fskn

A suggestion for people who might come across this thread in the future: Many large public and private employers in the US offer group term life insurance. (Occasionally, an employee union, rather than the employer, contracts with the insurance company.) A certain level of coverage (several hundred thousand dollars flat, or several times one's yearly salary) is guaranteed without health review, as long as you sign up soon (typically, 30 days) after you start. The price is low (typically, in the tens of dollars per month). The caveats are that you must act fast upon starting a new job, and that your coverage will end when your employment ends. Conversion to an individual term life policy may be possible, but this is not an absolute right. If conversion is possible, the coverage level, terms, and price will likely be less generous, and a health review could be required. If other people are financially dependent on you, and HIV makes it impossible for you to get adequate and affordable life insurance in the individual market, accepting a job with a group term life insurance benefit could be a solution. For the "guaranteed issue" amount, if you have the choice between a flat dollar amount and a multiple of your salary, keep in mind that a flat dollar amount can't easily be increased (you'd have to submit to medical review or wait for an incentive enrollment offer from the employer/union/insurer/benefits administrator — only happens when not enough coverage is being sold, and may never happen), whereas the salary multiple will rise over time, with your salary.

In case people don't realize, hiding your distance in Grindr does not prevent people from finding your exact location. A number of articles on the Web outline the risk inherent in geographically-based social apps. Even if you hide your distance, other people see profiles in order from nearest to farthest. A user intent on locating someone need only move around and watch the order of the profiles change. Scary stuff! In Android and iOS, you can deny an app access to location data. In practice, that makes Grindr unusable, as the screen fills up with profiles from thousands of miles away. In an encouraging development, the latest major release of iOS lets you turn off "Precise Location" for a given app. Turning this off means that Grindr gets only an approximate location. (It seems to be about half a mile away, but I don't know Apple's official spec.) Growlr or Scruff, I don't remember which, implemented similar behavior internally, years ago, to help protect users in countries where being gay, or engaging in gay sex, is against the law.

For me, it would have to be @Japbtm, but there are so many attractive, intelligent, perverted and friendly men on Breeding Zone. Thank you everyone for this online community!

My downstairs neighbor is gay and on Grindr. He is prone to deleting his account and then opening a new one when he gets horny (he seems to get the urge to get fucked about once a year), so one or the other of us has to re-block now and then. It's awkward because each of us knows whom the other is, and we inevitably see one another around our small building. We even used to ride the same bus to work, pre-pandemic. He never says hello. We've spoken only once in the three years he's lived here; he came into the laundry room while I was doing laundry, so I introduced myself. I've made friends with quite a few straight residents over the years. In this building as well as this town, it's customary to exchange greetings even with neighbors we don't know. I don't find the guy attractive, but chatting now and then would be nice, especially while we are stuck at home and relatively isolated, due to the pandemic. Even without attraction, I would have been open to a pandemic fuckbuddy or cuddlebuddy situation. He's a bottom, I'm a top, and we would have made a proximate and pretty safe "social bubble". It's an equal rights triumph that gay people can be as rude to gay people as straight people once were to gay people. Or maybe it's a generational difference, as I'm in my mid-40s and he's in his 30s. Still, I doubt that etiquette could have changed so quickly.

There used to be activity late at night around Lake Merritt, especially on the northern and northeastern shores. No idea what it's like during the Covid-19 pandemic. Judging by the number of used condoms, there was also a lot of activity in the Jingletown area, although I'm guessing that was more online-arranged, in-car fun.

I love making a bottom moan, with some caveats. Be authentic. Moan because of how we are feeling in the moment! The whiny, plaintive moans of women in straight porn are too much for me. The word that best describes that is "pleurnicher", French for "to whine", related to "pleurer", "to cry". That's not sexy to me at all. If we're fucking at my place, unfortunately I have to consider my neighbors. It's a 1960s wood-frame building without a shred of insulation. My downstairs neighbor is gay and I want him to hear. Despite being fairly handsome and a decade younger, the guy has only brought guys home three times in the six months since he moved in. I think he's lonely and needs some aural inspiration. The guy next-door is straight. He gets loud when he fucks his girlfriend, so it's only fair to make a little noise in return. I feel sorry for the girlfriend, as he cums fast. She usually gets hers, but only just. Being the good neighbor that I am, if it's late at night, I might just have to cover your mouth with my hand, as @DannyBoyCMH suggested. In a shared space like a bathhouse or an arcade, moaning is a mixed bag. I don't get off on blaring gay porn soundtracks, nor when a single couple is vocalizing loudly enough to fill the entire venue. So, I think about what sounds we are putting out. I tend to keep the video sound off, and I hope that our moans will pick up just as each of us is about to cum, which I hope will be a turn-on for others, too.

