I want to talk about the sexy topic of monogamy. No so much whether monogamy is achievable or whether it goes against our natural inclinations. The internet is littered with that stuff.  Is monogamy impossible? Are men designed to cheat? There are whole books dedicated to the topic: Eric Anderson's "The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating" and the bestselling "Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships" by Chris Ryan and Cacilda Jetha,  to name a few.

Call me cynical but you know what I get from these articles?  Maybe it’s not so much monogamy that’s impossible, maybe its lifetime relationships. Only having sex with one person may be no problem for a period of time, but when everything that one person does begins to drive you nuts - that’s the problem. Maybe we just aren’t designed to be with one person our whole life, because, let’s face it, people get annoying. But apparently I’m jaded…

What I actually want to talk about is monogamy assumption. Rather, I suppose I want to learn about monogamy and try to understand why it is so often assumed in (largely heterosexual ) relationships. I have been out of the dating circuit for almost a decade, so perhaps something changed while I was busy doing whatever it is one does in a monogamous relationship: taking Friday night walks through Home Depot, shopping for furniture, having scheduled sex. Maybe I have just been ill-informed by damaging television shows such as Sex and the City but I thought single people dated. A lot. I thought single people went out on multiple dates with multiple people. And not even just people who were looking for relationships; people who didn’t want anything serious too, I thought they dated as well.

"In fact, based on my limited findings, it would seem that straight people at least prefer monogamy."

When I started paying attention and asking around, I realized that people do in fact date, but most people don’t date multiple people at the same time. Why, you might ask? Well, the most common answer I’ve gotten is that people aren’t comfortable sleeping with more than one person at a time. In fact, based on my limited findings, it would seem that straight people at least prefer monogamy. And since, if you’re lucky, dating often leads to sex, people therefore tend to only date one person at a time.

 I recognize that this little “study” is extremely limited, but I’m hard pressed to find many people who feel differently.  It seems that even if people are dating multiple people, once they find someone they like, they stop dating the others. Which leaves me questioning- what if you like them all? What if you’re dating multiple people and you like all of them? What if you are sleeping with all of them? What if they’re sleeping with other people? What if they’re assuming you’re monogamous? Which leads me to my next question:

When do you have the monogamy discussion?

Is it the first date? First time you have sex? First time you say “I love you”? It seems to me, from my own experience, from my friends’ experiences, and from my inevitable exposure to pop culture, that exclusitivity is assumed from the beginning- at the very latest from the first time you have sex. Where does this come from, I wonder? Is this bred into us? Is it “natural” to assume once we are having sex with someone they aren’t having sex with anyone else? Are we taught this through pop culture? When did sex suddenly equal exclusivity? And furthermore, how did I miss this?

"Multiple studies suggest that monogamy is neither necessarily assumed nor the norm among gay male couples."  

So, I know this rant is slightly heteronormative. I am aware of this, since I can only truly speak from my own experience and my own interpretations of the world. I recognize that this is largely different among the LGBTQ community, particularly among gay men. Multiple studies, such as The Couples Study and Hoff’s survey of 566 gay male couples in the San Francisco Bay Area, suggest that monogamy is neither necessarily assumed nor the norm among gay male couples.  I’ve been lead to believe by my gay male friends that monogamy is not assumed until discussed.

So why is it so different among straight people? The obvious answer is that they are socialized that way, whereas queer people have always had to challenge “conventional” relationships.  Is the assumption of monogamy just another backwards thing we “breeders” do? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against monogamy, I just don’t want it forced on me or assumed, and I sure as hell don’t want to be judged for my aversion to it or mere desire to simply date. 

“That over one-third of LGBT people have been subjected to violence from an intimate partner is evidence of the brutality we can inflect upon one another, even those whom we claim to love.” 

