Condomless encounters

[+ FrankR]

1 hour ago, Antares said:

I’m on PrEP and use DoxyPEP, but still have a preference for using condoms. Pretty much won’t bottom without them, but I’ve had to get over it to some extent as more of a top. The BB attitude has just become too prevalent. Despite an ongoing jump in syphilis rates and lack of any protection against warts or herpes. Any “cumdump” bottoms or “breeder” tops are off the table and unattractive to me. 
 

side note: The breeder label is just cringeworthy to me, wish a better term had taken root. Just makes me think of animal husbandry. Plus it used to be a derogatory term used against straight people by our community, but at least made logical sense there. Kids these days, what ya gonna do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

You get to decide what you need to do to stay healthy.  My health comes first. The enjoyment of my partner comes second - because if I am not confortable then he will doubtlessly pick up on it. Sometimes “No.” is a full sentence. 

[+ SirBillybob]

On 5/19/2026 at 7:40 PM, Jamie21 said:

I wonder how many of the guys who are critical of bareback sex because of the health risks are at the same time taking big risks with their health by smoking, drinking alcohol or having a bad diet / no exercise resulting in them being overweight?

We all make choices but it seems to me that those being critical of those of us who do bareback sex are taking a moralistic approach yet seem to be hiding that behind health arguments. 

Whataboutism and false equivalence much?

By that logic, anybody regularly taking one basically established health-related risk such as a side of chips versus rocket at lunch forfeits the right to discuss another, along with weighing in on prevention guidelines and preferences, and gonorrhea checks your BMI before infecting you. 

Of course there is a value judgement regarding condom use, and public health messaging is inherently normative. Avoiding infection is preferable to acquiring one. In fact, it’s a rather uncontroversial values position. Recognizing it isn’t the same thing as demonstrating hidden moralism. 

You yourself may be inclined, with good intentions (how else would your motives be?), to discourage a guy’s smoking habit. Reality is under no obligation to be less carcinogenic in deference to his personal autonomy. 

Edited Friday at 11:26 PM by SirBillybob

[Aedo]

On 3/16/2026 at 4:06 PM, longislandjohn said:

I think in the time of prep, using a condom is not that common, but a preference is a preference.  It is something that should be hammered out before an encounter.  If your profile, or his, states condom only, that should be respected.  Since you hired him, why would he care?  He's getting paid regardless and I'd think he'd prefer a condom.  I can't imagine that the escort demanded no condom.  Well, I'd take it as a compliment!  He was getting paid and still wanted the full experience!

A huge reason why I seem only able to date in South America. Guys in the US don't seem to believe that other STIs exist, and they are all on prep and doxy. The last time I went on a date here in the US I got into a bit of an argument with the bottom as we were transitioning from oral to anal, much like the OP's story. He couldn't believe I used condoms. The argument killed the vibe -- "How could you NOT be on Prep!" this dumbass Rice graduate said, exasperatedly --, and I left and never saw him again.

[ShortCutie7]

5 minutes ago, Aedo said:

He couldn't believe I used condoms. The argument killed the vibe -- "How could you NOT be on Prep!" this dumbass Rice graduate said, exasperatedly --, and I left and never saw him again.

People are so incredibly short-sighted… one would think someone knowledgeable enough to be on PreP would know it only protects against one STI whereas condoms protect against pretty much all of them…

[DMonDude]

32 minutes ago, ShortCutie7 said:

People are so incredibly short-sighted… one would think someone knowledgeable enough to be on PreP would know it only protects against one STI whereas condoms protect against pretty much all of them…

To be fair, as has already been mentioned in this thread, it's probably because all the services people use to get PrEP also pair it with DoxyPep now. That's 4 STIs protected/increased protection from. Most others are curable/treatable or are ones people are vaccinated against. And ones like herpes also are equally as transmittable whether having sex bare on PrEP/DoxyPep or with a condom. Most people who aren't on PrEP and have anal sex with a condom don't do so for oral, so they still run the risk of getting other STIs too. All things considered the level of overall risk is closely comparable. So when the risk level is close, for a lot of those guys the choice is the one that feels better.

Not to say any of the guys are right to argue or pressure someone to take the condom off/not use it. They're wrong to do that to anyone. But I'm just saying you aren't getting their logic correct in your comment. They aren't being short sighted or making the decision they are thinking they are only protected against one STI. They've done math with details about the services that provide PrEP (like the fact that it also now normally comes with DoxyPep) that you didn't know and are acting accordingly.

Edited yesterday at 03:55 AM by DMonDude
added clarifications.

