It happened last year, it happened this year – brought something home from IML. But it’s not surprising… I mean I fucked about 19 different guys and got blowjobs from a few more, and some of those guys had been fucked over 100 times. They say when you have sex with someone you have sex with all the people they’ve had sex with. Just taking that conservatively – have sex with 20 guys who’ve been fucked by 50 guys and you’ve just had sex with 1,000 guys (all in a single weekend)… That’s pretty much IML… Put a few people with STDs into that mix and things can spread very quickly.

While being in a hotel with thousands of guys ready to fuck has it’s advantages, this would be the one disadvantage and the reason why it’s good we don’t live our lives this way 24/7/365.

So I’ve got an appointment to see a doctor at Callen-Lorde tomorrow evening. If I take the meds that night I should be all cleared up by Friday night when my boyfriend and I will probably be up in Montréal. But it means no fucking between now and then, unfortunately.

Came across this video on how to knowingly get gonorrhea – sorta funny…  😉

Well, a couple of months ago, when I said I was having discharge and it looked like I had gonorrhea I got treated, but didn’t get tested. Now I sorta wish I had gotten tested ’cause I’m now thinking I didn’t have gonorrhea at all…

You see, the symptoms got better, but didn’t really go away. When I did the post that I got tested and was still neg, the reason why I went in was because I still had symptoms and wanted to find out what was going on. That time I had a full battery of STD tests and they all came back negative. So if the symptoms persisted then I probably didn’t have anything the first time.

Which makes me wonder what was going on…

So two or three weeks ago there were a couple days when I had a little pain in my balls (probably epyditimus), but it went away and I didn’t think anything of it. Then this past Monday I suddenly had pretty bad discharge again as well as pain while pissing.

I’ve been working a lot lately and since I work at home I sometimes work on the floor on my stomach. I have a desk with an Aeron chair, but there are times when I just like to lay on the floor. On top of that you have to realize that I didn’t jack off in the traditional sense until I was in college. To cum I always humped the bed in sorta this one man frottage sorta thing. In fact, I really used to like frottage when I came out. Did a lot of it and since it was the height of the AIDS epidemic it probably helped keep me neg (especially since my bf turned out to be poz). My favorite used to be to have the bottom cum and then rub my dick in his cum. Felt really great.

Anyway, getting back on track here… I’ve sorta noticed that when I do a lot of “jacking off” while laying on my belly, I tend to get STD-like problems. Part of it is probably ’cause I don’t clean up – I just wear the cum stained underwear and pants around the rest of the day. I can smell the cum a bit and think it’s sorta hot. But my guess is the cum probably goes bad and a ton of bacteria probably invade since it’s a great source of food for them. So it’s probably not all that hygenic, but is good sex ever hygenic? Not that I’d call jacking off good sex, but going out in public smelling like cum is definitely a little edgy…

So when I got discharge on Monday my first thought was that it was related to jacking off – even if it was that the hole for my PA got irritated. I gave it a day or so to clear up but when it didn’t, I made an appointment and went to Callen-Lorde. I got this great NP who seemed like he was in Radical Faeries or something (he had orange nail polish on). Great guy and seemed really competent.

His first reaction was that even though I had discharge I probably didn’t have an STD. The fact that I was coming in monthly with similar symptoms made him think something was up. I also found out the tests from the second time were negative for STDs, but I had an elevated white blood cell count which indicated there was still some type of infection.

The bottom line is that he put me on Levaquin for 7 days and did another round of tests. So unfortunately I’ve had to say no to some hookups I really wanted to do since I can’t say for sure that I don’t have an STD.

The discharge had stopped, but I’ll wait until end of next week to fuck again. In the meantime, I’m jacking off on the floor and smelling like cum!

Went to Callen-Lorde today, got tested… Still neg. No big surprise there though there are some of you guys who who seem to just assume I’m poz – I’ve had more than one of you tell me you want my “charged load”. Well, it’s not charged…

I’m not saying I think I’ll stay neg forever (who knows?) – just that I’m OK with the risk, and if I become poz some day I’ll just deal with it. But that day isn’t today.

