BootmanLA

I think it depends on the mix of people involved. There are a lot of men - mostly, ones who identify as straight - who can convince themselves that "it's not gay" for a guy to suck them off, because a mouth is a mouth and they can close their eyes and all that jazz. Fucking an ass - a hairy ass, especially - drives the point home much more dramatically, no pun intended. Remember that people who participate in public or semi-public sex - at bathhouses, glory holes, ABs, parks, and the like - are a self-selected subset of the MSM (Men having Sex with Men) category. What they'll do in public may be quite different from what those who are comfortable identifying as gay or bi would do in a less public situation. Moreover, while I suspect most of the "straight identifying" MSM most often indulge in those sorts of public/semi-public areas, I'd wager that a solid majority - if not the vast majority - of openly gay and bi men seldom if ever indulge there. And even among those, there are a lot of guys who look at anal sex as something you only do with someone you're seeing repeatedly (or want to see repeatedly), not everyone who catches your eye or whose eye you caught. Of course that's a generalization, and there's a subset of guys - many of whom are on this site, which may slant perceptions - who are happy to fuck or get fucked on first meeting, sometimes without exchanging names, and there's nothing wrong with that. But anyone who thinks that's typical behavior may be misperceiving the marketplace out there because of sites like this.

FWIW, the state's coffers are not being "flooded" - at least not yet. For FY 2020-21, for instance, the total revenue from the tax on medical marijuana was $270,000 - a little more than a quarter million dollars, or a rounding error in a budget that's north of $30 billion. It's true that the number has grown, and is expected to continue to grow - because the legislature expanded the types of product that can be sold, as well as increasing the number of conditions for which it can be recommended (not "prescribed", as it remains a Schedule I drug for federal purposes). But even so, it's not expected to be a major revenue producer. I think current estimates are that the medical program will still produce only a few million per year, tops. That might change if legalization happens, but the legislature has known about this as a potential revenue source for years, ever since Washington and Colorado legalized it in 2012. If anything, the legislature has shown a serious reluctance to loosen recreational drug laws, a trend that is only increasing as the Republicans take more and more seats in the legislature

I know more than one top who refuses to fuck a bottom with a small cock. I know plenty of tops who want to fuck, do not want to GET fucked, but want a big cock on the bottom to jack off, to play with, or whatever. Moreover, this strikes me as one of those pointless rants. If the OP is a bottom, he can ignore any profile that lists the owner as a bottom, whether or not he's got a cock pic. The real question is why this bothers someone when it doesn't affect him.

Maybe, maybe not. If groups of people were routinely addressed as "Ladies (plus others)" I suspect a lot of men would complain about being relegated to being lumped in as a " plus other." Of course, business letters well into the middle of the 20th century were addressed to "Gentlemen:" if the recipient's name wasn't known, and only after a lot of women in business started making noise about that did "To whom it may concern" become widespread - it had existed, but wasn't considered formal or proper. People who are covered by that "+" symbol can reasonably object to being shuffled into a category that's not well-defined at all. From the perspective of someone who *IS* covered by one of the primary initials, it may seem like much ado about nothing, but I suspect those would be the first people to complain if the phrase were shortened to, say, "LBT+" and gay men were just assumed to be in the "catchall". I'm old enough to remember when it was simply "G&L" when you were referring to both gay men and lesbians, or just "gay". I remember LGB becoming more widely used as bisexuals began asserting their own, different identity (not just gays in denial), and I remember loud, vociferous fights over the move to LGBT because an awful lot of LGB people insisted that transgender/transsexual/transvestite issues were separate from gay (or gay and lesbian, or gay, lesbian, and bisexual) issues. Which is why I have come around, over the years, on "queer". Yes, it's a slur in origin. But it's also one of the few words I can imagine that covers all the people involved, without having to keep adding on letters (LGBTQIAMNOP). "Gay" was a slur once, too. We adapted. We (or most of us, at least) can adapt to "queer", eventually.

Actually, I don't think that's not *quite* correct any longer. FDA guidelines now approve its use for adolescents and adults "at risk" (not "high risk") for infection through sex or IV drug use. Moreover, with the approval of PrEP as a preventative measure that must be covered at no cost to the insured under any insurance policy subject to ACA guidelines, there is (apparently) a lot less scrutiny over PrEP prescriptions and insurers, in general, seem to be accepting a doctor's word that the patient is at risk and this is an appropriate preventative measure.

