Late at night, I research and write by myself so I can avoid confronting the fact that I am alone, typically until I pass out from exhaustion. Gradually through the evening, as sources for my stories and colleagues I’m collaborating with over long-term projects go to bed themselves, I’m left alone at my computer, occasionally Googling a fact that I’m curious about; tonight, I learned about the history of Prussia.

Thoughts randomly piece themselves together until a great idea hits me, I write it down, and then my aimless reading continues. Sometimes, I’m chasing a lead and poring over ethics complaints and campaign finance disclosure forms. Other times, I’m refreshing my knowledge of American or military history. And, tonight, I purposefully watched the digital clock on my computer until 12:00 AM hit to reach another year of sobriety from alcohol; today, May 6, is the day that I decided years ago that I was finally done with drinking. 

At one point in my life, I had a good job serving my community, a good partner whose boundless compassion and understanding was remarkable, a quaint suburban home, and a good network of friends with reputable backgrounds and even more respectable jobs. Yet, during that very same period of my life, and for years prior, I had generally functioned as an alcoholic.

Somehow, I had always managed to apologize away the missteps, the rare flashes of rage, and the endless sadness, literally bouts of uncontrollable sobbing, that inevitably ensued when I became drunk. At some inexact point years ago, however, the functioning component of my alcoholism started to disintegrate and more of my work was sloppy, more dinners with my husband were missed, more hangovers caused more missed trains, and, eventually, I lost the very thing that I so desperately wanted my entire life: love.

Jung said that we do not wish to hear someone say “I love you” but, instead, “I understand you.” And, for me, this is a truth that I have found only once in my life and that was because it was coupled with love. Sometimes, I will hear someone inexperienced with long-term relationships wax poetically about the perfect nature of his newest adventure; candidly, I indulge myself in these sophomoric romps to, feel, at least for a short while, capricious and giddy. Indeed, there is a fleeting joy in being, for all intents and purposes, idiotically infatuated. But, the one thing that I rarely hear and have never uttered in years is the sincere, and quiet, appreciation of imperfection inherent in love and understanding between two human beings: the pensive tics, the bedhead cowlicks, the sometimes terrible sense of humor, the earnest goodwill found in whomever you truly love.

These imperfections are the essence of the love that we truly seek, whether we know this or not is irrelevant because it is true. And, at one point in my life, I had this love. Though, being an alcoholic, and a particularly nasty, narcissistic one at that, I threw that all away in exchange for doing whatever I wanted to do. This is, indeed, the surest way to destroy a relationship.

Let no maudlin drunk or repentant (at least today) sinner convince you otherwise: we do things as human beings not because we are compelled by nature or illness but, instead, because we choose to do these things.

We cheat on our wives because we are lustful and, for some reason, decide to not have a candid conversation about a non-monogamous yet loving relationship. We steal from public coffers because we desire greater wealth and material instead of appreciating the things we have and choosing to live within our means. We belittle others because we have the power to do so and can feel better about ourselves in the process, and there is no complexity in our motivation anymore than there is complexity in the fact that we must sleep every night as it is our biological function. Whether or not we choose to resist these motivations, to instead cultivate the noblest components we are endowed with is entirely our decision. We are not powerless nor are we weak. On the contrary, we are empowered to deliberately make decisions that have inevitable consequences, be they good or bad.

And this is the most frightening part of being human.

If we are not compelled by force to behave in a terrible way, then we have chosen to deliberately defy our ethics and the better parts of our innate characters and have opted, instead, to give in to the most repugnant and damaging aspects of our animal nature. We become drunkards, drug addicts, narcissists, mean-spirited misanthropes, or, as is typical, whiny, weak-kneed explainers who would rather use these very tools of manipulation, drink for instance, to excuse away our behavior disingenuously rather than confront the fact that our characters are, at least for some of us, inherently predisposed toward unethical acts. This predisposition is not immutable; we can change how we behave and how we cope with life in order to focus our energies in more socially acceptable and rewarding ways. Some folks call this cognitive behavioral therapy; others call it Alcoholics Anonymous. Personally, I call it ethics.

As the years go by and the length of time between the last time I was drunk and “now” continues to increase, I realize that I know very little considering I have experienced so much. Oddly, my knowledge seems to have an inverse proportional relationship to my age and experience; and, this is unnerving. For if part of getting older is recognizing that you are fully responsible for your mistakes, then you must logically realize that you are where you are because of, mostly, your own actions combined with a small number of lucky encounters.

