Well, the Swiss courts have just ruled that people who have undetectable viral loads can’t be charged with HIV transmission because the transmission is likely just “hypothetical”. That’s a huge step forward, IMO. The current laws on HIV transmission were created in a time when HIV was incurable and a fairly quick death sentence. That’s just not the case anymore and gay men have known it in their guts for nearly a decade now. Last year Swiss government researchers confirmed what we strongly suspected – there’s essentially no risk in serodiscordant (poz/neg) heterosexual sex provided certain criteria are met, and that the same is probably true for gay sex. In other words the current drug cocktails change things substantially enough that we have to rethink our assumptions on what should be legally criminal transmission of HIV.

It’s a little sad how we’ve criminalized our brothers for having sex. I mean people are going to jail when no actual transmission occurred. And the burdon is put on the poz person to disclose rather than the neg person to ask which basically makes poz people sexual lepers, at least legally. Hopefully those attitudes will change as people re-evaluate what it means to be poz.

Like the case last year with the hot poz guy in North Carolina who was put under house arrest for barebacking (incidentally, he found the post and posted a comment just a week or so ago). Whether there was actual infection should have been considered, the sexual history of the negative person should have been considered, and his viral load should have been considered. But North Carolina is hardly a progressive state and I’m sure none of those were considered.

I doubt we’ll see these types of legal decisions in the US any time soon. But we can hope… At least the tide is changing somewhere…

Geneva’s deputy public prosecutor, Yves Bertossa, believes it is only a matter of time before other jurisdictions realise that prosecutions for HIV exposure should not take place when the accused is on successful antiretroviral therapy. He told Radio Lac: “There are some medical advances which can change the law. I think that in other [parts of Switzerland] or in other countries, the same conclusions should apply to their laws.”

I totally feel like I’m going through withdrawl… I set my laptop (a MacBook Pro) on my chair and it managed to slip off fall a few inches and hit the (metal) leg of my desk. The result was a bit catastrophic – the hard drive got fucked up. I took it out, tried to pull files off it, but since it was only half working that was a painful process. I got what I could (it was amazing how little I needed off it since so much is on servers these days). After erasing it I put it back in my laptop only to discover that my DVD drive wouldn’t read the install DVD. So I went down to TekServe but they refused to honor my AppleCare warranty citing a few dents in the laptop that happened like a year ago (aluminum is a soft metal). They also refused to sell me the part I needed – they’d only do the part installed for $300. So, I went home and bought the part off eBay for $120 (with next day shipping), and the next day got that installed. But then I realized the hard drive was really fucked and was completely dead.

SO, since I was going to need a new laptop this year anyway, we just went ahead and ordered a new MacBook Pro. When that comes in I’ll pull the data off a previous hard drive for the old laptop that I was using as a backup drive, put the previous hard drive in it, and sell it on eBay to defray the cost of the new laptop.

In the meantime I’m totally going through withdrawl. Yesterday I felt depressed, lethargic and a bit beat up by the whole experience. It’s amazing how dependent I am on not just having a computer (my bf and I have 6 between us plus 2 servers at a data center plus one we’re about to throw out), but I’ve become completely dependent on my laptop… For the next week or so I have to make due with an iMac we have – but I can’t curl up on the couch with it. And the new MacBooks aren’t as couch friendly either (my bf has one) – the screens are heavier since they’ve got glass in them an they tend to fall down when you’re laying on your back… But it will be nice to have a faster machine.

The other thing that happened this week was we got rid of the guy who was working for us. He was doing image tagging/rating for the porn blog as well as cleaning and generally helping out. Thing was, he just wasn’t that good… He’d literally mop himself into a corner and then complain ’cause his socks were getting wet. When we had him doing some painting around the apartment it was a disaster – paint got EVERYWHERE. And the straw that broke the camel’s back was that he filed a check. Who would file a check? Checks need to be deposited.

So we put out two ads – one for a personal assistant and one to help with the porn blog. The upside of a down economy is that there are so many quality people out there to to chose from. We had this one guy tell us about his mother who was looking for work – she used to be the personal assistant for a big name fashion designer, she had lost her job and was about to go into forclosure on her house. Really sad. There are people who have had had really good jobs but are now willing to work with porn for $10/hour… We’ve picked the personal assistant, and I’ll pick the one to help me with porn later today. But so many people are unemployed or underemployed.

I know, I know… I need to get back to fucking… All last year I was wondering when my dry period was going to come and it never really came. Well, it’s here now, at least I’m fucking someone every week or two… I’ve gone 3 months without sex before…

OK, I know it seems like it’s all I’m talking about lately, but it’s new and fresh… Anyway, here’s the last bit I’ll say for a while…

The new Bareback Buds Blog had it’s first full day yesterday. According to Google Analytics there were 1,065 page views on the blog (946 unique).

Plus it went out via my combined RSS feed to 172 more people so there were about 1,100+ eyeballs seeing the posts. Over time that will grow as it gets a following and as it starts to get traffic from search engines. Still, not bad stats for day 1… 😉

I’ve seen the stats for a number of different bareback blogs and most average in the 100-200 visits/day range and it goes without saying that they start with even less, so this beats that hands down… There are some like BikeGuy13 and Matt & Dan who’ve built up bigger followings (Bike Guy says he gets about 700-800/day), but the vast majority of sex blogs get less than he gets. Bottom line, if you want to start blogging your sex life, the buds blog is a great place to do it.

So far 8 guys have signed up for the blog, and 4 have written stories. If you’ve got a story to tell, sign up, and tell it… And you guys who just like to read – post comments and let the guys know how they’re doing! Or at least contact them via e-mail… It really will encourage them to write more.

