Requesting Proof of PrEP / Testing

[Simon Suraci]

This topic has been mentioned as an aside in various threads elsewhere, but I want to start a new topic specific to this subject. If it’s already covered in a dedicated thread, I haven’t found it yet searching the site. Please link if you know of a previous thread.

Clients: How many of you ask for proof of STI testing and/or proof of PrEP regimen, such as a photo of a provider’s prescription, or a PDF of recent test results? Do you ask for proof in person? How important is this “proof” to you? Will you see providers without having this information on hand?

Providers: How frequently do clients ask for some sort of “proof” of your medication, or STI testing? How do you respond to such requests?

Relatively few of my clients ask. I decline clients with these questions for a few reasons:

1) Unwilling to share personal information listed on my tests and meds. I could strike out the info, but then it could be anyone's test or anyone's vial of pills. Without personally identifying information, I see no way to address the client’s concern. I could just as easily forge a document or take a pic of someone else’s pills and pass them off as my own. There’s no guarantee I am being perfectly honest, and no way to verify. This is why I put “proof” in quotes.

2) Another thing to manage and update and spend time on. A photo of my prescription won’t prove that I took my pills consistently for the past week, and I’m not about to shoot daily videos recording every time I take a pill with a piece of paper noting the date. That’s crazy.

3) A great deal of people contacting me on RentMen are flaky as it is without any extra special screening requests. Going through the additional effort to 'prove' something when the likelihood that they will cancel, not show up, ghost, etc anyway is as high as anyone else. Seems like asking for a lot. I don't have patience for it tbh.

4) Anyone who wants to have sex with me - protected or otherwise - should have realistic expectations of the risks and be willing to take me at my word. People who can't do either of those I really don't want to work with anyway...

5) I’m assuming the type of person who is requiring “proof” of testing and PrEP use is also a person who is NOT doing either of those things, for any number of reasons, which I completely understand. This client is placing the burden on me to be responsible for their own health. I can’t do that. I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t get tested after every client. Incubation periods alone make it impossible to detect sexually transmitted infections in real time. If I say I’m taking PrEP, the client has to believe me.

At some point, the client has to take me at my word. I don’t see the point of spending extra time documenting my health practices because it offers no real “proof” to the client. It’s just another thing I have to manage and spend time on for those few clients who ask and insist.

I get it. Some providers lie about their status or health practices. There’s nothing I personally can do to police them, and I see nothing more I can do than what I already do which is take my meds and get tested regularly (for me, monthly). 

[SirBillybob]

Clients: 0/1 & 0/1 -> No. Not. Yes. 

Your thoughts are well organized. Perhaps they could be distilled down to a manageable boilerplate STI playbook. A few sentences on your philosophy and prophylaxis structure. That should be sufficient for most prospective clients and I suggest you provide it whether asked or not. Then you don’t need to try to second-guess why any particular one is inquiring. They’d be getting better info than the last time I asked and received the response: “I take gym supplements.” (non-English)

My situation is as a person habituated to protected sex from 1985 on, having experienced years of condomless intimacy prior to that and beating the odds. Just me, but I find them qualitatively similar. Perhaps irrelevant to my points as expressed above. 

Edited July 1, 2023 by SirBillybob

[pubic_assistance]

I have two policies regarding sexual health that have worked for me my entire life.

#1 Don't believe what anyone tells you about their status. 

#2 Wear a condom.

I've never had a single STI over many years of being a complete slut.

 

 

[Simon Suraci]

13 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

I have two policies regarding sexual health that have worked for me my entire life.

#1 Don't believe what anyone tells you about their status. 

#2 Wear a condom.

I've never had a single STI over many years of being a complete slut.

 

 

Thank you @pubic_assistance

#1 Agree. Not everyone knows their status, even if they test frequently. They could have an STI and not know it, and also genuinely not be lying about it.

#2 Not a realistic option for providers these days. Easy on the client side if condoms are no problem for you, but you’re dealing with only yourself and your chosen providers, not the whole market.

Tons of people require bb as a condition of their hiring decisions. A provider can offer safe sex only, but that severely limits their market.

Also, for #2, performance can be an issue for some providers. It’s difficult enough to get it up for a client the provider has zero sexual interest in, much less stay hard enough long enough to get past a very tight stubborn sphincter. Getting and maintaining an erection is a huge problem sometimes. Condoms make that mountain at least twice as steep. Not everyone is willing or able to rely on chemical assistance.

[pubic_assistance]

1 minute ago, Simon Suraci said:

Not a realistic option for providers these days.

Yes. Of course.

I wasn't suggesting it was an option for most providers. Although I will personally give greater consideration to a provider who specifically puts the word "condoms" in his profile rather than bb 

[CuriousByNature]

Everyone needs to determine the level of risk they are willing to assume, and also be completely responsible for their own health choices and protection.  Relying on someone else to keep you safer is both incredibly lazy and incredibly foolish.  

[Guest]

7 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

I have two policies regarding sexual health that have worked for me my entire life.

#1 Don't believe what anyone tells you about their status. 

#2 Wear a condom.

I've never had a single STI over many years of being a complete slut.

