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This makes sense and seems like a sound (compared to an Internet challenge from incels!) reason to abstain from nutting. One thing I notice when I'm in a phase where I'm masturbating a lot is that I am less interested in socializing, and especially in seeking out guys to fuck. Conversely, if I abstain for a few days (or limit my jerking sessions to quickies with no edging), I am more eager to be social and am driven to meet guys. (This isn't to say that there's anything wrong with frequent and hard masturbation. I would just love to understand, from a scientific perspective, what it does to the hormones that regulate social behavior, pair bonding, and sex drive. For example, an article I read explained that meeting a new lover causes an increase in some hormone for about a year and a half, after which attraction to the partner subsides/settles at a lower level. I also read about a study that involved manipulating hormone levels in naturally monogamous animals — voles, I think — to see whether monogamy could be shut off. A rise in a particular hormone soon after meeting a new partner removes the impetus to seek further partners, and sure enough, suppressing that hormone allows partner-seeking to continue, leaving rather promiscuous animals. 😁)

@barebackbro, don't forget VL! 😈

Let's not inadvertently amplify false views held by religious conservatives and the like. Anti-gay people often reduce sexual orientation to a "lifestyle". Obviously, the questions of who we fuck and who we love go much deeper than that. And though being openly gay might be easier for some young people today (particularly white, middle-class Americans born to university-educated parents and growing up in large coastal cities), it isn't "easy" for anyone. Sky-high rates of suicide among gay youth prove that. The journey is different at different times in history and in different settings, but it would be wrong to assume that young gay people today simply have it easy. Similarly, it would be wrong to assume that leading a (somewhat) overtly gay life was impossible before current times. Berlin in the 1920s, or the 1950s–1960s world depicted in the film Der Kreis, give examples of people who made different choices decades ago — not necessarily harder choices, not necessarily braver ones, but certainly different ones.

I too prefer all-bare, all the time, but in defense of Eros, they were honoring the rules established by San Francisco's Department of Public Health. At the height of the AIDS crisis, allowing sex clubs to continue operating in the City was controversial, and safeguards were imposed. A decision had to be made long before research had proven that U=U, and indeed, before cocktails made it possible for HIV+ people to have an undetectable viral load. One of the restrictions was no enclosed private rooms in sex clubs, hence the installation of tents inside Eros. Interestingly, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors finally voted to vacate the crisis-era bathhouse regulations in 2020. Now that, I would say, was way too long, but then again, Eros was for years the one remaining bathhouse in the City, and people could go to Berkley or San José (RIP Steamworks!), or even just patronize bar backrooms or adult arcades in the City, it they desired full freedom to breed.

Without at all wanting to question — let alone criticize — yours or anyone else's decision not to come out to family, I want to ask whether having a husband, partner or long-term boyfriend would change the balance in favor of coming out to your family. On a practical level, I'd find it difficult to have to "de-gay" the house every time, and to remember to present my significant other as a general-purpose friend (or to cut off contact with a partner while spending time with my family during the holidays). In a health crisis (mine, the partner's, either person's parent, either person's sibling, etc.) or at the end of life, I'd also be very worried. If our relationship were a secret, I couldn't offer much support if the partner were tending to a sick relative, or if they were grieving the loss of a parent. Worse yet, if I died without acknowledging the partner, resources that I'd want them to keep — that they might have worked for and/or that might be crucial to their economic security after my death — would instead be expected to go to family members. The partner might not even be welcome at my funeral, if my family members had never known about our relationship! On a personal level, I would feel as if I were being excluded from a significant part of a partner's life if they chose to hide their sexual orientation — and, by consequence, to hide me — from their family. Coming out is certainly a personal choice. There is, however, no analogue for heterosexuals, because their family relationships are the default, common, expected, assumed, always obvious. LGBT people who choose to have close, ongoing romantic (and also economic — marriage is very much an economic matter) relationships may need to "come out" to make sure that those relationships are properly recognized. Conversely, choosing not to come out might make it difficult for LGBT people to sustain relationships.