These small chances, these opportunities presented by chance, fate, or God himself, are often hard to identify, but they exist and your actions in response propel your own trajectory down one of many different paths presented to you.

Personally, I chose an unhappy path for a very long period of time, a path that unfairly involved others to a tragic degree. And, I cannot change this, nor can I possibly ever find redemption for these actions and words. Rather, I can simply try harder and hope that those opportunities I once had will present themselves again only in a more recognizable fashion with, I assume, a different set of characters. Hopefully, I will recognize these opportunities more perceptively than I did when I was an active drunk, otherwise I am destined to repeat my mistakes and the idea of happiness, of that love, will always be the dream that I put off every evening, opting instead to read about history or write about politics until I fall asleep.

Today, I am still sober. And, I am still putting off going to bed. Even so, it is much easier being alone sober than it is drunkenly sobbing. And, for that, I am glad I made the choice to continue my sobriety today. I expect that this will continue for some time; after all, you get quite used to not drinking and, interestingly enough, are sort of puzzled after a while why people drink at all, or why you did it in the first place. Then again, there is no puzzle to it.

We do these things because we want to do them.

This article first appeared on Josh's own blog here.

California! I just got back from California for the second time – and it was awesome; I didn’t want to come back. My friends and I went to Palm Springs, Laguna Beach and Los Angeles. 

In Palm Springs, when we got there, the temperature was 39 degrees Celsius. It was hot, hot hot! We had rented a house since there were five of us. The house was beautiful, with a great pool, which we spent much time in. We made tasty drinks, and had tasty snacks. I got a great tan. 

My one friend who lives in L.A didn’t know I had HIV. I decided to use the opportunity to tell her. But first she was talking about how flaming my outfit was - pink shirt and lime green capri pants, and then for the pool I was wearing super short swim shorts. She said she didn’t remember me dressing like this. I told her I am so much more comfortable with myself now. She asked “what changed?” and I told her about the group therapy program I did last year and then I told her I have HIV. 

I was scared she might react badly, as she can be abrupt and abrasive sometimes. But instead she said, “I’m sorry and I love you” and hugged me.  And then we all had a big group hug and that was that. It was awesome; a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and we continued like nothing happened. I have amazing friends! 

We tried to go shopping in Palm Springs but it was way too hot. We walked around for twenty minutes and decided to retreat back to the house. Nothing like a nice cold beer to cool you off. We spent four great days in Palm Springs. It was amazing just to relax and not have to worry about anything nor feel obligated to do anything. 

We then headed off to Laguna. I love Laguna; it is such a cute beach town, right on the ocean, with lots of cute, unique shops.  But one shop I didn’t like because the owner was insane! 

I tell my (women) friends I am going to go take a look  at a mens clothing store I’d seen. They head down the block. I was wearing pink shoes, lime green manpris (capris) and a pink shirt. As soon as I walk in, the woman in the store comes over and says “You’re so obviously not afraid of colour, this will be so much fun.” I smile and think “cool, she seems easy going.” 

She starts grabbing clothes - pants, shirts, and shorts - puts her arm around me and shoves me into the dressing room. I humour her. First I try on the shorts. I hear her say “my rule is you have to come out and show me.” I hate aggressive sales people, so I‘m annoyed but I humour her. I show her the shorts and shirts. I try on the pants, I love the pants! They are magically soft. I look at the price tag. My heart leaps, $185 for a pair of pants! I go out and show her, she swoons over them. I have to admit my butt look fabulous in them, I would do me. 

I go back in the dressing room and try to take them off but they are too tight. What if I can’t get them off? I will have to buy them. But I’m not paying $185 for a pair of pants. I’m struggling, trying not to grunt and I’m sweating profusely. After what feels like an hour, I breathe a sigh of relief and get those expensive things off my body. 

I hear another customer come in; I think to myself I can escape without buying anything. I slowly open the door and try to make a break for it. She cuts me off and stops me. Damn it, I was so close! She says “so are you going to take everything?” I reply “unfortunately not, I'm at the end of my vacation and the clothes are just too expensive. I really love the pants but I just can’t.” She takes me to the till and says, “what if I give you $30 off, that’s 16% off?” I tell her that’s generous but I can’t. She says, “what if I give you 25% off?. I tell her that I appreciate her offer but I have to think about it. 

