“Can I give you a hand with that?” were the first words the young man made to me in his perfect British accent.  He was tall, incredibly dark skinned, and lithe but in that athletic way only men who regularly run or play soccer can be.  His body was flawless, with that patch of hair in the middle of his chest denoting he was, in fact, a man, and when he removed his towel, the facts surrounding his being a man were decidedly and enormously to his credit. 

“And where are you from?” I responded after telling him to come into my room.  Even now, I have a habit of finding out the most banal, but eventually telling and vital to understanding, facts about men I meet under even the most anonymous and purely sexual of circumstances.

“Kenya,” he said.  I quickly started wondering whether or not I had enough personal knowledge of Kenya to validate his story.  Were they colonized by the British, which would explain his accent?  Is he just a crazy person from West Philadelphia who gets high and speaks, as I knew one young man to do, in a British accent for his own amusement or involuntary compulsion?  In a few seconds, I stopped my neurotic, thought-based assessments and was distracted by the only reason we both were seemingly in a bathhouse.  We said nothing more aside from his incredibly polite, “It was very nice to meet you,” as he left my room, leaving the door wide open and me, out of breath, on my bed.

As I write this, I am in a bathhouse.  Last night, I had an amusing and long conversation with a friend of mine at Woody’s in Philadelphia, the flagship gay bar here, and he asked me if I was willing to play wingman for his first foray into the globally popular gay male hobby of going to the bathhouse.  While he said he wanted more time before he personally dove in feet first, or up in the air rather, I had already alone decided to take advantage of half price Tuesday at Philadelphia’s only currently operating bathhouse off Rittenhouse Square.  After all, it wasn’t like I had planned on doing anything else last night, like building model airplanes, volunteering, or, most annoyingly stereotypical but factually accurate to my personal behavior, watching HGTV.  And so, when my friend and I parted ways, he went to his house, I went to the bathhouse, and I let my insecurities stay outside.  But, before we parted, he asked me some questions about the practical ins and outs of this quietly popular hobby in gay culture.

Rooms in most bathhouses in my experience are no larger than the square footage of a small storage shed in a suburban backyard.  Typically, each room has a light with a dimmer switch, no furniture or decoration aside from high gloss wall paint, tile or parquet flooring, and, more often than not, a single bed built into the floor or wall reminiscent of a submarine’s barracks.  Generally, these rooms have a television playing one or several stations of hardcore pornography or a speaker for, naturally, dance music.  These rooms usually have keys on small lanyards men can wrap around their ankles or wrists getting rid of the need of pockets and, therefore implicitly, the wearing of any clothing aside from a single towel provided upon check-in.

Originally, these businesses were started as a means to easily launder money.  After all, like all cash businesses related to the LGBT community, records were, at one time, non-existent or kept on two sets of books, and revenues somehow always found their way to Irish or Italian organized enterprises.  Today, however, these businesses, if run honestly, kept clean, and established on a premise outside of pretense or judgment, are genuinely profitable and a key, but rarely talked about, component of LGBT culture and economy.

Throughout the course of a day or night, dozens of men walk around in their towels, letting their leers and facial expressions communicate their desires, and have sex with each other.  In some cases, this sex is tender lovemaking, and in other cases, this sex is as aggressive as it is fulfilling.  In both cases, adults are consenting to engage in an activity, knowing full well the possible risks or lack thereof depending on their activity and partner of choice, and, hopefully, engaging in these acts for the right reasons.  In the overwhelming majority of bathhouses, condoms are provided at no cost to guests, and guests have every right to use them or not use them.  After all, part of being an adult is assessing risk, or lack thereof, and behaving accordingly to still enjoy life.

Often, my writing is misinterpreted, particularly in relation to sex and barebacking.  Quite literally, a reader recently implied that I was killing people by arguing against the, now obvious, ineffectual nature condom only campaigns are having on HIV transmission rates and the horrendously stigmatic approach inherent using the words “safe” or “clean” in relation to sex and HIV status.  Rather than recognize that I am simply pointing out a reality enjoyed by the overwhelming majority of LGBT folks, these readers are, instead, opting to promote their own particular agenda sustained by decades of conventional wisdom that, while once valuable to counteract a literal plague decimating the gay community, are now outdated as much as they are hurtful.  And, rather than understand that I make no point in advocating in favor of a particular activity, that I am merely pointing out the obvious reality of life, nothing more, nothing less, these readers would rather trot me out as the murderer of laughably characterized and non-existent “innocent victims.”

