PhoenixGeoff

I wonder if most vers guys prefer both topping and bottoming with the same type of guy (like I do), or if they like one kind of top and a completely different kind of bottom. I do have physical types that I prefer, but to me the overriding factor is a dirty mind...sluts of all body types turn me on, and an experienced, imaginative guy in the sack (or anywhere else) gets me hard.

Completely agree...both are great in different ways. But most of my sex is anonymous (often literally, as in not being even on a first-name basis)

Hmmm...you don't actually see it often. My guess is that the design would have to be a lot simpler with bolder lines so it would show through clearly (depending on just how hairy you are). Much as I like tats, I'd personally much rather see a guy with hairy forearms...it's just one of those mysterious minor fetishes that I have (body fur is definitely a plus with me but there's something about the forearms that a huge turnon) Looking at the pic you posted though, while you are hairy, I think a good design would still show through pretty well. If you want the sleeve, I'd say go for it. I'm leaning towards getting my first on my calf (not sure which one or both). I've seen those on a lot of guys and I think they look hot

Or a really good drag queen.... That is some really cool ink. I think I'm leaning more towards the traditional single blue color if and when I do get one of my own. My only concern about getting a sleeve like your porn star has is that there can be professional consequences (or maybe not, given how mainstream tats are becoming with younger people). I love the idea of incorporating Sagittarian-archery motifs. I like tattoos that have special significance to the person who has them. I'm pretty sure that I'll incorporate a biohazard into mine (if and when I get one), although it may be a bit more stylized and worked into the overall design. I'm not a big fan of the random tattoos in random parts of the body look either, even if they do all have significance.

Definitely makes sense to me. I'm just cautioning you to never underestimate the ability of users to leap to truly bizarre conclusions

Exactly. Ideally rawTOP would have to do the same on his site, but I'd imagine that most of the guys posting here already have profiles on your site too. After all, reading about hot raw sex is all very well, but your site actually delivers the goods! The main question you'd probably both have would be the degree to which you'd want to be dependent on an outside website. If one of you decided at some point you'd had enough and it was time to fold up the tent and take down your site, the other's members might be a little annoyed to lose a feature, particularly if they're paying customers. From a customer's perspective, it might be a little difficult to perceive the boundaries between one site and the other; they may not realize that they're dealing with two separate entities. You'd probably want to make sure that it was crystal clear when a customer was transitioning from one site to another.

Update on this: the DA dropped the charge. Good decision, but of course they never should have charged the guy with the felony in the first place. The bad news is that apparently after arresting him for having HIV, they wouldn't give him his meds in jail because they couldn't confirm he had HIV. Un-fucking-believable. What interests me (besides the fact that I've apparently got to watch out if I forget to wrap myself in Saran Wrap before leaving the house) is that the parole officer disclosed the HIV status in the first place. I've never personally been on the wrong side of the law, and I'm pretty open about my own HIV status, but if I were in O'Kelly's shoes, I'd be pissed that he'd told anyone that I was HIV+. I'd be willing to bet there's a lawsuit that comes out of this. My tax dollars at work....

Congratulations.

