ErosWired

I’m just appalled. Lord Voldemort? For God’s sake. I think if people said that to me I would carry around a wand just for the purpose of pointing it at them and saying Avada Kedavra. I can see how the eyes would be a significant problem, and why you would want to wear contacts to conceal them, though I think it’s tragic that you should need to. Movies and television have made red eyes a symbol for something negative, evil, or unnatural, and now you have to combat that perception. It’s interesting that you say you can’t tell what is your friend’s Autism versus his personality. Most of us on the high-functioning end of the Spectrum would say Autism isn’t something we have, it’s what we are. So in many ways, your friend’s personality is part of his Autistic nature, and vice versa. The biting is a bit unusual, but such things are not unheard of. If you find it annoying, you need not endure it; just let him know that you find it unpleasant. He may not realize it. Likewise the shoes - you may simply need to tell him that he’s given you so many nice pairs of shoes that you don’t really need any more. I’ve bern known to do the same thing in the past with giving the same type of gift repeatedly because it worked the first time, and I had to make myself sensitive to the fact that people do not always want or appreciate the same thing time after time. Sometimes these concepts simply do not occur to the Autistic mind and have to be introduced.

It’s also fucked up viewing from an inside perspective, for the reasons you list, but that doesn’t really have any bearing on it as a fetish. Viewed by people who do not share the fetish, lots of fetishes are fucked up, and perhaps objectively are. BDSM is a catalog of fucked-up, but it manages not to fuck up most of its adherents. Psychology is complex. The psychology of sex is just weird.

Your friend sounds as though he has some classic traits of what has in the past been classified as Asperger’s Syndrome, or high-functioning Autism. Though those terms have been replaced in the most recent definitions of the Spectrum, many people with Autism, myself included, still identify with them. I was first considered to have Asperger’s, and am like your friend in some respects. You are right that the key is caring and making an effort to understand - which is what makes the difference when any two people perceive differences between then, be they mental or physical, invisible or visible. I’m sure the issues you face would be a good deal simpler if other people would just care enough to make the effort to understand you before making assumptions. I fear that, humans being what they are, you ate likely always going to face this to some degree. I know I do. The best I can do is try not to let it affect me, and use each opportunity to educate someone.

I am very, very sorry this happens to you. I do not have physical attributes that cause me similar difficulties, but as an Autistic person I can appreciate the feeling that comes from “normal” people making ridiculous assumptions about you, drawing unfounded negative conclusions, and thinking of you as somehow ‘alien’ or ‘other’. As to asking if you are a product of incest, I would be tempted to reply to such a person: No, are you? I hear it has a negative effect on intelligence. I hope you do not encounter anyone here, or anywhere, who openly fetishizes you for your appearance; it would be all too easy, as men are widely fetishized for exactly the opposite - an abundance of melanin - ignoring the fact that they are simply people. In your case, the thought of fetishizing is particularly disturbing given the abhorrent practice in places in Africa, as you are no doubt aware, in which persons with albinism are actually hunted and dismembered so that parts of their bodies may be used as literal fetishes. Thank you for sharing your experience. I hope it helps open some eyes and broaden some minds.

We often talk about how confidence is sexy, and discuss ways of marketing ourselves in profiles, but there’s a sort of understood sense that it’s undesirable for a person to seem proud, boastful, conceited, self-important, or set himself above his peers in some way that shows a lack of humility. What would you think of a bottom who says, “I’m a good fuck”? Do you view it differently than one who says, “I give great ass”? What about “I give excellent ass” or “I’ve got the best ass on the planet”? Is it different if he says, “A lot of Tops say mine is the best ass they’ve ever had”? Is there a point at which one toots one’s own horn too loudly? Can a guy do it at all, or is an instant turn-off, whether it happens to be true or not? If the claim is true, how is anyone supposed to know if the person says nothing? If, for example, a bottom has mad skilz with his ass, is it entirely up to other people to spread word about it for other Tops to learn of it and enjoy him? I often wonder about this in the context of preparing text for profiles. I have reason to think that I give very good ass - I cannot test it myself to verify, obviously, but I have extensive experience of Tops making unsolicited comments during and after fucking that amount to very high compliments. I think I would be justified in making some claim of quality service. But I am always hesitant to say something like “I give great ass” because I don’t want someone to read it and think, He thinks a lot of himself, I bet he’s not that good. So how do you let people know you’ve got the good stuff without putting them off?