Last night, I engaged in mutually enjoyable and consensual sex in an overtly sexual environment.  And, the fact of the matter is that I am the rule, not the exception.  Acknowledging this does not condone or promote going to bathhouses; rather, it simply highlights that this goes on, that it is an important reality facing many gay men, and that judging this behavior or somehow insinuating that it is reckless or anything but net positive or neutral toward advancement of our loosely affiliated community is, at best, naive and, at worst, deceptive.  In both cases, such criticism is unwarranted, without merit, and, frankly, indicative of the very things that I routinely discredit, including judgmental and stigmatic practices in relation to sexual behavior.

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

As we try to maneuver through this dangerous sport we call dating, we all create rules for ourselves. Rules that help us define the guys we will date. Rules that help us to know when is the appropriate time to reveal our status. And even rules that help us when pants are down, literally. Those same rules that can save us can also hinder us. 

As you may have noticed, I have fallen off the map. There are various reasons for this, but the main culprit is that I just wasn’t dating. This was not because I didn’t want to - I was trying, I was just hindered by my rules. 

I was chatting with the guy on OkCupid for some time and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to actually meet him. But one Saturday night I was out with one of my best friends and we ran into him. Sometimes this city can be smaller than you can imagine. We started chatting and I actually was having a good time with him. So we set up a date for the following week. 

We met at a wine bar and talked and talked and talked and drank. Then he said that his favorite singer was Celine Dion. Now I know this is being published in Canada, so I might get some hate mail for this, but that was an affront to all of my rules - so I vowed that was the end. 

When I expressed this to various friends, they all laughed at me. One in particular said something I’ll never forget. Paraphrasing: We have friends to share our commonalities with. If you truly like this guy don’t let some French Canadian singer stop you from seeing him. With that sound advice, I promptly set up another date with the Celine lover and even though we didn’t work out, it made me stop and think about all of the other potential dates I stopped because of some offense to my various rules. 

I used to have a litany of rules – enough that could fill up a novella! Not just a disdain for guys who have an opposite taste in music than I have.  But with age, comes knowledge, or so they tell us, and I have since whittled my list down to a precious few. One of those is age limit. I have always had this rule that if I can vividly remember the year of your birth, I will not date you.  I was born in 1976 (yes, I am a bicentennial baby) and can vaguely remember images from when I was roughly six years old.   It’s a stupid rule, I know – but I have since cut off anyone over six years younger than me.. It is one rule that I have followed for sometime, but since I had made exceptions for other reasons I thought, “What the hell!” and lowered my age bar. 

A week later I had gone on a dates and ‘dates’ with a couple guys in their 20s. It was extremely weird having a conversation with people who never watched the Jem and the Holograms or who never wondered who would win in the epic musical battle between Debbie Gibson and Tiffany (I am full away of the irony of these being my musical tastes). But I managed to get over their intrinsic lack of knowledge of the things I hold dear to my heart and tried to enjoy them for who they are.  Surprisingly enough, some passed the test and some did not (we will touch more on that later). 

As fate would have it, I randomly saw that wealthy guy I dated last year but ended it mostly because I didn’t want to feel like a kept houseboy.  He asked me if I wanted to hang out again and  I was over the “youngins”.  As I took stock of my rules, I said what the hell.  And just like Foreigner tells us, it feels or felt like the first time. Like before, there was just something missing. It wasn’t the fact that he had money and he was a III^rd, there was just no proverbial spark... outside of the bedroom, that is. So maybe it wasn’t the fact that he had money that was turned me off originally -  it still wigged me out a little, but I came to realize  we were incompatible in so many other ways. 

So I vowed to keep my rules a guide but never let them hinder me from the potential of something great happening. The following week I got a text from one of those “youngins” that read, “Bad news. Just tested positive for syphilis. TTYL.” Ain't that a kick in the head  - or should I say a shot in the ass! 