I don't don't say anything in my post about curable infections. My focus is on preventable ones. Since a highly effective vaccine for Hepatitis B has been available for a long time, there is little reason to worry whether the disease is treatable; just get vaccinated! It's silly to include Hepatitis B on the same list as HSV, for example, because the latter has neither a vaccine nor a cure. Whether to include HPV on such a list depends on the person's age. For young people today, who are routinely vaccinated before their first exposure, HPV drops off the list of concerns.

For people not yet infected, the Hepatitis B vaccine has been available for a long time now. The HPV vaccine, though it is labeled for use in young people because it is most effective before first exposure, can be administered to adults. It doesn't do any harm and could have some protective value. HSV, as you say, remains a risk, although Acyclovir and Valacyclovir are apparently effective at reducing symptoms.

A tip for others whose pharmacies won't accept your Gilead/McKesson card: You are free to pay your share out-of-pocket and request reimbursement by mail. You can get a form by calling 1 (877) 505-6986, or print one yourself at www.patientrebateonline.com I've used the reimbursement process, and it works fine. If your prescription label was folded over itself, clearly mark where to find the required information. Keep copies of everything. (If you are a Kaiser Permanente member, you must also enclose a pharmacy record. This is not the same as your pharmacy receipt, and must instead be obtained from the Medical Secretaries office.) To be clear, the rules of the program still apply. For example, if you have government insurance (Medicaid/Medi-Cal, VA, etc.), you are not eligible, whether you present the card at the pharmacy or mail a reimbursement form.

The loss of traditional gay public sex venues is sad, but paradoxically, gay marriage will help sustain the remaining venues. Gay marriage assures a steady supply of men who need to breed/get bred by men other than their husbands. ?

Generally, yes. It would be no fun having prudish or judgmental gay friends. My straight male friends appreciate that I can relate to their worries about birth control.

User activity and free functionality are the two critical factors. If not enough people are online near you, or at times when you are free to hook up, you're bound to experience more rejection and frustration. Meeting is a numbers game: the more men, the greater the chances of finding someone compatible. For this reason, Grindr wins hands-down. Despite being just the opposite of the stereotypical young white twink, I meet lots of people there (and whatever their profiles say, most do bareback!). I am willing to maintain a paid membership precisely because there is so much user activity. If it's not possible for free users to view reasonable numbers of profiles (Recon), really see private photos that have been unlocked (BBRTS, Growlr), or send reasonable numbers of messages, users eventually give up. One problem is not being aware of the limits of the free functionality. When people unlock their private photos in Growlr, I have to remind them that, as a free user, I can only see the first two. An app needs some paid users to sustain itself, but it must attract lots of free users to maintain a critical mass of activity. @rawTOP, two differentiating features to consider are a data privacy pledge and an open API. Despite the sensitivity of gay hookup activity, existing apps have terrible security and make no commitments about privacy. Messages should be encrypted end-to-end, readable only by the two users, not by the app provider. Location data, user activity data, and (even encrypted) messages should not be stored on servers after processing. Scruff has a blog post on adding a little randomness to proximity data, but more work is needed in that field. Gay sex is a capital crime in large parts of Africa and the Arab world. Even here in the US, we risk job loss, social ostracism, and, for some users, a break-up or a divorce, if the wrong people find out. Lastly, all current gay hookup apps are closed platforms. Someone reverse-engineered the Gay.com chat protocol and supported it in a universal chat program, but that is now long-forgotten. If you want lots of users and lots of activity, an open protocol is the way to go. Why not integrate directly with a secure messaging platform, such as Apple iMessage, Signal, or Wickr? (I'd include Whatsapp, but metadata -- who communicates with whom -- is now shared with Facebook, the new corporate parent.) Sorry for the long post, but I hope it's helpful!

