This is a response to Rik for the most part. You ask why people are willing to take the risk of unprotected oral sex, knowing the possible outcomes could be more than just a load in your mouth. I'm 26 years old, which is old enough to have spent my entire sexual life with the spectre of HIV hanging over my head and young enough to have many of my older friends telling me about what being gay was like BEFORE HIV. I don't know how old you are, and I won't presume you're any older than I am, but if you're my age or younger... How can you NOT understand the risky choices young men make? The desire to have sex without having to think the whole time about the risks, never giving yourself over to lust, always having to be alert and careful when there's a possibility of flesh touching flesh. Do you feel the same draining, neverending fear that someday you'll get it, that some time you'll be enjoying sex *too much* and you'll forget, or the rubber'll break, or you'll get cum in your eye, and all the careful tiptoeing you've done through your sexual existence will have been a waste of time? Besides all that, the argument that you should always, always be safe is academic - How can someone seriously ask me to use a condom every time I have sex with my partner of five years, just in case one of us catches it? I can't even imagine spending the rest of my life wearing a rubber, yet that's the only way to have sex and still be safe. But see, I've made the choice to have sex, knowing the risks. I've made the choice to have unprotected sex with my partner, and that's a risk. So many people pay lip service to the concept of calculated risks, when what they mean is the calculated risks THEY'VE been willing to make - Meaning anyone who doesn't take those risks is paranoid, and anyone who takes more than those risks is foolhardy. I'm not saying YOU'RE saying that, not at all, but that doesn't seem to be the way most people approach safe or unsafe sex.