I leaned my chest against a door in his apartment and slid my jeans and briefs down over my ass and presented my hole to him. “Fuck me” I whispered. My boyfriend didn’t move towards me. “I want to feel you inside me with no condom. Fuck me,” I repeated. “No,” he softly said back. “Don’t ever ask me that again.” He walked away from me, angry. I stood there silently for a moment and then slowly pulled up my pants.

We didn’t have sex for a long time after that.

My partner told our mutual friends I had ended it, but truthfully, he left me no choice. There are things you should never say in a relationship, things you can’t un-hear, and your partner telling you he is afraid of you sexually is one of them.

I cried when he said it, and then I cried for an hour in the shower afterwards thinking about it.

In the beginning our sex life was fun, mildly kinky, and I was confident that as our intimacy grew and our relationship strengthened, our sex life would become more adventurous. But then I told him I wanted his cum in my ass, and suddenly I could feel him looking at me differently. Whatever narrative he had constructed about me in the beginning of our courtship was being challenged by my acknowledgement that I loved barrier free sex, the exchange of fluids in my rectum, and the sense of intimacy it brings. He felt I shouldn’t want those things, nor ask of them from him. Condom use was not open for negotiation he said, and what right did I have to suggest otherwise he wanted to know? I was HIV-positive and he was HIV-negative.

In his eyes it was clear. Me wanting to bareback with him made me a ’bad’ person, maybe even a criminal.

In serodiscordant relationships there is sometimes a surprisingly low general knowledge about harm reduction and HIV. From the very beginning I made sure we talked about PEP, PrEP, viral load and infectiousness, sexual positioning, and a myriad of other risk reduction techniques. I offered to take him to meet and speak privately with my HIV Specialist. I made space for him to talk about how he was feeling about being in a "magnet" couple and his identity as an HIV-negative man. I wanted him to be as educated as possible about the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. And then I wanted him to fuck me raw.

The San Francisco State University‘s ‘You And Me’ Study , surveys by the University of New South Wales in Australia, numerous Swiss sex researchers, and so on, are all showing that gay men are increasingly practicing harm reduction techniques in the face of condom fatigue and the changing nature of HIV in the West. They're rejecting the traditional one-size-fits-all Public Health approach and weighing the pros and cons of a life taking pills. A recent Australian study from 2010 estimated that my circumcised partners risk of transmission from topping my HIV-positive ass was 1 in 909 or 0.11%.

Somewhere in the last few years HIV had become less a gamble, and more a numbers game, but my HIV-negative boyfriend still wasn’t willing to play. 

In my relationship I could tell my boyfriend almost anything. I could tell him how I wanted to be treated, my dreams, the meanings behind my tattoos, and how my parents divorce had hurt me, but what I couldn’t tell him was how much of a risk he should find acceptable in our sex. I had to respect his decision, I told him, but he also had to respect mine. At 30 years old, I wasn’t ready to never again experience the joys of condomless sex.

It must have felt like an ultimatum to him, but to me it felt like a stalemate. Then, coupled with issues within the relationship, and his confession of fear, it ultimately became a deal breaker.

Two weeks later Tom stood over my bed and yanked off my briefs. He poured Gun Oil down the crack of my ass and then slowly worked his bare, uncut, HIV-negative cock into my asshole as I clenched my fists and bowed my head while grimacing. I sucked in air through my teeth. He smiled proudly at my discomfort.

Tom and I had met at a local queer pub named Swizzles. I told him I was newly single, HIV-positive and really wanted to get fucked raw. He asked me what my viral load was, I told him it was undetectable, he smiled at me, and then we went back to my apartment and fucked without a condom.

It felt like a healing act to get fucked raw again. To be treated as wholly desirable. As Tom’s cock rammed my prostrate, I thought of my ex, and imagined it was him that was inside of me bare, as I jerked myself off onto the sheets. Tom reached down, scooped up my jizz on his fingers, and then put them in his mouth. “Delicious” he said.

Up & Coming  is a sex magazine published independently in Toronto, Canada. On April 2nd, at swingers sex club Oasis Aqualounge (231 Mutual St, Toronto ), the third issue will be launched with Dj Scooter, queer porn icon Courtney Trouble, Burlesque star Axel Blows and others in attendance. Pre-sale tickets for the event are $20, or $25 after March 29th. You can purchase your tickets at www.off-the-record.ca or at the door the night of the event

Michael Burtch has previously contributed to PositiveLite.com as the columnist The Tattooed Activist between 2010 and 2012. 

