BootmanLA

It's certainly true that in most cases, once eyesight is damaged, it may never return fully (although the amount of loss can be anything from "almost imperceptible" to "total". Of course your poz friend with CMV was not on meds - that was my point. "Fuck flu" happens within a week or two of infection, as a symptom of converting to being HIV positive. NOBODY in that circumstance is on meds because they haven't been diagnosed yet. If he was infected and was not on meds and developed CMV, that wasn't fuck flu. That was the collapsing of his immune system due to advanced HIV infection. "Fuck flu" is not a general term for flu-like symptoms experienced by poz men. It specifically means symptoms occurring shortly after infection.

CMV is itself a fairly mild virus that's ordinarily easily treatable if it's caught reasonably early. If left untreated for years it can wreak havoc in a person's system, particularly as their immune system collapses, but absolute blindness from a CMV infection is a sign of advanced AIDS, not seroconversion fuck-flu.

This, absolutely. One thing at a time. Either you want to be with the girlfriend into the future, or you don't. You may not know the answer to that question at this time - and there's nothing wrong with that. But you do need to answer THAT, before you start looking elsewhere. The time to settle out where you stand with one partner is BEFORE you reach the point of trying to land another one. Or, alternatively, find out whether your asexual girlfriend is OK with you finding sex through other people, given that she's not particularly interested in it herself. If she gives her OK (which I don't think is likely, but that's just a guess), THEN move on to the next question, which is: Is this guy interested in me romantically (given that he has a boyfriend already), or is he looking for fun on the side? Whichever it is, are you comfortable with that choice, rather than hoping he'll switch from one to the other?

I think you've accurately diagnosed the problem with many such people. I'm just suggesting that the range of options available to discourage them (once they make contact) is perhaps wider for some than others. It has been expressed to me that autistic people sometimes (often?) have difficulty reading the moods and emotions of others, and for someone who's more in tune with those, It may be easier to choose among the options for how to respond - to both end the conversation quickly without causing undue offense.

It might be so interpreted, but that's a problem for the (mis-) interpreter. If a compliment comes through and appears sincere, even if I am not interested in the person, I always say "Thank you." Sometimes I say "Thank you, that's very kind", which I hope comes across as polite but not encouraging. I do not reply with a like compliment unless one is truly merited - if nothing about the person is appealing, I'm not going to "fake it", but I will show gratitude for the kind thoughts. Beyond that, I'm quite good at discouraging further converation by polite yet not encouraging responses. You've mentioned before that you are autistic, which I imagine probably presents some issues in terms of "reading" what other people are saying - but which may also make it hard for you to craft a response that is polite yet clear that you're not encouraging the other person. Not that you asked for advice, but I'm also not sure I can give you useful advice for that situation, other than asking any friends you trust to give you feedback on stock replies - which ones would be least likely to drag you into such a situation.

On the other hand: sex with Batman would be incredible for a gear fetish guy.

I think this question would have been better phrased as addressed to non-smokers. I think the chances of a smoker finding another smoker a "deal breaker" are about zero, which renders all the responses from smokers essentially irrelevant. I mean, let's be realistic: of course a smoke fetishist is not going to find a smoker a deal-breaker. Accordingly, a separate, equally valid topic might be: "For smokers, is it a deal breaker if your partner does not also smoke?" Or, perhaps, "For smokers, is it a deal breaker if your partner requests that you not smoke?"

My response in all such cases is "I'm guessing reading wasn't your strongest subject in school, before you left there?" THEN I block. 🙂

And I agree with this, too, but: when a social media platform (website, app, etc.) specifically and clearly indicates, among the options it gives its users for self-identification, that "chatting" and "friendship" and the like are acceptable reasons to be on the site, well... That's one of the things (few, perhaps) that BBRT has had going for it; it's unabashedly a hook-up site, and there's no place on there where you can indicate you're looking for a husband, or a dance partner, or whatever. It has a lot of other problems - as I know you've experienced, but that's the one thing it's got down pat. The difference with the train platform is that while it might be co-opted by non-train-users, that's not by the intent of the designers of the space. With Growlr/Scruff/Grindr/etc., it's not co-opting; those activities were specifically contemplated by the designers as people to be included. You don't have to like it, of course. But it's their space to offer as they see fit.