Now she gets bitchy: “well I can’t give you anymore than that.” I tell her “I appreciate you offering but, like I said, I need to think about it..” I try to walk away but she follows me out of the store. I am ready to snap; this is way too aggressive! She says, “think about how much you spend on other things like food, you just have to decide what’s more important.” I just smile and quickly walk away. I thank my lucky stars I've escaped. 

After that we went to The Montage Hotel (for super rich people) for lunch, a very expensive lunch. My two mojitos and my steak melt sandwich and fries came to $74 with tip, but  worth every penny. They were the best mojitos I have ever tasted. My sandwich was amazing and the atmosphere and view of the ocean were great. Great too that my $74 went to food and not that crazy woman in the store. 

Then on to L.A. Our friend that was with us lives in L.A so we stayed at her place. The first night we went out for the best sushi I ever had, so yummy. My L.A friend ordered mussels – and  nicknamed them car tires, for good reason. They convinced me to try one, I quickly regretted it. My face cringed; I opened my mouth and shoved it in. I immediately wanted to cry. I couldn’t swallow it, I just couldn’t. I spat it out and quickly drank a lot of beer. 

The next day our L.A friend, who is Korean, took us out for Korean barbeque. In the middle of the table is a grill that you cook the various meats on. You get an insane amount of Korean side dishes and condiments. It was delicious, but I ate way too much.  We were walking to the car and I kept rubbing my belly like a pregnant lady. 

We decided to head to Trader Joes to pick up supplies for making mojitos. We get there and all of a sudden my stomach is angry, very angry. I yell I have to poop, now! Trader Joes doesn’t have bathrooms. I run across the street to this fancy burger joint. There is a waitress right there “ Can I seat you?" she asks. I try to casually walk to the washroom, clenching my ass as tight as I can. After I’m done I open the door and try to sneak out, but she is right around the corner.  “Where would you like to sit?” she asks  “Actually I just came in to get a pop.” “A what? Oh sorry, you just want a soda., “Yes that’s all I want”. She totally knows I came in there just to use their toilet. Whatever, the $2.35 was worth it to be able to not shit myself. 

It was a great trip and I am sad it’s over but I am also thankful that I am so fortunate that I get to travel. I had a great time. 

I think I am riding on a wave of good Karma and if that’s true, I am really enjoying the ride! It’s not a tsunami wave, it’s a simple, gentle wave with small things happening with large rewards.

Today, I went downtown for the raising of the Pride flag at City Hall. This is the first time I’ve done this, and I’ve lived here for the better part of 32 years. I went mostly because I saw a photo opportunity  - and I did get a few good ones. When I was wrapping up, I looked over my shoulder and there was a young guy watching me.

He began to tell me, “This has got to be one of the most powerful statements any city can make”, pointing to the flag. There it was, flying next to the city flag and the Canadian flag. There was another flag that he thought was some sort of British flag. I felt I had to tell him it was the Ontario Provincial flag. He went on to say, what an experience it was that I could be there taking a picture of that flag, proudly flying next to all the others, only in Canada. In other countries it wouldn’t be celebrated in the same way.

This whole experience made me think back to 2011 Toronto Pride, I had taken a photo of the Pride flag with the Canadian flag (see below) that I was so proud to have taken. It was seen by a writer who wanted to use it in a story he wrote. It was an honour to have it included in a story about Pride.  I agreed to it right away. I have since donated a copy of it for a silent auction at a local fundraiser last year.

In a true “social media experience” I saw a link on my facebook that led me to another link for a site that one of my contacts was following called Fierté Canada Pride. Right away I noticed their profile photo, I clicked on it to see a larger version of it and sure enough, it was the same photo of the two flags. I thought about other photographers I’ve met who would be upset someone used their photos without permission or compensation.  For me, if it’s for an HIV cause or to promote Pride, then please use it. I volunteer to do all photos for my local AIDS Service Organizations for most of our events. It’s a way of giving back for a lot of what they have done for me. I sent the site a private message letting them know that it was my photo and that it looked great on their site and to enjoy it.

So giving in this way is a large reward for me. Karma, what you give out, you will get back. Beautiful!