I think the answer is pretty simple. If you identify as "queer", then feel free to label yourself so. If you don't, then don't. Don't label anyone else "queer" unless he or she has indicated that's how he or she identifies. You're right that there are plenty of people who are still offended by the term, although that number decreases on a steady basis as older generations die out (and/or, sometimes, mellow). The takeaway, I think, is for people who don't like the term to object (politely, but firmly) to being so labeled while not disparaging those who do so identify. As long as it's not aimed at you, or at someone else in your company who doesn't like the term, it shouldn't be a problem.

I'm sorry that my correctly punctuated sentences seem to bother you.

Again, loud and clear with the racism, message received. Why, for some reason, do I think you had an account on here before and came in with this same Islamophobic diatribe mess? I suppose there are probably more than one of you over there, but still, this sounds so familiar.

I think the "somewhere in between" category fits best. There are a number of places in the U.S. where it's legalized completely at the state level, and (at least during the current administration) it seems like in those jurisdictions the feds are leaving things alone, for the most part. There are places where it's not exactly legalized, but it's at least decriminalized, where there's a fine but no possibility of imprisonment except for major traffickers. There are plenty of places, too, where it's still illegal and where penalties have not been reduced at all. I don't think it needs to be behind the "backroom" wall, necessarily. But I think about how so many places on the Net used to require porn stories to include coding at the top, like "MMF oral anal WS" or whatever that gave the potential reader an indication of what was in the story, and you could skip anything that had a trigger for you. If the new system (when it arrives) could include some sort of coding for posts that required (not programmatically required, site rule required) users to use codes for certain topics, like "chems" or "pot" - and it should be easy enough in that new code to let people filter out any post with those tags. Alternatively, you could maintain the "Backroom" concept where posts could freely discuss those things without issue, but allow mention (if not long discussions) of those things IF they're properly tagged so that the filters would work for those who want to filter. In such a system, the mods should be able to add a tag (like "chems") to a post if they deem it necessary, and if the new system threads responses, then the entire thread could automatically be treated as tagged if the "root" post was. (A similar system could help segregate out things, like bisexuality or mentions of women in the fiction section, as a way of not forcing too many topics behind the "Backroom" wall. ) Personally, I find discussion of drug use - whether it's pot, coke, meth, or any other "chem" - a serious turnoff in erotic fiction, but that's me, not some edict from on high (no pun intended). I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I'm also sure there are plenty more people who aren't bothered by it in the slightest. I would not want my preferences to dictate what others can see, but a better way to filter out sensitive things that I don't want to see - so that I don't have to get halfway through a story before realizing "Oh, crap, this is about a bunch of stoners" and going back to the menu - would be much appreciated.

Short answer is that there's probably no good data on this, because it would be unethical to conduct the kind of experiment necessary to answer the question. Longer answer: Conventional studies show a very, very low risk of contracting HIV if you're on PrEP (what they call "breakthrough" cases). But to adequately answer what you're asking, they would have to have bottoms on PrEP take loads from high viral load tops. You'd also have to stagger the exposures, so that some bottoms would only get bred once, some would get several loads at one time, some would get multiple loads over a longer period of time, and so forth, in order to see whether there was a "breaking point" and whether it was something reached by cumulative exposure alone (like getting it daily for a few weeks) or reached by overwhelming the system (by taking multiple loads from different men in a single session). Strictly speaking, they'd also have to be sure that the bottom wasn't exposed to other men beyond what was documented, and that there was no IV drug use, for instance, that might change the results. But the fact that the number of known PrEP failures that can't be attributed to poor adherence to the prescribed regimen is very, very low, a logical inference would be that it works pretty darned well even against HVL semen. "Pretty darned well," of course, isn't perfect.

