BootmanLA

I think this experience, though, shows the downside of lying. The advantage of telling the truth (besides not having to remember details of a lie you tell) is that you can talk honestly about your answer. I'll also say this: I think chasers sometimes have a false sense of how risky unprotected sex is, on average, because of all the BS'ing that goes on about pozzing. I think people, in general, deserve honesty. But only you can decide whether pleasing people under false pretenses is worth it.

If there was a significant drug element it was probably moved to the "Chem Sex Fiction" area.

FWIW: the first guy to fuck me had a "smaller than average" cock and it hurt like hell. The second guy was almost twice as long as the first guy and in terms of total volume, it was more like 4 times bigger (way more than twice as thick). And it hurt less - in fact, it felt pretty good fairly quickly - because he knew how to take his time opening me up and getting me used to it. Don't turn down a shot at bottoming just because the most likely option in your circle is hung - unless you know he's the sort to just try and force it in.

What are you doing? Only you can answer that. She's given her consent to you having sex with men (Kudos to her). She asked you to get tested, which suggests she's aware of health concerns. So: why not go on PrEP, and suggest to her that she go on it as well, to protect herself in the (hopefully unlikely) event you contracted HIV while with another man? Only you can guess whether she'd consider that as being supportive of her health and keeping her safe, or as a warning sign you planned to "get wild" as you noted. While that wouldn't address concerns about other STIs - and you should get screened for them regularly if you're on PrEP, and even if you don't - it would take care of "the big one", as they say. And while it's true that HIV meds are now widely available, covered by most insurance, and pretty effective, they're a lifetime commitment. With PrEP, if you ever decided to give up on outside sex, or if you two split up down the road (that's a valid concern), she can go off PrEP if it's no longer relevant in her life. If she were to contract HIV through you and your "getting wild", there's no off-ramp for the treatment. Other than that, as long as you stay within the guardrails of whatever limits she puts on your outside sex, the rest is details. If you like the shirt, wear it when you're having sex with men. Ditto for the jocks. I suspect she doesn't want to know the details of your experiences, and that's what those are - details. Just keep them from spilling over to the rest of your life (ie PrEP, STI testing, etc.).

Some guys may be chasers hoping you're poz. Some guys may be having second thoughts and want reassurance that you're negative & on PrEP, or Poz undetectable. I'd imagine the response to "I'm poz" would be very different from those two guys. Perhaps you could respond "Before I answer that, I'm curious why you're asking now, and not before we had sex?". If it's a chaser, you could then reply "Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm negative and on PrEP" and know that this is someone who, as you've noted, is NOT looking after his health. If it's a person who's having second thoughts, you can then reassure him of your status, but urge him to consider PrEP if he's not on it, so he won't have to worry or feel bad about asking.

There are tests that can confirm whether it's a symptom of most of the commonly found STI's; and a urine test/culture can determine if you have a urinary infection. If I understand your post correctly, you have cancer and your doctors are assuming - rather than investigating - that your symptoms are being caused by your cancer. I am not a medical doctor but even if this happens to be a known side effect of the type of cancer you've got, or a side effect of treatment of it, you should insist that they at least do a basic screening for STIs and/or a urinary infection, especially if you're sexually active. (Obviously, if you're not sexually active, an STI is unlikely, unless it's one you acquired a good while back that is becoming active or spreading. But that's still something a test should show.)

FWIW: the number of posts someone has made appears below their name and ranking on each post (and it's dynamic, so if you have made 50 posts, and then make another, the next time someone pulls up a page with one of your posts on it, it will show 51). So the number of posts you've made is not secret information. It doesn't, however, show how many topics you've created, how many of your posts were replies, how many different forums you've posted in, or anything else that might or might not go into calculating your privilege level.