The most positive Karma experience happened about a week and a half ago.  I was out taking pictures at the local University Arboretum. I had been there for an hour or so, just sitting at the picnic table trying to catch the birds flying in and away from the feeder. I noticed a few people coming through the area. I talked to a couple of them, just a hello.

Then I noticed a couple  of guys. They looked around, then sat down on a bench to the right of me. They were around my age. I had this feeling that maybe I knew them as they fit the general description of a couple of guys I once chummed around with. One was a friend I had hoped to reconnect with, someone I hadn’t seen in about 15 years. I had made a commitment at a recent retreat back in February to try to re-connect. I had found an old phone number, but misplaced it.

So, after about 10-15 minutes, I decided to pack up and go say hello, see if it was that old friend. I turned around to see they were on their way out of the area, so I had to hurry. I managed to catch up and I called out the friend’s name. He turned around and said, “pardon me?” I said his name again and he looked at me. Then he said, “don’t tell me, give me a minute”. It was him, and like me, a little older a little more grey. He lives in another nearby city; we hadn’t seen each other in maybe 15 years and there we were, in the least of all expected places. I go to this place so often. We tried to catch up but he was in a hurry to go somewhere, said he had an appointment, he gave me his cell number and I was to call him.

This has to be the most genuine form of Karma ever, or was it “fate”? Could they be the same thing?  To move forward now I realize that I will need to do some apologizing to him. I can’t go into the reason for the separation but I wasn’t the person I am today. I didn’t know or use empathy or compassion very well then, hell most times I can’t say I had any awareness of it. I am aware that it may not be the same friendship it was before, but it could be. We can’t get into the same trouble  - or can we?

I spend a lot of time on the internet, but I am trying to get out more. Now that the weather is cooperating it’s been easier. Photography has become a social affair; I get to meet other photographers or people asking what I’m taking pictures of and they share stories of their own. One gentleman and his wife last night suggested I join the seniors’ centre, they have a photography club and I could win the photo of the week. I do qualify, you need to be 55 and over, and I am over.

So I’m trying to put a finger on what it is I’m doing and I don’t see many great things. I think a lot of it is just staying positive, avoiding the negatives. If you want things to add up in life, avoid the negatives. I have seen how people treat me by the way I treat them, I do it all so differently now. I made many bad choices in my life and tasted the bad Karma on those occasions, so yes, the good Karma is working for me now.

So I’ll sign off here and since Pride season is kicking off around the world, Happy Pride everyone.

“Seed is a gift, it’s love, it’s acceptance. Taking a man’s cum – in your ass, down your throat, rubbed into your skin, whatever - even if you don’t know his name, is closeness. It’s an act of love and trust.  Even if yawl just met. Both the bottom and the top will walk away smiling . . . and content. Now it’s a sleazy affair that boys get cracked out of their mind for. Like it’s an embarrassing nasty secret thing to want. This is so fucked.”

From HIV-positive bareback blogger Geek Slut, quoted in "Unlimited Intimacy  . .". .

Recently writer Tim Dean gave a presentation on the subculture of barebacking and its mores to an attentive audience of 200 at the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Summit in Toronto.  PositiveLite.com editor Bob Leahy caught up with him afterwards and sat down with him for this frank talk.

Bob Leahy: Tim. Thank you for talking to PositiveLite.com – and welcome to Toronto. I’d like to talk to you about your book first of all.  Tell me, how did you come to write about barebacking? What interested you there?

Tim Dean:  I came to write that book because I was living in the Bay Area of San Francisco and I was going out a lot and having a lot of sex – this was in the late 90s – and what I encountered in public sex environments were lots of guys who wanted me to cum inside of them. There was never a conversation about status, there was never a conversation about condoms, and I realized fairly quickly that this was something new in the history of the epidemic that I needed to think about — to think about what was involved and what had changed.

There is a substantial body of research that went in to the book.  Tell me about your research method.  How did you gather the information - through conventional methods?

I would say they were not very conventional methods. Much of the information was what I gleaned from personal experience, that is, hanging out in sex bars, sex clubs, bathhouses to a lesser extent, and also talking to people. That’s something I do in my life and I was using that material to reflect on. I also got very interested in bareback pornography and was able to use my training as a critic to analyze what is going on in this kind of pornography, what makes it different from other kinds of pornography.