That may explain it. A recent STI is one indication for PrEP. But if you believe your sexual activity puts you at risk, ask again, and find another medical provider if you must! What concerns me is the "don't need it" response. Based on sexual history, timing, test data, and partner info. (if available), a doctor could make such a finding in some cases, if a patient had asked for PEP. To dismiss a patient's need for PrEP, however, is much more difficult, since it is a matter of assessing past and future sexual risk.

@scott0882, I encourage you to ask again, even to the point of finding a new doctor and/or health system. Truvada for PrEP is FDA-approved, is the standard of care, and is covered by most private and public health insurance plans. If I'm reading your message correctly, you mention that you asked five years ago. That was around the time of the FDA approval. Very few doctors outside the research and public health communities would have known about PrEP back then. It could also be that your doctor thought you were asking for PEP (Post- Exposure Prophylaxis). @TheLusciousLad, have you been able to get your PrEP care covered?

For people who come across this post, affordability should never be a consideration! Gilead's patient assistance programs cover either the full cost of Truvada for PrEP, for people without insurance and earning less than a certain amount, or the prescription copayments, for people with insurance (regardless of income). Participants in government insurance programs, such as VA, Medicare and Medicaid, are excluded, but in most cases, those programs cover PrEP. Some states provide funds to fill remaining gaps in PrEP coverage; check with the agency in your state that handles (related, but different) Ryan White Act funding.

Anything that encourages testing is good, but as HIV tests go, OraQuick is not the most sensitive test available. For a newly-infected person, OraQuick may still show no infection several weeks after the best available tests would have detected the infection. If you are worried about a recent exposure, insist on a qualitative PCR RNA viral load test. (Qualitative means a yes/no answer, instead of the quantitave result -- "x copies of the virus" -- provided to a person who is Positive and under monitoring.) If you mention a recent and very risky exposure and your clinician doesn't propose this, go elsewhere. For routine, periodic testing, a 4th-generation test is ideal. Ask for one!

The AMP Study definitely welcomes people who use PrEP in the US, and it includes a patient access program (free Truvada from a mail-order pharmacy, without regard to income, insurance, etc.) for enrolled participants who would like to use PrEP. Allowing PrEP for US study participants is an ethical issue. Medical researchers rarely expect people to accept less than the standard of care (what is approved and generally available, in a given country). There are enough participants who don't elect PrEP, or who don't use it reliably, that statistical findings about the efficacy of the antibody product in the study can still be made. The AMP Study is still enrolling in San Francisco, and there are a number of other interesting studies as well.

PrEP is a concept, not a single medication. As was (and is) the case with HIV treatment, new drugs are being studied for HIV prevention. Some are particularly promising for prevention because, unlike the emtricitabine and tenofovir in Truvada, they are not already in use for treatment, making resistant virus even less common.

I love Folsom Gulch! These days, I usually go after tech. meetups, which are conveniently hosted in SoMa on weekday evenings. It's so funny because I'll be discussing databases or DevOps one minute, then my friends will hurry home to their wives or girlfriends, and the next minute I'll be reminded why I like being gay and living in the Bay Area, as I blast my load into some willing bottom on the other side of a glory hole at the Gulch. I first visited the Gulch 20 years ago, on a dare. I had grown up believing that sex should only be with someone you love. The friend who dared me was right: sex with someone you don't know can be hot, too. I'd been brainwashed by the safe-sex messaging of the day, and I used to want to set a good example. It was an epiphany to cum in a guy's mouth, through a glory hole, and not have to care about pulling out. Within a year of discovering the Gulch, I had my first experience breeding a guy anonymously at Adult Media on Kearny at Clay. Maybe it's silly to be sentimental about an adult video arcade, but I wish the place were still there. I hope that Folsom Gulch will be with us a long time yet.

There's no need to wait so long to confirm that you are HIV-negative. Ask for a qualitative PCR RNA viral load test, which would come back positive within days of infection. Even a "4th-generation" antibody test (pioneered in Europe and in regular use there long before it entered regular use in the US -- but still always ask exactly what test you are receiving) would come back positive within weeks of infection, eliminating the need for more than one four-week period of limited sexual activity before you start PrEP.

