yours, he's doing it wrong and missing out and should .... do what, actually? Do without and learn to rejoice in his glorious unwantedness for its own sake, rather than at least bypass part of the less desirable result of being (or at least feeling) less than appealing by getting the physical contact he wants? I don't mean this last part critically as much as I mean it to legitimately inquire. You have discussed, at various times, your life "on the spectrum" (I don't want to put words in your mouth as to where along that spectrum you are). You've described how it's difficult for you to pick up on social cues that (at least some) neurotypical people recognize and navigate with ease. Might it be possible that for someone who isn't neurodivergent, as you are, might not have the same problems deciding that having to pay for sex to get it regularly is still a lot more appealing than not having it at all?

I realize you're being facetious to some degree, but Texas has a much more diverse economy moving away from strict dependence on oil and gas - much more so than, say, Louisiana has. And in any event, Texas' economy is far less single-industry dependent than, say, West Virginia is on coal, or Kentucky is on coal and horses.

I would just throw out, for consideration, that for a lot of members of this site, the whole thing is one big masturbation exercise, and they get turned on writing things like "he treated me like worthless trash for the ten years we were together, and i loved it" when in reality, they'd throw a foot-stomping bitch-slapping screaming hissy fit if "he" failed to text that he was going to be late for dinner. In other words, not only is the idea of being treated this way a fantasy for some, it's probably largely a fantasy that it even happens at all. As I've written before, there's a wide swath of members here whose every post is some version of "Look at MEEEEEEEEEE, Daddy!" - cries for validation in the only way they think this site can provide, by pretending to be the most degenerate, trashiest person on the site - only to be topped shortly thereafter by the next member saying "Me too plus this...". I've reached the point of not taking seriously any of these people who claim to enjoy that kind of treatment. I'm sure a small percentage of them are real, but honestly, there are too many fakes to bother with sorting through to find the ones who might genuinely benefit from support.

It's not the state of Texas blocking you. It's this site, because the state of Texas is demanding (unconstitutionally, in my view, and they're likely to lose a challenge, but...) that all sites with sexual content over some ill-defined percentage must age-validate users. BZ, like many other sites, is instead simply blocking users who appear to be from Texas (and, for similar reasons, from a lot of other states). Texas was un-blocked for a while because there was a temporary restraining order on the law, but that has been lifted, so it's back to blocked. See this thread:

Sorry to report that this is not a "lately" thing - men have been passing over older/bigger bottoms, in general, for younger/skinnier/twinkier bottoms at least since gay connections stepped out of back alleys and into, successively, gay bars, other gay venues, and the apps and internet. Some men may well want random anonymous hookups, but only if those hookups are with someone they find appealing. If looks & body type and so forth didn't matter, most of them could stay home and get off faster masturbating. My only advice is to focus on guys who are looking for bigger guys. They're out there - not in as great numbers as those looking for Tom Holland types, but they're there - and try as much as possible to ignore the fact that the pool is smaller. Expecting guys who aren't into one's type to suddenly change is a fool's errand.

"Treat as positive" in such cases is excellent advice. I'm as concerned as anyone about antibiotic-resistant bugs and the like, but they're much more a problem from systemic overuse of antibiotics than the occasional "inconclusive" test result being treated as positive. In another thread here months ago, I mentioned having gotten a skin infection on my forehead that progressed rapidly and gave indications it might be MRSA. The doctors at the clinic immediately took the stance that it was better to assume it was and throw a heavier-duty antibiotic at it, especially since I'm poz (though undetectable). There's very little downside to treating when a test result is equivocal, and a lot of potential downside for ignoring it until it's confirmed.

In other words, anyone who doesn't feel the way you feel about sex is insufficiently introspective? I respect your insights, usually, but this just reeks of navel gazing. You "wonder" about a guy you've never met, whom I've described, and promptly impute a whole lot of garbage onto his thought process, assuming he must be considering all these things and the only reason he didn't come to the same conclusion as you is he lacks introspection. And worse, you purport to overrule his judgment that (for him at least) paying is less of a problem than not getting it at all. Sure, we all want validation, whether it's him wanting to be told he's desirable or you wanting to be used like a cum rag. But absent getting the exact validation we want, some of us can adapt to the actual world and seek comfort and pleasure in the things we CAN get. Without the snitty judgment of people who think their preferred hierarchy of needs must be respected by everyone regardless of circumstances.

How have you missed that? Quick Recap: Lauren Boebert and her date - apparently her side piece since, and possibly before, splitting with her husband (he who showed his dick to a group of teen girls in a bowling alley) - were thrown out of an Aurora, Colorado BeetleJuice musical production, both for her vaping and for their combined lewd behavior (him very visibly grabbing and fondling her breasts, her grabbing his cock through his pants and massaging it). In a theater with lots of people surrounding them, including families. She denied having done any of those things, and was recorded arrogantly flipping off the cameras at the security office of the theater as they were ejected. Until - shocker - security footage from the theater pretty conclusively documented the validity of the accusation.