Let’s talk about the bareback porn industry in a minute. Writing the book, you chose very consciously to be non-judgemental, is that right? You could have injected your own views in to it, but you chose to be descriptive.  Why did you do that?

That was a very important decision on my part, influenced by two things. One was to take a kind of anthropological approach to the study of sexual subcultures, where you limit what you can learn if you decide ahead of time whether something is good or bad, positive or negative. The other was a kind of psycho-analytic influence where the suspension of judgment allows thinking to achieve its full potential so that it was very, very important to me not to judge.

And what was the reaction to that approach? In your refusal to judge, did people think it sounded like you were endorsing barebacking?

Yes, some people did. And the fact that I wanted to write about this subculture without judging it and on the other hand saying that I’m also participating in this subculture, the refusal to judge was often understood as a kind of backhanded way of endorsing or excusing what I was doing.  I didn’t see it that way at all.  For me, it was an ethical decision to suspend judgement. Some people got that.  Some people read it differently.

So did it feel comfortable writing from the perspective of a participant in the barebacking culture? It’s kind of brave, I think.

It seemed sort of inevitable, in the sense that a lot of what I found out, I found out by doing it. Certainly in the literature I read at the time on “unsafe/unprotected sex” it was always assumed that somebody else was doing it, it was others who barebacked. It was very important to me to dispel that illusion. I was not going to be closet-y about the fact that I was barebacking. There is still a stigma attached to it and it’s hard to come out as somebody who enjoys bareback sex. But I don’t think we actually get anywhere by pretending we are not doing things . . . 

OK, let’s talk more about this. We haven’t defined barebacking.  Are we talking about people who identify as barebackers, part of a barebacking culture, or people who slip up occasionally - or both?

I used the decision when writing the book to use the term “barebackers” very broadly, to cover both the subculture and also people who may not consider themselves ‘barebackers” but who sometimes or occasionally do have sex without condoms, or want to have sex without condoms. It’s too easy to place the blame on a small subset who are very committed barebackers and I wanted to avoid that by using the term broadly.

I wanted to ask you about the allure of barebacking. There are so many stigmas and potential risks, why do people do it?

I think there are lots of reasons. The first and most obvious is that men often prefer sex without condoms, it feels better . . .

You called it “enhanced genital stimulation”.

Yes. That’s the most obvious reason. Beyond that there are all the meanings that are attached to exchanging semen, to receiving someone else’s cum. I think HIV prevention discourses have not been very good at acknowledging how important semen is to gay men – their own and other peoples’. Sometimes you want lots of guys’ semen inside of you.

Well, you’ve talked a lot about disgust with bodily fluids, and you mentioned spit as an example, but semen must be the same kind of thing, that we have a sort of love/hate relationship with it - in that in some contexts these fluids are very hot and in others they disgust us.

I think that’s true. I think that semen, because of HIV and the epidemic, has become even more loaded with meaning, in becoming dangerous, in becoming dirty . . .

Toxic.

Yes, In becoming toxic it has become potentially hotter. That is, on the one hand we are told we must absolutely keep it outside of our bodies, and on the other hand it becomes something very exciting to get inside.

Well, let me throw out a quote from you on that. I think you said “the fact that sex may be unsafe may be the sexiest thing about it.” Is that true?

I think for a number of people that’s absolutely the case. It’s a mistake to think we don’t like risk. Risk can be very exciting.

I suppose you can think then of public sex. We think public sex is very hot because we might get caught. But are we saying bareback sex is hot because we could get infected with HIV?

In some cases, yes. Your question makes me think of straight couples who like to fuck in the bathroom of a plane. There is a risk involved, it’s not comfortable, maybe the sex isn’t all that gratifying because of the conditions, but there is a risk involved which makes it very exciting. And that translates for some gay men in terms of HIV too.

Is the transgressive thing important in bareback sex too, the chance of something bad happening.

Yes, and also stepping away from being a normal responsible adult in our society, and everything that goes along with that. You know part of the appeal of public sex is that it happens outside the house, it happens in a space where someone can be somebody different. Therefore it’s hot. We are also inundated with safe sex messages and sometimes for that very reason stepping away from that and doing something that is “unsafe”,  that’s ”risky”, can be the hottest thing to do.