This is good news from a Covid-19 perspective, considering that Ontario is really struggling. It's bad news from a random sex perspective, but I believe temporary sacrifices now will pay off in a smaller and shorter surge, and an earlier reopening.

Fascinating topic and devices. Thanks for sharing, everyone! The thought of opening a bottom's hole with a speculum, aiming for the center and shooting my cum inside, and then emptying some used condoms to add more cum, drives me wild.

Never! I started freeballing all the time, last spring. (I love Commando/WoofGear, which makes pants and shorts that are practical and comfortable for freeballers.) I traveled in Europe for five weeks in the fall, and grudgingly packed one pair of underwear. They came in handy because the Swiss guy I met has an underwear fetish. We wore our respective pairs for several days, and came in them several times, before trading. I really didn't want to wash that special pair when I got home, but I eventually had to. We can always exchange more by mail, until we meet again!

I think your friend has told you what you need to know. He's not well-informed about sexual health and his testing practices, such as they are, don't make quick STI detection, disclosure and treatment possible. Any sexual partner might be infected with an STI and might infect you. You yourself might be infected with an STI at some point and might infect a sexual partner. Discussing sexual health is good, but if you "don't want to catch anything", it's not a sufficient strategy. Tests offer a snapshot not even as of the day they were taken, but sometime before that ("window period"), and there is no assurance (nor would it be realistic to expect) that a partner has (had) abstained from sex since that moment. If you want instead to reduce your chances of getting and transmitting STIs, and to reduce the length of time that (often asymptomatic) STIs are left undiagnosed and untreated, then regular, frequent testing for yourself and for your partners is a potential strategy. Monogamy is another strategy, but in practice, many people find it hard to uphold personally and — unless you could lock up your partners and never let them out of you sight — other people's compliance could never be verified. Also, for other readers: don't forget vaccinations available to protect against some common STIs: HPV (vaccine most effective for young people, but can be given to adults), Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and meningitis (vaccine recommended for gay men after sexually-transmitted outbreaks in Souther California some years ago).

This and @mblad99's warning are good to keep in mind, even though incidents of violence are pretty rare these days (at least in urban areas in Western countries), compared to the amount of cruising that goes on. One tip I read years ago was to always let the other guy show his dick first, as a way of avoiding entrapment. (That too should be rare nowadays, but it is a risk.)

It will very much be an individual decision, for patients to make in consultation with their PrEP providers. I haven't had a face-to-face PrEP appointment in years, though I do of course go to a lab for tests. Since I test monthly, and an injection clinic is in the same building, there would be no inconvenience. At Kaiser San Francisco, my PrEP provider (first a Pharm.D., and now an N.P.) and I exchange secure messages online, my prescription is renewed electronically and I can have it dispensed by mail or at any Kaiser pharmacy, and I have standing lab orders, so I can test at whatever Kaiser facility is convenient. I'm required to complete HIV and STI tests every 3 months, but I can go as often as every 3 weeks, and my choice based on my level of sexual risk is to go monthly. (Standing orders for safety tests and a Hepatitis C test are for 6- and 12-month intervals, respectively.) Kaiser SF has been piloting 1-month injectable Cabotegravir for treatment, so I've asked whether they are ready to offer 2-month injectable Cabotegravir for prevention. I say "piloting" because even though FDA approval had been granted, and the research results on which the approval were based left no doubts about safety or efficacy, injectables pose lots of implementation issues. The same amazing person who piloted Truvada for PrEP at Kaiser SF almost a decade ago (long before the preventive care mandate eliminated implementation issues like rebate forms) has been working on these practical questions for injectables, so I'm optimistic that this option will soon be available to people who want it.

