TW: How did you survive?

[Rudynate]

Me????

Bottom shaming?????  Nah.  Colorful, yes.  Judgemental, no.   I often refer to myself as liking to take it in the ass (colorful).   maybe lay off the manhattans before you post. 

[Rudynate]

23 hours ago, Rudynate said:

I made it through with a combination of dumb luck and learning to live with safe sex.  When the first cases started to appear on either coast, I was living in Denver and it was common for people there to say "Oh, we'll never have to worry about that here."  As someone with a biology degree and a healthcare background, I suspected it was only a matter of time until the first cases showed up in Denver, given the high mobility of young gay men, and, sure enough, they did.  The early safe sex recommendations were so draconian that I decided I would rather do without and content myself with beating off. I think I got my first HIV test in 1986 and I was completely prepared for it to be positive, but it wasn't. Back then, the reality of AIDS was so horrible, that finding out I was negative was a huge motivator to keep making the right choices.

Re-reading this gave me an answer I've been searching for.  Occasionally, I talk  to young guys who ask me how I have stayed HIV negative for so long, as though there is some secret or special skill to it.  I think the reason that they they find it so difficult, is that they don't feel that urgency around it that we did.  They have never seen the grim reality of a world without effective antiviral meds.

[muscmtl]

This said, as this about escorts, wish there were more poz escorts cuz: poz for poz = game changer.

Fun fact, we pozforpoz right from the start. Was listening to FIASCO and one guy talked about it in 1982.

Fuck I miss the all poz only orgies of the before meds, during the wezallgonnadie anyway end of the world era. 

[muscmtl]

22 hours ago, jeezifonly said:

Medically inaccurate assessment, but extra points awarded for bottom-shaming. 

Wrong. Other thing no one talks about is the shit loads of guys not pozzing during that era. By 1985 I guarantee that if you heard a guy was neg then he was a strict top, and the supposed strict tops who pozzed were just one of those that would die before admitting they took a dick up their ass 

[+ FrankR]

Could we stop with the attempts to make HIV positive sound glamorous. It is still life changing today. You need to find a good doctor. You are on meds for the rest of your life. You have constant labs and blood work. And the mental health challenges are brutal. I have seen and helped many friends through this.  

[+ KensingtonHomo]

On 4/21/2026 at 4:56 PM, muscmtl said:

Wrong. Other thing no one talks about is the shit loads of guys not pozzing during that era. By 1985 I guarantee that if you heard a guy was neg then he was a strict top, and the supposed strict tops who pozzed were just one of those that would die before admitting they took a dick up their ass 

Your "perspective," unless it's meant to be tongue in cheek, is 180 degrees from nearly every other gay man I've met who lived through the emergence and initial AIDS crisis. I live in NYC and the few gay men I know who are boomers or older Gen Xers lost nearly their entire friend groups. Some were lucky to be tops, which mitigated their risks, or they stayed in monogamous relationships. A few were celibate for 5-10 years. 

[+ KensingtonHomo]

I'm a Gen Xer who came out in the late 80s as a teenager. I stayed negative for two reasons: sheer terror at what I saw happening to gay men in the late 80s and early 90s, and luck that by the time I was sexually active, safer sex practices were pretty standard. As a bottom, I was scrupulous with condom use, not swallowing. I was also a bit of a prude and a romantic, which helped. I was looking to fall in love so I rarely "hooked up." When I met my husband in 2001, we used condoms for 6 months and were tested multiple times before we went raw. We were monogamous from then until 2019 when we stumbled into a threesome in Spain. Since then, we've both used PreP on Demand (though I'm very interested in the shot) and gone back to getting tested every six months or if we suspect an exposure to another STI. 

[b2bf]

Boomer here. I came out (to myself as well) in the early ‘80s when I was 24. I supposed timing and dumb luck were most critical for my survival. 

I met my life partner a few months after coming out. We had infrequent sex for the first year/ 18 months - then never again and never discussed. Weird, I know. We were together for 41 years. I was 25 and almost perpetually horny, so meaningless hookups became my outlet. I blamed circumstances for that but now that I know that I’m firmly on the spectrum, it makes perfect sense. Be that as it may, it was not the best time for that behaviour.

In ’89 we moved to LA (not the best place for that either). I became a frequent visitor to the Hollywood Spa on Ivar. By then I was good about using condoms. I still clearly remember, early summer ’92, I remember the room on the 2nd floor mezzanine, and I remember the quintessential early 20-something blond California jock. I found the condom inside me after he left. Shortly after I was treated for venerial warts and tested negative for HIV. In September I was laid up for two or three days with a really severe flu.

In ’94 we were applying for a mortgage on a house in Amsterdam. The mortgage required insurance which required a blood test. I tested positive (bank manager: “if we don’t include the closing costs then the mortgage is below the threshold requiring insurance, so we can just throw the test results away” - the Dutch are eminently pragmatic). AZT had just been declared not effective for long term treatment. So it was just a matter of time - or hope for better treatment. In 1996 HAART started in the Netherlands and I began on a whole slew of antivirals with all sorts of varying side-effects. Who knows what would have happened under a different country’s medical system or if I had been infected just a little earlier.

Now after 30 years I have a “blip.” No longer undetectable (123) and just about to be retested. So all these memories come back. Let’s hope it’s just a blip (to my knowledge there have been two Prep resistant infections so far - both in Toronto).

[+ Charlie]

Many gay men in partnerships assumed that they were safe from AIDS. A good friend of mine had a younger partner, and he thought they had an exclusive relationship. However, the younger partner travelled often on business, and shortly after returning from one business trip, he became ill and tested positive for AIDS. My friend tested negative. It was early in the epidemic, and there were no effective treatments; the younger partner soon died. Luckily, my friend did not test positive, and lived another thirty years, but it permanently affected his attitude towards partnerships.

[MikeBiDude]

3 hours ago, Charlie said:

Many gay men in partnerships assumed that they were safe from AIDS. A good friend of mine had a younger partner, and he thought they had an exclusive relationship. However, the younger partner travelled often on business, and shortly after returning from one business trip, he became ill and tested positive for AIDS. My friend tested negative. It was early in the epidemic, and there were no effective treatments; the younger partner soon died. Luckily, my friend did not test positive, and lived another thirty years, but it permanently affected his attitude towards partnerships.

Reminiscent of BD Wong’s character in “And the Band Played On” when he comes home and tells his long term AIDS activist partner he was positive. Feel free to correct me if I’m remembering this wrong.