The other allure you’ve described is in the title of your book. “Unlimited Intimacy.” That’s important for barebackers, isn’t it?

Yes, I think it is. Men who have a lot of casual sex with a lot of casual partners are not in flight from intimacy but actually searching for a particular kind of intimacy. The phrase “unlimited intimacy” came from a barebacker in an interview I read and that seemed to me to be a perfect way to encapsulate intimacy beyond the couple.

So there is nothing more intimate for some people than exchanging bodily fluids?

Right.

Sometimes we talk about casual sex, but it sounds like what you’re describing is very intense sex.

It’s incredibly intense. It’s very meaningful, completely spiritual. If you are having sex with a bunch of strangers, group sex can be something that feels like communion.

I think you’ve mentioned too in the book that there is very much a sense of belonging.

Sure. It’s about finding and making a community with people you don’t necessarily need to get to know to be part of.

OK I want to find out about barebackers and what is their relationship to risk. I think what you say - and this is probably grossly simplifying – is that this is an equation, where barebackers recognize the risk, but then balance it against the pleasure. Is that what’s going on?

Sure, I think that’s part of it. But one of the other things I want to add that’s going on is that the majority of barebackers do NOT want to infect sero-negative guys. They are not trying to put other people at risk. They are interested in an experience of risk for themselves that is maybe more a risk in fantasy than in actuality in some cases.

So they do care about the possibility of HIV transmission?

Yes.

Do you think people think they don`t care.

I do. It's hard for people to wrap their heads around the fact that people can be barebacking and still wish to reduce transmission. I think it's a mistake to think about barebackers as simply irresponsible hedonists.

Tell me why you’ve been using the word “disgust” a lot lately.

I’ve become very interested in disgust for various reasons.  One, in the world of academic theory I inhabit, people don’t talk about disgust, they talk about shame. Shame is connected to identity.  For me, disgust is connected to acts and in order to have a discourse about sexual acts we need to think about and talk about disgust.  Disgust is really complicated because disgust in the context of food simply pushes you away from food.  Disgust vis-à-vis sex or bodily fluids can draw you to those things. Sometimes sex can be intensified by doing things that you actually feel can be kind of disgusting.

Or that other people find disgusting?

Which is why large amounts of bodily fluids, especially semen, are important in the subculture and within some of the porn. One of the things that interests me is that some people find “sloppy seconds”  disgusting, that is using multiple loads, using cum as lube. But a lot of guys, including straight guys, find it very hot.

And isn’t it a staple of bareback porn? I’m thinking of the porn classic Dawson’s 20 Load Weekend?

Absolutely.

Tim, I think one of the take-home messages I got from listening to you is that if we find an act not to our liking, it becomes morally wrong.

I want to make the distinction between moral disgust and sexual disgust so that we can hold on more tightly to the idea that just because you don’t like something does not make it morally wrong. That seems to me very important.

Is anything morally wrong in sex?

Absolutely.

Give me an example of what is morally wrong in the context of barebacking?

I think coerced sex is morally wrong. I think lying to people is morally wrong. I think treating people badly is morally wrong. The ethics have to do not with the act you are actually doing, but how you treat your partner. To me it’s very important in the book — and in my life — to understand that other people are not objects to be used for one’s gratification. Other people are not sexual commodities. We may play out a fantasy in which I use you as my sexual slave and we both may enjoy that, but within the broader context of our encounter I treat you like a human being with respect, etc.

Let’s talk about the breeding, gift-giving subculture. Some people have played it down and suggested it’s mostly fantasy and that it’s very hard to track down real bug-chasers for research, for instance. Is this really a big part of bareback culture?

It’s certainly a big part of the fantasies that animate the subculture. In that way it seems to me important. I think in the process of writing the book and when I was giving lectures, people wanted to know, “How many gift givers, how many people are there out there doing this?” I don’t think that can be answered because the fact is it’s a very exciting fantasy for a lot of people but how that translates into practice is very, very hard to know.

But are there some people out there who really want to be poz?

I think so, yes. They see being poz as an inevitability, as giving them licence to bareback without worrying.

How do you feel about that?

Well, I think part of the reason I want to talk about fantasy is not so much that I’m psycho-analytically oriented – although I am – but because American culture does not have a very good way of talking about fantasy. Therefore it does not have a very good way of distinguishing between what is a fantasy and what is something you actually want to do. I’ve done some work on this around rape fantasies.  A lot of people have a fantasy about being raped, but that doesn’t mean they want to be raped. It means they want to enact a fantasy; and it seems to me you can make an analogy with guys out there who say they want to become poz.

