TW: How did you survive?

[BuckCanucked]

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).

[+ PhileasFogg]

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.  

[Nue2thegame]

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. 

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

59 minutes ago, PhileasFogg said:

...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.

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.

[+ JamesB]

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.

[BuckCanucked]

43 minutes ago, Nue2thegame said:

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. 

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

[mike carey]

3 hours ago, BuckCanucked said:

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

Scientifically Proven™

[ShortCutie7]

4 hours ago, JamesB said:

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 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.

[+ claym]

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. 

Edited yesterday at 06:58 AM by claym
clarity

[mtaabq]

8 hours ago, BuckCanucked said:

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? 

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. 

[+ 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

 

[mike carey]

A timely and sobering recollection, @nycman!

[+ Charlie]

At the time that AIDS appeared in the public consciousness, I was already in my 40s and had been in a partnered relationship for 20 years. We were not exclusive, but we were also long past the slutty promiscuity of youth. I had also never been into being an anal bottom, which reduced one possible source of infection. My doctor was also a gay personal friend, so I was alerted early to what was going around in the medical area. I belonged to various gay organizations, which were a source of reliable information, and for a few years in the late 1980's I actually ran the AIDS Information Hotline for a major city. In spite of all that, I think that I was also probably just lucky. I had many friends who got AIDS at that time and most of them died from it, though a few hung on long enough to get effective treatment. One of them hung on until 1996 and died officially of something else, but his sister (a medical technologist) still says, "He died of AIDS."

[+ robear]

Luck, condoms, and probably natural resistance.

I came of age in the late 70s, and I was a busy little slut.  Baths, bookstores, bushes, back rooms, they all saw me several times a week. When what would become AIDS came on the scene in the early 80s, one of the first insights was that condoms helped prevent spread. As a top, I became consistently condom compliant, I simply did not fuck without a condom (and I did a LOT of fucking). I never used condoms for oral as recommended by some (who did?), and I am an avid cocksucker.

In the darkest days of the 80s, the mindset was "we're all gonna die, so why worry." I wasn't first tested for HIV until 1996, I just ASSUMED I had to have it, but at least using condoms helped prevent ME from giving it to someone else. Despite my activities, the only experience I had with STDs were Hep-B in college and a few mild cases of what was then called non-gonococcal urethritis (probably chlamydia), and intestinal parasites (my busy little tongue got around), both of which were easily treated. My PCP has commented that I must have a really healthy immune system, even at an advanced age I rarely get even a head cold, so I believe that natural protection came into play for me, too.

Now I take the little blue pill every day, not so much because my current sex life demands it, but because I CAN. What a different world we gay men would live in today if that pill had existed in 1982. I do it for fallen comrades (weird as that may sound).

[+ Vegas_Millennial]

10 hours ago, claym said:

In the early 1908s I worked at a hospital...

Wow, I bet hospitals were much different over a hundred years ago than they are today 😲.  Thank you for your century of service 🙏 

[+ JamesB]

14 hours ago, ShortCutie7 said:

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.

I wouldn’t consider three times a year to be sexually active either and I should have clarified in my post that I was referring to unprotected sex; that’s on me. That said, you might be a good candidate for on-demand or event-driven PrEP, especially if you bottom, since condoms can fail and you’ll end up with a full load inside you. Don’t ask me how I know. In any case, it’s best to have an open and honest conversation with your doctor and then decide what level of risk you’re comfortable with, keeping in mind that the only completely risk-free option is abstinence.