[ShortCutie7]

3 minutes ago, DMonDude said:

To be fair, as has already been mentioned in this thread, it's probably because all the services people use to get PrEP also pair it with DoxyPep now. That's 4 STIs protected/increased protection from. Most others are curable/treatable or are ones people are vaccinated against. And ones like herpes also are equally as transmittable whether having sex bare on PrEP/DoxyPep or with a condom. All things considered the level of risk is closely comparable. So when the risk level is close, for a lot of those guys the choice is the one that feels better.

Not to say any of the guys are right to argue or pressure someone to take the condom off/not use it. But you're i'm just saying you aren't getting their logic correct in your comment.

I totally get that… my point is that condoms are more encompassing in what they protect against than PrEP (even when combined with DoxyPep), so the attitude against condoms by someone who is knowledgeable enough to be on PrEP in the first place is ridiculous.

[+ Jamie21]

8 hours ago, SirBillybob said:

Whataboutism and false equivalence much?

By that logic, anybody regularly taking one basically established health-related risk such as a side of chips versus rocket at lunch forfeits the right to discuss another, along with weighing in on prevention guidelines and preferences, and gonorrhea checks your BMI before infecting you. 

Of course there is a value judgement regarding condom use, and public health messaging is inherently normative. Avoiding infection is preferable to acquiring one. In fact, it’s a rather uncontroversial values position. Recognizing it isn’t the same thing as demonstrating hidden moralism. 

You yourself may be inclined, with good intentions (how else would your motives be?), to discourage a guy’s smoking habit. Reality is under no obligation to be less carcinogenic in deference to his personal autonomy. 

I don’t agree it’s whataboutism. I’m saying it’s potentially hypocritical to have concerns about bareback sex whilst being unconcerned about clear health risks with other behaviours over which one has a personal choice. Especially when the behaviours have costs to others (second hand smoke, alcohol related misbehaviour and disorder). It seems that if one takes one’s health and wellbeing seriously one does so in a consistent and rational way. To be cavalier about alcohol and smoking and careful about sexual health using the public health argument makes me suspect that the real reason for the objection to bareback sex is moral. 

 

 

[d.anders]

Reading this thread makes me wonder, how many younger gay guys can afford health insurance? How does a sexually active guy pay for all these drugs and doctor visits? I guess a lot of cities have free or low-cost clinics for gays, but if you're sexually active, how often does one have to visit? Doesn't this routine tire quickly?

I have a dear, younger friend (late 30's) who is probably a sex addict. He's what many would consider a hot top, and Grindr is a big part of his life. He told me several years ago that condoms were dead among younger gay men. 

So many of us who survived AIDS in the 70's and 80's still live with that trauma. I'm so glad I'm not young and horny anymore.

[+ SirBillybob]

8 hours ago, Jamie21 said:

I don’t agree it’s whataboutism. I’m saying it’s potentially hypocritical to have concerns about bareback sex whilst being unconcerned about clear health risks with other behaviours over which one has a personal choice. Especially when the behaviours have costs to others (second hand smoke, alcohol related misbehaviour and disorder). It seems that if one takes one’s health and wellbeing seriously one does so in a consistent and rational way. To be cavalier about alcohol and smoking and careful about sexual health using the public health argument makes me suspect that the real reason for the objection to bareback sex is moral. 

You’re serving common sense across a few behavioural health risks with inarguable cascade effects. This is familiar territory inn’t. 

Historically, sex has attracted moral scrutiny. But it doesn’t follow that concern about STI transmission is therefore a disguised sermon where the character of people making certain choices is condemned, or that inconsistency in other areas of wellness is hypocrisy. A parent whose health status is undermined by obesity or the dude whose flecks of puke land on your shoes outside the pub is nevertheless qualified to dissuade their family member from smoking. 

That STI health guidance is so frequently conflated with moralism may say less about the guidance than about the unique cultural space sex continues to occupy. Locked in a binary of virtue or vice, the discussion can only go in circles. 

And now I’m headed to the fitness centre where gripping barbells may have a desirable depilation effect with respect to the hairs on my palms, after which I may check out possessing an adequate supply of condoms. 

Edited 22 hours ago by SirBillybob

[jonasfoleson]

On 3/16/2026 at 8:34 PM, haring222 said:

I grew up in the 90s where condoms were just the norm.  I was also an escort in Chicago from '98-'02 where condoms were just required equipment.  Once I figured out a brand that fit, I never looked back or changed the routine.  As much as I like butts, I want a barrier between my dick any any possible stranger poo.

I was surprised recently... in NYC, hired a very good looking Bel Ami looking guy, originally from the UK, for 2 hours at an eyewatering rate.  Confirmed with him that I would want to top him for at least 45 minutes and that he was up for it.  About 30 minutes into it, I was getting a truly excellent blow job from him and needed it to stop before I went over the edge.  Flipped him over, rubbed his back and butt cheeks for a second, slipped a condom on my dick, slipped easily inside of him. 