OK, I want to talk about bareback porn.  It’s very different to mainstream gay porn, isn’t it? It looks different, I’m thinking in particular of Treasure Island Media  (NSFW link) which has a home-made feel. Actors can be overweight, older, not conventionally attractive. Why is that?

I’m very interested in Treasure Island Media and Paul Morris’s whole politics, ethics and aesthetics of making porn. He sees himself as a documentary pornographer, documenting what guys are already up to and therefore the guys in his films should not be some kind of fantasy ideal with perfect bodies.  

They should look like us?

They should look like us. They should look like the guys we are and the guys we meet.  Some people don’t like his porn for that reason.  They say the guys in it are ugly. That’s not my view on it. The range of body types makes it real.  It makes it hot. It’s clear you can be older, overweight, you can be hairy, you can have an imperfect body, you can look like a poz guy – and still be a porn star, still be the subject of sexual pleasure. That’s important.

Do you have any views, Tim, on the role of barebacking porn in encouraging or stimulating bareback behaviour?

People want to be able to draw a very clear line between pornography and behaviour – and I don’t think you can draw that line. I think it’s been proven again and again that watching pornography, of whatever kind, will not simply translate into imitating those behaviours. It’s not that pornography has no influence. Of course it has influence over what we find exciting, what our fantasies are.  But what interests me is that even with this iPhone you are recording this interview on we can go in to the bathroom and make pornography and put it on line . . . .

Want to?  (laughs)

(laughs) So that is to say we can all — and lots of people do – make our own porn and put it on XTube and I think that’s an incredibly interesting development.  We can all be pornographers.  If you don’t like the mainstream porn that’s out there, make your own porn – and I think that’s a great thing.

OK. I want to finally get to the intersection between barebacking and HIV prevention efforts. The language of HIV prevention uses words like “intervention” and “counselling” which essentially relate to efforts to change behaviour, or even stop various behaviours. Is there any scope for the world of counselling and interventions to interact with barebackers or do they have their own rationale for what they do and have made up their minds? Are the two worlds apart?

I think there is space for an intersection. When I wrote the book it was very important for me to not to write about barebacking with the desire to understand it in order to stop it. I do think, though, that what counselling offers is a space to think through what one’s desires are, what one’s fantasies are. I think to the degree that counselling makes a space available to sort through the confusion that all of us have in our minds about sex, desire, desirability – that’s good. But if counselling goes in to a situation with the sole attempt to stop something, then it closes off the space in which people can figure out their lives and what kind of sex they would actually like for themselves.

What we’ve seen here is applying a harm reduction approach to barebacking in terms of talking about techniques that might reduce the risk of transmission.  Does that make sense to you?

Yes, it does. But I don’t think it’s all or nothing.  For a long time it was pitched as “use condoms all the time or you are going to become a crazy reckless barebacker who is going to become poz and spread the virus”. It’s not either/or. Thinking in terms of harm reduction makes much more sense.

That’s likely a good place to end.  Tim, thank you so much for talking to us.  You’ve been incredibly honest and forthright about something that challenges many of us.  This has been so useful. It’s been a real pleasure talking to you.

Thank you, Bob

Tim Dean’s book “Unlimited Intimacy, Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking” is available on Amazon here. 

Tim Dean is professor of English and director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture at the University at Buffalo. He is the author or editor of several books, including Beyond Sexuality, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

I hadn't talked to my cousin David in close to fifteen years.  This phone call was a flashback to when we were both living in Manhattan in the 1980’s and our frequent dinners eating cheap Chinese, talking non-stop and laughing with our mouths full of food. 

We had an unusual way of deciding who would pay for dinner. He was a commercial photographer and we'd meet at his studio in Manhattan’s Photography District, near the famous Flatiron Building.  

We’d hang out on a corner of Broadway for five minutes and have a contest. Whoever spotted the most cars filled with Hasidic Jews heading downtown to Brooklyn would get a free meal.  No doubt this sounds odd if you don’t know Manhattan, but there are lots of Hasidim especially in that part of the city and because of their close-knit community – both at work and back home – cars filled with bearded men in black hats were not quite but almost as common as taxicabs. 