This photograph was taken when Jeremiah and Millicent Buckleyy were about to embark on the Montrose, to sail to Canada in 1926, destined for St. John, in New Brunswick. They bought a dairy farm at Okotoks, in Alberta but returned to England in 1945, and Jeremiah and Millicent are buried in St Helen's Churchyard, Grindleford

Letting go of the past, working hard on the present and hoping for a better future.  Often we try to achieve that in our personal lives but it’s really ingrained in us since the time of cavemen.  Nomads, moving from place to place, populating new lands, leaving the past behind, working and creating our future. 

Many of us have relatives who were immigrants, I come from three generations of immigrants to Canada, my grandmother, my mother and I all emigrated to Canada from England. My mother emigrated with her family in 1927, then returned to England with her new husband (my future father).  She returned to Canada when she was 58 and I emigrated when I was 20.  However, the story I will tell you is of my family coming to Canada in 1927, stepping off the boat and finding a new life.

My grandfather had served in the First World War and when he was discharged he could either take a payment or he could accept 40 acres of farmland to the south of Calgary - in a little known area called Okotoks.

Now, some people may be thinking:

“40 acres of land, just given to you on a plate, I wish I was that lucky!”

Well, imagine packing all your worldly possessions into trunks and taking your five children on a mighty steamship, to sail across the stormy seas of the Atlantic and to go to a strange uninhabited area in the west of Canada... in the middle of March!

The seven of them arrived in a freezing, damp Halifax harbour, then wearily waited while boatloads of people were processed through Canadian Immigration.  With papers stamped, they gathered on a platform to board a train which would carry them for days across Canada, to start their new lives in an even colder, snow-covered Calgary.

In an early letter back to England, my grandmother told of being impressed by the generosity of Canadians and of how, upon arrival, neighbours came to visit with milk, bread and cheese.  Of course, there were no fridges to keep things cold, they had to put items in a hole dug in ground - not the easiest of things to do when the ground is still frozen.

They were all hard workers. Life didn’t come easy and in those days, when you made your bed, you lay in it... there were no relatives to help you out.

My grandfather had spent his working life up to that point as a quarry labourer and had not farmed at all but on a whim and a prayer he started “Buckley’s Dairy”.  He and the children rose before sun-up to milk the cows.  Once the milk was squirted from the cows’ udders into waiting pails, it was poured straight into glass bottles and two strong horses then pulled the loaded wagon with my grandfather, my mother and her brother wrapped in thick coats and blankets, perched on the front bench.  Each house on the delivery run woke up to fresh milk placed on the doorstep.

My mother said at first it was an adventure but soon became extremely tiring and on top of that each of them had chores to do after school too but there was no time for complaints and there was no point either because the work had to get done.

The farm produced their own food and Grandma Buckley was constantly baking.  The warm, wafting aromas of freshly baked loaves, pies bursting with apples and jam-filled sponge cakes filled the nostrils of visitors who happened to drop by - and it seemed more and more people were “dropping by”.

My mother told me that on a gorgeous summer’s day, the wide, blue sky stretched for miles. Later, as the sun set and the night drew in, she would lie in bed, listening to coyotes howl in the distance.  Occasionally, she sat at the window and saw fireflies flitting like tiny miners’ lamps, being carried across the moonlit prairie fields of hay.

My grandparents lead a seemingly simple life but I view them as incredibly brave... putting down new roots, working hard to make a living and going to bed each night worn out but proud of what they achieved.  They knew they were part of a new frontier... Western Canada, next to the majestic Rocky Mountains, where the air was clear, free from crammed-in houses and the industrialized smog of northern England.

It was that way for millions of migrants all over the world.  They had drive and dedication.

They let go of the past, worked hard on the present and hoped they were building a better future.

Timeless.

My plan for this night is to attend the StorySlam: Adventures in Food   event while I’m here in Tel Aviv. I figure this has to be in a restaurant or something. But it’s not. It is in a location in what starts to feel like a no-man’s land as I am entering an industrial area.  I am as directionally challenged as my dyslexic-like inability to spell, just to give a bit of context.) 