Well, here’s honesty for you… Turns out my cockring mishap was sorta for the best… Later that evening I noticed what looked like a little “discharge”, but it wasn’t the normal yellow thick stuff that would indicate I had gonorrhea. I almost wondered if it was piss or precum or something… My dick had been a little “itchy”, but that happens when my PA gets irritated, but itchiness plus something else I pay attention to (which is why I was looking to see if there was discharge in the first place). So I made an appointment to go in and see the folks at Callen-Lorde. Then on top of that it burned when I pissed first thing yesterday, so I knew I had something… Bottom line I saw the doctor there yesterday and she thinks I probably had chlamydia. Oh well, it happens when you like fucking cumhole bottoms… [And yes, I did send e-mails to all the guys I had hooked up with in the period specified by the doctor…]

So yesterday my bf and I had had a small argument over the phone. It was over something that cost less than $10 (plus some effort in doing something), so really wasn’t major but neither one of us handled the situation the way we should have. I had forgotten about it by the time he got home, but he hadn’t and he was in this pissy mood. I gave him the better part of an hour to chillout and when he didn’t I figured I’d go out and have a drink and give him more space to cool off.

So the question was where to go… I just wanted some dark bar where I could “be alone in a crowd”, so to speak. I hadn’t been there in years, but Rawhide seemed like it would fit the bill. Rawhide has been around for 30 years now and feels like an old bar (in a good way)… If nothing else I knew there would be go-go dancers I could watch. Rawhide turned out to be a surprisingly good choice…

I wasn’t expecting to talk to anyone. The other day (after the hookup with “the hole” and the research study), I had gone to Gym Bar and, other than some quick remarks about how badly this cute tattooed Latin guy and his female friend where playing pool (it took them 4 tries to hit the balls on the break, and went downhill from there), no one really seemed to want to talk to me. And I was looking really cute that day too – I didn’t get it. But at Rawhide it was completely different…

The first guy to approach me was this handsome older guy (probably 60ish). He said he managed a mostly wholesale business in Brooklyn. He was pretty intense and sorta all over me (with little bit of touching), but while the conversation was nice, there came a time when I wasn’t into it anymore. I went and got a beer and didn’t go back to talk to him.

They had two go-go dancers at the bar – one was a guy who looked like a big, muscular Israeli, the other was a black guy with a huge dick who must have taken Viagra^® or something, ’cause it never went soft – the whole night. When the Israeli got done dancing he spent like 20+ minutes talking to an older guy. It was really clear the Israeli guy was looking for “work” when he got done go-go dancing. Then there was this other beautifully built guy who was fully clothed but always talking to older guys… Him I tagged for an escort as well. It was weird seeing so much escort work going on at a “neighborhood bar”. At the same time it was discrete – I talked to two “regulars” (below) who had no idea there was escorting going on. They were looking right at it and not understanding what they were seeing. I guess it helps having been an escort to understand what was going on…

One of the weirder parts was there was this guy who brought a female co-worker into the place and they stayed for a long time. She wasn’t the type you’d expect to hang out at Rawhide (at least not for very long)… Very weird, but the guy who she was with was pretty cute (and really short too!)

There were two guys playing pool most of the night – a cute little one and another one who looked a tad “alternative” (all black clothes, shaved head, goatee)… We chatted for a while and when the cute little guy heard my theory on the escorting going on he went right up to the Israeli guy and after some serious flirting and a $5 tip, asked him what his price would be for a night… Turns out the guy charges $600…

As the night wore on it was really clear the ‘alternative’ guy was into me. In fact, it got to a point where he was sort of all over me, we were kissing, feeling each other up, etc. He saw my wedding ring early on, and made it clear he knew there were limits. When I said I wasn’t looking to hookup, he said he expected as much… Still, I was drunk (4 pints of Stella by that point) and we started making out a bit. He was hard and kept having me grab his ass… I guess it could have been fun, but I don’t “function” that well when I’m drunk and the whole probable chlamydia thing meant it was a no-go even if I had wanted to try…

While we were sorta all over each other there for a while, we didn’t make nearly as much of a scene as the gaggle of bears that were there. Two of them had their shirts either off or pulled over their head showing off their big bellies. And I mean big bellies – these guys were probably 300 lbs or more… And the pants on one of them kept riding low – so there was bear crack to be seen as well. I found it amusing but the cute little guy was a little put off by it.

So all in all it was a really fun night. I haven’t had that much fun at a bar in a long time. Guess I should do it more often…

Today is “National HIV Testing Day”, so I’ll give my pitch on HIV testing – which won’t be quite what you hear from others…

For the most part, the people who die of AIDS these days are people who don’t get tested and don’t find out they’re poz until it’s too late for treatments to be effective. There’s no need for those deaths… None whatsoever.

If you’re worried what it will mean to test positive – give up that fear and go get tested. Becoming HIV positive today is not the death sentence it once was. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll die of something else – like old age or in a car accident or something. But that’s not the case if you don’t get tested. Then the chances are you will die of AIDS.