David Phillips 

The quote above from David Phillips, was a comment on an earlier post of mine. At the time I thought, ‘Damn, he’s right. I should have mentioned that side of it in the article.’ Then a couple of days later it hit me that by saying that, he had inadvertently reopened a chapter of my life that I’d more or less successfully filed away. It shocked me that I hadn’t thought about it for years and that other events had overtaken it on my list of life changing moments.

It’s one of the last remaining taboos, along with men being abused by their wives. If you are a man you just don’t readily admit that you were in an abusive relationship …with another man and yet if the statistics are true and one in three LGBT people are being abused by their partners, shouldn’t we be talking about it? After all, we lay our sex lives bare and confess all about our relationships with HIV and yet revealing a past full of same-sex abuse somehow makes us losers, weaklings and unable to hold our heads up in society. 

An abiding memory I have is one which still gives me chills and one which David Phillips reawakened.

The pub would be its usual boisterous self on a Friday night. It was loud, full of smoke and both working and unemployed men from a tough industrial town in the North East of England. It was a straight bar and my partner’s brothers would be there, full of fighting talk and Newcastle Brown Ale (a lethal combination). I was sat on the edge of the group playing 5-card Stud, silently supporting my partner but not standing behind him, otherwise the others would accuse you of cheating. At any given moment but usually after Pat had had that elusive one beer too many, he’d turn his empty glass upside down on the table. At that moment my world would stop. The noise in the bar would be blocked out and my heart would start thumping in my chest. At that moment, mostly without warning, I’d know I was in trouble. 

I was 21 and he was my first real love, after a few years of fumblings, furtive adventures and infatuations here and there. He’d completely swept me off my feet. I was the deepest shade of green you could imagine and met someone who was street smart and a player and knew exactly how to manipulate my naivety; talk about putty in someone’s hands! I didn’t know he was psychotic, or had been behind bars, or was an ex-boxer, or was addicted to betting on the horses, or came from a family of five brothers living on and off in a small council house, with a mother desperately trying to cling on to the reins. I didn’t know that he had a sort of sugar daddy who worshipped him and funded his gambling and rent arrears out of his own meagre pension and hated me from the first moment he set eyes on me. I didn’t know any of that; all I knew was that he was the handsomest man I’d ever seen and after one night at one of his hook-up’s houses, after he had begged him to let us use a room, I was completely hooked. 

The timing was appalling. I’d just qualified as a teacher and had my first job in a town a few miles away. I had my own bedsit, my independence and loved the work I was doing. I was already set for promotion and my working future looked rosy. Pat ruined all that within six months. I should have taken the hint after a furious row during the morning after the first night before. I even walked away, horrified at the appalling arrogance of the man and the already evident aggression. The fact that I believed his apologies after he ran after me and swore undying love and unremitting attention, was a mistake that I lived to regret.

Funnily enough, looking back in many ways, I don’t regret it now. I grew up in those three years and I needed to and there’s no doubt that part of who I am now was forged through those harsh lessons. The road through life might have been easier and I would have avoided losing my job and my family and any other friends I used to have but in a perverse way, Pat taught me how to survive and read people in a way that I wonder if I could have done on my own. 

It was the beatings that I still carry the scars from, both mental and physical. I’m convinced that half of my current back problems come from his thumping me repeatedly on the back instead of the face, because I had to go to school and face a class the next morning. He would take out his rage on me and until that rage was spent, there wasn’t much I could do about it. In the beginning I fought back but I was out of my league and of course, the classic apologies and promises never to do it again always worked. Now I know I fit the profile of a classic abusee but I didn’t see it then. 

There came a point where it was too late and I couldn’t get out. The love changed to fear but I’d burned my boats with the schools, who got sick of my constant absences due to illness and I ended up on sickness benefit. I’d also turned my back on my family after a disastrous visit, during which Pat started an argument with them, as he loved to do with virtually anyone. My mother couldn’t take the swearing and the aggression and I ran out in sheer horror and shame. I learned later that Pat had added a few other choice home truths after I had gone and after that I couldn’t face them again. 