I certainly can't speak for tops in general or any in particular, but I will only note this in passing: It might be more productive to say "I love the way you fuck me" or "I love how you make me feel when you're fucking me" rather than "I love the way your cock fucks me" or "I love how your cock makes me feel". I've known some tops over the years who, even if only in it for the sex, don't like being reduced to a living, walking dildo. If you know he's especially fond of his endowment, of course, you can add that, ie "and your cock fills me up so fucking nice" or whatever. Complimenting the man, not just his equipment, is probably going to do more for his ego AND perhaps ensure a repeat (or a sooner repeat).

In the United States, age of consent laws vary considerably from state to state. It's simply not possible to state what "the age of consent" is without knowing the state in question. Period. Any statement that "X is the age" is at best a guess. The "X years difference" rules are the law in some states, not in others, and the X number varies among the states that do have such a law. In some it's a flat cutoff that anyone over a certain age can consent with anyone else who can consent, regardless of what the difference in age may be. The one thing that CAN be said, nationwide, is that if both parties are over 18, there is no "age of consent" situation to worry about. If either is under that age, the situation changes from state to state.

You're conflating a couple of completely separate, widely spaced in time Supreme Court decisions. The first was Lawrence v. Texas, from 2003, when the Court ruled that adult, consensual, non-commercial, private (in terms of location) sodomy - which included oral and anal sex - could not be criminalized as they fell within the sphere of privacy rights enjoyed by adults under the Constitution. That ruling was somewhat of a surprise because only seventeen years earlier, the Court had upheld such a law (in a Georgia case titled Bowers v. Hardwick). In the 2003 ruling the Court made it expressly clear it was overturning the Bowers ruling as wrongly decided. It's rare for the Court to expressly overturn a precedent in its entirety, and even rarer after only a short period. More often, the Court nibbles around the edges, carving out exceptions to the original decision until little is left, before disposing of the remains. The second case was Obergefell v. Hodges, from 2015 (a dozen years AFTER Lawrence), in which the Court ruled that states could not prohibit same-sex marriage, as marriage was a fundamental liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment; such a restriction would fail under the level of scrutiny it was required to meet to justify a discriminatory law. This one was far less of a surprise because the liberal four (Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan) were a shoe-in, and Kennedy had pretty consistently voted to strike down anti-gay laws for a number of years, even though he was overall a conservative. In any event, neither decision addressed age of consent laws at all. In theory, a future case might call into question whether a state's age of consent laws could discriminate on the basis of the activity being same-sex or opposite-sex, but I don't think any states have such differences at this point. If they do, and such were challenged, I don't think even this conservative court would rule that such a distinction was permissible - I'm pretty sure Gorsuch and Roberts would side with the liberals on that one.

A little historical perspective: Back in the pre-online days, when personal ads were in print in the back of gay magazines and gay weekly newspapers, a significant number of ads used the phrase "No fats/femmes/blacks". So racial exclusion for one-on-one encounters has always been there - not shared by everyone, of course, but enough so that people felt comfortable making such a statement in a public ad. That practice continued in early online ads but I've seen a lot less of it in recent years, probably because more open-minded people who would in fact meet all the qualifications imposed by the ad poster (or app profile) respond with blunt indignation to those people, if the "no F/F/B" person tries to hit on them. Advertising you're a racist is becoming socially unacceptable. For group parties, I think initially people just assumed you'd have no control over the other participants and you would just casually reject anyone at the party you didn't want to play with, even if the sole reason was race. But just as in online ads, it's becoming socially (if a sex party can be called social) unacceptable to express a racist opinion. No one wants to be called out at such an event for rejecting all the minority players, so some are just asking up front, to save themselves some well-deserved potential embarrassment. Additionally: we're becoming culturally attuned to getting things exactly our way, on our schedule: food and grocery delivery apps covering almost every place under the sun, online ordering that allows detailed customization of an order, rapid delivery through services like Amazon Prime, and more. It's not really surprising to me that people who would prefer only partners of a certain race at a sex party would think little of just asking for that up front, on the grounds that they can ask for, and get, almost anything else these days.

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.