jessmapex

About a decade ago I cut the cord, cancelled my expensive cable service and joined a streaming TV service that was cheaper. 
I tried Sling, YouTube TV, Sony (defunct now), Hulu with Live TV. All had crappy user interfaces that were slow. Eventually all raised their prices and now cost same as cable. 
I am not handy enough to climb the rooftop and install a good antenna to get broadcast tv.
But after getting tired of climbing streaming bills, endless ads to forward through, crappy programming,  I finally decided to cancel my streaming TV. 
I haven't truly cut the cord. I will still get news etc via regular YouTube and other local TV free apps on my Smart TV.
But for now, it's goodbye to linear TV. 

It's not that they haven't tried.  It's just that it probably hasn't sold as well.
Guys don't watch porn to see themselves.  They watch it to watch the unattainable.  The fantasy.  
That's what porn is:  A highly unrealistic, hyper-visual, fantasy-driven medium.
This sort of marginalized porn has usually been shoehorned into a fetish category and as much as I'd like to see society evolve, it's not realistic to think it's going to change anytime soon.  
The gay community is mega progressive in regards to our rights, but we heavily inner-discriminate if someone doesn't fit within a classic frame of beauty.

Maybe it's my age...but when I see PCP I think drugs.

I agree.  The problem is when most of these people get into trouble they don't blame themselves, they blame others.  Like the government or their spouses or family that won't bail them out, etc.   Their own frivolous behavior is never the culprit.

I'm not surprised at all.  Nearly 60% of the population lives paycheck to paycheck, but people still find the money for concerts, expensive clothes, cars and drugs.  It is amazing.  I believe it has been like this for a long time.  
 
With inflation stubbornly high, 58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck: CNBC survey
WWW.CNBC.COM With inflation stubbornly high, more than half of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new report.  

I prefer using my tongue 😜 

You can really spot the ones who don't cook. I literally touch EVERYTHING with my hands while preparing food. Do you use gloves at your house when making a sandwich ? 🤨

Hands? 

Thanks for further supporting my claim that bi guys are better in bed. 🥳

What’s Siri? Do they advertise on Rentmen?

Yes, on his facebook page his hubby posted. 

For good quality (content-wise and resolurion-wise), you still have to pay. I was a long time subscriber to seancody during its heyday. Now I subscribe to nextdoorstudios and nakedsword. 

I live in the suburbia. Originally i chose a PCP based a recommendation from a friend and because of her prior work with HIV and the gay community. But last year she half retired due to some health issues. They assigned a new PCP.  The practice and the new PCP does not seem particularly oriented toward gay men and their issues. Once, my original PCP was out of office and I had something I thought was an STI. When I told the nurse practitioner about it, it seemed like it was a scandal around the office. The NP did a urine test in the office and the aides gave me dirty looks. That practice is used to family patients. I interpreted the dirty looks as them saying - you cheating bastard or something to that effect. So for PreP, I would rather seek someone who is familiar with the gay lifestyle and is non-judgemental. In San Francisco there are practices like that, but the suburbs around SF are very family oriented.
 
A friend of mine, who is a bttm and HIV poz, told me his boyfriend, who is a top, gave him HIV. He said his bf got it from getting oral sex. Although i know the chances of getting it through top oral sex are miniscule, I get paranoid after every meeting with a provider. Lately, I am also enjoying getting deep-throated and a lot of guys, because they think i have a good dick, love to suck on it very deep.
In last few years, i am topping (protected) quite a bit. Before that i rarely got into insertive anal sex in any position. Finally, one of these days, I do want to experience bareback topping..since i have never done it.  I want to enjoy sex at least once as nature intended.
So i decided PreP is in order to get some peace of mind and perhaps explore bareback at least once with someone trustworthy.

I would venture to say that the company’s philosophy may be irrelevant, depending on …
The medication uptake for a total employee constituency could be measured in total costs and fed back to the policy purchaser for fiscal purposes, but medical insurance as I understand it is subject to the same confidentiality as is required of licensed health professionals. A physician is usually the face of supervision of insurance claims adjudication related to eligibility, etc.
A small company could conceivably know of a sudden uptick in utilization owing to an individual’s changed health circumstances. I am not sure if it would be stratified pharmacologically or collapsed within other insured professional services contained in the insurance contract. 
I have known HIV patients working in small outfits that felt backed into a corner related to expensive antiretroviral medication insurance claims because they feared being profiled, that is, assumptions made about who among the team suddenly has an expensive and undisclosed illness. They were usually young and perhaps out viz orientation, but many typically younger heterosexual men and women as well. 
Even patients working in large companies where an upward blip in professional costs would be absorbable within the overall annual sum of services paid out often required considerable reassurance. They sometimes phoned, say, Clarica, SunLife, ManuLife, GreenShield, Blue Cross, etc, at the outset, to confirm confidentiality. Small company policy premiums are often pooled into groupings of smaller outfits in order to manage random hits to HR budgets, and that was often assessed as well.
It is illegal in some provinces in Canada to tap into the public payer based coverage assistance system without first using all private insurance options possible.
All this is to say that using your workplace insurance is likely failsafe as far as confidentiality and the risks of red-flagging. I expect that PrEP, particularly taken intermittently (on-demand) would be of a cost magnitude that would not raise eyebrows compared to many other drug costs. No spreadsheets of what employee filled what medication prescriptions. 