Ditto. Silly to ask about recent testing and PrEP. If you're a bottom, use PrEP and wear a condom. If you're a top, wear a condom. 

[SirBillybob]

8 hours ago, Unicorn said:

… If you're a bottom, use PrEP and wear a condom …

Cuz you busily own that dick in you and it wears what YOU want. 😏

Edited July 2, 2023 by SirBillybob

[SirBillybob]

On 7/1/2023 at 5:42 PM, Simon Suraci said:

…. Also, for #2, performance can be an issue for some providers. It’s difficult enough to get it up for a client the provider has zero sexual interest in, much less stay hard enough long enough to get past a very tight stubborn sphincter. Getting and maintaining an erection is a huge problem sometimes. Condoms make that mountain at least twice as steep. Not everyone is willing or able to rely on chemical assistance.

Your point above is a natural response to overly simplistic yet basically sound dictates written above even though you had alluded to functional challenges. I post here a short read regarding my observations on the front lines, as well as personal experience.

This is how I frame it to begin, from the perspective of background training, then at least an hour to unpack and explain in more detail, obviously not in this setting, the concepts tailored to the individual. I think that anybody putting their dick to work should consider this learning curve. 

Anybody in this business should include in their required reading Bernie Zilbergeld’s Myth of the Male Penis, if not already done so. A bit long to get through, in fact many more minutes than this post read, but if you stick with it you may find it interesting. It likely won’t help in terms of your entry above but I suggest doing it anyway as his ideas are central to your biggest functional imperative.

You can look for reviews from obnoxious consumers according to whether Zilbergeld’s hundreds of thoughtful pages are overly inclusive of content, but I doubt that such short attention spans would enable useful responses.

Otherwise, there is very little in the way of good news for performative labour, particularly if PDE5 inhibitors are not your thing, as it is usually not really sex for the performer and condoms were designed for sex.

You are describing a paradoxical bind related to insertive intercourse that boils down to damned if you use a condom, damned if you don’t. Few folks in general choose employment tasks of this nature, fraught with such challenges. Merit pay is not an outrageous notion. 

Some factors may up-regulate erection reliability.

These include having fetishized condoms, in the event a Skinnerian behavioural repetitive paired association between prophylactic and arousal historically occurred, which I myself integrated decades ago by using condoms for masturbation until the point that jacking with or without was equally pleasurable and condoms as enemy militating against pleasure were essentially neutralized. At the time, however, incentivizing protected sex for mere survival was a predominant driver, and my general practice orientation was to externalize an internal conundrum and personify something as inanimate as a few regular inches of latex. After all, that link is the basis of robust fetishistic developments that typically occur more outside the realm of consciousness. A hot dude pulling out a condom fires up my nitric oxide and guanylate cyclase down there because it was wired thus through practice. 

There is also an apparent random but little understood phenomenon that separates males categorically according to erections that are consistently, prodigiously accessible and autonomous for some, and for others requiring more overt behaviours and concentrated focus to acquire desired tumescence. Woe betide, relatively speaking, and empathy deserved regarding the wrong profession chosen by those that fall more into the latter subgroup.

Perhaps those in the former category should offer discounts (joking, well half joking). I just tend to gravitate to contexts wherein sorting out how they are stratified can be discerned in very short order. I don’t witness struggles with erection because they are either obviously overtly robust or I adjust my requirements for the person behind the penis.

 

Edited July 2, 2023 by SirBillybob

[muscmtl]

Geez... Still these types of posts.

VDs: get them, get treated, get over them

If VDs scare you, then get off the sex train, all passengers deserve better than you blocking a seat

[marylander1940]

16 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

I have two policies regarding sexual health that have worked for me my entire life.

#1 Don't believe what anyone tells you about their status. 

 

 

Especially when one answer will get the reaction they want and the other one won't.

 

 

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Asking for a negative STI test is the most foolish request you can make of a sex worker.

Assuming it was taken at the EXACT time before you meet and processed right that very day, it's next to useless as a harbinger of safety.

However, you can show someone a current script of Truvada/Descovy along with a side of Doxy for good measure.  

That's still no guarantee.  

The only truly safe sex is no sex at all.  And that shit ain't happening with most of ya'll here.

[SouthOfTheBorder]

On 7/1/2023 at 10:58 PM, SirBillybob said:

Perhaps they could be distilled down to a manageable boilerplate

if only some could take their own well-considered advice 

unfortunately, it will never happen 

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by SouthOfTheBorder

[SirBillybob]

8 hours ago, BenjaminNicholas said:

Asking for a negative STI test is the most foolish request you can make of a sex worker.

Certainly A most foolish request. Surely not THE, for those that have seen it all. 😏

[Insert thread link here?]

Edited July 5, 2023 by SirBillybob

[ICTJOCK]

I have found clients ask me if I'm on prep as a way to ask if bareback will be the order of the day  (without directly asking).   I've never have had a client ask for "proof".

Good health and fitness are very important to me.    I agree with much of what Simon said.    I  did have a client ask me if "I am healthy" and followed up with ,  "you look healthy,  you look great".   Which I just chuckled and said thanks.