I manage to navigate my way there on foot without too many problems but still, I feel so unsure of where I am going. Only once I go the wrong way and have to back track. But it still takes me a long time to get there.  

The venue, as it turns out is a beer distillery called “The Dancing Camel” Approaching the door I see a sign, “Storyslam, yes you found it, come on in.” At least I’m not the only one. Apparently they changed locations as the last month they had over 100 people. It’s the only show of this kind here in English.

Just around the bar is a friendly woman with short brown hair sitting on a stool. “Are you here  for the storyslam?” It turns out she has family in Toronto. When I give her my card for my (and Erin Rodgers) show “Tales of…. “ She says, “Oh Bloor Street, great location”. Her name is Xoli, (and I’m sure to fuck this one up. You know me and names.)

I’m asked if I wanted to tell a story. I wasn’t expecting this. The theme is food. Do I tell a story or not? If I don’t I’ll be pissed off at myself afterward. I put my name down on a piece of paper and throw it in a bucket.

Soon all the organizers know there is a guy here from Toronto with a storytelling show. I feel special, yet pressured now. I’d better be fucking good after the buzz that is happening now.

The host for the evening who produces the show has a TV show on a local Israeli station about restaurants. He says it’s similar to what English TV does, which I’m not sure what that is. He is super nice.

Despite my getting lost I’m still really early. Outside I’m chatting with ex-pats from all over. I feel a sense of camaraderie with the ex-pats and the performing community. One Persian-American woman from LA, super outgoing, tells me she is friends with one of the guys on the reality show “The Shahs of Sunset.”  She pulls out her phone and shows me a photo. I’m now in love with her!

A couple of other people introduce themselves just out of the blue. How un-Toronto. Compare and contrast.

The original woman I met and her husband own a very well known café called XoHo, the name based on putting letters from both of their names together. I now have multiple invitiations from them and others who work there to come down and visit.

Prior to the show, they have a musical act playing, bluegrass kind of blues, complete with harmonica and violin. They are amazing, and a bit hipster looking. Voilà, I finally found some. I knew they were here somewhere. But hipster-Jew, one with a tzitzit, attached to his guitar belt (this is the fringe that is found on a prayer shawl).

Suddenly I realize these are the guys I had been listening to on YouTube performing “The Roommate Song” at a different venue. Wow, I’m amazed at how this is coming together.

Sitting on a stool I realize that there is an orthodox Jew sitting behind me complete in a black hat. “OL this should be interesting” as I project all my pre-judgments on him.

It turns out he is Yisrael Campbell, the very one who is a successful comic, actor and has the acclaimed one-man show called “Circumsize Me” that played in Toronto. More and more I’m realizing I’m participating in something really special

When it comes to Storytelling show time, I know what story I will tell. It is about the time I made pot brownies and had to go to the hospital with a cold-induced asthma attack and ate the brownies.

When it comes to loto (Editors’s note: I have no idea what this is. Lotto maybe?) spots, I either never get them, or I’m last when there is no longer an audience. The host picks a piece of paper and reads it, “Our first storyteller of the evening is Brian Finch.” “Fuck” is going through my head, as I’m nervous. This is the first time performing in a different country.

I tell my story, and I kill it. I don’t say that often. If I sucked, I’d say so.

After the show, all the producers tell me how much they enjoyed the story and how great that I was the first one up to start the show. Again, Wow! I was scared, and I get this wonderful warm reaction.

Now I’m invited to future musical events at this venue. I’ve met so many amazing and fun ex-pats.

It’s official. I have fallen in love with Tel Aviv.

TheBody.com, probably one of the best resources for HIV related news and stories in the United States and, logically, the world, reports today on an incredible story of love between a heterosexual couple, Peter and Kathy McLloyd, who share the same love for each other but who are serodiscordant; that is, Peter is HIV+ and Kathy is HIV-. 

This story is incredibly compelling, important to tell, and demonstrates that HIV is more than I tend to focus on.  More specifically, HIV cares not a whit about your sexuality, your race, or your heart.  Rather, it cares only about whether or not your bloodstream is accessible.  Indeed, this stark fact is often why I make the case that personal behavior in relation to HIV is irrelevant; the fact that this virus will touch someone who accidentally gets pricked with a needle in a medical procedure and leave someone who barebacks routinely untouched is testament to the fact that personal behavior has nothing to do with HIV’s “purpose” and everything to do with random happenstance.  Yet, I came away from the story feeling stronger than I already did about the fact that I do not feel confident I will ever be able to engage in a mixed-status relationship.