So there I was, living in his family home with battle-worn siblings and his mother who, in her own way, tried to take me under her wing. I had no job, I’d cut the ties with my family; I had nowhere to go. I had to adapt pretty damn quickly and learned what it was like to, shall we say, live on the other side of the tracks. I learned about honour amongst thieves and the fierce loyalty his family had towards each other. Luckily, his brothers were sympathetic. It was never mentioned that Pat and I were gay, although it must have been obvious. Pat was their brother and I was his partner and that’s all that was important to them; the rest of the world had better watch out with their comments.

We went down to London a couple of times to get jobs and I built up experience in different trades (supermarket manager, record shop manager etc). Again, I’m grateful for that. A teacher often goes from kindergarten to his pension without ever leaving a school situation and it’s frequently true when they say that a teacher is a man amongst children but a child amongst men. The problem was that Pat could never hold down a job and was repeatedly fired for starting rows and being aggressive. He’d take out his frustrations on me via alcohol and the beatings got worse. One day after turning up for work with a black eye and broken nose, the penny began to drop. 

To cut a long and painful story short, I eventually walked out on him; rang my parents and begged their forgiveness for two years of silence and asked if I could come home. To my astonishment, they later told me that they were convinced rough, tough, macho Pat was gay but didn’t ever suspect I was! Go figure! They protected me whilst I got myself together, got back into teaching, got my own place and got my life back on track.

What I didn’t know was that they had to put up with months of a drunken Pat ringing them, threatening them and abusing both them and me and once even turning up on the doorstep. Thank God they had the strength to put up with all that while making sure I never knew about it. It was only later when I came out to them and told them the whole story that they in turn told me about the aftermath of the break up. 

So why did I put up with all that crap for so long? Why would any sane and supposedly intelligent person allow his life to be dismantled and his body to be regularly battered in this way? Well, I could write a whole article about my theories as to why Pat was the way he was; a psychologist could have a field day but in the end you have to own your own mistakes and face up to the fact that it is nobody’s fault but your own. I was so naïve and my life experience had never prepared me for someone like Pat. I was in love, at least for the first year, after which I was in too deep and I was forever finding excuses for his behaviour.

From what I read now, these are classic avoidance techniques and classic abuser and abusee scenarios. My naivety also led me to romanticise the situation somewhat. His life and background was a sort of exotic ‘otherness’, with enough danger to make it exciting; it was almost seductive.

Only after the reality became apparent did all that nonsense disappear and it became a question of making the best of a very bad job. Perversely, although he was the beast personified in the outside world, he was passive sexually (more food for the psychologist). I’m sure that made him hate himself and by extension me even more but there you go, I just wasn’t aware what went on in the mind of a psychopath. 

There will be people reading this who make instant judgements. Yes I should have left him after the first fists were raised but nobody ever got away with threatening me in that way again – lesson learned! I’m not a masochist either; that was never a part of the equation. Yes, I should have been more responsible concerning my job and family; why would I put both in such a situation where they had to deal with my failure? I should have reported Pat to the police, or gone to a social worker. That’s possible today but in 1971, it was much more difficult. The police would laugh you out of the station and social services just weren’t equipped for same sex violence (they could barely protect people in heterosexual abusive relationships). Battered women’s shelters didn’t even exist and believe it or not, I still had enough pride to know that you didn’t go running to the authorities if you were being abused by your boyfriend.

One in three LGBT people are apparently still being abused by their partners. Believe me, it isn’t just physical abuse either. (One of Pat’s favourite tricks was to humiliate me in public by exposing my weaknesses in a sort of reverse snobbism.) Verbal abuse can be just as damaging although the scars are mainly on the inside and not visible to the outside world.