Exhaustion is a good way to put it. Well that and the fact that sex with condoms (and lube...God how I hate the smell and feel and taste of lube!) really sucks compared with barebacking. I came out in a major city around 1990. I didn't consciously recognize that I was gay until I was 19 or so (yeah I can be really dense) and I didn't have sex before then, other than a little minor fooling around with other kids. I certainly was never molested or abused, and my family has always been supportive. However, I didn't know a lot about HIV and AIDS when I was coming to terms with being gay, but I sure did know that gay men were dropping like flies at the time and I was convinced that I wouldn't live to see my 30th birthday. When I finally did start having sex with other guys (I'm such a geek...I actually met my first trick on a local gay BBS!), the safe sex thing was constantly pounded into my head. Despite some token efforts to make putting on the condom part of the intimacy, the message was very much "Use a condom or die." And I think that (along with my previous misinformation about AIDS) ended up leading me into some very fucked up thinking around sex. There were the inevitable slip-ups, followed by months of guilt and fear while frantically getting tested outside of the 90 day window to see if I had "dodged the bullet" (at that point, lacking better information, I assumed that HIV was transmitted extremely easily during sex). So I had this idea in the back of my head that being gay automatically led to HIV and consciously I assumed that getting drunk and having bareback sex once with a guy who had HIV guaranteed that I'd get HIV too. After a bit, a sense of fatalism crept in. I figured that becoming infected at some point was pretty much unavoidable. And so I stopped trying to avoid it. Discovering that I wasn't alone in preferring bareback sex to condoms helped things along immensely. I remember some of the earliest barebacking sites that showed up on the Internet in the '90s (which combined barebacking with "bugchasing" and "giftgiving"). I also remember finding guys on IRC into barebacking. And I definitely remember my first modern bareback porno (one of the early Michael McKey ones) and how hot that was. Once I knew I wasn't the only one who felt this way, that I wasn't totally nuts, that was pretty much the end of my condom use. If I have to draw a parallel with why the media campaigns and the safe sex lessons did not work for me, I'd look at the War on Drugs advertising. Even today, anti-drug messaging invariably tries to scare you with the worst case scenario. Look at the meth campaigns. The problem is, people look around and look at the tweakers they know (or the tweakers they are)...the ones who haven't hit the worst case yet (and might never get that bad), that haven't lost their teeth or gotten arrested or lost their home or whatever, and they draw the logical conclusion that the drug advertising is a lie. Don't get me wrong...meth is a terrible drug, and I have seen people go from a six figure income to homelessness on it, but that doesn't happen to everyone who uses it and if it does, it's usually after several years of abuse, which is not the message in the ads. In the same way, every time I ended up barebacking and didn't get infected, that chipped away at the message that I had to use a condom every single time or face death. The reality for me was that I had pretty much given up on condom use eight years before I finally tested positive (granted, for five of those eight I was in the Army, so my whoring around was limited). And now, the effectiveness of HAART has really undercut the safe sex message. I'm now approaching 40, ten years more than that young kid I used to be thought he'd ever have. My doctor tells me there's no reason I shouldn't live into my 70s. I appear to be perfectly healthy (if a bit overweight). I'm also pretty open about my status (I believe in full disclosure for potential sex partners and my online profiles all state that I'm HIV+). So I'm sure that there are some guys who draw the conclusion that barebacking is OK even if you get HIV based on the simple fact that I exist, I'm having fun, having sex and apparently suffering few or no consequences. [i'm cross-posting a slightly revised version of this in the comments over on The Body too]

Yup...and a total amateur one, so you get what you pay for as far as my psychoanalysis is concerned!

Meh...my dick's out there for pretty much anyone to see, so feel free to go compare. Not that it means much anyways...being proud of having a big cock is like being proud of being short or tall or black or white or straight or gay for that matter...it's stupid to take pride in something you were born with. But learning how to use what you have is what takes skill and practice. Sorry you took my interpretation as "being a bitch." I merely explained why I find it a turn-off. If that's your fetish then great...I hope you have fun with it. Try not to get so oversensitive.

Hey, you don't have to justify yourself to me! I've always preferred guys who have some substance to them...the two worst words I can read in a profile (besides DDF UB2, safe and sane, etc.) are "swimmer's build."

I think that's a problem you get when a hookup site gets too specialized. Bears are one subset of the gay community. Guys who openly bareback are a (probably smaller) subset. The intersection between the two is going to be pretty limited. Add in kink, and you're probably looking at just a handful of good candidates, even in a big city like Chicago. I could see a successful porn site being run with guys who are into bears and barebacking. A successful and worthwhile hookup site is a bit tougher.