Then he's probably right that (having dodged infection up to that point), his change in sexual practices probably kept him from becoming HIV+.

While I am not a moderator here, I am going to beg people - answer these questions in the context of the Health forum they're in, and don't turn this into a "you should do it bro!" or "Man that's so hot poz me too!" thread.

Except that's not a categorically true statement. HIV can kill slowly or rapidly, depending on the health of the person infected and a number of other factors. It's one of those "mostly true, but..." statements that deserves qualification.

Question: are you suggesting that your friend believes he's stayed HIV negative because he stopped bottoming in 1984 (certainly a valid conjecture) or that somehow getting anal warts removed with laser surgery in 1984 has rendered him immune to HIV (which would be laughable)?

"Probably" is an excessively strong word to use here. I do not mean to discount that risk still exists; obviously it does. But as many, many "chaser" people here have discovered - just a quick read through the Bug Chasing Backroom forum will suffice to document - the number of infectious, "toxic" HIV+ men out there has plummeted in the developed world in recent years because of the widespread availability of treatment, which the overwhelming majority of poz men gladly take (because they're not nuts with a death wish), and because of PrEP, which is now essentially free for most people in the US. From the early 1990's until about 2007, new diagnoses in the US ran around 50,000 per year. Since then, annual new diagnoses have dropped into the mid 30,000's range - a drop of over one-third. And that shift has mostly occurred among the "men having sex with men" cohort; transmissions from drug use (needle sharing) have remained largely constant, in part because of the opioid epidemic. There's always risk, yes. And it's a risk that makes no sense (for most) to take. But "probably"? Simply not true any longer.

Perhaps you shouldn't use legal terms like "manslaughter" when you clearly have no idea what they actually mean. "Manslaughter" is not the same thing as "completely accidental". Manslaughter is a crime; something that is "completely accidental" is not. JFC. Manslaughter involves intent, but (though the terminology differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) it means that there was not "malice aforethought", which is ordinarily a requirement for murder. And in any event, there's seldom any case involving a killing where all of the relevant elements are so clear that "there is no doubt that they did this." Even things like declaring someone a psychopath or a sociopath is a judgment call, made by some people where no doubt others would disagree.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! Seriously. I just hate (okay, well, get mildly annoyed) when people who want to use a resource in one particular way get annoyed when others use it a different way. Just make it clear enough in your profile that you're not interested in chat, only action (and if appropriate, specify "I mean NOW, not you'll be here next month sometime maybe"). And then feel free to blast anyone who can't read that clear statement and comprehend it.

My thoughts: 1. Yes, some guys are on "the apps" just as a means of chatting with a guy and jacking off to hot talk about what he'd like to do to/with the guy. For those people, obviously, distance isn't really a factor. 2. Some people just like giving compliments to men who appeal to them, regardless of distance. 3. Most of "the apps" have a field where you can check off all the things you're looking for (in terms of your interaction with others). For instance: Growlr allows you to check boxes for "Love, Dates, Conversation, Friends, No Strings Attached, Husband, Significant Other, Networking" within that category of "interactions sought". Scruff has a field called "Open to" and allows the choices of "Friendships, Relationships, Random Play/NSA, Dates, Chat Only, Networking". I'm sure most sites (not necessarily all) have such options, which means: people who are using the app for any of those purposes does not mean the app is "failing to serve their intended purpose." An app may not meet YOUR particular needs or wants, but complaining that there are people looking for things other than what you want is like going to a general restaurant that serves a wide variety of food and being upset that not every dish on the menu is Italian. As I see it: many of the apps view themselves as a virtual combination of the old fashioned gay bar and LGBT community center, minus the alcohol and smoke stench. Just as some people used to go out hoping to get laid and some used to go out hoping to meet a new boyfriend, different people can want different things "on the apps." All that said: one can, of course, make it clear in one's profile that one is not interested in idle chit-chat, even compliments; that you're only interested in sex, and you want it fairly soon, so don't bother chatting unless you're ready to deliver. Of course, that runs the risk of offending those who might well "deliver" but who like a little more lead-in effort. Them's the breaks.