Then he paused....'are you wearing a rubber?'  Assuming he was concerned, I answered yes and offered to let him see it.  

With half of my dick inside of this guy, we got into an argument about me wearing the condom.  He turned it into this weird thing and tried to guilt me into taking it off...I assumed he had a latex allergy and I told him it was latex free Skyn so no worries.  He pretty much told me that I was not going to wear a condom and top him and tried to physically reach around and take it off. 

Clearly, I am not going to force anyone to let me top them but the entire thing was just weird.  It's like a 180 form what I would occasionally encounter back in the 90s from positive guys.

Prep has changed this. 

[Nue2thegame]

17 minutes ago, jonasfoleson said:

Prep has changed this. 

PrEP has changed people’s sense of need to use condoms but it doesn’t explain why a bottom without a latex allergy would object to a top that chose to use one. 

[Luv2play]

15 minutes ago, Nue2thegame said:

PrEP has changed people’s sense of need to use condoms but it doesn’t explain why a bottom without a latex allergy would object to a top that chose to use one. 

You evidently don’t fully understand the dynamics involved in being a bottom and what constitutes sexual desire and what satisfies or quenches the thirst for close physical connection expressed in anal intercourse.

[ShortCutie7]

6 hours ago, d.anders said:

Reading this thread makes me wonder, how many younger gay guys can afford health insurance? How does a sexually active guy pay for all these drugs and doctor visits? I guess a lot of cities have free or low-cost clinics for gays, but if you're sexually active, how often does one have to visit? Doesn't this routine tire quickly?

I have a dear, younger friend (late 30's) who is probably a sex addict. He's what many would consider a hot top, and Grindr is a big part of his life. He told me several years ago that condoms were dead among younger gay men. 

This is 100% accurate- I am in that age demographic and it’s part of why I don’t think those my age and younger who claim to be on PreP are realistically consistently doing so or getting tested etc.

17 minutes ago, Nue2thegame said:

PrEP has changed people’s sense of need to use condoms but it doesn’t explain why a bottom without a latex allergy would object to a top that chose to use one. 

Exactly- what I’m trying to say in this thread is that I don’t get why someone would be ANTI-condom. 

[+ SirBillybob]

2 hours ago, Luv2play said:

You evidently don’t fully understand the dynamics involved in being a bottom and what constitutes sexual desire and what satisfies or quenches the thirst for close physical connection expressed in anal intercourse.

Sounds like an appeal for special insight that you apparently uniquely possess relative to certain others. That’s doing a lot of work rhetorically. 

Elevating the preference for condom use for insertive anal, particularly in a transactional context where services and health risk terms are commonly negotiated, to evidence that the client doesn’t understand close physical connection feels like it’s changing the subject from typical boundaries to that of flimsy assumptions about deficits related to grasping desire and arousal. 

Some bottoms find condomless sex more satisfying. Some tops find condoms preferable. (Here I use these terms insertive / receptive behaviourally rather than as defined person categories.) This isn’t to say that both parties’ access to satisfaction reasonably on their terms isn’t important. However, one wouldn’t expect the incompatibility to yield psychological trench warfare at point of intercourse. The reason the OP started the thread was that the experience was startling, truncating the type of encounter that usually plays out without drama. 

Nobody here that may view the ritual of condom application, its brief pause and associated anticipation, as intentional and relational has necessarily lost the plot regarding sex dynamics. 

Edited 20 hours ago by SirBillybob

[Antares]

What’s utterly bizarre to me is what started this thread: bottoms who refuse to be fucked with a condom. All through the HIV times before PrEP (which I consider an absolute miracle and am so grateful for) and up to just a few years ago if there was an objection to using a rubber, it was the top fighting it. Except for the “bug hunters,” which was a psychological malfunction I’ll never understand. 
 

There was never a question that wearing a condom changed the feeling of topping, although condoms have come a long way from my early days when a Trojan-Enz was as fancy as it got…with a good poly one these days you barely feel the difference.
 

But as someone who was a 50/50 vers, I know damned well that it makes zero physical difference as a bottom. It’s totally a mental thing, and in the PrEP and undetectable era (also amazing how far HIV+ management meds have finally come) the dramatic reduction (but not elimination) in barebacking risk has just been fetishized. If being a cumdump is your thing, no problem, easy skip for me, just like water sports and whatever else I don’t care for. But freaking out if someone you’ve not said that to and started an encounter with because you wanted to fuck them is just weirdly childish. 
 

A little empathy and respect for those of us who lived through the sex is deadly ‘80s and ‘90s and self-awareness that bottoming bareback is just a preference and not some kind of moral stance worthy of a soapbox would be nice. For many of us, barebacking was an intimate thing reserved for a trusting serious relationship and wearing a condom is more comfortable for a hookup. Call that its own fetish if you want. 