@Bwccummer, I really appreciate what you wrote, which is entirely correct and often forgotten by the die-hard, condoms-only crowd: nothing precludes use of PrEP + condoms. We know from lots of research on condoms for birth control that no matter what people's intentions, there is a gap between perfect use and actual use. People might not have condoms with them, they might get caught up in the moment and decide not to use them, or a condom might break (unlikely but possible). For those real possibilities, PrEP would provide an extra margin of safety. It's not a bad thing! It is also worth mentioning strict prescribing guidelines for PrEP, at least in the US. To renew their prescriptions, at-risk PrEP patients (including, by definition, men who have sex with men) are required to have HIV and STI tests at least every 3 months. People who don't use PrEP have no obligation to get regular HIV and STI testing. They may go only sporadically, and to random clinics not affiliated with their regular medical providers (if they even have regular medical providers, as PrEP patients must). The chances that they will see their test results, see them quickly, and return for treatment, are lower. And whatever the condoms-only crowd says, condoms are hardly ever used for blowjobs. Anal sex isn't the only mode of STI transmission!

Federal (Health Canada) approval shouldn't pose particular problems, though it will take time, but how the provincial health plans respond could pose a problem. A relevant example is medical (pill-based) abortion. Because the provincial health plans stubbornly refuse to cover most prescriptions, Canadian women continued to rely on surgical abortion long after the pill-based option was approved. The provinces have finally realized that surgery is more expensive than pills, and have started to provide coverage and expand access. Access to Truvada (or generic equivalent)and Descovy for PrEP remains a problem for Canadians without employer-provided supplemental health insurance, again, because the provincial health plans don't cover most prescriptions. Hopefully the potential for net savings from preventing HIV infections (the provincial plans do cover drugs for treating HIV and a few other other costly, chronic conditions) will tip the scales in favor of routine provincial coverage for pills, and someday also injectables, for PrEP.

With the earlier approval of one-month injectable Cabotegravir for HIV treatment in the US, and very decisive research results in prevention studies, two-month injectable Cabotegravir for PrEP has just been approved by the FDA! [think before following links] https://www.poz.com/article/apretude-approvedthe-first-longacting-injectable-prep-option There will be insurance questions, because injectable medications are usually covered on a different basis than outpatient prescriptions. Given the long-acting nature of the injectable, there is an option for an oral lead-in (taking Cabotegravir in pill form first). There will also be a need for contingency planning, in case a patient misses an injection.

I've gotten more than one bacterial STI from fucking straight married guys. Some gay men are uninformed about sexual health, don't bother with regular HIV and STI testing, or just lie, but the straight guys I've played with have taken ignorance and lack of concern for others to new heights. They relied on imaginary declarations (they simply declared that they themselves were HIV-negative and had no STIs, and they expected their male sex partners to declare the same thing) rather than on strategies that work, like frequent testing with one's regular doctor (which increases the likelihood that non-normal test results will actually be received, and that treatment will be made available). My impression is that some straight men [who have sex with men] are so starved for sex that they will take tremendous risks, but without the level of health knowledge that gay men typically have.

I parsed this as "it was". Maybe you meant to type "it wasn't".

Although I have compassion for GLBT people who live in rural or backward (not necessarily the same thing) areas, the truth is that people who care about their health factor in their health situation when deciding where to live. My favorite examples are HIV prevention and treatment norms in San Francisco. There is no other place in the world where same-day initiation of antiretroviral therapy is universally available to people who test positive for HIV. All major public, private, and charitable/community-based/non-profit health providers in the City participate in a Getting to Zero consortium that has set this as the standard. The consortium even relies on "detailing", an old-fashioned practice whereby more experienced medical practitioners teach less experienced ones, to reach small medical offices (most of which are affiliated with larger, GTZ-aware networks like Sutter Health anyway). Other jurisdictions are starting local GTZ groups, but none can match the comprehensive reach of San Francisco's. The City's latest annual HIV epidemiological report (also a unique effort, unmatched anywhere in the US for detail and accuracy) reveals that virtually all of the people newly-diagnosed with HIV in San Francisco last year started ART the day they received their positive test results. Faster ART initiation means a smaller viral reservoir, which could benefit patients if HIV "cure research" keeps advancing. For the gay community at large, faster ART initiation means shorter time to viral suppression, which means less HIV transmission. San Francisco's GTZ consortium has also made same-day PrEP initiation standard. Last but not least, anyone who gets a routine HIV test through the San Francisco Department of Public Health gets a pooled qualitative PCR HIV viral load test. This innovative approach, whose only other use in the US is for blood donations, strikes a compromise between speed and cost. Pooling blood from multiple patients makes it affordable to use a viral load test for HIV diagnosis. (Only if the pool tests positive do the individual samples all have to be tested.) This test can detect HIV within days of infection, rather than a week or two, for the newest and best available antibody+antigen test commonly used elsewhere. Faster detection means faster treatment. If you are a gay man, your sexual health outcomes will be better in San Francisco than anywhere else. My favorite counterexample is senior citizens who choose to retire to small towns in the countryside, but soon start complaining because the rural hospital has closed, the doctor has left town, they have to drive or be driven to dialysis or to the pharmacy, etc., etc. Choosing to live in a small town makes no sense if someone has significant medical needs, or is in a group that, statistically speaking, has significant medical needs. (This is not to say that I approve of rural hospital closures, only that it is physically impossible to provide the same standard of medical care in small towns as in large population centers.)