I hesitate to say "It's all in your head" because that makes it sound like it's not a real experience. But of course it is in your head - it's how you're looking at the experience, and how you're experiencing him and his actions. As you said, even when they're "going through the motions" the PHYSICAL part of the sex is still "fucking good motions". But you don't experience them in the same light once something has been "switched on" in your brain. It's the same reason that, for many guys, dirty talk is such a huge turn-on (and for some, a distracting turn-off). What our other senses tell us, and how we interpret our physical sensations, can change in our heads. Again, not that I'm saying it's not real - mental things are very real, just as mental health is real health. And it may even cause your physical reactions to be different, as your body responds not only to his physical stimuli but to your own brain processing it. But I suspect that if you had a high-speed camera to document the activity with no audio, you wouldn't necessarily see any difference in the things HE does, and possibly (though not as likely) in what you do in response.

It's also important to note that while having the warts removed gets rid of *those* warts, the virus that causes them (HPV) may still be lurking in your system and can cause new outbreaks for some time. And of course, if someone else comes long with HPV (it's the most common STI), you can be re-infected. You don't develop an immunity to them. As @rawfuckr notes, there is an HPV vaccine. It currently protects against 9 varieties of HPV - there are, in total, over 150 strains, of which 40 affect the genital area. The 9 the vaccine works against are generally the most problematic ones. However - and this is key - it will NOT protect you against any variety you already have or have had. It's still a good idea to get it, even if you have had 1 or 2 varieties (and both of your outbreaks may have been caused by the same variant). But that doesn't mean you won't ever have another outbreak.

I'm going to give you a few things to ask yourself and think about. 1. Does the man you're in a relationship with know that you want to pursue this outside sex? Is he okay with it? 2. You say you haven't had sex for 6 months now. Does that include your relationship? If so: is this purely a platonic, non-sexual relationship where nothing you might contract could infect him? If your relationship with him IS sexual in some fashion, he deserves to know what risks you're exposing him to. 3. I'm all for you getting the sex you want, AS LONG AS YOU DO IT RESPONSIBLY. That means discussing your plans with your partner. (It may be that he gives his blessing to you to enjoy yourself however you want. It may be that he wants to end a relationship that puts him at some risk. But he deserves to get the chance to make that choice.) 4. If you do decide even that you MAY go back to having sex, get back on PrEP and stay on it. You don't want to be "off" it when you decide at the drop of a hat that you can't hold out any longer and head over to a bookstore or whatever, and you may not have time to use the "on demand" scheduling by planning ahead. 5. The rest - who you want to fuck you, what you want them to say/do, - is just fluff. I'm not going to tell you to go chase your slutty dreams nor am I going to tell you to zip it up and stay home with your partner. You're 43 years old, for christssakes. Be a man, own your desires, make the arrangements necessary in your home life to accommodate them, and do what you decide is best.

