Simon Suraci

Some guys advertise as both a masseur and escort.  If you want more than a massage with a happy ending, book them as an escort.  Even then, some communication in advance will help set expectations for both parties. 
 

I forgot to mention this in my previous comment above and I didn’t think of it until @Simon Suracipost. The reason he charges a higher rate is because he rents an AirBnB for incalls and the fee helps off set the rental. He try’s to group the sessions on a particular day when he rents the space. 

For just massage, I agree. That’s crazy, no matter how skilled or amazing he is at massage. From the comments here so far, it sounds like the massage skill level leaves something to be desired. 
For full service massage, escort service, or combo massage/escort service, $300 for an hour is not unreasonable at all. That’s what I charge and my clients pay it without hesitation. Of course I charge half that for my regular massage services. Reading @Ocposterboy‘s and @tennisjock’s comments give me doubts that anything to the level of escort service is on offer.
Ghosting upon arrival is not ok. @DiscreetInSoCal and @aeikaryokothanks for posting a warning of such unprofessional behavior for others to steer clear.
Remember guys, think with your big head. It’s all too easy to get carried away with an image online of a hot guy and lose yourself in the fantasy, only to be disappointed with the reality in person. Good looks only go so far. 
 

I always date in my own age group. I need someone who recognizes the same cultural references.
I only buy boys to play around.

He’s right. I guess I’m one of the ‘older’ guys in the business - in the daddy category. There’s no shortage of younger guys wanting a daddy experience, and prepared to hire for it. There’s also plenty of older guys looking for things that older providers can provide that younger guys can’t or won’t do, such as intimacy, being empathetic and actually turning up on time not being hung over or high and treating their client as a person rather than just another punter (apologies to those younger guys in the business who are professional- I don’t mean to stereotype, younger reliable guys do exist but are not easy to find in the crowd!)
That’s the other thing. There’s loads of younger guys doing sex work, with a wide range of quality. There’s far fewer older guys, and those who are doing it have stuck around at it because they’re good. People hire for all sorts of reasons and age is not necessarily a factor that matters for many of those reasons. 
 

Gentlemen, thank you for your thoughts and for sharing your own horror stories. A rather strange type of solidarity. Much appreciated, though.
Update:
Yep. definitely been to Santo Domingo and it's richer in options. All-inclusive resorts are not necessarily my type of vacation, so this was purely to please my husband. Oddly, I've been to La Romana, and I've hooked up with people there without any issues.
So I wasn't able to flip the Butler, but as I have always said, it doesn't hurt to ask. I asked him if he flips and he said no, but he had a few names of guys who will gladly help. Something in the back of my mind was telling me that there has to be some kind of covert activity. I'm sure there have been this type of requests in the past.
I was referred to a few local providers, two of which I chose, one Dominican, the other Haitian. They were perfect, affordable, safe and hot as hell. Had a great time last night. As everything in the DR, they were versatile in many ways, one of which was that they also sell merchandise, so I got mugs, t-shirts and other souvenirs from them.
Today I saw the Butler and he did notice my change in mood for the better. He was discreet but inquired about "how was my day".
I rarely come to places where this type of things are more underground than easily accessible. I still feel that it was risky to ask the Butler if he flips and for info, but I'm glad I did. This chain of resorts is gay friendly (yes it's also LBT... friendly, but I'm talking about me) and this is an adults-only resort, so I guess that I'm not the first to make this type of request.
I also decided to tell my in-laws that I need "me time", so I haven't seen them. I'm glad that I was able to please my in-laws, please my husband and now please myself. Now I feel like a real vacation.

For just massage, I agree. That’s crazy, no matter how skilled or amazing he is at massage. From the comments here so far, it sounds like the massage skill level leaves something to be desired. 
For full service massage, escort service, or combo massage/escort service, $300 for an hour is not unreasonable at all. That’s what I charge and my clients pay it without hesitation. Of course I charge half that for my regular massage services. Reading @Ocposterboy‘s and @tennisjock’s comments give me doubts that anything to the level of escort service is on offer.
Ghosting upon arrival is not ok. @DiscreetInSoCal and @aeikaryokothanks for posting a warning of such unprofessional behavior for others to steer clear.
Remember guys, think with your big head. It’s all too easy to get carried away with an image online of a hot guy and lose yourself in the fantasy, only to be disappointed with the reality in person. Good looks only go so far. 
 

For just massage, I agree. That’s crazy, no matter how skilled or amazing he is at massage. From the comments here so far, it sounds like the massage skill level leaves something to be desired. 
For full service massage, escort service, or combo massage/escort service, $300 for an hour is not unreasonable at all. That’s what I charge and my clients pay it without hesitation. Of course I charge half that for my regular massage services. Reading @Ocposterboy‘s and @tennisjock’s comments give me doubts that anything to the level of escort service is on offer.
Ghosting upon arrival is not ok. @DiscreetInSoCal and @aeikaryokothanks for posting a warning of such unprofessional behavior for others to steer clear.
Remember guys, think with your big head. It’s all too easy to get carried away with an image online of a hot guy and lose yourself in the fantasy, only to be disappointed with the reality in person. Good looks only go so far. 
 