As a gay man, I have spent years navigating the LGBT community in a sexual and social sense. Failing miserably at two long term relationships, I tend to take a more cynical view of my ability to ever engage in the type of love demonstrated by my parents, a heterosexual couple celebrating their 36th year of being a single unit this year.  And, while there are days they seemingly want to murder one another, the love they demonstrate for one another has made itself manifest in the deep concern my father had during my mother’s breast cancer battle, the devastation my mother felt during my father’s brain surgery in the 1990s after a stroke-like event, and the fact that, regardless of how early it is, my father makes my mother a cup of tea religiously to greet her before the sun rises.

Yet, the fact that I have an apparent personal disability relating to romance is compounded by the reality that I also have a virus laying dormant in my bone marrow or bloodstream lying in wait for the opportunity to kill me and infect others. On a personal level, this means that I make taking my medication priority number one in my life, and that I experience a set of unique issues that the HIV- community knows nothing about.

Every three months, I get six to eight vials of blood taken for analysis. About a week after my blood is drawn, I pore over approximately a dozen pages detailing exactly what is going on in my body chemically, how much testosterone I’m lacking thanks to HIV’s bizarre effect on male hormones, what my CD4 count is, and how paralyzed HIV currently is thanks to Gilead’s once-a-day pill Complera.  The two biggest numbers, my CD4 count, the immune system cells that HIV attacks ferociously and without care to my life, and HIV viral load, the physical number of HIV particles flowing through my veins, give me particular pause when assessing my overall health and, potentially, longevity.  And, each time I go through this analysis, I’m waiting for the, wholly unlikely and statistically impossible, scenario where I’ll stop responding to treatment, where HIV will have adapted to the antiretroviral medicine I take, and where I’ll begin to promptly die.

Of course, this scenario never happens, I’m healthier than most HIV- men, and I present no threat whatsoever to the HIV- community thanks to my medication preventing HIV transmission. But, I also present no threat to the HIV- community because of one detail of my personal behavior: I will not date or knowingly have sex with someone who is definitively HIV negative. 

Now, the idea of someone being definitively HIV negative is, frankly, laughable in the LGBT community. These publicly “clean” folks, who according to the hysteria propagated by the seemingly perennial shock and awe pieces done on barebacking don’t even practice the outdated drivel they preach regarding using condoms, are the ones infecting others with HIV. Most of them aren’t even aware that they have HIV.  And, the ones that do take a bizarre position rooted in stigma and backward thinking about sexual behavior and health:  they’d rather secretly whisper about their status, declare publicly that they’re HIV- (they’re not), and they’d smugly cross their arms and roll their eyes at my distaste for their hypocrisy. That is, the only people walking around who can say, without a shred of irony or doubt, they have no statistic likelihood of transmitting HIV are the celibate, a non-existent group in an adult society, or the HIV+ who are on medication.

Let me say that again: the only people who are not at threat of transmitting HIV are people who are HIV+ and adhere to their HIV medication over 96% of the time.

I was once talking with a friend of mine I lost to the warmth of Florida about this unhinged hypocrisy rife throughout some segments of the LGBT community. He dismissed it, too; such stupidity and obvious failure to grasp reality was undeserving of any thinking person’s time.  Even so, he reached the inevitable conclusion that I did. More specifically, he brought up the fact that, since his HIV diagnosis, he had been healthier and “cleaner” than compared to his entire adult life up to that point. Therefore, he made the decision to withdraw from the reckless thoughtlessness that is the rabble of these “clean” folks and, instead, to focus on dating and having sex with those openly HIV+.  Years of experience have taught me that his focus is, regrettably to some and dishearteningly limiting to my personal pool of potential boyfriends, the right one.