My theory is that romantic dreams and stories produce some of the same brain stimulae as being in love. They also drive and shape our desire for love. I've attended Frameline, the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival, for 21 years, and the film selection criteria boil down to: at least one shirtless white male teenager, at least one sex scene with an exoticized Latin or Black top (the bottom always winces in pain), and a happy ending in which at least one couple meets, moves in together, or gets married. Even a documentary several years ago about a gay soccer team degenerated into vignettes about players who had fallen in love, gotten married, adopted puppies (no pregnancies just yet among the team), and invited their mothers-in-law for the holidays! Who knew that one little gay soccer team could foster so many relationships, international, interracial, and intergenerational, but all monogamous and perfect? Audiences lap it up year after year. Conforming films are always sold out. My boyfriend and I met on BBRTS. We are open: we enjoy sex with each other and we tell each other what we do outside. Happily (ecstatically!) divorced from my ex-husband of 9 years, I reject relationship conventions. The boyfriend and I sleep over most nights, but we keep separate places and take some nights to ourselves. Flowers, candles and dinner on the table would not prove that we care about each other. Choosing to spend part of our time together, truly enjoying that time, and kissing with mouthfuls of each other's cum after we've blown each other, are proof. For me, all sex creates a valid human relationship. How can it be anything else, when a guy is trusting me to penetrate his body, and is giving me so much pleasure? We do not have to say "I love you" or get married to confirm. We simply feel. We do not necessarily need to know each other, exchange names, or say anything at all. He might be open to kissing (definitely my preference), but he might display intimacy in other ways, from a smile to a hand on my head as I suck him, to an awkward (proof that it's not rehearsed) hug as one of us leaves. We might never see each other again, or we might decide to meet regularly. Look at every sexual encounter as a limitless possibility! Even in gay circles, monogamous relationships command respect and reverence while open relationships are considered pretend ones. (As soon as someone feels he has to say "I'm not judging", he is.) Casual sex as a lifestyle is lowest on the totem pole. There are models for standard, monogamous relationships all around us, but The Ethical Slut is one of the few sources of advice for people who prefer open relationships or casual sex. To the poster in whose experience all open relationships fail, is it possible that the departing partner might still have met the man he's running off with, if his relationship had been closed instead of open? Not even the penalty of stoning and death in Muslim countries is strong enough to stop sex outside marriage.

In a nutshell, the Dutch are asking questions that others have already answered, and are doing it to delay. I was at an HIV prevention research conference a few weeks ago. The ethicist who opened the conference explained that governments sometimes avoid research that would identify populations whose existence is denied (e.g., gay people in most African countries) or whose behavior is illegal (e.g., gay men in Muslim countries, drug users in China). Governments also avoid research that would identify groups of people who need treatments not locally available or not funded (e.g., HIV-positive people in developing nations). In Europe, you have the opposite of the last case, in my opinion. Given evidence that daily Truvada prevents HIV in another developed, western country, European governments are launching their own studies so that they can delay approving and paying for preventive use of Truvada. Either someone in Strasbourg or Geneva has pencilled out the numbers and determined that it's cheaper to fund treatment than to prevent new infections, at Europe's low HIV infection rates, or the Conservative Party in each country has decided that the people being infected today are not worth saving. (One would have expected this in the US, where most new HIV infections occur among people of color.) The Dutch open-label study is absurd, coming hot on the heels of IPERGAY. We already know from two US studies, iPrEx (double-blind) and iPrEx-OLE (open-label), that daily Truvada works for PrEP. In the meantime, IPERGAY has already established, with a rigorous, double-blind design, that the same episodic dosing schedule that the Dutch want to explore on a less rigorous, open-label basis, lowers risk by 86%! (A double-blind study has two randomly-drawn groups, one that receives real medicine and one that receives a fake, or placebo. Neither participants nor doctors know who is in which group. The participants in an open-label trial choose to receive real medicine, and the doctors know, too. Double-blind is more rigorous; the results carry much more statistical weight.) It is certainly valuable to continue comparing daily and episodic Truvada dosing. It is not ethical to use that as an excuse to withhold daily Truvada for PrEP. Similarly, in the US, where daily Truvada for PrEP is already approved, available, and covered by most insurers, the IPERGAY study design would be unethical but the Dutch one would be ethical. If we ran IPERGAY in the US, participants in the placebo arm would get substandard care (no PrEP), without knowing. If we ran the Dutch study in the US, participants receiving substandard care (less-than-daily PrEP) would know. Basically, an ethical study might secretly enhance, but will never secretly reduce, standard care. I should add that local, population-based studies can be valuable. Truvada is an effective preventive for American gay men, at a community-wide level, but it was ineffective in an early study of African straight women, for whom social and cultural constraints deterred adherence. Separate PrEP studies for white and Black gay men in the US would probably show different community-level effects -- in one country! But Western Europe and the US are similar enough that general PrEP research results will hold in both places. Much HIV testing and treatment work has already crossed the pond in one direction or the other.

