keroscenefire

There is a new bill that was introduced in New York that would decriminalize sex work. It's unclear if the bill would even get any votes this legislative session, but the fact that the bill has officially been introduced is a big deal. If it did pass, New York would be the first state to decriminalize sex work statewide (Nevada is limited to a handful of counties) and the language of the bill is pretty sweeping, decriminalizing the sex work but also those who pay for sex work. Even some Democratic presidential candidates have voiced some support (including Kamala Harris and John Hickenlooper, who oversaw marijuana legalization in Colorado). New Republic has a good lowdown here: https://newrepublic.com/article/154111/new-york-bill-decriminalization-prostitution-sex-worker-rights What do you think? Is sex work the next big decriminalization push?

I've started to take Vitamin B12 since I have been eating a mostly vegan diet the last year or so and developed a deficiency. It can cause neurological problems. I started to develop a bit of a pins and needles feeling in my extremities, so my doctor tested and found the b12 deficiency. It's fairly common in vegans since B12 is not found in any plants. It is sometimes found fortified in breakfast cereals but I am on a fasting diet and don't typically eat breakfast. The symptoms subsided when I took the vitamin so if you are vegan and have odd neurological symptoms, you may want to look into it: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/vitamin-b12-deficiency-can-be-sneaky-harmful-201301105780

I do know that some guys have those multiple dates down and do actually intend to go to all of those locations but gauge interest to see how long they should spend in each city as part of the trip. https://rent.men/MikeGaite does this and when I met with him I asked him about it and he said that is exactly what he does. When I contacted him earlier in the year, Denver was listed just like all the cities he has listed now. And he very specifically told me when the days he was planning to be in Denver and sure enough we met during that time. With the high costs of hotels and airplane tickets, it only makes sense that some escorts would try to figure out the interest in the city to figure out how many days they should stay. I would recommend contacting the guy if you're interested because he likely does intend to go to your city and having more interest will encourage him to stay longer.

If it's the former than definitely the standard rate x 2, but it could be negotiable. I think a good question is: What would you like to be compensated for your time for this?

In this case the escort had me send a picture before I met, so he definitely could've chosen based on that. But he may have just been flattering me too..who knows.

It is a thing..since I am in my 30s..I have actually had a couple of escorts tell me what a relief it was to not have an older client for once. But whether they actively discriminate against older clients, I don't know. I suspect one did...he told me that he chose me over another client after I sent my picture and I was younger. But I think the real professionals like Benjamin, Greg and others view all clients as great guys and welcome making connections with many types of men. I actually appreciate that Mike Gaite and others advertise that specifically.

I do love living in Denver, though it's getting very expensive here and it would be hard to drive to any nearby cities like you can do in some other regions. However, you can get virtually anywhere in the US from DIA and often fairly affordably. But it sounds like from your last time living here, it didn't vibe with you very well, so maybe it's just not a good fit.

A escort of mine got a visa to America through becoming an airline steward. He said there are a lot of gay, good-looking airline stewards on all the major international airlines. Sure enough, I do see some good-looking presumably Brazilian airline stewards often when I travel.

Gilead does provide rebates/reimbursements for the drug. It honestly is kinda challenging and there are a lot of hoops. I've had to do it twice at the beginning of my insurance coverage when I haven't gotten close to my deductible on my insurance. You basically have to apply for the program then put it on a credit card, then do some paperwork to get it reimbursed and hope and pray that your check comes back before you start accruing interest. It did for me one time, but didn't the second time because I had paid for it partially through an HSA and I guess they don't reimburse those. They did reimburse the portion that I paid on my credit card, but I had to like go through my credit card statements and highlight the Truvada payment and by the time I got the rebate I had acquired a couple hundred dollars in interest that Gilead would not pay. Trying to get a hold of them on the phone was a nightmare and they required faxing and mailing documents, which is kinda insane in this age of e-mail. But at least for me it was kinda worth it because one 90-day supply actually met my entire deductible and after that I basically had to pay little or no money for any medical treatment at all until my insurance renews for the year. Anyway the web site is here: https://www.gileadadvancingaccess.com. Good luck on trying to figure it out. They don't make it easy but maybe the SF City Clinic has some resources to help you with it (my insurance company did for me).

I didn't really push him on what happened. But I did notice that his five-star rating on RM recently dipped because of a couple of negative ratings during that Cali trip. My guess is maybe the clientele there is a bit more demanding that he's used to and maybe he got taken advantage of somewhat. We all know us men can be big time a-holes on occasion. I just hope that he finds happiness and success. He has some long-term goals outside of escorting so just hope that he is able to do what he needs to achieve them.

I think we have to remember that escorts are people like any other who go through slumps in their professional or personal lives and maybe change the way they act with clients as a result. I too had a semi-regular in Denver that I had a few very positive encounters where we had a lot of fun. But during a more recent interaction he seemed like he was less into it and just not as happy-go-lucky as before. He even explained he had a recent California trip that soured him a bit on the industry with just a couple of bad encounters. I think I'll probably chill out on spending time with him for a bit, but definitely will hit him up again in the future and hopefully he will be more on an upswing and have a more positive time with him. I definitely don't count an escort out entirely just because of one time he didn't seem to be into it. But maybe if that is more the trend, then yeah I definitely would rather spend time with gentlemen that generally seem interested in spending it with me.