There’s clearly still a taboo round the subject. So, if it’s really true that a third of gay people are being abused by partners, why aren’t we hearing about it? Social workers will tell you that it’s a big problem which they do their best to deal with but society as a whole is far from sympathetic to the woes of the ‘sissy being slapped by his boy or girl friend’. Yet bullies can take all shapes and forms and same-sex bullies aren’t interested in having you as an equal partner, they search for conquests and possessions; people they can call their own property. It’s a mind- trip, a kick, a compensation tactic, call it what you will but if you’re on the receiving end, it can damage you for life.

Last week, I read a comment on an HIV forum that many young people wish older guys would stop giving in to the urge to tell their life stories…enough already! I get it, I really do. We come from a different generation, different circumstances and different truths and continually pushing the past into youngsters’ faces will of course turn them off big time. My point in writing this piece is that some things are universal and belong to every generation.

One in three LGBT people suffer abuse from their partners in 2013! Let that sink in for a minute. If it’s only half true, it’s shocking and proof that the stigmas and taboos are not confined to HIV. Surely, we as a community should be addressing this social cancer amongst us, or should we sweep it under the carpet like every generation before us?

Telling my own story has not been easy for me. I’m still ashamed that I let it happen (I’m blushing as I write) and with hindsight, which is a wonderful thing, I should have been strong enough to get out early but if one person reading this recognises the signs and makes the right decisions, then maybe it’s been worthwhile.

Remember, you can be outwardly the butchest creation on God’s earth and be regarded by society as a rock and someone who could deal with anything but behind closed doors, you could still be subject to someone else’s sadistic tendencies and living in your own private hell. It needs to be talked about and it needs exposing, so that people feel safe enough to get help if they need it. Unfortunately, breaking down society’s silence and disdain, is so much easier said than done. 

“You're only as sick as your secrets, but the truth shall set you free...” (via David Geffen).

Recently I was invited to my friend Mike’s birthday celebration. He decided that he wanted to relive his childhood. For him that meant renting a soccer field at the local sports complex. For Soccer? No, for dodge ball. That’s right, dodge ball. 

Imagine, if you will, a soccer field filled with roughly fifteen gay men reliving their junior high gym class nightmares. We rocked out to Taylor Dayne, Michael Jackson, and Madonna and to top it off, some of us took the 80s reference to the max by wearing sweatbands and florescent tights. If you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and just sit with that image for a minute. Now imagine us being gawked at by group of hard-core South American soccer players who just finished their game. 

As much as I would love to joke about the actual event, because it is kind of ridiculous, I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun! The fun increased doubly when halfway through our game, two new players arrived: Brad and Mark. Both were incredibly handsome, built, and just plain hot. I assumed that they were a couple and did what any adolescent minded person would do: I made them my constant dodge ball targets. What was it that our parent’s always told us? “Those who pick on you, like you the most.”  Soon it seemed that Brad felt the same way. Did they want me to be their Lucky Pierre? Well, either that or he was hired as some sort of dodge ball hit man and I was his only target.  I was so confused. 

After the last balls were thrown we decided to head to a local sports bar to boast about our day, like any good jocks would do. From across the table I heard Mark talking about his boyfriend. So maybe no Lucky Pierre, but there was still the possibility of Brad! Two beers down and as we were falling off our chairs reminiscing about the day, Mike looked at me with wide eyes and mouthed, “Look at your phone!” It felt like I was in study hall all over again when I picked up my phone and there was a text from Mike: “Brad is crushing on you. Hard.” I felt like writing on my napkin, ‘Do you like me? Circle yes or no.’ 

I didn’t even speak to Brad for the duration of our time at bar. Around 5pm and we all decided to disperse and meet up again later at another friend’s birthday party at Bamboo 52 in Hell’s Kitchen.  After much deliberation on what to wear, Mike and I arrived to the second birthday party. Brad finally showed up about an hour later and as if we were back in Junior High Mike said, “Brad, why don’t you sit next to me?” Which landed him right next to me. Unfortunately, the Junior High quality of our interactions did not end there.  All of a sudden, with no more than three words spoken to each other, we were a couple. There was no in-depth conversation.  There was no courtship. There was no copulation. Hell, we hadn’t even played MASH.  But there we were and he would be draped over me for the entire evening.  