PrEP is recommended in the US for men who have sex with men, a term broad enough to encompass straight men who fuck trans people. You sound like an excellent candidate for PrEP. Other common criteria include multiple partners and/or a recent STI. Be conscious of the difference in risk between what you have done and what you want to do, and emphasize the latter when seeking PrEP. Since you mention frequent HIV testing, be aware of two options: 4th-generation antibody tests detect antibodies fewer than four weeks after an HIV infection. Always check that you are receiving (or self-administering, if available) a 4th-generation test. A qualitative PCR RNA viral load test detects the virus (not the antibodies) within 10 or fewer days after an HIV infection. If you've had a risky exposure and are worried, insist on this test, which is offered by any US health practitioner who is culturally competent in serving MSM. Also, until you start Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or if you don't start, remember Post-Exposure Prophylaxis. Started within 72 hours, a 30-day course of HIV drugs (chosen by your doctor, ideally on the basis of the drug regimen used by your HIV-positive sex partner) prevents HIV infection. If you are afraid after a risky exposure, a hospital emergency room can provide PEP. It is the standard of care in the US and many other countries.

Leave him, now! I read all three of your posts in the thread. I wasted 9 years domestically partnered with and then legally married to a jerk who who used put-downs and displayed the same ambivalence that you see in your boyfriend. He also became a sexual prude. I am much happier now that he is completely out of my life. Relationships are all about choice. I chose to be single for a long time, and now I'm choosing to be with a boyfriend who is unambiguously nice. Couples counseling can be useful, but be wary. There is a perverse incentive at work: the faster a couple resolves its differences, the less money the counselor earns. One thing you could do before pulling the plug is to print everything you've written here (without people's responses, which might blindside your boyfriend), give it to him, and see how he responds. If he wants to change and wants you to stay with him, start by making him suck your dick, just like he does with other men.

The dose schedule in the second arm of your study is the same as for the Canada-France IPERGAY study. Instead of daily PrEP, the other arm of IPERGAY involved the same episodic dosing, but with a placebo (sugar pill). Also, you study is open-label, which means that you choose which arm you want to be in, and your doctor knows, too. IPERGAY was double-blind, with participants assigned randomly to receive Truvada or placebo, and neither participants nor doctors informed. Based on another recent study, iPrEx-OLE, you are protected 100% if you choose daily Truvada and take it at least 4 times a week. The recommendation remains daily. IPERGAY was so successful that the study was "unblinded" (participants were told which arm they had been assigned to) early, and everyone was given Truvada. The risk reduction was 86% under real-world conditions (people having unplanned sex or forgetting to take Truvada as scheduled). Resukts were reported just a few months ago, so this is cutting-edge research. So, if you can plan your sex life with reasonable certainty, and if you take Truvada as scheduled, you will enjoy near-total protection if you choose episodic dosing. I heard Dr. Raphael Landovitz from the University of California, Los Angeles speak about this at a conference a few weeks ago. He pointed out that daily routine improves adherence. He had also noticed that IPERGAY participants were taking 4 doses of Truvada in the average week, and thus meeting the threshold established by iPrEx-OLE regardless of their sexual activity. So, he suggested that episodic dosing isn't worth the slight uncertainty it creates.