BootmanLA

I'll point out a few things that might be relevant in some of these cases. First is the average length of a porn scene vs. the average length of a typical sex act. In my experience, the latter is almost always shorter than the former (with some notable exceptions in cases of excellent stamina). Back in the heyday of gay porn studio productions, an average scene lasted between 10 and 15 minutes, in order to have 4 or 5 scenes fill between an hour and 90 minutes of videotape. The physical medium constraints are long gone but people still want to have lengthy scenes (in my experience), and that means cutting and splicing the action so that it looks like it's longer than it actually was. That wouldn't require sharp cuts, but (second) you're also dealing with a generation that grew up with fast-shifting video games from early childhood; it's been remarked on that music video (are those still a thing?) editing also took a turn towards dramatic swoops, fast cuts, and the like. My guess is that's done a number on people's attention spans. And third, old style porn had camera operators who understood what they were doing. Because porn films had a larger budget then (nobody spends a dime on something they're planning to put on OF/JFF), so they could block shots ahead of time, make sure that mirrors didn't reflect the camera, that lighting eliminated shadows from the equipment, and all that. Those operators understood how to use the camera without having to rely on gimmicks. The majority of porn today is amateur, not professional, but some amateurs want to stand out from the crowd, and I think some of them have a strange idea of what makes them look "professional". The idea seems to be "attempt to do something dramatic" and it will have "artistic vision".

Kinda hard to be a "start" when the OP made clear it's also "the end". (Not that I object to one-part stories, just pointing out that people expecting more will be disappointed.)

If by "anything else" you mean a sexually transmitted infection, the rules on that (which went into effect more than a year ago) are crystal clear. The reasoning behind them - which you may or may not agree with - are also spelled out here: This post appears at the very top of the Backroom section, and if "READ THIS!" isn't sufficient to get someone to actually read the rules, I'm not sure what else the site owner could do. Regardless, your ire is misplaced. The moderators enforce the rules laid down at the top. The site owner, who makes the rules, has made his position clear on this. Complaining and mocking the moderator who gave an infraction is childish and unproductive.

As long as you stay on PrEP, and keep on top of any other STI's you may acquire (and you should be getting tested for them, even if you've always "expected" your partners to be "ddf"), then you should be fine.

Actually, the odds, as you describe them, might be elevated in your case, at least for the combo. Not sure whether this is your first Herpes infection, or an outbreak of an existing, ongoing infection, but even if the latter, that can dampen your immune system (because it's fighting the herpes outbreak either way). That can leave you susceptible to other infections, like strep, which you might otherwise be able to fend off. Or, even if you're on meds and undetectable, your system is still constantly dealing with HIV; and the meds themselves are quite possibly, albeit slowly, taking a toll on other bodily processes. That, too, can lower your overall defenses just enough that in combination with the herpes infection or outbreak, you were vulnerable to the strep as well.

That's very possibly correct. When I looked it up trying to figure it out, I got lots of other possibilities, mostly non-sexual - which suggests to me that it might not be readily recognizable the way BBBH is. I don't know of any alternative meaning for BBBH, so I think it would be recognizable by most people for whom it was relevant.

BBBH does not have a graphic symbol per se, as far as I know. I have seen promotions where they are seeking to have people tattoo the hashtag #BBBH on their bodies. I have no idea what RIL stands for.

You're right - these are the same idiots who thought a grifter con artist who ran multiple companies into the ground and who squandered a multi-hundred-million dollar inheritance on projects pampering his ego but hemorrhaging cash was a business genius who nonetheless cared about the common people's concerns.

