Thanks to Blondbuzzed for staying on his course. He has had a bad experience and is sharing it here with us, hoping that we might be more alert to the risks involved. Lots of people read these boards and lots of guys have been alerted. Good Work!
The same goes to Straycatt and Samgone. Way to go!
If anyone thinks that you sometimes 'freaked out a bit' and that this 'aint a biggie' and 'what the hell, shit happens anyway', la, la, la, reconfirm their right to think so. (We live in a free country, don't we?) It is your health, your well-being and last but not least, your medical bill at stake here. (Dr. Danny claimed in one of his postings that he had bought his first house solely on gonohrea. Ain't this telling?) You are very qualified to feel about it the way you do! Eventually, yours is the right to err on the side of safety as much as it is theirs to err on the side of risk. I feel very cool about being able to say, dude, I care when shit happens in your life. The other guys are very free to say that no shit in other people's lives is big enough for them to admit that they care. That's how I see 'cool' and that's how they see 'cool'.
I do very gladly agree with Scruffy that 'nothing has changed in the last 10 years in terms of the safe sex.' What has changed is our perception of what is 'safe', conditionally speaking and what is 'risky', conditionally speaking, too.
Some 10 years ago, safe sex was largely defined in terms of 'make sure, you wear a condom, if you are an anal top and conversely, make sure your top wears a condom, if you are an anal bottom. Do not share the same tooth-brush and beware of using the same needles and syringes, if you are an intravenous drug user'. Such policies failed to stop AIDS completely but certainly helped towards reducing the numbers of new seroconversions. Life for many of us, avid cruisers, started returning to normalcy and few sex clubs (if not spas) (re-) opened up in San Francisco, too. Lots of folks moved (back) to the city in the early to mid-1990s; myself, included. Yes, we were having a ball of a kind, too. The party, if on a reduced scale, went on.
Towards the end of the 1990s a significant upsurge in new cases of chalmydia, syph, clap, Hep B and C, etc. has been reported by the SF health authorities. AIDS was still big in our eyes but a host of other, mostly curable STDs virtually had a party of their own, too. In 2000, AIDS activists started giving away small key-chains with a flash light and detailed instruction how to inspect a penis for tell-tale signs before taking it into your mouth. I would have found that humorous, if I did not know better.
Europeans have been always more cautious when describing the risks of oral sex and various groups and organizations in Germany started recommending wearing protection even when having oral sex only, early in the day. I have never come across any report on the upsurge of STD infections here (am in Europe at the moment) and certainly no one was distributing those little flash lights.
There is a growing tendency to include 'oral sex with condom' recommendation into the general guidelines and definitions of safe sex. (I am not saying that anyone had done so, so far, but I see a trend there.)
My bottomline:
The decision to use condoms with any kind of sex is always an individual decision, no matter how harsh the consequences might be, for both yourself and the others.
You might wish to reconsider your present sexual practices and re-estimate your risk levels. Living in a committed, monogamous relationship is very different from cruising the PowerExchange or the Steamworks, five times a week and partying on the buffet of seemingly endless debauchery. Or having few, tame regular buddies who come to service you on a regular basis, for that matter.
I happen to have a very 'active' sexual life. I also happen to be a keen observer and have no problem in chatting up the guys, if I want to. So, I met this 'absolutely gorgeous, A&F, All-American, and what not 'college dude, couple a weeks ago in SF. He hits one of the sex clubs 2-4 times a week, and starts early in the evening. Very few guys turn his blow job offer down and he is GOOD! He says his personal record was to suck 44-45 cocks in one night. He said, he lost the precise count. His goal is to reach 60 for one night and, yeah, if the guy shoots, he swallows. If the guy wears a condom, he'll suck him, too. After all, a cock is a cock is a cock... rite? I am wondering, what is his health status after having trained for this kind of sexual Olympics over the last six months? I guess, Dr. Danny could buy half-a-villa in Italy and stuff the fridge full of food for his growing nephew, just trying to cure this one single dude. (K, I am kiddin'!)
There is no final answer to this. Your truth and your decision will always be yours and only yours to live with. If this gave you some food for thought, we have all done a very good job here.
KD