The irony of it is that there are so many game-players and fuck-fantasy-fappers out there that I feel I have to go to some length to convince or demonstrate that I am, in fact, actually down to fuck, actually available with my cunt up, actually do take anon cocks without discriminating, and am not just another ‘maybe’. If I could post a profile that simply said “cumdump ass taking all loads, no one refused” and know that men would take my post at face value and act on it, I would stop at that, but that’s what so many do, and don’t follow through, or tap out, or flake, and I have to go that bit farther to seem genuine. The fact that I take the time and effort to underscore that I’m on the level does seem to help close the deal many times. There’s also the fact that a cumdump is often up against others competing for the same pool of Tops, and most of them just throw out a “ass-up cumdump anon pump-n-go” ad, and you have to find some way to stand out from those if you want to be the one chosen to serve. You have to spice it up some, add some marketing, otherwise it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best ass in a 100-mile radius, they’re not going to give it a try.

While this is generally true, even non-porous materials can have small - even tiny - voids in the surface due to manufacturing methods. For instance, a non-porous plastic may nonetheless have developed some micro-bubbles on the surface during molding that rupture on de-molding, leaving tiny pitted areas. While not a ‘porous’ quality of the material that would cause a general issue in use or treatment, you should carefully inspect toys for such spots as they have the potential to trap undesirable material, and warrant additional attention in cleaning.

Although your post has some very good observations, I’m afraid I don’t agree with this one, at least not as something universally applicable. Personally, I gravitate toward a profile where the guy has taken the time to tell me about himself. It doesn’t say ‘eccentric’ or ‘quirky’ to me, it says there’s a brain in there, which is my number one criteria if I’m the one doing the hunting. I don’t make selections on the basis of ‘snapshots’ if I can help it. I want to know as much as possible about the guy before I open the conversation so I know whether it’s likely to be worth my time. The more he tells me, the more I can deduce. Now, what I can agree with is that if someone wants to write a longer profile, he’d better have the chops to make it something you enjoy reading. If he’s going to write a novel, it needs to be a good novel. But I don’t agree that we all have to pander to the shortest attention spans and lowest reading levels out there. In the end we’ll just end up grunting and grabbing our crotches at each other (and we’re well on the way to that).

I would avoid rubbing oils on any plastics where you don’t already know what the result will be. Some plastics degrade badly when exposed to oils. You also need to be cautious in storing different types of plastics together, as some will react chemically with each other and cause melting and deformation. Some types of silicone products are like sensitive fucking orchids that need to be pampered and stored separately. Whenever possible, be sure to read the documentation and care instructions that came with your toys and know what type of polymers you’re dealing with. Generally speaking, warm soap and water should suffice in most cases, but take careful note if any of your toys were molded in such a way that small bubbles or other voids occurred in the surface that may trap material - if there are, you may have to treat these areas manually to ensure hygiene. I would not use bleach. It’s a powerful oxidizing agent that may weaken chemical bonds in plastics and cause them to degrade. In addition, if your toy is colored by pigments, it may suffer from undesirable discoloration.

The guy tied me to the bed, stepped out, and came back in wearing a black robe and “Jason” type horror mask. Unlike you, I couldn’t hold it in. I broke out laughing. Totally burst his bubble. He didn’t end up fucking me, but he had already had his fun cutting my clothes off on a St. Andrew’s Cross and taking pictures, which is what he had been mainly after to start with.