I think that may be because of the increased visibility of sports championship rings and the decreased appeal of university/college rings, both over the last 3 decades or so. As for the latter: I think the increased physical mobility of the college-educated classes in the U.S. over the past three or four decades has reduced their significance. When a large portion of the graduating class of a particular college stayed in the same region for work (and tended to stay for a lifetime until retirement), other graduates of the college would recognize the ring, and it served as a kind of starting point for conversation (which class were you in? Did you have professor X?). And it helped distinguish college grads from non-grads, so it also served as kind of a class distinction. Once people started moving around the country for careers, and doing so multiple times over a working life, the value of such a ring declined significantly, because a UCLA ring would go unrecognized in Atlanta or Nashville or Salt Lake City, just like a Columbia ring wouldn't be identifiable on sight in Seattle or Dallas. Also of note: with the dramatic rise in tuition costs over the last 30-odd years, class rings may well be an expense few people are eager to take on, especially with student loans pending.

I can't advise you on whether to temporarily give up BB sex or not. However, I will note that I've been getting a fair amount of feedback from FTL area friends and acquaintances that monkeypox IS being discussed down there, and the community is well aware of it. As was the case with HIV in the very early days, the community is filling in with information resources where the media is letting things fall through the cracks. And so "local" information is more readily available in areas with dense populations of LGBT people, which gives FTL an advantage over Tampa/St. Pete. Unfortunately, awareness doesn't equate to vaccine availability, and that's going to be governed in part by the politics you referenced.

Because it's not that simple? Because there's a difference between, say, a president who actively is trying to undermine civil rights in this country and who appointed three justices to the Supreme Court to carry out that mission (one to a seat stolen from the previous president, one who actively lied during a deliberately botched FBI investigation into his background, and one rammed into the Court only a few weeks before said president was resoundingly rejected by the people), and a president who is facing obstruction to his entire agenda from the opposition party? I can explain the difference between being unable to overcome resistance to doing good things, on the one hand, and actively trying to harm people, on the other hand, to you. I can't understand it for you. But yes - many of us DO call out the present administration for its missteps. Here's an example. Trump weaponized the judicial appointment system beyond the SCOTUS nominations, with the GOP ignoring the home-state "blue slip" approval process for appellate court judges (who are the final arbiters of virtually all federal cases, since only a handful get to the Supreme Court). Coupled with the blockade on approving Obama appointees during his last two years, that gave Trump and the GOP a huge advantage in packing the appellate courts with right-wing judges. When Biden took office, he was in a position to at least somewhat balance that. But he's refused to encourage older federal appellate judges appointed by Democrats to step down (which would create a vacancy he could fill with a younger judge, who would serve a lot longer than the 70 or 80 year old she's replacing). He's not been in a particular rush to appoint judges in red states, which runs the risk that those seats will be open when/if the Senate changes hands to the GOP and thus blocked from getting filled. He was caught trying to cut a deal with Mitch McConnell to have the GOP stop blocking some district federal judicial appointees (they're currently blocked with unfavorable "blue slips") in exchange for agreeing to appoint a right-wing anti-abortion lawyer to a federal judgeship in Kentucky, and the Democrats have been uniformly furious with him over that. He's now committed to not nominating that person. That's just one example, but yes, we do hold Biden accountable when he's making wrong decisions about the future of the country. What we don't do is blame him for things outside his control. No president - not Biden, not Trump, not Obama, not Bush, none of them - have control, or even much influence, over gasoline prices at the pump. Yet GOP supporters invariably trot out the "Why are gas prices so high this summer?" in every Democratic administration, even though it also happens in Republican ones, because they see it as a winning issue for the economically illiterate. It's amazing how silent they've gotten now that gas pump prices have been falling steadily for five weeks. And those same economically illiterate people who are blaming him for inflation never seem to notice that inflation is, right now, a global problem, not a US problem. It's global because the factors that are driving it - chiefly labor shortages, supply chain issues, and pandemic recovery - are global issues as well, and inflation is an issue for right-wing governments, centrist governments, left-wing governments, coalition governments, and completely dysfunctional messes of governments. But the GOP again thinks it's got a winning issue by whining that a Coke that cost $1.75 last summer is now $2. You are free to blame the current administration, of course, for anything you want, including gas prices, inflation, or a toenail fungus. That doesn't actually make them responsible for any of the above, of course.

That's something you'd have to take up with him, I suspect.