Undoubtedly that's true in some cases. The thing to remember, possibly more than anything else, is that gay men are not evenly distributed around the country, nor are the various degrees of being "out", of being "non-flaky", of being mature enough to make plans and stick with them, evenly distributed either. And beyond that, experiences in Area 1 on App A may be different than experiences in Area 2 on the same app, or on App B in Area 1. In other words, the number of variables is just too complex for any sort of broad generalizations as to which app is the best - there's no one best choice in every area, for every population.

Blah blah blah. Yet another gay man deciding that his determination of what term is appropriate for others is the only valid viewpoint, all for the sake of seeing something in "print" on here that he can then jack off to. Pitiful.

One other thing I'd like to quibble over. Putin didn't just "seize upon... a happy event"; he helped create that event, and has been doing so for at least a decade, per our intelligence services. He's been gaming social media with sock puppets and botnets, not just promoting Donald Trump, but also advocating people to strongly oppose him - thus deepening the gulf between the two sides here. I'm not saying that without Putin Americans would all come together in peace and harmony; but I think it's undeniable his social media campaign to divide the country has made that infinitely harder. And yes, Hair Furor played right into his hands; Putin is a master manipulator and knew exactly what buttons to push for the last 20 years to get Trump on his side.

I agree in general, certainly. But there's kind of a difference, too: Britain has long been shorn of virtually all of her colonies, with only a handful of realms that are not functionally independent from the "mother country". Spain, the Netherlands - all the great worldwide empires have long since spun off (or had taken from them) virtually all of those possessions. But not the United States. The lands we stole (or forced a "cession" of) got incorporated pretty quickly into the nation as a whole, rather than maintained as colonies, making it that much harder to pry them out of our hands. Some took a while (Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma) to be converted to states. But it happened. There are some exceptions - Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the string of islands in the Pacific. But compared with what we kept an incorporated into the US, they're a rounding error.

Interesting topic. I think of myself as having very few actual friends - because I put a lot of weight on that word, and I'm not sure most of the people I know would welcome carrying that weight as part of our relationship/interaction. For those that I do place in that category, my favorite thing is something one of them pointed out years ago: I can go months, even years without talking directly with one of my friends, and yet, the moment we reconnect, there's no hesitancy, no awkwardness, and no feeling like I need to itemize all the major things that have happened to me in the interim (or for him to do the same to me). The friendships just endure.

It not only has a substantial European membership, but the company itself is based in Europe. Or at least, across the Atlantic from the U.S. - I am not sure where "headquarters" is for them, but I believe it's in the UK, and that's only "quasi-Europe" these days. Not long after worldleathermen.com was created, the same company began branching out with other sites (worldrubbermen.com, worldskinheads.com, etc.), with everyone in one big database, but you'd only appear on the site where you created your profile. Then I believe they expanded to allowing your profile to cross-post to other sites within the tree, and eventually merged them all under "recon.com" with the option to specify which type(s) of man you identify as - leather, rubber, skinhead, fister, etc.

I think you've explained what he's willing to hear. (Any man who thinks "guys aren't like that" is delusional.) If he becomes poz, well, you warned him.

Not any more, at least. But historically speaking, we've taken as much as we've legitimately acquired. The latter group would include the Louisiana Purchase and the Gadsen Purchase, as well as the purchase of Alaska. We accepted Texas after encouraging that territory to rebel against Mexico and declare independence; we "allowed" cessions from Spain (East and West Florida, southwest Louisiana), Great Britain (parts of Minnesota and North Dakota) and Mexico (most of the southwest, including California, Nevada, Utah, and most of Arizona and New Mexico); we essentially stole Hawaii; and we laid claim to much of the eastern "midwest" after the Revolutionary War because Great Britain just was largely fed up with North America. And those are just the parts that make up the actual 50 United States. We took innumerable islands in the Pacific (and fewer in the Caribbean), some in trumped-up wars with failing states like Spain at the end of the 19th century. And of course, that excludes the fact that we essentially seized most of the territory of the original United States from the native people who were there when we arrived, and when they objected, we either slaughtered them or relocated them by force.