At first I didn’t mind it: I actually enjoyed having all this attention being paid to me. Very soon it became quite annoying. I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t talk to anyone else. Before too long I was trying to make eye contact with my other friends hoping they would rescue me. I assume they were trying to be polite and not looking at us afraid they might interrupt. 

As that party ended and we all left for another bar, I decided to make a break for it and head home. I thought at least this way I could finally find some peace. Alas, Brad said, “I have to get up early and I will go with you.” Mike patted me on the back and walked away without seeing the obvious look of distress on my face. 

We hopped on the train home and I made it obvious that I really was exhausted and had an early day, so I was going straight home. The one thing that kept on going through my mind was something that my father said to me when I was a teenager. I didn’t have the best relationship with my father, but god was he right…

‘Be careful what you ask for’.

Whether it’s the miserable weather in Philadelphia right now or it’s the fact that I feel like I’m rapidly approaching that point in my life where I’m about to become a solidly single adult man without any prospect of getting married “young,” I am in a contemplative mood about my own sexuality, romantic attachments (or lack thereof), and my own mortality. Certainly, I recognize that this might sound histrionic or hysterical; after all, by all estimates, I have a solid forty years ahead of me at least as a talking primate. Notwithstanding, as each day passes, this biological alarm sounds louder and louder in my head. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you find someone? Why do you keep just having sex with strangers? Why do you act like this is fun when, really, you’re constantly alone even when you’re in a room full of people? What is wrong with you (again)? 

Recently, I went on a few dates with a, in my eyes, beautiful man with perfect teeth and an ethics system in line with Immanuel Kant. We talked for hours about our positions on public policy, about our education, about our families. And, I was incredibly attracted to him; after all, although he was a few years younger than I am, a fact that goes against my typical dating behavior, he was charming. In particular, he seemed to stay in constant motion much like I try to do. We sat in the cafe that I’ve been coming to for over a decade, a business that I’ve seen shutter its doors twice before settling, seemingly, on the right formula in its current state. In fact, I remember coming here as a young gay teenager, shaking like a leaf as I walked around Philadelphia’s Gayborhood, nervously looking for other people like me.

At last, when I found this place in 2001, a cafe where I felt safe, the clientele was seemingly gay, and I was comfortable enough to look at other men I found attractive while still being able to stay away in my own aloofness, I planted in that place. Over a decade later, I sat there with this man and every part of me wanted simply to hold his hand and to convey that things were going to be alright; that the stress he was talking about was something that he would soon get over, that he deserved to be happy, and that he simply had to be open to happiness in order to be happy.

At that moment, I realized that I was trying to talk to myself from years ago; that the selfish way I had sexualized this man and developed feelings for him was really part of myself kicking and screaming in furious idiocy against the mistakes that I have made in my own life. I was, seemingly, begging for another chance, pleading with fate, time, or god himself to allow me to save myself one last time.

“Please, have mercy, understand that I really mean it this time, please just let me try this again,” were the words I meant to say when I was trying to be engaging, interested, and aware of my date. Of course, in life, there exist no real second chances; we have no ability to have a gimme, a do-over, or a revision. Instead, we have to build upon the scar tissue that we inflict on ourselves, either in our heads or in our hearts. More specifically, we cannot erase these wounds or somehow wipe them away completely; rather, we must work around them or build, clumsily, on top of them, layering ourselves with experience after experience, painful circumstance after painful circumstance, joyous laugh after joyous laugh. Truly, there exists no do-over, and while there are things I painfully wish I could regret, I cannot, for without these circumstances, I would not be feeling these things as I do now.