If so, that's a new one on me. I'm old-school, as you know, so I come from an era when men would wear a wedding ring, if applicable (and if he chose one - I knew men who opted not to get one), and then on the other hand, one ring of another type - a class ring (high school or college), a signet ring, a fraternal/Masonic ring, or something like that. But the general gist was, one ring max per hand. Anything else was considered gaudy or froo-froo. Women had a tad more leeway in terms of a wedding band and an engagement ring both on the left, and a single "other" ring on the right. More than that was tacky. I'm as happy as anyone to toss toxic masculinity conventions aside, but it's still jarring to see guys with two, three, or four rings on a single hand.

All the same apply.

I wouldn't say "one culture in particular" as much as it's probably more common, in general, in cultural groups that practice sex shaming and repression. Because if you convince kids from an early age that we don't talk about sex openly at all, they're reluctant to tell people what's going on. And if you shame sex enough, you can also convince the kids that it's their own fault for leading the adult into this behavior. That said, some insular cultures almost expect couples to be related - cousins, for instance - in order to maintain purity of the bloodlines. Not necessarily first cousins (that is, children of siblings) but more distant ones - certainly. Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband, Prince Phillip, were cousins, as were Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

I'm just going to throw out my periodic reminder that "should" is one of the most useless words in the English language, at least insofar as how many people use it. All these high and mighty princesses decreeing that a bottom "should" do this or that, just make me roll my eyes.

Indeed, vaccines are in short supply. In Louisiana, for instance, we have received 1,000 doses for the entire state, and the Dept. of Health has decided to use them for people who have had actual exposure to a confirmed case, at least for now.

They are indeed. I can't say what (if anything) turquoise represents, but in the classic hankie code, navy blue meant anal sex and light blue meant oral sex. So shades of a color matter. Olive green (military) was different from hunter green (daddy/boy), which was different from kelly green (prostitution), and so on. And that's before you get into patterns, like stripes, polka dots, checks/gingham, camo, and the like. Obviously, most of these colors were never used in real life cruising situations because nobody had a chart of all the possible combos. The ones that were best known were also those used most frequently: navy (fucking), red (fisting), gray (bondage), black (SM), and yellow (WS). Those were all fairly easy to remember. And of course, at particular events, a few others might become popular, like hunter green for Daddies at a bear event. But I don't recall ever seeing the patterned hankies in use in the wild. Once the internet came along, however, and the notion of profiles took hold, people could abbreviate by writing "Into navy (left), hunter green (left), fuschia (left), gold lame (left). Google them if you're curious". My guess is that's when a lot of the esoteric things started showing on the "code list" as well.

You're absolutely right. The Senate GOP, especially if Mitch McConnell is in charge, will detonate the filibuster if they need to. They blew it up for Supreme Court nominees, because they needed to. They didn't need to for the Trump tax cuts, because tax cuts can already be enacted through reconciliation procedures that bypass the filibuster. So until now, they've had no legislative priorities that required them to end the filibuster; they're perfectly content to let it hang out there, hamstringing the Democrats. But if the GOP doesn't face major blowback from the Dobbs decision in this year's midterms, the social conservative wing may decide in 2025 that a nationwide ban on abortion can be had. and if they have the presidency, the House, and 50 votes in the Senate (plus the VP to break the tie), they'll end the filibuster immediately in order to pass it. I can't see them passing a ban on gay marriage (they'll let individual states deal with that, or not), but if SCOTUS overturns Obergefell, or even Windsor, look for them to pass more legislation removing any federal protection for same-sex marriages. Part of the problem is the imbalance between Democratic and Republican priorities. By and large, the Republicans don't want to DO anything - they want to hamstring government enough that it fails to function, which benefits them, electorally. As P.J. O'Roarke used to say, the Republicans are the party that says that government doesn't work, and then gets elected and proves it. Inertia favors them, for the most part (although it favored the opposition to Trump, because he and his team were so incompetent at implementing the things they nominally wanted). Inertia does not favor the opponents of a competent authoritarian, like DeSantis or Cruz or Hawley.