It's interesting that the Sydney study came up with higher transmission rates then, particularly since it specifies that it's drawing on HIV+ guys on HAART. It's possible that the methodology has improved in the 15 years between the 1992 data that Varghese looked at and the Sydney study. It's also conceivable that something about HAART may make transmission more likely, not less (off the top of my head, I know that many of the protease inhibitors can wreak havoc on your digestive system...that may make transmission from poz bottom to neg top more likely). Do we know for sure that undetectable viral load makes transmission less likely? Remember, viral load in the blood stream does not necessarily apply to other systems in the body. In fact we know that HIV sticks around in certain parts of the body even if the viral load in the blood drops to undetectable; that's why HAART is just a treatment, not a cure. It's possible that one of the places that HIV "hides" while you're being treated is in the reproductive system.

Of course it is. You want the pleasure of barebacking. You get off on anonymity. But you're also scared (with good reason) of HIV and other STDs. And perhaps you think that guys who do what you want to do (have sex with pretty much anyone) have self esteem problems. There's nothing really "fucked up" about wanting or thinking all of those things, even if they are contradictory. Personally, I wouldn't think too hard about your particular fetishes and wonder where they come from. You like older men. You like promiscuous, anonymous, dangerous sex. Hardly the most unusual fetishes out there (if you wanted to do all that while wearing red high heels while on a trapeze with a midget singing The Star Spangled Banner, then I might raise an eyebrow. And suggest you get used to disappointment). Your rational brain quite logically points out that your fetishes aren't exactly safe, and sometimes it stops you and sometimes it doesn't. Well, welcome to the human race. Our sexual likes and dislikes are pretty inexplicable. And lots of people seem driven to do things that are rationally pretty dangerous (like riding motorcycles, rock climbing, sailing around the world, whatever). I think rawTOP is right. Right now you have your urges, but you're not sure yet whether indulging them is worth the risk. Hence the angst, and hence the self-created part. At some point, we make up our minds and either throw caution to the winds or decide to play it safe. Nothing wrong with either decision. I do think older men are probably LESS likely to be safe. After all, we've had a lot more years to fuck around. Many if not most of my friends are poz. The better older guys will be responsible and not have you do anything you don't really want to do, but the proportion of men who are assholes doesn't really go down as people age.

I'll just say that I think people generally find everyone's sex life ridiculous, except their own. What's freakish to you or me may be incredibly hot for someone else. After all, the vast majority of people find our attraction to other men to be "freakish." And certainly, many gay men (to say nothing of straight people) would find my own rampant barebacking to be freakish too. Chacun à son goût. On the other hand, just because you or I may not like a particular kink doesn't mean you can't be polite about it. Personally, I'm not much of a fan of domination and submission scenes either (I find being a dom too much work and responsibility and being a sub too confining). But you can state your reasons for not getting into a particular scene without getting too insulting.

I don't have access to the article itself, but Wikipedia cites a March 2010 study (Jin F et al. (March 2010). "Per-contact probability of HIV transmission in homosexual men in Sydney in the era of HAART". AIDS 24 (6): 907–913.) that lists significantly higher risks of transmission than the Varghese study.

You could create forums of your own on BBRTS if you were so inclined. Another option would be to provide links to other BB oriented sites for cross-promotion purposes (like to this forum, this and other sex blogs, sites that carry your porn, etc. If you wanted to be more adventurous, you could make membership in this forum an "opt-in" option on your site. That would give your users control over who their login information is shared with.

I have a friend who's like this. He tests HIV positive (i.e. he does have the antibodies in his blood), but his viral load has always been undetectable with no meds at all, for several years now. I'm not sure if he can infect other people or not (I'd assume probably not). I think there's a difference between "HIV-resistant" (meaning you just don't get infected) and "long-term non-progressors" (which means you do get infected but, like my friend, can handle it). There's likely different mechanisms (possibly multiple different mechanisms) at work in either case. IIRC, the feline version of HIV is incredibly widespread (among large cats in the wild), but most cats are "long-term non-progressors."