I had a really good response to the post yesterday asking if anyone was interested in having a blog here on rawtop.com. So I spent the day today getting it up – so you’ll notice a BB Buds link in the main nav above.

Here are the basic details (I’ve put up a more detailed explanation elsewhere)… Anyone can register and submit a post. Stories have to be about you. If you want to work on fiction, just let me know and I can set that up too… Initially your posts will have to be approved. In part this is to make sure no one abuses the system, but it’s also to make sure you understand the basics about blogging. After a few posts, once you get the hang of things your status will be upgraded and you’ll be allowed to post immediately and upload pictures.

So what do you get if you post? For starters, you get recognition for what you write. Under each blog post will be your user name, e-mail address, website URL, Yahoo! Messenger ID and AIM ID (if you provide them). That way people can contact you if they like your story and want to hookup with you. On top of that you get a page that’s just your blog posts (see the one for AskeMeIMight – the first guy to do a post) that has all your contact info at the top as well as a general blurb about you (if you provide it).  Remember, your website URL can be a link to your public profile page on your favorite hookup site, it doesn’t have to be another blog…

You can also put links to sponsors in your posts provided your post doesn’t come off looking too commercial. It take a fair amount of traffic to make money, but eventually you will make some money. If you want to know what sponsors do well on this site check out the webmasters blog I started up the other day (just one post so far, and still rough around the edges, but more to come)…

So there you have it… Wanna share stories about your sex life in a place where lot of people will read what you write? Now you can…

I just had a thought and I’m curious to find out if anyone would be interested… There are a growing number of guys who are starting their own sex blogs. If they do it right and are dedicated to it, that’s great – they’ll do well in the long run. Thing is, a lot of them start out, do a few blog posts, and lose interest. Since it’s never considered a major blog, hardly anyone sees it. On top of that a lot of them are putting their blogs on blogspot.com which is one of the worst places to put a sex blog these days thanks to the content warning that fucks up the search engine spiders from indexing the content which means it’s harder for people to find them. I started on blogspot, but it was different back then – no content warnings…

So, I’m thinking of starting up a blog for “friends” (haven’t figured out the exact name yet) where people could post their own blog posts. Contributors would have direct access to the blogging interface to enter their stories. Each of their posts would prominently say who they were and link their home page, which can be here or somewhere else. They’d also get a category or tag URL which would be just their blog posts. Initially I’d have to approve their posts, but as they got the hang of it they’d get full access to publish their posts immediately.

The advantage of this over having your own blog is you’d get a lot more exposure. Typically an average sex blog gets 100-200 visits a day – the more successful ones get maybe 500 visits a day. I’m getting about 3,500 visits a day and that number is growing every month. For the average person who does it a little and stops, their blog posts will get more attention, but it’s also a good thing even for guys who have their own blog – post some of your hookups here instead of on your blog and it’s like a full page ad for your blog.

If you have a blog somewhere else (even one you’ve sorta abandoned), I’ll even work with you to move your content over if you want. All I ask is that the content be removed or redirected from the other location so there aren’t duplicate content penalties.

For guys who really get into it and have quality contributions I’m willing to compensate them. I’ll have to figure out what makes sense – one option is to have them put an affiliate ad or two in their posts and on their home page, another option is to compensate them on a pay-per-post basis (not a lot of money, but a little).

For guys who are more into fiction I could do the same type of thing by reviving the bareback stories blog which I had planned to migrate to a new forum (which I still plan on getting up one of these days).

If any of you are interested, contact me @ rawtop@yahoo.com and tell me which your interested in – personal sex blogging or writing fiction for the stories blog.

UPDATE:

3 or 4 of you have expressed an interest in about 12 hours, so this is going to happen. I’m setting something up now. But I wanted to mention that the same thing can be done on two of my other domains: 1) WilyWilly.com is more for condom and solo porn, so if you use condoms and want to be able to mention them, then that’s the site for you or 2) TwistedPig.com is a site I haven’t mentioned yet ’cause I just set it up last week and there isn’t much content on it. If you’re more into hardcore kink (like Leather Skin Biker is), that’s a good site for you…

Here’s an exercise for those of you who use Firefox… Go through the alphabet one letter at a time and see what Firefox suggests for you. My suggested destinations are pretty revealing…

A – Adam4Adam.com
B – BarebackRT.com
C – Chase.com (my bank)
D – DedicatedNow.com (my hosting company)
E – Elance.com (where I hire people who do work for me)
F – Feedburner.com (how I send out daily e-mails)
G – GoDaddy.com (my registrar)
H – AmateurGayTeenVideo.com (one of my sites, not sure how it relates to the letter ‘h’)
I – IMRL.com (International Mr. Leather)
J – JizzFlixxx.com (my favorite tube site for posting my personal videos)
K – Kink.com (a new sponsor – they run BoundGods.com & ButtMachineBoys.com)
L – LeatherSkinBiker.com (a site I host for another blogger)
M – Mail.Yahoo.com (my e-mail)
N – NewYork.Craigslist.org/M4M/
O – NewYork.Craigslist.org/M4M/ (not sure how it related to the letter ‘o’)
P – PropertyShark.com (looking up details of places we might be interested in)
Q – QBTimeTracker.com (time sheets that integrate with QuickBooks for my business)
R – rawTOP.com
S – SweetAndRaw.com
T – Twitter.com
U – Unica.com (web analytics for a client)
V – VOD.rawTOP.com
W – WilyWilly.com (one of my sites)
X – XTube.com
Y – YouTube.com
Z – ZBuckz.com (one of my sponsors – they run the HDK sites)

So what does Firefox know about you?