Along these lines, I'd like to throw something else out there, which probably won't be a popular opinion (but then it's mine, so it doesn't have to be shared by anyone else). I have written fiction for other sites, though nothing posted here. And there's a particular reason why not: the inevitable chorus of people who want to tell the author what he should do with his characters in subsequent chapters or posts. Feedback is a good thing, especially if it's positive. Personally, I don't even object to negative feedback, as long as it's something I can work with (constructive, rather than destructive), but not everyone wants negative feedback. But when I write a story, I generally have the plotline worked out in my head; I know where it's going, I know where it's going to end up, and what I don't want is people telling me I "should" (god, I hate that word) have them do this or that or the other. It's insulting. As many people have driven home, these are the AUTHOR'S characters; it's for him to develop them as he sees fit, and absent asking "What would you like to see Jim do next" (or whatever), I don't want that kind of feedback. It's telling me that MY idea for MY characters isn't what you want. Here's a hint: if you want a character who's going to do X, then write a fucking story of your own where your character does X. Don't tell me how I should write mine. And because this attitude - "Hot story! Jim needs to give in to his urges and do X and then do Y and then do Z!" - is so prevalent on here, I just haven't got any interest in sharing my writing. (A decision for which some of you, I'm sure, are very grateful.)

No worries on the quote - just pointing it out to clarify.

Bear in mind that 41 of the 56 (white) men who signed the Declaration of Independence noting that all men were created equal also owned slaves. I'm not inclined to put a whole lot of stock into the thought process of people who exhibit that much patently obvious cognitive dissonance. Over the years, aside from the initial set of ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) adopted as a compromise to gain ratification of the original document, there has only been one serious set of revisions (the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, all adopted in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War). Every other change has been a sort of modest tinkering around the edges; that's not to say that things like guaranteeing the right to vote if you're 18 or older, or if you're a woman, weren't significant for the affected individuals, but the reality is that none of these changes changed the fundamental nature of the federal government or its relationship to the people. The two other amendments that come closest, in my opinion, are the one authorizing an income tax and the one providing for direct election of U.S. Senators. But even that latter change pales in comparison with the impact of the existing system that allocates two senators to the 581,000 people of Wyoming and also two senators to the 39,500,000 people of California. In other words, in order to bring about a massive change in the relationship between the people and our government, we first had to fight a bloody war that killed over 600,000 people. And even then, the victors (seeking to preserve the Union) only got the changes approved by conditioning allowing the rebelling states re-entry to the nation on approval of those amendments. They would never have been ratified by the southern states other than at the literal barrels of the guns pointed at them. That's how hard it is to make a substantive change to the U.S. Constitution. By contrast, in the same timeframe that the U.S. has had its constitution, France had an absolute monarchy, the First Republic, the Directorate, the First Empire, a restored monarchy, a brief return to the First Empire, another restoration of the monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Third Republic, the Vichy-Nazi collaborationist government, the Fourth Republic, and the Fifth Republic. France has a far greater appetite for completely throwing out the current system of government for a new one than the United States ever will. Correct. An amendment to the US Constitution requires first approval by 2/3 of the US Senate AND 2/3 of the US House - the former an impossibility as long as sparsely populated states, predominately conservative, get the same senate vote as a massively populated ones - or else approval by a "constitutional convention" - which has never been called since the beginning and for which there are no precedents (who could serve, how many per state, any requirement of proportionality, etc.). Then, assuming either Congress or such a convention proposes an amendment, it must be ratified by the legislatures (not the people, directly) of 3/4 of the states, or 38 out of 50. It's barely possible to do with wildly popular ideas that face little objection. It's impossible otherwise. No, because the "right to pursue happiness" is listed in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. As such, the only thing the Declaration did was separate us from Great Britain - and realistically, it was actually the war we fought that achieved the goal, not the Declaration. It's otherwise completely non-binding, so there's nothing for the Supreme Court to interpret there. As far as actual governance is concerned, the Declaration is 100% irrelevant. Inspirational, but irrelevant. To expound on my point above about the Civil War: that's what it takes when you have a deeply divided country. It's possible, as @ErosWired and others have hinted, that demographics and time will take care of this: younger people are far more liberal than their parents, generally speaking (even with weasly Nazi sympathizers like Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk in the same age bracket), and over time, as the dyed-in-the-wool reactionaries die off, they'll be outnumbered. But that's why they're so frantic to lock in discriminatory voting regulations - to stave off those changes for another generation. And still, even if younger, more liberal voters gain control of much of the power, the malapportionment of the U.S. Senate will remain a stumbling block for advancing anything. Unless a future Democratic majority in the Senate is willing to end the filibuster, it will take 60 votes in the Senate to do anything progressive, and I'm not sure that with 2 GOP senators per conservative state that we will ever again reach that 60 vote threshold. The current impasse over passing anything of substance will remain in place, I'm afraid.