Let me say first of all that I can’t speak for all drag performers, only from a knowledge of my nephew’s performance ethos, and that if certain other drag queens of my acquaintance (I have been fucked multiple times by a man who enjoys performing in drag as a nun. He’s a hoot). I am certainly not such a performer myself. But if we look at the nature and function of the clown in society, there is a difference between what a clown does, how he does it, why, and in what context, that sets it apart from drag. Across cultures, the societal role of the clown is as a person sanctioned to draw attention to deficiencies or flaws in the society and the power structure, and the sanction is permitted because the clown takes it on himself to be an object of humor and ridicule, thus deflecting the weight of the blow the criticism might have on its target in authority. That is, the clown is allowed to criticize the king, but he’s required to be funny about it to defuse the social unrest. Essentially, the people can say, “He said something bad about the King, but it’s okay because he’s a dumb goof.” Across cultures, there is usually a specific type of costume associated with clowns - a clown uniform if you will - worn so that there is no question that the person saying the socially edgy things he’s saying has the sanction to do so. If you picture “clown” in your mind, you’ll likely see some aspect of this ritual dress. The ‘uniform’ has varied from culture to culture, from primitive societies to the present, but in all cases there would be no doubt that a person in that culture was looking at one of their clowns. In some cultures, clowns were members of exclusive ‘societies’ requiring ritual admission, almost in the sense of a guild, because hilarity in the context of rubbing the chief’s nose in it is a serious business, and the thing they had to make sure they did very, very well was make fools of themselves so that they would be ridiculous to people. I have known other drag performers in addition to my nephew, and while they are generally good-natured and able to laugh at their own and each other’s foibles, I have found that on the whole they want to be respected as performers and as persons, and not considered ridiculous. This is partly because their decision to do drag stems from a self-acceptance of some queer aspect of their nature. That aspect of themselves is not ridiculous to them; on the contrary, it is an important part of their identity, self-respect and self-esteem. While the clown actively courts ridicule, the drag performer generally does not. Many drag queens put great effort into perfecting their look and delivery, and uphold high standards upon which they stake personal pride and dignity. A man who takes a stage in smoking drag and makes grown men start to pant with a take on “Stormy Weather” is not going for laughs, and would be offended if treated like a clown. Their drag persona is just that - a persona, an expression of a facet of a genuine inner self. The clown’s outfit is intended to put a wrapper of faceless, humorous anonymity around a potentially unpalatable social statement, but the drag performer’s persona is neither a mask nor a costume meant to conceal - it’s intended to reveal an alternate facet of the queer individual. Drag is, therefore, not at all the same as clowning, because it does not function the same way to buffer social unease around controversial speech, and it has no social sanction to do so. Drag performers have a steep hill to climb from the get-go because most of the heterosexual world thinks a man in a dress is ridiculous. The last thing many of them would want is to be considered on a par with men who wear honky red noses and size 30 shoes. Queer people don’t want society to get to a point where it says, “The queer said something upsetting but that’s okay because he’s a dumb goof.” Or “just a fag.” Because they already do that, and it hasn’t gone well. People who express their true selves in drag cannot afford to be seen as clowns today. They can be skilled entertainers and performers. They can look outrageous, extravagant and utterly fabulous in making their statements. They can be funny as hell. They can, and do, very often speak truth to power, and sometimes pay a price…because they are not clowns.