On the phone we spoke for nearly an hour, catching up on the last fifteen years. Work, his kids, my writing, our parents, the old days, the recession - and then he asked about my health and I told him how good it was.  

"Do you know how lucky you are," he said, repeating it twice. I readily agreed, knowing that he too had many other friends who died hard deaths. We acknowledged the unfathomable randomness of life.  We discussed my great fortune and other friends, those who had it all only to be struck dead, without warning – Jake while windsurfing, Stan a vicious type of brain tumor, others from car wrecks, kidney disease and other maladies.  

I don’t always feel lucky so the reminder was a gift, one that I’ll take as I head back to New York for my 30^th college reunion in June.   

I’m excited to go. I’m looking forward to it, but wish I had more on my resume. Among the friends I’m excited to see for the first time in decades are a U.S. Congressman, a lawyer who is one of the leading activists in the fight for marriage equality, successful artists and professors too.  

And me, a writer who spends too much time not writing, with declining freelance revenues that have led me to anxiously scour Craigslist looking for more catering work, gladly serving and bartending even though I’m making the same hourly wage I made when I catered between jobs in the late 1990's.  

Swiss Chard Beggar’s Purse, Maam? 

I like the work if not the pay, but passing kobe beef sliders, swiss chard beggar's purses or pouring cocktails isn’t a bad way to make things happen. I’m proud of my resilience, my ability to put things together to pay the rent even while I am occasionally embarrassed by seeing people I know who are surprised to see me holding a tray of champagne at a wedding reception.   

After all I’m the guy who drove a taxicab in New York City after graduating from college with honours. The guy who never worried much about earning money for the future, a creative sort, who didn’t fit in the box.  

Sometimes I can’t sleep and lie awake worrying about everything from the NY Mets bullpen to what will happen when I’m too old to work. I wish I’d done things differently, made more money and saved it, bought a house, wore suits to work, could take vacations every year. Was my lack of concern about money because my upper middle class upbringing left me deluded that things always work out or because I thought I’d be dead before I reached 40? 

Would whoever threw up in my bed clean it up? 

A month ago I lost my black necktie, the one I need for catering and was enraged at my carelessness. It would cost me another $7.99 at Ross Dress for Less to get a new one; that’s half an hour’s pay. I berated myself for the stupidity. My fury got worse. The only one Ross had in stock cost $16.99, $18.48 with tax. Determined not to spend that much I spent two hours scouring half a dozen thrift shops looking for a bargain before I returned to buy it.  I found the missing tie the following week.   

I frequently joke that I have my retirement plan almost in order. It has four parts, and three are taken care of. The three pieces in order are a hot plate, a space heater and an inflatable aero-bed. The only thing missing is a friend with a garage I can live in that has an electrical outlet that can support all three appliances without blowing a fuse. I'll be the old guy sweeping the sidewalk in front of their Victorian, whom the neighbors bring leftovers too and kindly listen to my stories about the old days, before getting away relieved. 

In college, early in my freshman year, I earned the nickname "Ralph". If you don’t know the slang, to ralph is to vomit. By October I had twice thrown up and blacked out.  When I was told I was the one who puked in the shower I thought it wasn't true because the guys in the dorm figured I was wimpy and would clean it up without much debate. The second time I woke up on a Saturday morning smelling of vomit, furious about the fact that someone threw up in my bed. 

When my roommate said it was me I didn't believe him.  After all I wasn’t a big drinker, had never listened to Neil Young before college and wasn't a sloppy drunk. 

Of course I was the culprit.  But lucky for me, my stomach couldn’t handle too much booze and despite the roster of world-class drunks on both sides of my gene pool I was spared the family affliction of alcoholism.  

Though spared the fate of becoming a drunk, the nickname lasted all four years of college. There were people who thought that was my name, including Fran, one of the nicest of the sweet ladies who worked in the dining hall. 

On graduation day she was beaming as she gave me a hug. 

“Ralph you were one of the nicest kids I ever met.  I hope life treats you well.” 

It has. Even if I’m passing trays of champagne and sleeping on an inflatable mattress in someone’s garage when I'm old it has treated me very, very well.  

Oh yeah and if you need to borrow a black necktie, let me know.  I’ve got an extra.

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.