the saga continues

how to start your day? how about another sex-themed dirty laundry!Wrap it up


I've never understood why people have sex bareback. For those of you not familiar with the term (if, for instance, you've never had a proper gay-sex-education or you missed the now-legendary episode of Oprah in which a gay man tells her all about it), barebacking means having sex without a condom. I should rephrase my first statement: It's not that I don't understand why people bareback. I understand it perfectly. It feels good. What I don't understand is people who are willing to take their lives into their own hands for it.

I bring this up because I just moved to a new city where, because I don't have a lot of gay friends, I've been spending a little more time on, shall we say, gay singles' websites than I'd like to admit. I've been shocked by the number of mens' profiles I've come across who are looking exclusively for unprotected sex.

I don't mean that these are people who have the occasional slip-up: people who get wasted and take someone home from the bar only to wake up the next morning with nary a condom in sight. The people I'm talking about have profiles that say things like "Bareback-only bottom looking for now!" or "Read the profile: if you won't do it bare, don't bother messaging." Once I get beyond the ick factor-you know, that kind of I-need-a-shower feeling you get when you think about what these people are doing with strangers-I start to wonder: what is it that motivates them to engage in such risky behavior?

As my move to New York approached, most gay people I knew, regardless of age, nationality, or religion, told me, "Be really careful up there. So many people are HIV-positive." "Well," I always told them, "I wasn't planning to move to New York City and say, 'Thank God! I've moved to New York so I can finally throw caution to the wind! Unprotected sexual intercourse here I come!'" I'd lived in Baltimore for four years and been able to protect myself thus far.

The amount of guys that engage in risky behavior in New York, though--or at least those that advertise for it online--dwarfs the number in Baltimore, which blows my mind. After all, HIV hit New York first. Don't these guys remember? Is it because they aren't old enough to recall entire networks of friends being wiped out? Has our collective memory failed us so much that we're no longer aware that we lost most of a generation?

I always wonder to myself when I see one of these guys online--the "Drop your pants and go" guys or the "No rubbers allowed" guys--what brought them to that point? Do they care so little for their own health? Are they in it for the thrill? Or, I hate to even consider, the chase?

I don't write this claiming to have always made the right choices; I don't write it to condemn those who choose to risk their health, possibly even their lives, with the sexual decisions they make. There are just so many things I want to say to people when I see that they're seeking random, unprotected sex. I want to remind them about the struggle for our rights that we've had to go through in the last century, ask them why they're willing to throw away a life that others had to fight so hard for them to have. I'd like to remind them that there are ways for them to protect themselves, ways to avoid meeting a fate that so many others met before they knew any better.

These aren't the kind of messages you send on "gay singles' websites," however, so I'll say it here.