The false equivalency between a Disney cast member in a Minnie Mouse costume and a man in drag is a long-armed reach, and a feat of rhetorical acrobatics, even by your standards. No, I am not saying that all drag is inherently ‘sexual’ in the sense of prurience. I am saying that its inherent nature is absolutely, unavoidably rooted in gender difference - that juxtaposition is the entire point of it as a form of expression. There is no equivalence with the person in the Minnie Mouse suit - who may, by the way, be a person of either gender, and that person’s gender is immaterial. The mouse is the entire point. The same cannot be said of the performer in drag. If the person in the “woman suit” is a female, she’s just a woman. If the person is a man, a statement is being made because what’s inside the “woman suit” makes all the difference. Of course it does, or it wouldn’t be drag, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The comparison with circus clowns might be closer to the mark, but I would point out that the social function of clowns throughout history has not been idle entertainment, but the ability to make radical social statements and speak truth to power without getting their heads chopped off. Clowns have always been on the spearhead of social agendas. But that’s as far as the comparison goes. How many drag performers do you know personally? How many of them do you think consider themselves clowns, objects of ridicule? My nephew sure as hell doesn’t consider himself a fucking clown, and would take umbrage at your comparison. I take it you don’t read to children very often. If you’re going to successfully share a story time with a group of children, the very, very last thing you want to do is make a spectacle of yourself to the point that they are paying more attention to what you’re wearing than what you’re reading. But in the case of a drag story hour, that seems to be precisely what we get. The focus isn’t on the books or on the kids, and do you know how we can tell? It’s in the name - a “Drag Queen Story Hour”. It’s all about the drag. Children, we’re going to have a drag queen story hour. [boy raises his hand] What’s a drag queen? You’ll see in just a moment, Brad. Everyone look at the drag queen, now. Make sure you pay attention. That’s a drag queen. [Brad, to himself] I don’t get it. -or- [Brad, to himself] That’s a guy in a dress. I don’t get it. Either way, what’s the point of it for the children? Where’s the added value, except to make a point of exposing children to a person with this alternative lifestyle in an overt pitch to make that person appear more socially acceptable? I don’t happen to disagree in general with helping demonstrate that a person in drag is not a danger to society, but this is a cynical ploy trying to act like it isn’t. Let’s take a step back. If drag is inherently about drawing attention to gender difference - that is, a difference between sexes - and it is inherently about that - then if the hour is focused on the fact that the reader is in drag, then the hour is focused on the fact that the reader is exhibiting a juxtaposition of gender roles. And the children involved are being used to force everyone to look at it. Your argument that it’s nothing but big, colorful costumery is arch, to say the least. If the guy was dressed up as Mary Poppins to read Mary Poppins, that would be one thing - it would be an actual costume. He’s not. He’s dressed as his femme alter ego Trayla Trasch and he doesn’t look like any character in any children’s book, ever. But read my post again - nowhere did you hear me make any sort of argument that a drag performer shouldn’t be around a child because the child might be influenced. I said nothing of the kind. What I objected to was that children are being used as pawns in a culture war battle between adults over matters inherently concerning adult gender roles.

I’m not sure it’s so much that the younger generation is more open to talking about sexual health as it is that they’ve been raised in the age of social media info oversharing and they don’t have as much of a filter for talking about anything. It’s not a question of what are you willing to talk about - it’s what aren’t you willing to talk about.

I do, as it happens. I imagine one could thoroughly cure a case of syphilis by placing the infected host in a crematorium for three hours, and indeed cure most any complaint he might have had, but his post-treatment activity would be limited to what one could do inside an urn.

It bears mentioning, in addition, that at-home rapid STI test kits generally cost north of $40 US. In the United States, going to a clinic for testing may incur a cost as well, especially for the uninsured or under-insured. How many guys are willing to drop forty bucks every time they want a shag? The men who fuck me fuck for free.

One of the facets of my life has put me in the position where I have many times been asked to read children’s books to groups of children, of various ages, in schools and public venues. Up to a certain age, children will be oblivious to the fact that the person reading to them is a man dressed as a woman unless it is flagrantly obvious or made a point of. Which begs the question, to my mind. What, indeed, is the point of a drag queen story hour for children, other than to make a point to adults about a lifestyle? The arguments that children are being groomed or indoctrinated are absurd, of course, and are sewn out of whole cloth by culture war mongers who have no qualms about crying “think of the children!” to twist hearts and minds over any issue. But the fact that a drag queen story hour for children has no lewd or sexualized content at all does not mean that it lacks all sex-related context for the adults involved. The very act of saying “See? People who dress in drag can do regular things like read stories to children” is an intentional statement made to those who dislike, judge, and oppress the LGBT community. Dressing in drag is a choice. If a man, even a Transperson, wishes to perform the public service of reading to children, there is no reason that service needs to be performed in drag - unless you happen to be reading about the Magic Schoolbus and want to portray Ms. Frizzle. Otherwise, the drag is performance art intended for a purpose of its own, even if that purpose is only making the point that the wearer is not a man who conforms to conventional gender roles. But if that’s the point, then there actually is an agenda beyond simply reading to children, and the children are being used, essentially, to stage a scene. I do not object to drag at all, but I object to that. By all means fight the fight against bigotry, but leave the children out of it. Full disclosure: My nephew is a drag performer. I support him absolutely. I have helped create his outfits and have attended his performances. He has a kind, generous heart, and I would trust him around any child on the planet.