Congratulations on recognizing the word (assuming you didn't have to look it up). I wasn't sure if you would. 1. The phrase means, roughly, "God willing". I heard the English version of that phrase growing up non-stop - does that mean everyone in the US who uses that phrase is a terrorist? Moreover: it's not an "ISISlamic" phrase; it's Arabic, which is a secular language shared by Arab Christians, Arab Muslims, non-theocratic Arabs, and more. Like I said, your bigotry and racism shine through loud and clear. 2. Not "all over the world". There are Islamic nations that are, if not welcoming to gays, at least basically tolerant of them, and in many others, it's not the religious leaders who are so vocally anti-gay; it's the secular, often military rulers of the country who impose those measures. That's not defending theocratic states that oppress, torture, or murder gays; it's pointing out that it's a mixed bag, and Christianity has a long, long record of doing the exact same thing. And there are plenty in the Christian movement today who would happily reinstate that record as contemporary practice. 1. I see plenty of substance, as opposed to your hurling of bigotry as though that made it an "argument" or a "point". 2. If I'm trying to get you to go away out of boredom, I'm only sorry that it's not working very well. Oh, I very much assume your racism has been pointed out to you many times - to be honest, I'd be shocked if you'd led such a sheltered life that you hadn't encountered anyone else willing to call a spade a spade and tell you what you are. Honey, if you're actually worried about being beheaded by Islamists, then I suggest you move out of whatever Islamic law jurisdiction you're living in, or (assuming the more likely option that you're living comfortably in a western country), get therapy for your delusional paranoia, and soon. There are medications that can help.

That depends, of course, on the thickness of the walls. I've seen ABSes with walls made of 1/2" plywood - about the minimum you can use (with support) for a wall that doesn't have ordinary studs 16" on center. I note that construction detail because I'd imagine most ABSes would have a fairly wide - 3 feet or so - between wall studs/supports so that a guy can press tightly against the wall. It's possible some places might use 1/4" plywood, but I think that might prove a bit flimsy. In such a case, if the wall is only 1/2" thick, the guy doesn't need to have a 9" monster dick to fuck through it. Might not be as satisfying for the bottom if the top is only, say, 4 1/2" or so, but I'd think almost any average to average plus length cock could reach. And of course, if the hole is larger, the top can press hard up against the wall and possibly go a little deeper.

You say you wouldn't consider him a bottom or a versatile. However, he says he takes cock, but only uses "mouth, fist, and toys" on a hole. To me, that signifies the reverse; that he IS primarily a bottom, but willing to other things (besides fucking) with another bottom. What he does NOT seem to be is a top, as he makes no mention of using his cock at all.

Palm Springs and Phoenix are in a different category from Tucson, which is over 1,000 feet higher in elevation than Phoenix and nearly 2,000 feet higher than Palm Springs. It's true that in parts of Tucson, particularly the lowest-elevation desert areas, can be very hot, but, as they say, it's a dry heat, so 95 in Tucson is far more tolerable than 95 in Florida or Louisiana. I've spent extensive time in the Tucson region in July and August and it's not as bad as one might think - though certainly hotter than Maine, for instance. Moreover, that's Tucson proper. The city has several mountain ranges nearby, many of which have even higher-elevation settlements that are a short drive from the city center. On my first drive out there, as I exited the interstate highway at 2:00 PM to head to the place I was staying, my car's outside thermometer said it was 92 degrees. 20 minutes later, as I pulled into the driveway of the place I was staying up a bit in the mountains, the thermometer read 72 degrees. But that's because the place I was staying was at 5,000 feet elevation.

This is generally true, except the part about the herpes vaccine (HSV). While the HSV shots show *some* protection against infection, they do not offer complete protection, and once contracted, herpes is *not* a curable STI. See, for instance, [think before following links] https://www.cdc.gov/std/herpes/treatment.htm. That's not to discourage this course of action, but as you note, it's a "safer" way to have bareback sex, not a "guaranteed safe" way.

That's excellent news! I will note - something we tend to forget in evaluating risks is that it's all relative. For instance, it could be that taking X medication doubles the risk of a heart attack in people who have Y heart condition. But if only 1 in 20 million people have Y heart condition, then it's not a high risk overall. And if the odds of a person with Y condition having a heart attack are 1 in 20,000, then doubling that - to 2 out of 20,000 people with the condition (who are 1 in 20 million) may not be a huge increase in risk at all. Conversely, for a commonplace condition - like type 2 diabetes, with about 35 million people who have it) - something that increases the odds of a particular complication faced by a third of such patients by a factor of two would be significant - at least, something one might want to consider carefully and monitor closely.