In other words – don’t be afraid of HIV, be afraid of not knowing your poz.

You don’t have to get tested every 3 or 6 months unless you want to. The goal here is to catch your HIV before it starts doing really nasty shit to your body. You’re probably fine if you catch it within a year of infection – but definitely don’t wait more than 2 years between tests. There are strains of HIV that are more aggressive than others that need to be treated fairly quickly.

If it’s been more than a year since you had an HIV test, get tested this week…

Last night when I was laying on the floor playing with my dog I noticed a book on my shelf – “Epitaphs for the Living“. It was published in 1989 and I bought it shortly after I came out. It’s an incredibly somber book. Has pictures of people with AIDS with their hand written notes below the picture. I want to quote from some of them…

There’s a picture of two guys sitting on a bed. One has his arm around the other… Each gave their perspective, but one is especially poignant…

Life is such a precious gift! It has been very hard to watch life melt away from the one I love and I can do nothing but be there and love him with all my heart. I love you Pat.

Another picture is of a guy in a turtle neck most guys would say was pretty hot…

Thank you, Billy, for a beautiful photograph. Its how I want to be remembered; happy, attractive, self satisifid and content with lie. But in many ways the photo doesn’t look like me. · It doesn’t show the K.S. lesions growing on my face + body. · It doesn’t show that I am half blind · It doesn’t show the fact that I’ve had 3 bouts of Pneumocystis Pneumonia in the past year and a half · It doesn’t show the fear I have of what may happen to my health either tomorrow or 6 months down the road · It doesn’t show the sadness, not only my own, but the sadness I feel every time I walk down the street and see friends and acquaintances who have been diagnosed. · It doesn’t show the anger I feel at having about 1/2 of my life whipped out from under my feet at the age of 30. · It doesn’t show the great discontent and anger I have form our government for having ignored this epidemic for so long while people were dying in every city in our country. · It doesn’t show the great amount of love + compassion I feel from my family, community + friends. · And most of all it doesn’t show the tremendous need for all sexually active people to learn about AIDS to protect themselves and their loved ones so the y won’t have to go through my pain or the pain of so many others who have gone before me and will continue to go after me.

David Brewster
San Francisco, CA
Diagnosed Oct 31, 1986

Then there’s a photo of a guy sitting in a barber’s chair in what looks like the middle of a living room or sun porch. He looks about 40…

Sometimes I find myself siting all alone wondering, after two years since diagnosis, where I will find the strength to continue to live with AIDS. I think living with AIDS can be the hardest part, not the dieing [sic].

Johnnie

Then there’s a picture of a black man looking out a window at a hospital. He’s wearing a denim jacket and glasses…

Being tested HIV positive has not been easy. You can’t really set any goals, except to thank God for letting you see the breaking of a new day, a day that none of us have ever seen before. I take one day at a time and hope for the next day…

Jim

Then there’s a picture of a very weak looking guy named Dave in a hospital bed. His friend/lover is at the end of the room looking out the window…

I just wanted to say how scared I was, I’m so sick of being sick I can’t stand it. The cancer on my skin has gotten so bad I’m afraid to be seen in public. I thank God for the support of all my friends especially Ernie and Michael and to know that they are there. It’s just sometimes for me it’s hard. Its hard being the one that’s always smiling and saying everything is okay. Sometimes I feel like its not okay. After working all the years I’ve worked I finally made a name for myself. It’s all taken away. I don’t want to have to settle for that. People say you should be happy to be alive. This to me is not living. But I’ll be okay. I’ll go to sleep and wake up tomorrow and everything will be fine again.

When I found I had AIDS it didn’t bother me as far as knowing I was going to die. Dieing doesn’t scare me, but leaving my friends did. I was always afraid of what was going to happen. I guess I was still scared…

Dave died before the book was published. His friends transcribed his words from audio cassette.

Which reminds me, one of the things I wish I had done before my lover died was to record his voice. I’ve forgotten what his voice sounded like…

Damn… I’m sitting here barely able to see the screen through my tears. All of you guys who think I don’t remember what it was like – that I’m somehow spitting on the graves of those who died – fuck you. I do remember. It’s just things are very different now. Very very different.

That was a time of death. Now we’re in a time of living. A lot of people who went through that are still very angry and their fears about things like HIV are very deep seated. I get that – this post has been really difficult to write because I went through it too.

While things have changed, if you don’t get tested your experience will be like the guys above rather than the healthy poz guys you see around you living normal lives.

Please get tested… Know your HIV status so you can live a long healthy life…