SidewaysDM

I just paid $6.09 high octane here on SoCal, Los Angeles area.
@Lucky wow that seems high for Costco regular!!

I just paid $5.99.9 at Costco for regular.
As a boy I remember the sign at the Sunoco listing the price as 19.9.
One Memorial Day Weekend a few years later I was going on a driving vacation and was annoyed to see that the price had gone up...to 38.9 a gallon.
So all that makes me old.

He who laughs last laughs best.

Yup. The "influencer" provider I had a bad session with needed more money and contacted me a year later to make "amends." After he walked out halfway through the session, where he spent the first half on Instagram and calling friends.
As much as I wanted to say "Like hell," I politely pretended I was someone else.

Dear penthouse. I never thought this would happen to me.     The guy I paid. Is sooooo into me he wants more.    Now what do I do ?

I generally thank them for their time and mention how I enjoyed myself. Most often, I receive a response which leads to another engagement. I have only had one experience, which although not bad, I would not want to re-engage with that particular provider because they didn't deliver the complete experience I was looking for. 

Hey guys - There is new provider in Los Angeles that I cannot recommend highly enough: Middleasternfit: https://rent.men/Middleasternfit
I gave him 5 stars in my Rentmen review, and here is what I said in the Rentmen.eu review (where you can write more):
 
I’ve had some great and memorable experiences before with some really wonderful escorts, but Middleasternfit is in a class by himself. He is passionate, sexy, and playful. He is a great kisser. He has an amazing, tight body. He has a huge, thick cock, and he sure knows how to use it. 
The man is an incredible lover. The sex was hot and intense. And it was also intimate and connected and sensual. He made the sex feel less like an encounter with a stranger and more like honeymoon sex.
Middleasternfit  is also very warm and thoughtful. He knew my birthday was coming up, and he greeted me a gourmet chocolate treat, and a few other surprises. It was such an amazing gesture, and says a lot about how attentive he is. 
I had an amazing, unforgettable time with Middleasternfit . Book some time with him. You’ll be grateful you did.
 

I don’t care how many names or identities he has had! I would leave my wife, if I could be his sugar daddy! He is one yummy specimen! 

I wouldn’t call myself “sexually active” since I do it like 3 times a year, and always use a condom for anal, but I’m not on PrEP because (among other reasons) I don’t want to be on any medications that aren’t 100% necessary. I had been a “mask and vaccine police” of sorts during the pandemic and do think that the vaccines and prolonged mask wearing negatively impacted my long-term health. I’m definitely not opposed to getting on PrEP eventually, but I would have to be in a situation where I at least have the time and resources to be sexually active, and by that point PrEP will have been around long enough for there to be more research on long-term side effects, efficacy, etc.

In the early 1908s I worked at a hospital and went to its library to find out more about what was then labeled GRID (Gay-Related-Immune-Deficiency).  The first scientific studies identified receptive anal sex as the riskiest sexual activity by far.  While I did not reduce the frequency of my sexual activity which was as much as several times weekly, from that point on I have been 99% top.  At that time I knew nothing about the behavioral modification approach of harm reduction.  I however intuitively decided against high risk activity.
There have been two longer-term monogamous relationships.  Now my sexual activity includes oral sex and deep kissing.  When I anticipate sexual activity I follow the medication management guidelines researchers advise for those who are less sexually active. Truvata and doxycycline are in my medicine cabinet and my friends.  To this day I do not wear a condom. 

A timely and sobering recollection, @nycman!

I came of age in the late 80’s. Thankfully an older gay male grabbed me by the short hairs and dragged to visit his dying 30-year old friends in the hospital when I was around 19 years old. The message was loud and clear. “This is going to happen to you too, you little whore. Unless you learn to use a condom 100% of the time.” That coupled with a very early interview I read with Larry Kramer where he stated something like “by death number 30 we noticed that all the bottoms were dying”. That was nearly a decade before the medical community could pull its head out of its ass long enough to realize the same fact. 
So with those two events in the mid-80’s, I became a hard-core condom wearing top and I remained so for over 30 years. I honestly believe those two men saved my life. Sex was terrifying but still fun. AIDS and HIV clouded my mind constantly. I convinced myself several times that I had seroconverted and my mental state often boarded on insanity. Yet somehow, we survived.
”During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for." - Dan Savage
And of course, that insanity gave birth to who I am today.
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” - Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
 