"Horde" is not a synonym for "majority". A large group of people can be a "horde" without being anywhere near a majority, or even a plurality. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, whether it's that the 2020 election was stolen, that the earth is flat, that the moon is made of green cheese, or that there are secret cabals of globalist pedophiles operating from the basement of a basement-less pizza parlor in suburban Virginia. That doesn't mean anyone else has an obligation to respect that opinion, and yes, if it's a stupid one backed by no evidence whatsoever, I feel free to mock that opinion. I have no illusions of youth - I'm very up front about my age, my location, and so forth (unlike some people on here I could name, but won't). As for "bad" vs. "good" - in a political system like what we have in the United States, we frequently have to choose between two options, neither of which is 100% desirable. Rather than bitch, threaten to hold my breath till the choices improve, or stay home and complain that nobody is representing me, I always choose the least bad option, when there's no "good" option, and then work hard to press that least bad option to a better place. I think that's far more productive. As for your racist screed about immigration, well, I think that again shows your true colors, just like your "tranny" comment and a lot of other things you've said here. Again, you're entitled to your opinion, racist and ill-informed as it may be, but that doesn't mean I feel any obligation to respect it, or you. What I do have to do is treat you with respect - by not attacking you personally, only the (foul) ideas you spout.

I would add this, at the risk of possibly pissing off a few people: I don't think there's a whole lot of reason for posting a picture with a post in the forums 99% of the time. I mean, if the post is in a topic called "how big a gape can you make your hole?" it might be relevant to post a pic of said hole as evidence for whatever you're claiming, but in general, an "I like getting raw fucked by big dicks" doesn't need a visual explanation of what you mean. It's not that I object to explicit pics - far from it. But the forums are for discussion and sharing information, and random pics that boil down to some form of bragging don't really add to the discussion or the shared information. So unless someone is a prolific poster and has a lot of illustrations of points he's trying to make (where the illustration actually adds to the discussion), I can't see why this total posting image size is such an issue.

All true, though I'd note that Palm Springs may also develop water troubles eventually, as some of their groundwater comes from the Colorado River, which also supplies much of Arizona's water (and California's, and other states'). Moreover, while Phoenix is indeed experiencing abnormal warming because it's so overbuilt, that's not necessarily the case for much of the rest of the state. Even areas around Tucson, which is the second-largest city, don't have quite the heat problems that Phoenix has - partly because Phoenix is at such a low elevation (Tucson is 1200 feet higher than Phoenix). Again, this isn't to dispute what you're saying, just noting that what's the case in one part of a state may be very different from another part - like the difference between right-wing redneck panhandle Florida and Fort Lauderdale.

I strongly second this. I had friends who had lived for years in Florida, but as they approached retirement age, they started looking at other options. For now they've ended up in Seattle, but they're considering relocating again eventually to a somewhat warmer climate. As for why they left Florida they went through several hurricanes hitting close enough that they had damage to their property (they lived on a 26 acre ranch in central Florida). It's not just direct hit areas that have to worry about it; hurricanes can have gale-force winds spreading over hundreds of miles. Lose power to storms like that (which in their case also meant losing water, as they had a well) enough times and you start rethinking a region. Add in the incessant political lurches to the right, and it's fast becoming (outside of a handful of expensive cities) an intolerable place to live. It's true that Florida doesn't have an income tax. But property taxes are steep, and in many places, the combined state and local sales tax rate can be 8%. Note that of that sales tax, 6% is levied by the state, which means the vast majority of the sales tax revenue goes into state, not local, hands. (By contrast, in Fulton County (Atlanta), the sales tax rate is 8.9%, but only 4% of that goes to the state, while the other 4.9% is in local hands to be spent on local priorities.)