That is probably true. However, the problem in the United States is that a huge number of those people do not vote. In the 2020 election, which had record levels of turnout, still fully one-third of eligible voters did not vote. What's more, millions more have been deprived of the right to vote because of a past felony conviction (in many states, you don't regain the right to vote even after serving your sentence unless you're pardoned). Conservatives in the U.S. have spent years honing a strategy designed to limit the ability of people who lean non-conservative to vote; and even though that strategy rarely involves an outright ban (like for felons), all they have to do is make it so burdensome to vote that a lot of people give up. Conservatives skew older (often retired), so they have fewer time constraints on voting, for instance. Poorer working people, often working two or more jobs, often find it hard to get to the polls during the limited hours some states provide for casting votes on election day. Many states don't allow mail-in ballots or early voting at all. Conservative states also skew things by providing fewer voting resources in poorer communities. Go to a polling place in a well-to-do area, and you'll see three or four voting machines, or half a dozen workers with a seemingly limited supply of paper ballots if those are used. Go to a poorer location, and you'll likely find only one or two machines and they're servicing a much larger number of voters. When early voting locations are provided, they're often inconveniently located not near public transit, so they're far more useful to people with time on their hands and cars to get around than working people who have to use the bus. And so on. The biggest problem in the U.S. is that there are virtually no standards for elections that apply to everyone, so counties and states that are determined to make things harder for certain voters have lots of ways to make that happen.

That is true. However, the Supreme Court's decision leaves it up to states, and there are some states where abortion is now absolutely illegal under state law; and quite a few more where rape and incest exceptions do not exist. NOT, I would note, because a majority of people in those states have indicated such a preference, but because antiquated laws from the days when women had zero agency over their own bodies and it was considered legally impossible for a husband to rape his wife, from days when married women could not transact commercial business without the consent and approval of their husbands, and so forth. Or because a male-dominated GOP-led legislature rammed those laws through and there's no provision for undoing them unless the legislature repeals them. The first is only true in part. A surgical abortion is certainly more expensive than, say, a box of condoms. But condoms plus another form of birth control can STILL fail. Also - again, thanks to the GOP - companies (which are on paper simply legal fictions, but thanks to the Supreme Court can have "religious convictions" somehow) can opt out of providing birth control coverage for their employees on company health plans - even if there's no workaround like requiring the plan to provide it at no cost. Here in Louisiana, I remember that for more than a decade, the legislature refused to authorize the state employee health plans to cover prescription birth control - even though the plans' own actuaries testified that the costs of unwanted pregnancy care far, far outweighed the nominal cost of the prescriptions. As for the second part, that's just bullshit. Absolute bullshit. A study done covering 1998-2010 showed that for the 16.1 million abortions during that period, there were 108 women who died, for a rate of 0.7 per 100,000 abortions. By contrast, the mortality rate for live births was over 20 per 100,000. Carrying a pregnancy to term is FAR more hazardous to a woman's life than an early term abortion - by a factor of 30.

I'd hesitate to call this "paranoid" but honestly, the chances of an HIV infection from something like this are exceedingly slim.