For me, one word - luck. Truthfully, given my activity and proclivities, I am at a loss to explain how I am still here and how I survived relatively unscathed. (For context, I “came of age” to mansex in the early 80’s when I turned 17. And to be honest, I was probably too stupid to understand the incredible risks that I was taking. Alcohol, I am certain, clouded my judgment.) Condom use was hit or miss, yet somehow I remained HIV negative. Abstention from sex left a great deal to be desired. The clap? Yes, a couple of times, but I usually knew a doctor who could get me the antibiotics so I was spared a visit to the “free clinic”. I started taking Prep when it was suggested to me by a provider whose opinion I highly respected and when I learned it was available to me for zero co-pay. At 62 and overweight my pool of suitors these days is greatly reduced, but those who favor me with their attention are on Prep and I tend to avoid those who are not. I do not take it for granted that I was spared when so many were taken from us. 

FunFact: Raw milk and hot tubbing in denim cures all, unless you take Tylenol. I saw it on the interwebs.

I’m always surprised by how many people who are sexually active on the apps or hiring aren’t taking PrEP, let alone Doxy. It really boggles my mind.

I have a gay friend in his 50s who has been in a 30 year monogamous relationship.  He confided to me that he recently started having extra-marital sex whenever his husband traveled out of town (he told his husband he was going to do it).  He wasn't on prep either and I, like you, pointed it that the risk is high and the cost of mitigation is low.  I don't know whether or not he headed my advice; but, he asked me more questions about it. 
So, it's not just the "young, dumb, and full of cum" that believe they are invincible.  Even those senior citizens who lived through the height of the epidemic but are now re-entering the "market" are clueless how to take the reasonable safely measures available to them now.

I've noticed a lot of members here came of age during or before the HIV/AIDS crisis, when transmission was not well understood, infection was high, deaths in the community soaring, and spreading to hetero and drug using populations. Gays and bis my age (60) and especially slightly older found themselves in a world of misery around them. I came of age just as the scare was at its peak, so I opted for abstinence (via suppression of m2m attraction) and hetero LTRs saw me safely through it. 
How are you here?
Luck? Abstinence? Partnered? Just fortunate it didn't develop to AIDS until treatments came along? How is everyone living with it/around it now? Are we all on prep? More demanding about condoms? 
I knew of related deaths well into the early 90s. How are you younger guys, especially providers, living with that spectre, or are you really even cognizant of the world-changing impact of the virus in a post-prevention and treatment world? (Like black death, even measles and polio, I think our memories of such scourges are short).

My story (and age) are similar to yours.  Suppression of interest, pursuit of my wife, and all was well for decades.
i still think that younger guys today feel invincible and don’t factor in many risks that exist.  I actually had one escort that wasn’t on prep until I pointed out that the risk is high and the cost of mitigation is low…meaning it’s stupid to not get on prep…he did within the week.
But unbridled promiscuity still brings risk of HPV, HSV, and even drug resistant infections.  

I vividly remember measles, polio, the advent of the 1980s HIV pandemic, and then COVID -19 in 2020. I lost more close friends in the last one than in all the others combined, so I have a keen appreciation for the risks OP speaks of. I survived the HIV pandemic because I was in a 30+ year monogamous, heterosexual relationship. I’m living my best life now but I’m navigating uncharted water.  I’ve learned that most males have an appetite for some risk but the risks they choose to accept and the way they attempt to mitigate them or not varies enormously.  Complicating the equation now, what we choose to read, believe and accept also varies enormously and I see the result it in all kinds of hard to explain behavior - including my own. 

That's just weird and rude.. LIke if you're afraid of something, don't do it..... or just WASH YOUR HANDS AFTER!  I feel like all massseurs I see just go wash their hands as you get dressed. 
 
With a physical therapist that's different. 

A guy put gloves on me before offering mutual touch.  He also put a condom on before allowing oral.

Yes, most recently. Saw a guy in December and he definitely didn't wear gloves. Had originally seen him a couple of times a few years prior. Booked a 90 minute follow-up appointment last month and I heard him putting on gloves. Not only that, I was on my stomach for 85 of those 90 minutes. Will not book again. 

You all just made my night! I’m laughing out loud at all of your comments. My wife is in the living room wondering why I’m laughing so loud. Thank you! 

A masseur wearing gloves sounds pretty strange to me. I mean, part of the reason I go for a massage is the human touch. And wearing gloves during an HE? The logic escapes me. What next, a Hazmat suit?!

This is March 2026, during Austin's busy SXSW and rodeo season.
Beware and be careful.
https://www.kxan.com/news/crime/austin-prostitution-sting-leads-to-21-arrests-within-one-week/