The 86 percent effectivenes in a study was found in this article: https://www.poz.com/article/IPERGAY-CROI-26854-6956

I would imagine this is something a lot of newbies have to develop. It may be that when starting out you do have to put a lot of effort into cultivating new clients and trying to make it so you have some regulars. But once you got a solid network, I'd imagine the effort can really peter off because you have regulars that make up a significant portion of your income.

I did tell him of my review and I believe another member has as well. I think a lot of it honestly is how you approach him. I had a great time with him but he did say he doesn't like people who he thinks will waste his time. He has only been doing this for less than six months so a lot of this could be just trying to figure out reality vs. expectations in this business for him.

Yes, there is a lot of controversy with Truvada and its maker Gilead. The US government actually paid for most of the research that found out that Truvada could be used to prevent HIV. Yet Gilead charges kind of insane amount for the drug..more than $1500 per month even though the wholesale price is only around $5-6 per month. That's actually what many pay in other countries. There are some generic versions coming but Gilead is trying to keep it higher price by introducing a slightly altered medication and recommending that one is prescribed instead of Truvada. A lot of controversy there for sure. I do take it too.

Just typing too fast...I fixed it.

Cohort and longitudinal studies are very common in medical research. Researchers acknowledge the limitations of such studies but recognize that they are the only ethical way to get information about health outcomes over time. One such longitudinal cohort study is the Framingham Heart Study that basically provides the scientific basis in the medical field for understanding how factors such as cigarette smoking, obesity, genetics, exercise, etc. play into risk factors for heart disease. This study has been going on for more than 70 years and has been used as the basis for more than 1,000 medical papers. It is true that randomized, controlled studies are the "gold standard" in medical research and must be used when you are trying to test new medications and treatments. But we are long past the time when it was considered ok to randomly give people syphilis just to see what happens. That's why this meta-analysis study of douching is pretty solid in my opinion. It takes data from 24 other studies (going all the way back to 1970) and looks at trends over time using statistical analysis that even takes into account other risk factors. If a doctor of a gay man was asked by his patient, "Does douching increase my risk of STIs?" The only ethical answer would be, yes. Just as the same doctor would use the Framingham Heart Study to tell the patient that smoking or eating fatty food, or not exercising is bad for your heart. We all get to choose what risks we want to take or not, but the evidence here is clear that douching very likely increases your risk for STIs and we do not need a randomized, controlled study for medical professionals to make that call.

He may have changed a bit since I met him, but all we did was a phone call and I sent him a regular selfie type picture. I think he feels like if you put more effort into it as a client, you're less likely to flake on him. That's the sense I got anyway.

Such a study would likely never pass an institutional review board especially if your hypothesis is that douching is harmful to health. You can't knowingly ask someone to do something that could cause them a life-threatening illness. That is why you do these meta-analysis studies because you can get around the ethical issues that a double-blind study like this would present. So instead you try to pull several studies and their data and do statistical analysis to find out of there is an association between rectal douching and STIs and that association is significant even when you put in other potential factors in the statistical modeling. This study was published in the British Medical Journal, a peer-reviewed journal that takes less than a quarter of its submissions (https://sti.bmj.com/pages/about/). I'm pretty confident that if the data was crap, it wouldn't have been published. The data is good and suggests that douching increases your risk of getting STIs.

But I think this makes sense: "The mucus lining in the rectum, which is there to protect against infection, may be injured by [douching]." We already know that HIV and other infections enter the body through micro-tears that often occur through anal sex in the rectal tissue. If douching washes away some of the mucus lining then you're more likely to get micro tears through sex and therefore infection. This is almost especially true for HIV itself which attacks the very immune cells that the body is sending to those micro-tears after injury. Getting rid of the natural mucus lining (and not using enough lube as well) means you're more likely to cause those micro-tears during sex and put yourself at higher risk. The study mentioned in the article is also a "meta-study" meaning it actually studies the results of previous studies. These meta-studies tend to be pretty legit because they are not just giving you the results of one group of men being but in this case 24 groups of men and according to their analysis, douching does put you at higher risk for STIs. It's not just a one-off study whose results could be skewed by many factors, but rather a more solid collection of data from a variety of sources that shows a strong overall trend. In many ways, this study is almost the opposite of the single, one-off study (since discredited) that did show a connection between vaccines and autism. Instead of seeing the dozens of studies that showed no connection, people latched onto the study that did.

Probably better to ask him than us.

As she sang in her most famous song, "Que Sera Sera," a great scene from an underrated Hitchcock film.

I hired two escorts who were actually a couple and they charged me just slightly above their normal rate for the hour ($300 instead of $250). We actually did finish in about an hour..maybe five minutes after an hour, believe it or not. But yeah definitely propose everything to your hires and ask them what they think is appropriate for such an occasion.

I'm taking my mom tomorrow..Aretha is one of her favorites.

In Denver that's pretty rare because I guess most people have their own cars...not sure. I also actually go to them 80 percent of the time, so maybe it just doesn't come up. I've only had one ask for a Lyft..and then since I actually do that one the side, I went and picked him up myself.