I would point out that the odds increase the more times you repeat your exposure (since you only need to get "unlucky" once). Let's suppose that the chance of getting HIV from fucking a poz bottom bareback are 0.6% for each time you do it. If you crunch through the math, you basically get a 50-50 chance of getting HIV from topping alone if you fuck a poz guy bare about 115 times, and a 90% chance of converting if you raw fuck a poz guy about 382 times. Keep in mind, this is assuming that each and every one of the guys you fuck has HIV. Obviously, fucking guys who don't have HIV doesn't expose you to any risk, so if you're fucking both poz and neg guys indiscriminately, the probabilities drop based on the proportion of guys in your population who have been infected. That will vary based on infection rates in your city and the kind of men you tend to have sex with, so it's kind of hard to estimate. But if you assume that one man in ten that you have sex with has HIV, then you need to top about 1,155 times to have a 50% chance of converting.

The biggest problem I have is not with the sites themselves but the guys on them...too many flakes, too many guys who can't be bothered to respond with a "no thanks" if not interested, too many out-of-date pics (or no pics at all). If I were designing a hookup site from scratch, I'd bring together a few things that I like from a bunch of sites. Advanced searching (BBRTS and A4A do this pretty well) - for example, Manhunt's search capabilities suck The ability for other guys to leave public reviews (obviously allowing the original guy to respond and the management to delete reviews that are out of line) like rateurtrick.com I love the idea of the GPS/hookup site thing that Grindr does...looking forward to seeing that on my bberry (which is supposedly coming soon). I'm not sure if I'd go for a specialized theme and try to attract a niche (only barebackers, only leathermen, whatever). I kind of like to see all of the options out there. And lots of guys might not go to a specialized site but be interested in what you're into anyway. I can't count the number of guys who've hit me up for bb sex online, when their profile says "DDF safe only," even after I tell them flat out I'm poz and only fuck raw. They usually don't hang out on places like BBRTS, even though it's pretty clear they like barebacking. Finally, I guess I'd ideally prefer to have an established site add to or improve their offerings rather than seeing something completely new start from scratch. I don't want to have to add another site to my regular cruising grounds!

As long as that decision is a temporary one, I think it's fair enough. Hell, I used to go for quite some time between HIV tests. In my case, I knew it was a matter of not wanting to know because that allowed me to tell myself that I was healthy. I was, to a large extent, sticking my head in the sand and hoping that if I ignored the possibility of infection, it wouldn't happen. I can only tell you that my experience of discovering my status, the diagnosis that I had been dreading for quite some time (but not enough to change my habits) has turned out to be a good thing in retrospect in many ways. Was it still a bit of a shock, even after years of indiscriminate barebacking? Yes, it was. In hindsight, it took me far longer than I expected to come to terms with it. But I would not give up that experience for anything. Personally, I think I have made many changes in my life for the better as a result. I also think that I enjoy sex considerably more too. I've personally found my diagnosis to be actually kind of liberating in many ways. Any big life change like HIV is going to have both negative and positive impacts. It's not all bad, nor does it necessarily mean that life will get worse (although it might mean that if left untreated). It does mean that things will change. But I have decided (in part as a result of this experience) that change is not something to be feared and often something to be embraced.

I've always thought that sex is sex and love is love and it seems to me that Gruntraq has a good handle on the difference. There's no reason why we can't be massive sex pigs on the one hand and also loving and respectful partners at the same time.

I personally have always preferred guys that were somewhat older than me. When I was in my early 20s, I remember having a huge thing for more bearish guys in their 30s or 40s. As I've aged (I'm now approaching 40 myself), my ideal guy has moved a bit closer to me in age, say from around 30 to 55 now. I've always been kind of curious about the guys who are attracted to younger guys. I won't say that I've never found men in their 20s attractive, but the ones I do like tend to look older than they really are (and usually have some kind of facial hair...a huge turnon for me!) I'm a bit curious about the kind of men the guys on this site are attracted to. Do the more submissive guys prefer older tops? Are the more dominant types attracted to bottoms who are more "boyish," younger and smoother? Or are those just stereotypes?