@BlackDude, several of your doctor's actions seem inconsistent with the CDC PrEP guidelines. Whether you receive a 30- or 90-day PrEP prescription is ultimately an insurance matter; it should not be a matter of clinical discretion. Many health plans charge lower unit prices for 90-day prescriptions than for 30-day ones (although PrEP constitutes preventive care, so the medication and all PrEP-related services should be free of charge for the vast majority of insured Americans). Your doctor was right to take a sexual history when you asked for PrEP, although a conscientious general practitioner would already have done so. It should be done as a matter of course for all patients who are at an age where they are likely to be sexually active (jokingly, I'd say, as was said decades ago, for all patients "of marriageable age" 🙂). Whether STI test requests between the 3-month interval specified in the CDC PrEP guidelines should occasion further discussion of sexual habits is debatable. It is reasonable to minimize unnecessary tests. (For example, as a PrEP patient at Kaiser Permanente, I have standing orders and can go in for common STI tests as often as every 3 weeks. I go monthly regardless of my level of sexual activity, but I always decline the rectal swab because I'm a top and never have potential exposure from receptive anal sex.) It is not reasonable to make patients feel ashamed, to waste their time, or to delay access to testing. Your doctor was right to recommend Covid-19 vaccination. Although research hasn't yet established that men who have sex with men (MSM) are at a higher risk of Covid-19 infection, of severe illness if they do become infected, and of death, plenty of research shows that GLBT people have worse health outcomes than the general population. Research does, unfortunately, indicate that African Americans are significantly more likely to become infected, to experience severe illness, and to die from Covid-19, than the average American. I hope you'll follow your doctor's advice to get a Covid-19 vaccination if you have not already done so, and then follow everyone's advice here, and get a new doctor. Good luck! Remember that you are worth it. You have the right to sound medical care, free of stigma. Your life, or at least, your quality of life, depends on it.

@AirmaxUK, thanks for mentioning the Patroc Web site, too. I had not heard of it. I'm heading to Europe for a month and found useful, recently-updated listings for major cities.

@Barebackwhore, very well explained! I would add, for people who asked about onset of protection, about on-demand/intermittent/"2-1-1" dosing, and about side effects, that it is great to discuss these concerns with peers in an online forum, but that it's even more important to raise them with the medical professional who provides your PrEP care. (If you don't have regular contact with a medical professional, make it happen! PrEP is not intended to be DIY. All conclusions about PrEP's very high efficacy are based on studies of people who were under ongoing medical supervision.) Also, on-demand dosing is discussed in the draft 2021 revision to the CDC PrEP guidelines, and of course in the research literature (Ipergay trial and others since). If you are curious about this option, ask your medical professional to read up if they are not yet familiar. Even relatively conservative, large, longtime PrEP providers like Kaiser Permanente now openly support intermittent dosing (and it has been an option in France for years now). Although on-demand dosing does not necessarily reduce side effects (which are either mild or uncommon, anyway), some PrEP patients prefer it.