I have recommended Mistr before and continue to be happy with the convenience and service. 

Through my somewhat chubby kid --> chubby undergrad -> toned and out grad -> thin late twenties -> in good shape thirties -> beefy forties , i have never felt comfortable in my own body. After weed became legal and easily available in California, I had my first edible and an out-of-body experience where "I" clearly felt separate from the "body" and felt like "I" should get rid of that body and enter the body of a hot smooth-skinned muscled boy from Instagram and fly away to exotic destinations. 
I think when i hire a hot provider, i am trying to enter him in more ways than two😀 .
 

I switched to MISTR about six months ago and have been very pleased with the convenience.

When I started on Prep maybe five years ago, my PCP referred the supervision of Prep to a different doctor at an infectious disease practice. Was all fine, though the scheduling was complicated (the doctor only took appointments one day a week) and the practice required a second appointment with another office for blood/urine work, then there were some billing hassles... And coming back after COVID, the scheduling hassles just increased, even though they were 5minute tele-medicine appointments.
Right when I was hitting my limit with these hassles, I ended up hiring a gent who happened to a MISTR spokesmodel. (He wore his MISTR trucker hat to our meetup.) So I asked him about the service. His pitched emphasized how the company was mostly about trying to ease access for more people, which I found intriguing, so I looked into it further and found that I liked MISTR's business model (ie using grants to pay for prescriptions for uninsured clients & leveraging the payments from insured clients to subsidize others). So I gave it a go.

Two prescription cycles later I'm very pleased. The very communicative and responsive MISTR team worked very hard to try to eliminate my modest copay altogether but my insurance insisted on the same co-pay for the same generic Truvada as I was getting with my specialist. (My insurer refuses to pay for Descovy, which both my specialist and MISTR tried to go with.) Plus, with MISTR, I don't have the visit co-pays for either the specialist or the bloodwork appointments, so it definitely ends up costing me less there (an annual savings of roughly $250). I'm still getting used to swabbing myself for the testing, which my state requires fairly frequently, but it's easy enough. I also have direct access to my test results, which I didn't always with my previous specialist.

So I've had no complaints with MISTR so far, and sincerely hope it's able to keep on doing what it's doing...
 

I cannot weigh in on 3rd party testing / dispensing, but I likely wouldn’t take PrEP if exclusively insertive with condom protection. My tenofovir-emtricitabine uptake as versa is based on occasional receptive anal with consistent condom protection.
The key clinical factor in your case, due to insertive oral, if unprotected, is screening for other STIs. I assume that if you get tested for them it is not through your physician, as otherwise it might make sense to address PrEP with her although I can understand that reluctance is justifiable. 
It is also prudent to inform your physician of all medications that you take. If not, you will need to micromanage potential drug interactions and contraindications, adverse events, ie, researching this knowledge; consider alterations in blood chemistry that she may detect doing the clinical work she needs to execute without being hamstrung, without compromising the care relationship, and so on. 

LOL, yes, Just like elected officials, priests, and grade school teachers, personal trainers never do drugs. It's simply just too...too..."inconsistent."  😉

Through my somewhat chubby kid --> chubby undergrad -> toned and out grad -> thin late twenties -> in good shape thirties -> beefy forties , i have never felt comfortable in my own body. After weed became legal and easily available in California, I had my first edible and an out-of-body experience where "I" clearly felt separate from the "body" and felt like "I" should get rid of that body and enter the body of a hot smooth-skinned muscled boy from Instagram and fly away to exotic destinations. 
I think when i hire a hot provider, i am trying to enter him in more ways than two😀 .
 

This hits the nail on the head.  I am very happy for you - it makes all the difference when one feels supported growing up.  I am not in that boat unfortunately, and have spent many years being overly critical about myself - to the point where I am my own harshest judge.  Brutally harsh.  That can lead a person to just give up on believing that anyone would give them a second glance, and therefore miss those moments when someone may have been interested.  I think building confidence in others is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone. 

Try not to let it bother too much.  Believe me, when you are old and frail, no one wants to bother with you (that includes your own children).  I've seen it time and time again. You are not alone in feeling this way. 

Thank you all for the guidance. As a left-brained person, I am not particularly money-savvy, but know enough to get by. I have been able to maintain a diverse portfolio of investments mostly in ETFs. I also use robot investors like Wealthfront , Betterment etc since I do not know how to pick stocks myself.
In my early 50s I am feeling pretty lost in life as I don't know where I am headed next, what kind of support system I will have as I become old and frail etc. Friends from 20s and 30s left me due to political differences that peaked during COVID.  Lost my father last year, and Mom is in her last years. 
This forum has been a good support system .. especially sage advice from the people ahead of me in this journey called life.

That Ramada is awful, but affordable. I once stayed there and hired a provider from RM. He just had to walk from his room to mine. 

I dont think VR will ever be able to simulate warmth of a human body and the scent of sex.