For just massage, I agree. That’s crazy, no matter how skilled or amazing he is at massage. From the comments here so far, it sounds like the massage skill level leaves something to be desired. 
For full service massage, escort service, or combo massage/escort service, $300 for an hour is not unreasonable at all. That’s what I charge and my clients pay it without hesitation. Of course I charge half that for my regular massage services. Reading @Ocposterboy‘s and @tennisjock’s comments give me doubts that anything to the level of escort service is on offer.
Ghosting upon arrival is not ok. @DiscreetInSoCal and @aeikaryokothanks for posting a warning of such unprofessional behavior for others to steer clear.
Remember guys, think with your big head. It’s all too easy to get carried away with an image online of a hot guy and lose yourself in the fantasy, only to be disappointed with the reality in person. Good looks only go so far. 
 

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

This is a much more powerful justification for the building blocks of payment than typically presented. And I doubt every provider thinks this way - but 100% respect for those that do. 

See if you can turn the butler.

I really appreciate @Simon Suraci thoughtful and honest post. We have had two providers who alerted us following a session that they tested positive for an STI. In both cases, our response was similar to Simon's client. We're Gen X and used to testing for HIV and having the sharing of that information be urgent. 
So we are always grateful for providers being honest. We keep it to ourselves of course. And we've never actually had an STI from a provider. 

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

@Simon Suraci thank you for this candid post.
my sense has always been sex w established providers is safer in all respects vs random guys in the wild.  
the reasons nobody wants to discuss STIs in personal terms are very complicated -  there’s the general shame one feels for having contracted an STI, potential shaming from healthcare providers, potential stigma by others and then there’s just not wanting to ruin the fantasy that is largely driven by unrealistic porn that almost everyone consumes these days.  

I’m lucky - I live in a big city with easy access to non-judgmental healthcare, but yet I still feel like I failed or did something wrong when contracted an STI in the past.  I don’t have much sex compared to the average person in a big city & don’t participate in the apps - I practice safer sex w condoms most of the time.  And yet - it has happened to me.  And if it’s happening to me, then it’s happening to many others as well.  They just don’t talk about it. 
Now, when hiring providers - the first in-person conversation is about sexual health and how we can proceed.  It’s not sexy, but it’s honest and can build trust immediately.  Trust & honesty = better sex.  Uncomfortable conversations are frequently the most necessary conversations.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.

^This!!!
Here is my two cents in typical long form fashion.
Firstly, thank you @SouthOfTheBorder for posting this topic. Clients don’t want to talk or think about these things. So many people are immature when it comes to discussing sexual health. Our culture stigmatizes people for wanting - and having - sex. Our culture looks down on sex workers and treats us as scapegoats. We’re the “dirty” ones, the irresponsible, the depraved. But that’s just not true. If anything, professional sex workers are much more responsible and informed than the average person with regard to managing risks, maintaining good sexual health, communicating with their partners, and guarding their personal safety.
For every sketchy provider story I hear about on here, there are half a dozen experienced working men doing the right things and handling business professionally, not doing drugs or extorting people or behaving recklessly. The negative stories stick out more so we tend to focus on those. In between the horror stories are many good guys doing good work.
I’ll share the following because I know that many of you respect honesty and straight talk. A lot of providers don’t want to share this type of stuff openly because many clients are uneducated and carry around unfair biases and misinformation around sex and sexual health and use it to demonize us. The concern is clients will hold such information against us thinking “So-and-so had such and such last year. Ohhh better not hire him because I might catch the same thing”. It’s not fair because your average msm bareback hookup is going to be a much higher risk to you than hiring a professional. Hiring an experienced pro with a head on his shoulders is going to be relatively much safer for you than random sex in the wild. Clients on this platform are more educated than average on such matters, so perhaps I am preaching to the choir - still stigma persists no matter what we share or keep silent on. That’s why we don’t talk about this stuff very often. Also, it’s not sexy. But it’s important just the same.
Non-provider men similar to me have WAAAY more unprotected casual sex than I do, and they only get checked every three months (at best!). Most of them are on PreP and bareback exclusively. Doctors in the US require quarterly testing for patients receiving a PreP regimen, so that’s normal. Some of my peers are not on PreP and don’t know their HIV status, much less whether they are spreading STIs around because they are not testing on any regular basis - perhaps only if/when they experience symptoms (and not everyone experiences symptoms). Many straight-curious and bi men fall into this category, but any type can. If they test, it might be only once or twice a year. Your best case scenario outside of hiring is a conscientious gay guy getting tested every three months.
I test every month because of my work. Not because I have more sex than others, but because I care a great deal about my clients, my own health, and my ability to work. Monthly testing only leaves a small window for anything to happen and me not know about it. Keep in mind when you test, you are not clear as of that date you test. You are clear as of 10-14 days or so prior to the date you test, perhaps less. Incubation periods take time for the infection to show up on a test and to be communicable to others. Verify this info with your healthcare provider, as I am not your doctor. I merely bring up the point to clarify testing is not an up-to-the-minute snapshot of what is in your body - rather a snapshot of what has developed in your body (or not) over a period of time since your last exposure up to the time you test.
For example, I had a session last year for a client with multiple providers in which I had unprotected sex (bottom) with one of the providers. I topped the client and another provider in that session. As it so happened, I tested on my monthly schedule the following day. A couple days later I got the test results and all was negative. Little did I know one provider I was exposed to during that encounter passed an STI on to me. Given my activities in the weeks surrounding the encounter, I was able to confirm by process of elimination who it was and when. I topped clients, as I typically do, in the following weeks without knowing any of this, and thankfully did not expose any of them to an infection since the infection was rectal only. On my next test, I caught the issue and immediately alerted a few people who may have been exposed based on the activities with which we had recently engaged. It was only a two week or so window that I potentially passed it on and was yet unaware I had an infection. Since I have much fewer clients engaging me for bottom and/or bottom-adjacent activities, it was pretty easy to identify the few that may have been exposed in that short window. Since I test so frequently, I fortunately had the opportunity to give them all quick notice to get tested and/or treated before an infection had enough time to develop, express symptoms, and/or be passed on to anyone else. Here is a client response:

