Been a reader since college, love your podcasts. Like to think I've learned a lot from you, but my situation may make you disagree.I'm a 27 year-old gay guy in a major east coast city, athletic, STI-free, decent-looking, and a top. Would dig something longterm with a dude, but so far no takers, so I have a active sex life with the dudes I meet along the way. Problem is, I'm definitely making some shitty decisions. I seem to have an ability to unintentionally convince bottoms to take it raw. Way more often than not (and more often than it should be), the offer to bareback is made. And I'm good at taking the offer.
I've gotten better lately, finally getting to the point where I'm regularly suggesting to the naked dude I'm with that fucking protected would be hot, and he should go get a condom. But when he starts guiding my cock into his wanting, raw hole, my resolve crumbles.
I'm no victim here. Barebacking is my decision and it's a STUPID one. I've walked away clean until now, but even though tops are at less risk for certain STIs, I'm not gonna stay that way if I keep up the shitty decision-making. Still, knowing that, I keep barebacking when the offer's made. So, what do I do to convince my horned up self to do the right thing in the future, Dan? Any tips or tricks you can supply would be much appreciated.
Boys' Asses Raw: Enough
My response after the jump...
If you've been reading "Savage Love" since college, BARE, so you should already know all of this: the top is at less risk of HIV infection during unprotected anal sex, but there's still risk and the risk is significant; guys who bareback are likelier to be positive (duh)—particularly guys who bottom (DUH)—so the more random guys you bareback "along the way," the more times you're going to be exposed to HIV, the more likely it becomes that one of your HIV exposures will take.
So you may be "clean" now, BARE, as of your last HIV test, but you're gonna get "dirty" soon. (I'm putting "dirty" in quotes, poz guys, to draw attention to BARE's offensive use of the word "clean" to mean not-yet-HIV-infected.)
And HIV isn't the only STI you need to worry about—there are lots of others out there, and many of them are unpleasant, and some increase your risk of acquiring HIV if and when you're exposed and your risks of catching one or all of these other STIs are higher if 1. you're not using condoms and 2. you're having sex with guys who don't use condoms and blah blah blah.
You know all of this, right? Because you've been reading "Savage Love" since college. So what's really going on here, BARE? What the fuck is wrong with you?
I think your actions may be a clue as to why, at your advanced age, you haven't had any longterm takers. From the way you behave in the sack—your active disregard for your own health and the health of your partners—it's clear that you don't much value or respect yourself or the men you sleep with. If you did, BARE, you wouldn't be prioritizing fleeting and risky sexual pleasures over your own sexual health and the sexual health of your partners.
And it's unlikely that how little you value and respect yourself and other gay men manifests itself only at those times when some naked dude starts "guiding [your] cock into his wanting, raw hole."
Meaning, BARE, that barebacking isn't the only way you mistreat yourself and your partners.
Good guys—relationship material—sense your major damage and steer clear. Consequently you're relegated to sleeping mostly with other guys like you, BARE, guys who place a similarly low value themselves and their sex partners.
These issues—not the barebacking itself, BARE, but what the barebacking is symptomatic of—is something you might want to explore with a shrink.