“Our sexuality builds on itself; it is not just the same thing over and over,” said Conner Habib, the brilliantly self-aware and analytical gay porn star I saw speak yesterday at an event sponsored by Philadelphia’s Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative at the William Way LGBT Community Center. And, like my sexuality, my identity is not the same thing over and over; instead, it keeps building on top of itself. Like sitting with that young man in the cafe, I sat at the William Way LGBT Community Center surrounded by my past. In particular, I sat next to the bathroom that I raised the necessary funds to build before I lost my job for my drunkenness and past active alcoholism, a “secret” that critics of mine routinely gossip about or snipe about, typically drunkenly or bitterly, to themselves.

Throughout the sex-positive seminar, Habib talked about the importance of, for communication’s sake, taking the physical off the table entirely and, instead, focusing on our growth as sexual beings, what sexuality looks like in our minds and in our hearts. And, I talked with a few people near me during a breakout session about how our sexuality has developed, and how, personally, my own is now outwardly boring compared to my past sexuality.

More specifically, I realized that young man that I once was, the one who went overboard in relation sex, drugs, and alcohol in order to stay in constant motion, is not dead as I let myself to believe. Instead, he is simply the scar tissue upon which I’ve become a “grown up.” And, upon this foundation full of very interesting stories, some emotionally devastating, others life-affirming, and still others hilariously slapstick, I navigate the world as a sexually active gay man, coming into contact with my past every single day, letting these memories wash over me, sometimes allowing them to churn for a moment and dissipate swiftly or, like today, letting them bubble quietly and constantly.

And, while these wounds are no longer open, they have scarred my identity to a point where I must build upon them or no longer advance personally as a man. Indeed, as I get older everyday, I confront the stubborn reality that there really is no “around” but instead there are plenty of “throughs.” Whether or not others recognize this about themselves is a whole other matter altogether; at the end of the day, though, one thing is obvious.

I have no other option than moving forward, both sexually and emotionally.

This article originally appeared in Josh’s own blog here.  

When I first was diagnosed as HIV+, I remember being thankful for all the infrastructure in place to help me ensure that I wasn’t going to die of AIDS.  Whether it was through Philadelphia’s AIDS Activities Coordination Office or my initial visits to Philadelphia FIGHT, I received a care and attention that, just a decade or two ago, would be considered remarkable.  And, thanks to scientific advancements by pharmaceutical companies like Gilead, in part because of the United States government’s tardy, but right, confrontation of HIV/AIDS, my life expectancy is around 70, and I experience mild, if any, side effects.  Even more gratifying is the fact that these side effects have seemingly subsided now that I’ve been on medication for several months and am, happily, undetectable.  This means that, so long as I keep taking my once-a-day single pill Complera, there exists no measurable amount of HIV in my bloodstream, that I am, effectively, neutered from passing on HIV to anyone else, even if I have bareback sex, and that HIV cannot hurt me, generally. 

At the time of my diagnosis, though, I remember thinking, “Now, how am I supposed to have sex?” 

Notwithstanding all the tools, helpful professionals, and worthy mission-driven organizations here in Philadelphia, I was still at a loss as to how, exactly, I was supposed to navigate the gay sex and dating world in modern, iPhone hook up app based society.  In fact, I effectively tabled this personal discussion I was having with myself in favor of overtly sexual, overtly bareback, and thus only HIV+ majority population, sexual situations.  For example, there was a solid year where I would only go to bathhouses and sex parties for sexual gratification; after all, in an environment where everyone is barebacking, where everyone is specifically there to have sex, and where everyone, like it or not, has implicitly offered their informed consent to engage in these behaviors by their very participation in these behaviors, there is no need to say, “Excuse me, sir, but before you put your condomless penis into my anus, I’d like to show you my most recent results from Labcorp in Raritan, NJ, which detail that my CD4 count is a little low but that my HIV viral load is undetectable.”