I love my regular clients. Most them are really good people.
Aside - the provider I got the infection from is married to another provider. Given they have frequent unprotected sex with one another and with all of their respective clients, the risks for them are necessarily higher than your average working guy. Keep this in mind when hiring a provider couple, or one of a pair of providers. Not to stigmatize, but to measure your risk.
I have a fraction of the sex of men similar to me, and it’s generally with people who a) are more conscious about the risks they are taking, b) have much less sex on average, and c) practice safer sex -maybe 10-20%.
Every provider is different. Some have more recreational sex, some have less. Some have riskier sex, some safer sex, perhaps some mix of both. I’d say that providers tend to have much less recreational sex than their peers, if not by intentional choice, than by the mere practical realities of being in this business. That’s me. One cannot be blowing loads recreationally right and left and expect to have any sexual energy left for his clients to enjoy. 
Sex carries some risk no matter how much or little sex you have, be it protected or unprotected. Having sex exposes you to the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections, full stop. How much risk you are willing to tolerate is up to you. We have many other threads in the forums on how to mitigate risks, like oral vs anal, top vs bottom play, using condoms, vetting your guys, etc, so I won’t get into all those here. My point is you have to be responsible for your own health and assess your own personal level of risk tolerance.
For the married/attached guys out there regularly having sex with their significant other, it’s best to keep open communication with your partner/spouse about your hiring. I know many of you don’t share for various reasons, so you risk inadvertently passing an STI on to your partner, and that is a much more difficult conversation to have than discussing the boundaries of your relationship beforehand. I suppose, if you’re not having sex with your partner, you can manage your own sexual health without your partner needing to know anything about your hiring or hooking up habits. Assess and manage your personal level risk, and get tested regularly in proportion to that risk and treat infections promptly if/when they manifest. Simple as that. Better yet, if you’re able, get on PreP and follow the required testing regimen. I know many won’t for shared health record privacy concerns. Talk to your significant other. Sooner or later things will surface. One of my clients likes to bareback flip fuck and he regularly has sex with his wife. I am upfront with him about all of my sexual health and relative risks. He wants the sex anyway. Hey, to each his own.
This is our livelihood. It behooves us to stay healthy, obviously for our own sake, but also for the sake of our business. We can’t make money when we are recovering from a sexually transmitted infection. For masseurs like myself, I can’t offer escort service, but I can still massage, sans the extras I otherwise might offer during my recovery, nor can I offer combo massage / sex work service. It puts a damper on what I can earn in that 1-2 week period. For the full time escorts out there, they can’t earn a dime unless they are knowingly putting their clients at risk, which is not only problematic from an ethical and moral perspective, but also just doesn’t make business sense to do. We have too much to lose by damaging our reputations in this way.
So…in a sense, seeing a responsible, professional provider may actually carry, in many ways, less risk than having casual recreational sex with the average man who has sex with men. I don’t mean zero risk. Less risk.
I agree with much of the other posters on mitigating risk with visual checks, mouthwash, peeing after sex, washing, etc. Never a bad idea, but all of these are marginal at best in helping reduce your risk. If you have the sex at all, you already took on the risk. Very little in the form of after care will prevent you from getting STIs.
We sex workers take on this personal level of risk and manage that risk as best we can. That’s part of what you’re paying us for. Think like how much you pay an oil rigger vs a controlled environment factory line worker. One job is inherently more risky, so you compensate it more to account for that level of risk and damage control.
When your providers inform you that you may have been exposed to an STI, they are being responsible and doing the right thing. Please do not stigmatize them or punish them for doing their job or for taking on reasonable levels of risk that this job requires. Honor them and show them respect. Keep hiring us when we are well, because we are responsible and professional, and we care.