Now, I make a few caveats here. First, I state that I will not have sex or date someone who is definitively HIV-. Therefore, anyone I encounter in a bathhouse, a bareback sex party, or on any website where I indicate that I do not have sex with a condom and that I’m HIV+, is automatically outside of this group. Logically, you cannot definitively state you’re HIV- if you engage in bareback sex of any way, shape, or form, and you certainly cannot definitively state you’re HIV- if you are having sex with HIV+ folks who do not explicitly disclose the minute details of their personal health management that I’ve discussed here (for instance, adhering to triple, or greater, combination therapy over 96% of the time.)  In addition, you cannot definitively state you’re HIV- in the same breath you then take before going down on whoever you just picked up at Woody’s drunkenly.

Disingenuously, and ridiculously wrought with logical fallacy, “clean” folks totally ignore the statistical risk that syphilis, hepatitis, worms (yes, worms), genital warts, chlamydia, and gonorrhea actually do pose in so-called “safe” sex environments.  Taking this into account, I’d much rather serosort my partners and stick to those I know are generally healthy and actually monitoring their health:  the openly HIV+.

Secondly, there exist a healthy number of good, well-meaning men who, despite the potential for an infinitesimally rare blip in my medication’s ability to clamp down HIV, will nonetheless accept this risk, as any reasonable person would.  In fact, these people are right insofar as if you’re going to engage in bareback sex, an HIV+ man adherent to his medication is the safest bet possible you can make in relation to sexual behavior and risk of HIV transmission. After all, it’s not us who are infecting the HIV-; it’s the, consciously or unconsciously, deceptively “clean” folks running around infecting others.  Scientifically, we who are HIV+ and adherent to medication are statistically unable to pass on HIV to others.

Notwithstanding this mature and forward-thinking approach, that is, assessing risk and accepting it as part of being an adult with an active sex life, these HIV- men who are sincerely HIV+ friendly in relation to sex and dating have, in my experience, an inability to truly enjoy the activity they purport to like.

No matter how much scientific evidence and statistical analysis counters our inherent terror at HIV, as gay men, we’re still ultimately afraid of contracting HIV.  Thanks to years and years of hysteria propagated by well-meaning but ultimately counterproductive HIV prevention efforts, including by the Gay Men’s Health Crisis when hysteria was necessary to stop people from literally dying, the idea that HIV is a de facto terrorist organization in the LGBT community is a hard one to shake. I recall specifically men who were fine with accepting a blow job but wouldn’t touch me otherwise; a nervous HIV- ally who shook like a leaf while we made out; and, the dozens of bottoms I’ve encountered who are stuck in a cycle of affirming to engage in condom-based sex, who get high, who then walk around the bathhouse nude, who take whatever anyone gives them, and who, upon sobering up, resolve to never do it again only to repeat the cycle the next weekend. The fact that these gentlemen require crystal methamphetamine or alcohol to lower their inhibitions is testament to the fact that the anxiety and irrational terror experienced toward HIV is probably one of the strongest pieces of evidence in favor of what I’m writing here right now.  And, in each one of these cases, I know that my sexual partners are doing something simply to get off; they aren’t interested in me, they have no desire to talk for a few hours before sex (a favorite hobby of mine), they view talking about HIV as a mood killer rather than a mood enhancer (whereas I get ridiculously turned on by a man who takes charge of his health, is confident in his sexual prowess, and lets HIV take a backseat to his overall attractiveness by asserting plainly he’s on medication and healthy. 

Specifically, I remember picking up on a code in a social setting by simply affirming to a fellow HIV+ man, “Well, aren’t you healthy looking?” He knew what I meant, I knew what I meant, and we promptly had sex for several hours.)

So, I’m clean and want to stay that way.  That means I’m HIV+ looking for another HIV+ man. Of course, this limits my options.  But, I would have it no other way, for to me to truly love another man, to truly enjoy sex with him, and to appreciate the sum total of his assets as another human being, I must also understand that he and I share a commonality, a reality and self-honesty that many in the purportedly HIV- LGBT community seem unable to grasp or confront.  And, while it is unfair for me to tar the entire HIV- community with the murky stigma only a few have presented to me, I am too respectful of my time and effort to squander anymore of my life on the well-meaning, but ultimately unfulfilling, efforts of HIV+ friendly partners.  Logically, this means I’m a hypocrite, for I am expressing the same intolerance toward the HIV- community that I express routine disgust with in relation to HIV.

Then again, nobody said being human meant being ideologically coherent. If it did, I think we homo sapiens would be woefully boring.

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