Frankly, personal health matters are of little relevance or concern in overtly sexual, and bareback, environments, and anyone who claims anything to the contrary either doesn’t participate in these activities, and as such has no stakeholdership in the discussion, or they are complete and utter hypocrites (reformed pigs who hilariously take a “Do as I say, not as I have done” attitude in relation to HIV prevention, and who often make a living offering bad advice that won’t be used by anyone, I’m looking at you.  Many of you are HIV+ for a reason, and it isn’t because you had conservative sexual tastes.)

Even so, the longer I’ve been HIV+, the more traditional and, admittedly, boring I have become in relation to my sex and dating.  After all, at the end of the day, you can have all the piggish fun you want in a sling, but nobody who happens by your room at the bathhouse is going to want to cuddle or make dinner for you.  That isn’t to say these behaviors are bad; in fact, I routinely affirm that these exploits in bathhouses and sex parties are natural, fun, and, if done for the right reasons, perfectly healthy.  Yet, I still grapple with the best way to figure out how to easily normalize my relations with monogamy, dating, and more traditional concepts of coupling with my HIV status.  This tightrope walk of being honest with potential sex partners and boyfriends while still casting a net wide enough to actually engage in sex and dating is one that, I think, a great many of us who are HIV+ table, like I did, in favour of situations where we don’t even have to address it (like bathhouses.)  And, when we do try to be open, honest, and informative with our sex and dating partners, the results are, quite often, disheartening.

For instance, recently, I got a man’s number in a local gay bar.  We flirted relentlessly, and we both were obviously sexually attracted to each other.  So, just as our later text conversation started delving into matters that were the standard precursor to engaging in naked time together, I disclosed my HIV status.  His reaction was, at least in my insecure HIV focused insecurity based mind, predictable.  Feigning ambivalence, he, nonetheless, tellingly grew rather cool in the previously hot rapid fire text messaging conversation.  Then, he stopped messaging me altogether.  And, finally, in an attempt to salvage his politeness, said that he was tired.

Now, as I stated, I could entirely be infusing my own preconceived insecurities onto this man who very may well have been tired and entirely fine with my HIV status.  Or, as is the case with a large enough number of potential partners for me to write about it today, situations of which I have literally scores of conversation screenshots that I could chronicle in annoying detail here, he got spooked at the my mentioning of HIV and, in order to play the part of accepting, open-minded progressive, he feigned ambivalence, ran for the hills, and blamed being tired for our 180 away from having sex.  This approach, if that’s the case, while well-meaning, is annoying and compounds the difficulty those of us living with HIV already face in relation to sex and dating.  Frankly, I would much rather someone say, “Ick, gay plague,” and dismiss me summarily rather than “Oh that’s fine *oh god please no*, I’m okay with it *oh god can you get it from kissing?*”  After all, time is a premium for those of us facing death if we don’t continue to have wide, and free, access to antiretroviral medication.

This type of experience, of trying to do the right thing in disclosing and receiving little, if any, benefit to disclosing reinforces my, unfortunately relationship limiting and hostile-to-cuddling, default attraction to overtly sexual, overtly bareback outlets through which to meet men and have sex.

 Make no mistake, I am not complaining about this reality, nor am I demanding that the world do something.  Instead, I’m simply politely suggesting that we should be a little more candid with each other; I truly would never want to put anyone in a position where they were tolerating having sex with me under the ridiculous notion that they had to prove their compassionate bona fides.  Conversely, I would hope that others wouldn’t want to put me in a position where I see little benefit to disclosing my HIV status or where others blatantly lie about their status in order to have sex.  This latter group is rampant, based only my anecdotal and admittedly unscientific, personal knowledge, and while I agree with these men in that there is no statistically significant or scientifically probable chance of their transmitting HIV to sexual partners, and thus the idea of HIV status is, essentially, moot, I still cannot very well reconcile my own demands of candor and honesty along with finding sex partners and dates under false, and disrespectful, premises.

Then again, the guys who don’t talk about HIV whatsoever are also the ones who are, seemingly, having a lot more sex than I am.  So, what do I know?

This article originally appeared on Josh’s own blog here.