If you were trying to find someone to do it here, this isn’t a hookup site. Try using the Grindr app, or Sniffies.com in your area. You should be able to find someone willing before long, especially if you’re not particularly picky.

Bareback sex is a risky proposition. Your best defense against STDs is not to police others, but to ensure that you have gotten all vaccinations you can get yourself, get on PrEP, and get yourself tested regularly, and treat any infection promptly. There’s no reason you can’t ask someone to get tested before you meet. There is, however, a difference between asking if they have been tested, and asking them to get tested. The first is asking fir information to let you make a choice for your own sexual health. The second is requiring another person to take positive action, spend time, effort, and possibly blood, to help you make that choice. If the guy you’re looking to connect with is a potential relationship or long-term fuck bud, that might be worthwhile to him. If it’s a random hookup, you’re way more trouble than you’re worth, and they’re likely to take a pass on you. You can ask them to get tested, but that’s only going to work for a hookup planned far enough in advance for him to get the test and await the results. In terms of the dynamics of hookup culture, that’s an eternity. In my experience, if you don’t close the deal within minutes, it ain’t gonna happen. You can ask him to get tested, and then he can lie about getting it, or lie about any result, just as easily as if you’d only asked him if he’d been tested. You can ask to see the test results, but frankly by that point a lot of guys will be starting to think you’re uptight, paranoid, pushy, invasive, and too much of a drag to be any fun to fuck. The honest ones may also be offended that you demand proof because you assume they’re lying to you. Asking them to get tested may be an effective way to avoid infection, but mostly because it may ensure you don’t get fucked in the first place.

Three-week old cum that hasn’t been frozen? Don’t even entertain that thought. Listen - there’s more to being a responsible, proficient Dominant than being callous, abusive, controlling, and domineering. Not every mean-spirited bully who claims to be a Dom is one. Some of them are just cruel, insecure and weak, or psychopaths who enjoy hurting people. (Not every Sadist is a psychopath, either, by the way. The gold standard in the BDSM world is Safe, Sane, and Consensual. What he is proposing is neither safe nor sane, and no credible Dominant in the lifestyle would put a submissive’s health irresponsibly at risk this way. Make you drink stale cum, perhaps; make you drink it three weeks old unpreserved? No fucking way. I strongly recommend you give this dude a pass. He wouldn’t get another word from me.

Saving is not necessarily the same thing as preserving. I remember seeing a video once (don’t ask where, I’ve forgotten, I expunged it from memory) of a guy who saved all his cumloads in a very large glass jar that he kept sitting on top of a radiator. The contents looked like something you’d expect to find in a radioactive waste facility. In no conceivable way would that cum have been safe to consume, even if you could survive the pong of it long enough to get the lid completely off. If the guy is keeping his loads in unrefrigerated conditions, I would give it a pass the same way you would any foodstuff (I’m stretching the term here) that could potentially harbor harmful microorganisms. Semen qualifies. If he’s kept it in the refrigerator, use reasonable judgment. If it’s been there two days, probably okay; a week, might want to give that some thought. Since Easter, forget it. If the cum is frozen you’re probably all right unless it’s his cum from when he was a teenager twenty years ago that he’s been saving for “somebody special” (in which case, make a graceful exit). Having said all of the above, if he simply presents it warm and liquid, you have absolutely no way of knowing if it’s safe to consume, if it contained STDs when it was produced, if the treatment of the semen was adequate to render pathogen harmless, whether the cum is even his own. Similarly, even if (huge if) you were getting the cum fresh from the fount, there would be no way of knowing what the taste would be like, as the taste of semen can be highly variable depending on the man’s diet, habits such as smoking, and health conditions. Once the semen leaves the factory (as it were) it almost immediately begins breaking down chemically, and the living cellular material contained in it, including the sperm, begin to die and slowly decompose. Cum isn’t meant to be stored; it’s meant to get pumped deep into the target area in a warm, wet cunt, where the sperm them make a mad dash for the finish line in a very short time. (In an asscunt, there is understandably some confusion as to the location of the finish line.) My own limited experience with the issue suggests that semen, unlike bourbon, does not improve with age. It simply becomes vile, and then more vile, and if it was bitter or unpleasant to start with, it has a head start on its way downhill. I am not, however, an avid cum drinker, and others may have a different viewpoint as regards flavor. Questions of hygiene, on the other hand, are not really matters of opinion, and you should use common sense. We allow for the fact that most people in the world do not agree that guzzling stale semen classifies as common sense, given that you’re here among debauched degenerates.