[+ SirBillybob]

2 hours ago, jonasfoleson said:

Prep has changed this. 

Of course, rightly so.

What do PrEP product monographs contain regarding condom use? 

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

1 hour ago, Luv2play said:

You evidently don’t fully understand the dynamics involved in being a bottom and what constitutes sexual desire and what satisfies or quenches the thirst for close physical connection expressed in anal intercourse.

Yes!  Sex is a Pleasure/Risk calculation.  One must derive more Pleasure than Risk from the experience in order to want to do it.  If I'm not going to feel the bare skin, then it becomes so much less pleasurable to me that it is no longer worth the risk of herpes/warts that are still transmittable with a condom.  I'd rather go without sex. 

27 minutes ago, Antares said:

...I know damned well that it makes zero physical difference as a bottom. It’s totally a mental thing...

Sex IS a mental thing! 

28 minutes ago, Antares said:

If being a cumdump is your thing, no problem, easy skip for me, just like water sports and whatever else I don’t care for.

Yes, that's what I would do as a bottom.  I would say "Let's do not do anal if you're gonna put on a condom.  But, care to take a piss on me?".  I'll derive more pleasure from feeling my partner's fresh warm piss on me than I would feeling a latex membrane in my ass, and it's much safer for me too l.

18 hours ago, FrankR said:

Sometimes “No.” is a full sentence. 

Yes!  Even us cumdump sluts have a right to say "No".  No bare, then no use of my hole.  Let me keep it in shape for those who want to appreciate its natural feel.

I don't hate or disrespect others who want to use condoms.  You're just not going to use them with me.  I don't enjoy giving a blowjob to someone with a condom on, and if I don't enjoy it I'm not going to do it.  The same with anal sex.  You don't get to use me if I'm not going to enjoy it.

[LookingAround]

15 hours ago, Aedo said:

A huge reason why I seem only able to date in South America. Guys in the US don't seem to believe that other STIs exist, and they are all on prep and doxy. The last time I went on a date here in the US I got into a bit of an argument with the bottom as we were transitioning from oral to anal, much like the OP's story. He couldn't believe I used condoms. The argument killed the vibe -- "How could you NOT be on Prep!" this dumbass Rice graduate said, exasperatedly --, and I left and never saw him again.

You're not on prep and you called someone else a dumbass?

[jonasfoleson]

2 hours ago, SirBillybob said:

Of course, rightly so.

What do PrEP product monographs contain regarding condom use? 

if a person can just get a jab or take a tablet a day after fucking, it would encourage a lack of condom use. 

[+ FrankR]

1 hour ago, jonasfoleson said:

if a person can just get a jab or take a tablet a day after fucking, it would encourage a lack of condom use. 

If a person has half a brain or has spent 30 minutes talking to a healthcare provider they will know the jabs and pills dont prevent all STDs. A study by the NIH indicated only about 80% of those on Prep and Doxy Pep actually follow through with consistent treatment.  Once condom use is a habit, it is hard to “forget” to wrap your tool.  Only YOU can prevent wildfires!

[LookingAround]

How many of you follow the same logic by wearing masks to avoid colds and the flu and other communicable diseases transmitted by respiration? Be honest, do you follow the same logic?

[Aedo]

5 hours ago, LookingAround said:

You're not on prep and you called someone else a dumbass?

Yes, and so are you if you can't discern that I was critical of his incredulity and aggressive judgment that I preferred condoms to using Prep and other drugs, not of his use of Prep and other drugs. 

And, as others have noted, condoms protect you from more than do all these drugs. And, Trojan Bareskin condoms are amazing and aren't much worse than bareback sex, for both partners. And, those drugs oftentime take a visible, physical toll on your body and on your kidneys. There was no justifiable reason for that man's response, nor is there one for yours. Sex is so much more than the maximization of physical pleasure, and we are blessed to have better condoms than in ages past and blessed that we can share our sexuality in many different ways.

Edited 14 hours ago by Aedo
further thoughts.

[LookingAround]

1 hour ago, Aedo said:

Yes, and so are you if you can't discern that I was critical of his incredulity and aggressive judgment that I preferred condoms to using Prep and other drugs, not of his use of Prep and other drugs. 

And, as others have noted, condoms protect you from more than do all these drugs. And, Trojan Bareskin condoms are amazing and aren't much worse than bareback sex, for both partners. And, those drugs oftentime take a visible, physical toll on your body and on your kidneys. There was no justifiable reason for that man's response, nor is there one for yours. Sex is so much more than the maximization of physical pleasure, and we are blessed to have better condoms than in ages past and blessed that we can share our sexuality in many different ways.

Sorry if I triggered you. 

Edited 12 hours ago by LookingAround