@Sfmike64, it's refreshing to see another reminder about the preventive health mandate, which makes PrEP care (visits, tests, prescription) free (no $ copayment or % coinsurance, and not subject to a deductible) for the vast majority of health insurance plans in the US. I wonder why outfits like MISTR that purport to help with paperwork — some now unnecessary, in the case of drug manufacturer patient assistance rebates for PrEP drugs, and some now an illegal insurer requirement, in the case of preapproval forms — continue to advertise, and I wonder why people who are insured, or who are eligible to be, don't exercise their rights. You are completely correct that the system cost of PrEP care is less than the system cost of HIV care for infections not prevented. People need to bear in mind that even though the preventive care designation makes PrEP free, prescribing guidelines do apply. PrEP is and has always been intended for groups who are at a statistically high risk of getting HIV, such as men who have sex with men (MSM), trans people, and especially people of color and young people. There is no intention that the entire US population be on PrEP. (In other countries, high-risk groups are different, of course. In many African countries, HIV is widespread among heterosexuals, which would make PrEP economic for the general population.) I would offer a different explanation for high prescription drug prices in the US, which subsidize patient assistance programs here at home and subsidize low drug prices (or low licensing fees) in the developing world: Americans love the fiction of charity. Our country has always been uncomfortable providing comprehensive health care to people who are not working, are not married, don't earn much money, are not citizens or permanent residents, etc., etc. Patient assistance programs, subsidized by full-price drug buyers such the federal government, the states, and large private insurers, have been more palatable than political change to establish universal health insurance. Voters who consider universal health insurance socialist, unamerican, downright horrible, feel good when they imagine that US drug companies are performing an act of charity by offering rebate coupons. Similarly, we've always been uncomfortable helping foreign countries — especially if the residents look different than us or worship differently. (We're glad to help when we get something in return, like a pool of cheap labor, control over natural resources, or access to land for forward military bases.) Drug price discounts for developing countries have been more palatable than political change to increase foreign aid spending and ease restrictions (see "gag order", for example). The same voters who consider foreign aid abhorrent feel good when they imagine that US drug companies are performing an act of charity by giving away medicine (or the right to make and sell it) to developing countries. I don't think the drug companies have the government in their pocket. I think they're responding naturally and logically to a political quagmire that leaves millions of Americans still uninsured and billions of people in the rest of the world still unable to afford essential medicines. Patchwork "solutions" like patient assistance programs and foreign discounts do just enough that we as Americans don't have to see too many people dying on the street (I mean this in the sense of "without medical care", not in the sense of homelessness, which is a different problem handled in a similar way; my city has yellow parking meters where idiot do-gooders can insert dimes and quarters, ostensibly to "solve" homelessness!). People like me who prefer system solutions like universal health insurance, domestically, and larger aid payments, abroad, are either in the minority, or we don't control enough votes (in institutions like the Senate where, the more populous the state, the less each person's vote matters).

Maybe you could hide the test tubes (or other, smaller cum containers) inside a solid-color (not see-through) Tupperware container in the freezer. If you labeled it with your name, would your flatmates still be likely to open it?

Couldn't have said it better myself! This kind of bottom would be better served by backing up to a glory hole in adult bookstore to take lots of random cocks (a hot scene in its own right), but for one-on-one play, he might have better luck with a dildo than a human.

I agree with @Filthpig69, @phukhole, and others. The scent of another man's hairy pits arouses me in a way that no drug and no porn movie ever could. It's a shame that people turn to extrinsic sources of sexual stimulation when intrinsic ones like smelly pits have been right there all along for our enjoyment! Visually, I'm also really turned on by guys in sleeveless shirts or tank tops that reveal pit hair. Sometimes, the sleeves of a guy's ordinary T-shirt are cut just short enough, he is just hairy enough, and he moves his arms just high enough, that some pit hair shows. Thanks for the amazing pics, @DarkroomTaker!

Don't forget the "discrete" ones! 😂 You know right away that they're intelligent. Yesterday I saw someone who pointed out in his Grindr profile that when he taps, it's meant as a "complement". If only more people knew that these words mean other things!