People don’t read. Electronic media since the rise first of radio, then drastically of television, have been pulling people’s attention away from the written word. The need to condense information into ever-smaller packets to meet the requirements of broadcast formats, and to make more and more room for commercial advertising, gradually shrank the size of the information segment the common viewer expected, and as expectations shrank, so did patience, attention span, and the ability to engage in cognitive depth. Fast (like, zoomy) forward to today’s apps in the (pending) post-Twitter age when the damage has been done, and you find that text information is expected in tiny spoonfuls, if it absolutely must be tolerated at all, and most information is at least accompanied by images, graphics, and other visual symbolic representation that attempts to convey increasingly complex concepts via simple symbols, and increasingly fails because people are no longer being taught how to think - only to react. This post has already vastly exceeded most users’ TL;DR threshold, and this is only the third full paragraph. No one is reading profiles because modern electronic media conditions them that everything important is visible at a glance, and that anything additional will be spoon-fed to them. Them asking you what you’re into is them coming up with their mouth open waiting for the spoon. They can no longer feed themselves. We are a civilization in decline.

There has never been a time when bare sex was risk-free, and in earlier ages, other STDs were much more greatly feared. Syphilis, notably, was once just as untreatable as HIV, and could be just as lethal. In 1495, Italian physician wrote of syphilis (though it wouldn’t be called that for another 35 years): “Nothing could be more serious than this curse, this barbarian poison.” It spread rapidly, and was referred to as “The Great Pox”. The Italians blamed the French for it. The French blamed the Italians. Russia blamed the Polish. The Polish blamed the Germans. The Turks blamed Christians, Muslims blamed the Hindus, and nobody blamed Treponema pallidum, because a link between germs and disease wouldn’t be demonstrated for another three and a half centuries, Fritz Richard Schaudinn wouldn’t pin down the actual culprit until 1905, and almost 40 more years would pass before someone would discover you could kill the damn thing with mold extract (penicillin). Here’s a great article on the history of syphilis, for anyone interested: [think before following links] https://www.everydayhealth.com/syphilis/painful-history-odd-bug/# As to getting reinfected with HIV once a widely available cure is found (not a drastic measure like a bone-marrow transplant into an immune-naive patient), it will depend on the nature of the immunity to the virus develops in the host, and the speed at which the virus creates variations of itself capable of thwarting that immunity. You’re not at risk of getting measles anymore, but you should get a fresh influenza shot every year. It could be either scenario; I’m not an epidemiologist, and can’t speak to how the category of viruses HIV falls into behaves in this regard, if we even know - we’ve never fought an enemy quite like this before. But even if you do get reinfected, as long as the cure is effective, you can get re-cured. We follow that playbook with gono, chlamydia and the like all the time. Emergence of treatment-resistant strains will always be a concern, but that’s how nature works - the adaptable survive.

Chronic hay fever is nothing to sneeze at. (Bu-dum-tzing - Thanks, folks, I’m here all week, try the fish.) I work hard on staying healthy, and haven’t been sick in quite a while, but last month I didn’t take my hay fever preventative for a couple of days, and pollen pounced. Five weeks on, and I’m still coughing.