True, but there's nothing in this person's profile to indicate he's any such thing as an "international political scholar." And given that he referred to "trannies" in another posting here, I have serious doubts that he's anything of the sort. If he'd shown any sort of awareness of how our political system works - he mischaracterized how the impeachment process works, he mistakenly stated that we'd removed Supreme Court justices by that means before (we haven't), and he seems to not understand that with party-line votes in Congress and no party controlling 2/3 of the Senate since 1966, no impeachment for anything is likely to succeed because of tribal politics. Those are not, may I charitably say, the signs of an "international political scholar". They are the signs of a misinformed twitwit. That is true "on average" but the distribution of such people is not equal between the parties. Kudos for giving the party its proper name (although uncapitalized). But you're simply mistaken about which party lives for the uninformed voter - even the Republicans freely admit this when there are no microphones present (and sometimes even when they are). Moreover, college-educated voters by a significant margin vote Democratic, and although educational achievement is not an exact proxy for being informed, it's certainly related. It's also widely documented that GOP voters, not Democratic ones, get the majority of their "information" from dubious or slanted news sources. There is no equivalent to NewsMax or OAN on the left, for instance, and while it's arguable that MSNBC is as leftist as FoxNews is right-wing, only one of the two is noted for promoting paranoid conspiracies about things like election security and Covid-19, and it's not the liberal one. Find me the liberal equivalent to the hordes of GOP voters who think the 2020 election was stolen, or that Covid-19 is a hoax, or that there's a secret pedophile ring among "globalist" liberals.

Anyone who uses the slur "trannies" to refer to transgender persons, in 2023, can safely be discounted as a bigoted nut. I'd almost expect you to be talking about "what the coloreds want".

There are places you can get cheap or free PrEP via online without necessarily triggering your insurance. With one of those, it's unlikely your wife would find out, as long as you had a place to hide the pills that she's unlikely to discover. (Side note: in every relationship I think each partner should have some measure of privacy and a place to keep things that the other will not explore. But it's hard to establish that once the relationship is started, because it practically screams "I have things I want to hide from you." If that zone of privacy is established before the relationship gets serious, and each side understands that there are things - like a journal or diary - that need to be off-limits, it's a lot easier. And needless to say, that's not an excuse for putting the other person's health at risk.)

A few thoughts, and a correction: That's an understandable concern, and it's a tough call to make. On the one hand, you might go 20 or 30 years without getting pozzed, and that's 20 or 30 years of no damage to your system from the medication. On the other hand, once you're pozzed, you not only will be on medication for the rest of your life, but your body will be constantly under siege from the virus, essentially always on high alert (which might cause eventual damage of its own). One plus: if you exclusively top, you're already at lower risk than if you were an exclusive or regular bottom. One way to avoid increasing that risk is to use a condom in the riskiest situations - for instance, if you fuck guys in bathhouses or other places where they may already have one or more loads in them, or if you are fucking someone a complete stranger whose habits you don't know. You're not at risk in situations where the bottom has no other loads in his system and he's either negative or undetectable, so that compromise might push your already lower risk into the "almost but not quite completely" safe area. The correction: Truvada is ordinarily not prescribed for HIV treatment. By itself, it's effective for prevention, but not for treatment; essentially all modern HIV treatment options contain at least three different antiviral medications, and Truvada (and Descovy) only contain two of those. So it's possible that HIV treatment, which will contain MORE types of medication, may be even more toxic to your system than Truvada or Descovy would be.

In general, I would agree, but I think the OP's situation is a little different. For starters, I find very few people who identify as "versatile" who later go on to be exclusive tops, although I do know of a number who've gone on to become exclusive bottoms. It may happen, but in my experience there are plenty of versatile men who only top because they have to, sometimes, in order to get laid. With the plethora of bottoms there aren't that many versatile men who "have" to bottom because they can't find anyone who will bottom for them. But the OP specifically is already effectively (by his own making) an exclusive bottom - because he wants to be monogamous and his partner is exclusively top. Given that he clearly also wants to top on occasion, I think it's a safe bet he's going to continue to identify as "versatile" - he doesn't seem likely to be happy becoming a bottom. Also, while identities can and do change over a sexual lifetime, the partner is 38 and still identifies as an exclusive top. The chances of him, at this age, suddenly discovering he really likes to bottom don't seem that high to me, especially when he's got an eager partner wanting to show him what he's missing. If he's passing up that already now, imagine how set he'll be in his ways when he's 50.