Well, I don't make the society's rules, but they exist. They change, but not because any one person demands that they do. For a very long time, being gay wasn't considered (by the general public) as "natural." Scientists started considering it a normal variation decades before public sentiment shifted in that direction; most people considered it a "choice" and most religions considered it a "sinful choice." Because of that, in fact outing people who were closeted DID in fact often ruin lives. Federal employees with any sort of security clearance lost that clearance, which in most cases meant losing that job (and being barred from most other federal work). Ditto for state and local workers. You may be too young to remember, but Anita Bryant, a former Miss America and spokesmodel for Florida Orange Juice, led a successful public crusade in the 1970's to repeal a local Dade County (Miami) ordinance barring discrimination against gay people - Dade did not reinstate those protections for more than 20 years. You are ill-informed at best on this issue. We currently have the right to marry recognized in 2015 by the US Supreme Court, but that right is under attack and three of the four justices who voted against mandating recognition of same-sex marriages are still there (Alito, Roberts, Thomas). They have been joined on the right by Gorsuch, who replaced the fourth "no" vote, Scalia), by Amy Coney Barrett (another right-winger, who replaced yes-vote Ginsburg), and Kavanaugh, who is more conservative than Kennedy, who he replaced and who was also a "yes" vote). So there are now six solidly conservative votes on a Court that has shown little hesitation to overturn decades of precedent (see: Roe v. Wade) if they disagree with the answer. And even when they do not outright overturn the prior opinion, they regularly curtail its reach - so, for instance, they might rule that states have to allow same-sex marriages, but not that they have to provide the same benefits to both gay and straight couples. They might rule that private employers don't have to cover same-sex spouses on health care plans if the employer has a "religious" objection. And so on. We currently enjoy job protection only because the Court ruled that Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex, necessarily includes sexual orientation under the category of "sex" (because anti-gay bias is essentially punishing gay people for not acting like some would expect their biological sex to behave). But that's (a) a statutory provision, and if the GOP retakes the Senate and presidency, there's reason to fear they'd pass legislation to redefine "sex" in that law to exclude anti-gay discrimination; and (b) that decision was 6-3, but one of the two "yes" votes (Ginsburg) was replaced by Barrett (probably a "no" if it comes up). All it would take is for there to be some reason to distinguish a later case from this precedent, and we could probably lose Roberts as well - leaving only 4 votes for gay rights. And the fact that we're still fighting, case by case by case by case - and after a long series of key victories, LOSING as this Court find "religious freedom" trumps almost everything - should tell anyone paying attention we aren't NEARLY done yet. (And in any event, religious institutions, including churches, church-run universities, church-run hospitals, church-run nursing care facilities, etc. - and there are a LOT of those - are often partly or completely exempt from anti discrimination laws. So a minister who is quietly gay and not out to his congregation will, in many denominations, lose his job immediately if he's outed.) Well again, I don't make society's rules, and none of us, individually, have the power to change them. Even if all the gays in the country banded together, we don't have the numbers to force society to treat "leaving the wife for another woman" and "leaving the wife for a man" equally. And remember: we're not talking about him voluntarily leaving his wife: we're talking about inserting our ideas of what he and she should do, in their marriage, and forcing them to make a decision colored by society when it's usually NONE OF SOCIETY'S GODDAMNED BUSINESS. Yeah, in an ideal world, a man could realize he was gay fairly young, come out, face no problems in school or at work, and be just as likely to find a life partner of the same sex as the young man who never has to make that realization or come out because he's straight. Hell, the fact that the "default" is "straight" and thus imposes a burden on the gay person to come out, rather than withholding any thoughts about who someone else might be attracted to until he told us, tells you it's not an ideal world. In the world we actually live in, things are not so rosy. This, I'm sad to say, is just plain ignorance. We allow people to CHOOSE privacy about frequenting gay bathhouses or attending sex parties, because the SPECIFICS of one's sex life are personal and in general, none of society's business. But nothing stops Joe or John or Jim from telling anyone and everyone he meets how he gets his rocks off, and where - and while there might be individual repercussions from choosing to tell (like a friend dumping you for being a slut), there were no actual penalties imposed. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was about taking AWAY the gay person's right to serve openly in the military - a gay person could serve ONLY if he did not acknowledge his sexual orientation, and (officially at least) military superiors were forbidden to ask whether you were or weren't gay. But if you volunteered that information - if you told someone in your chain of command, for instance, that you were gay or bi - you were discharged from the military, and not "honorably". (Any discharge other than "honorable" carries some level of stigma, even though a "general" discharge isn't looked as badly as a "dishonorable" discharge.) These are nowhere near the same situation and not even parallel concepts. One involves giving people the choice what to reveal about themselves; the other imposes a PENALTY for revealing something about themselves.

We all make compromises. For some of us, the realization that we have to pay for sex to get fucked regularly is less of a problem than going without entirely. In my line of work, I have to deal with a number of people who can make my life much easier, or much harder, even though they are (socially and professionally speaking, NOT ethically or morally speaking) my inferiors. They're not even my subordinates; they're people who work in the building where my office space is leased, people who work in lower level positions in the offices I deal with professionally, and so forth. I not only pay attention, learn their names, and greet them and inquire after them at most opportunities, but I happily bribe them with things (not money, but...) to make their own work lives easier. For instance, one woman runs the receiving office for the building and directs the delivery of all packages and material to offices - anything I can't personally carry in myself (say, a couple of cases of file boxes), I have to drop at her office and she has someone bring it up to me. I make sure her mini-fridge in her office has water and juice, and every few weeks I drop off a box of individual bags of a kind of chip she likes. Half the time, the stuff I've dropped off beats me to my office while I'm moving my car to my assigned parking spot and walking up to the building. Would I prefer if she just liked me enough to go out of the way that way anyway? Sure. But I know her crews are busy from start of shift to the end, so being prioritized is a perk, and one I'm happy to pay for. I honestly don't see a whole lot of difference between that and sex. I'm paying someone to do something for me that makes me happy and my life is easier and smoother as a result. As I've said: I don't pay for sex (mostly because there aren't a lot of sex workers in my area), but the handful of superhot sex workers I drool over? If one were in my city that AmEx would be in my hand in a millisecond.

I agree with you, IF (as I suspect) you're saying that the belief people should be "out" is never enough, by itself, to justify outing someone against his will. But as I've rehashed earlier (and I assume this doesn't conflict with your statements), if the closeted gay person actively seeks to harm the community (a politician who fights/votes against gay civil rights, for instance; a preacher who preaches about the sin of gay sex, especially if he slurs us all as groomers and pedophiles: out that mother fucker yesterday.