You are describing feelings of strong anxiety that result from experiencing emotions you are unaccustomed to without framework for dealing with them. The intensity of these novel emotions has taken you by surprise, and left you uncertain how to respond. Because it is uncharacteristic of you, it has left you questioning whether there is something wrong with you, or, if there isn't, what this change could possibly mean. The fact that you are feeling a level of distress that is causing you to feel physically unwell, and is causing you to alter the way you behave around others, speaks to something other than a casual infatuation. First, the immediate and practical: Don't panic. You say you've almost lost control. No, you haven't. You are going to remain in control of this situation. The feelings you are experiencing are happening inside you, and will not be evident to anyone else unless to act on them in a way to demonstrate them. You need not do so. When you feel these strong emotions, you may find yourself feeling that you won't be able to stand it unless you act on them, or won't be able to constrain yourself, but in fact, you will, and you can. The first thing to do when confronted by these moments of anxiety is to control your breathing. Take deep, slow, regular breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Focus on the pattern of breathing until you have regular control. This will create a physical system of feedback that will enable to you to gain a sense of stability through anxiety, and apply a calmer mind to the problem at hand. Walk away, when you can. Remove yourself from the stimulus that is generating the immediate conundrum. Allow yourself time to process emotion without piling more on. Reduce the immediate physical stress level by tightening and releasing muscle groups in your body, starting with the extremities and working inward. Tighten, hold, then release. Second, ask yourself why this is causing you distress: This man has been your best friend through most of your life, and you have in many ways measured your own success and life experience by comparing yours to his. You make this clear in many ways in your narrative. You admire him, you value his friendship and companionship, you take pride in his accomplishments. You have been participants, to a greater or lesser degree, in each other's lives from an early period to the present. A few years ago, however, the closeness of the bond between the two of you was divided to a degree, as is natural when men marry and form families. He could no longer be as invested in you personally, nor you him. Wives can be demanding on one's time (God knows) and children can, and should, become the center of a father's concern. One question you may ask yourself is, do you feel as though he is slipping away from you at some level, as though you are losing a bond by which you have defined yourself for most of your life? You describe yourself being satisfied in a heterosexual marriage with children. You don't describe a history of same-sex experiences in your narrative, and explain that you are taken aback by an unexpected attraction to the sight of your friend's body, and the sight of him having sex with his wife—yet you've found your way to a site devoted in the main to homosexual bareback sex, where you are asking this question. Something led you here. To what extent have you spent time examining your own feelings about same-sex attraction in general, not just toward your mate? This will require some frank self-honesty, and a willingness to (at least temporarily) set aside any preconceived notions of morality or religion) to allow a straight-up, just-the-facts self-examination. It's notable, for instance, that you describe seeing your friend naked in the bathroom, and tell us what you saw him doing in enough detail that it's clear that you watched him masturbate, but you then tell us you got in the shower and gloss over your own behavior entirely: "I don’t want to say how I was or what I did in there." This suggests shame or a strong reluctance to confront your own feelings. If you are to relieve the distress you feel when you have these feelings, you must get to the bottom of why they trouble you so greatly that you won't put them into words. It may be that putting them into frank, direct words may help you sort out their meaning for you. Third, going forward: I would suggest that you need to complete some measure of the self-searching described above before you attempt to relate any of this to your friend. It's not a question of whether you tell him until you know what to tell him. I would also suggest that you give yourself permission to feel these uncertain emotions, and permission to explore them in your thoughts, but not attempt to act on them while they are still causing you distress. Recognize that the roles that you both occupy are substantially different than the roles you once occupied, and that you will never again be the same men you were when you were single and could be devoted to one another. That ship has sailed, and you are both now captains of your own vessels, under separate sail. You must grow apart in some ways, even if you grow alongside one another, like a tree that branches into two trunks; you will always share common roots. Explore in your mind how your life looks in this context. Given the level of mental distress and physical and behavioral effect that you describe, you may well wish to consider looking into some clinical evaluation. In any psychological evaluation, distress is usually a primary diagnostic factor. There's not necessarily any reason to suppose that you are experiencing anything beyond an unexpected coping with changing life circumstances, but the relatively sudden, unexpected, and intense onset of this episode may be worth looking at from a clinical perspective. The degree to which what is happening is truly psychologically uncharacteristic of you (as opposed to simply repressed) is a matter that may be most effectively explored in a therapeutic setting. Everything's going to be all right. You're not losing it. The sky isn't falling. Go let your kids remind you what's really important today.

Which, of course, is the brutal irony of the thing. By the time I was diagnosed, I had almost no immune system left. Parts of my immunity had literally become extinct, and had to be reconstructed (I very much hope) through extensive re-vaccination. A lifetime worth of earned immunity through exposure - gone. For the first six months, I had to take prophylaxis just so another infection didn’t come finish me off. Sir, you have a disease that could kill you by destroying your immune system. We need to destroy your immune system before the disease has a chance to kill you.