This is where Bob and I behaved in precisely the same manner, without necessarily starting from the very same premise.

Unlike Bob, in those days, I used to believe that many/most(?) of the guys I was meeting for sex among the members of my college coterie were actually HIV negative guys. A few of them used to be virgins to anything sexual when I met them, and a few others hardly had any experience worth mentioning. Well, as we all know, of all the problems in this world, virginity and the lack of sexual experience are probably the easiest and by far, the most pleasant ones to solve.

But there was a nasty outbreak of Hepatitis C out there, AND I had made a very conscious decision to have sex with condoms ONLY. It was one of those things, that I refused to think/debate about. Condoms have been a non-negotiable for me in all these years.

Again, I can only speak for myself, and am very much aware of the fact that other guys may have made a very different experience. But I have never had any problems using condoms, and practically all of the guys I have been having sex with agreed to the condom use without anything ado. You fucked with condom and lube. Full stop. And you moved on without spending any time thinking about what really happened last night. That peace of mind has always been priceless in my books. And still is, to this day.

I always saw m2m sex as pure, recreational fun.

Two guys mess around, get their rocks off, and move on. If the experience was worth repeating, they'll probably do so. The sun rises in the east, we go to work/school, and still have to pay our bills, put food on the kitchen table, etc.

Call me spoiled, or whatever, but the very idea that the m2m sex should have ANY consequences for the players involved just does not sit well with me. So, I fucked the dude. (Wow!) Now, I have got to go, make doc appointments, take batteries of tests, start taking meds, pay the bills associated with all of the above? Definitely not my cupper... But I fully understand and accept the fact that other guys may hold a vastly different opinion here.

KD

Quote |

Truly a different context: I came out in my final year of college and didn't have a group of friends like that. The time of exploring and becoming more adventurous for me was when I moved to DC, right as the HIV/ADS was beginning to reach high public awareness.

DC was a hot spot both gay men and for HIV/AIDS. I knew the first man to publicly identify himself in DC as being a PWA and to be interviewed by the Washington Post. I didn't know him well but I became a better friend with his lover, who later also died.

As an introvert just beginning to come out of my shell as a person, not just as being gay, I had very few truly close friends. So many of my (what should I call them?) friendly acquaintances and and sex partners did indeed have HIV. There were funerals, quilt panels, demonstrations, and more.

Eventually I had a boyfriend of many years who was a hospice volunteer. He taught me a lot. The whole thing, the sheer sense of mortality, permeated one's consciousness and life.

I must go, running late again, and the dogs are demanding breakfast. Just as well.

~ Bob

Quote |

Whatever the context, background, etc., the HIV outbreak was a very major game changer for all of us. I doubt that anyone would want to seriously deny this.

On a more mundane side, being a member of a closely knit coterie of college dudes and few working guys belonging to the same peer group really meant not just lots of sex with the guys you knew, (or well, sorta knew) but also a lot of unplanned, spontaneous sexcapades. We are talking here about the pre-cell phone age, too...

With dudes acutely lacking both knowledge and experience in specific matters of hygiene, AND with life being a bit less organized, and a bit more spontaneous, too, accidents of less savory nature were bound to happen.

No one really used to panic or even comment much about those. Everyone pretty much understood that such 'accidents', well, came with the territory. By this very same token, most guys actually agreed that the condoms came in very handy...

No doubt that everybody started using the condoms first and foremost because of the Big Bug as it used to be called. But as it is so often the case in life, other, frequently very mundane aspects of life entered into the equation, too, cementing the only hitherto known survival strategy.

Looking back to this time and age, I believe that it really was the time when we all learned to dance like kites on the rim of a volcano...

KD

Quote |

It really changed everything - before the general public became aware of AIDS I remember a buddy of mine talking about how sex with another guy was safer - no chance of getting pregnant.

As the disease and knowledge of it grew people were talking about how "gay sex can kill you" - and a few guys I knew who were "casual bi" - in other words way more into girls but in the right mood with some beer.... well they just stopped fooling around at all. The idea that no one would ever know - what could go wrong - the one time "oh what the hell" that happened as kids was over.

For myself it scared me deeper into the closet and made masturbation look like it was going to be my way of life.....

Quote |

You hit the nail on the head reminding us all that at the time and age, the idea of having sex with women, attractive as this may have been to the str8 guys, was seen by many men as a possible or even probable trap with very far-reaching consequences. A dude thought he was using her for sex, and she thought of using him as a convenient source of income.

Men were neither going to say anything to anyone nor were they going to be asking for anything afterwards. It was simply a mutual sex release, occasionally mixed up with some light emotions adding a bit to the pleasures of our encounters. The NSA really reached its full meaning in those days...

Surprisingly, very few of my buddies really stopped, once the news reached us that, well, 'gay sex could kill you'. By that time we must have had so much of it already that we reasoned: if it was meant to kill us, we would be all 6 feet down and under...

Yet, the nastiness of the Hep C mixed with the previously mentioned practicalities made us all use condoms all the time. Sure, the exceptions must have happened but those must have been far and few between.

In practical terms, our inner coterie rarely exceeded 2 dozens of actively playing guys. The outer interference was relatively minimal, and basically the pool stayed largely protected by the very idiosyncrasies that we very much disliked in our time and day.

Sadly, couple of guys did catch the bug once we all graduated, and our closed coterie became a matter of the past.

Most of us knew that what held us so tightly together were actually our specific college-life related circumstances. We were all there doing the same thing, and a few of us enjoyed sharing some intimacy among ourselves. Convenience is often overlooked as being a powerful motive of human behavior.

KD

Quote |

That was one of the great things - there was no expectation of love or romance or staying together forever -

Early on it was just a physical release - we were friends - we were horny - we needed to cum. As I got a bit older with some there was a degree of, as you say, "light emotions" - we cared about each other - but it was still not the passion that was expected with heterosexual sex.





With me it was not so much my buddies stopping - it was more my being afraid to expand my number of sex partners. AIDS was all over the news when I was in college - giving some of the stigma back to gay sex that had faded a bit in the 70's.

So every time I was in a situation where it could have happened I had to wrestle with my own internal issues as a guy in the closet and then add to that "and what if he has...." - it made masturbation and waiting till I was home on vacation with my buddies seem like a much safer route. So there were a lot of opportunities I missed that in the pre-HIV days I think I would have gone for....

Quote |

Sex was passionate, though. The feelings afterwards however, never went anywhere close by. The bottom dudes got their act together very soon. They were showing passion and emotion during the actual intercourse. The tops matched this fully, as a rule. In other words, everyone was putting as much energy and enthusiasm and knowledge/skill as he had at the time to make sure that the actual sexual experience was as good as possible. A bottom friend of mine used to say, 'since I am getting fucked anyway, we all may have some real fun along the way, too...'

Once the sexual bit ended, and we returned out of the zone, the guys you messed around with were sure, still your friends, but no further expectations of any kind were raised on anyone's part.

Naturally, once the freshman year ended, a few of the guys figured out that some of their buddies were real keepers, and that the others, well, not necessarily so.

So, the dudes who kinda became 'regulars' started hanging out amongst themselves a bit more, and the already existing bonds of friendship grew a bit stronger. Hardly anyone really spoke about being in love of any kind, but a good top guy made sure that his favorite bottom dude got reasonable support if needed.

The tops, too, tended to group together, and made sure that if one of your friends needed a hand here and there; he got the support needed, too.

There was quite some bonding, quite a few seemingly great friendships, but hardly anyone tried to emulate any heteronormative emotional life associated with the heterosexual intimacy.

This is where the practicalities of life interferred. In a pre-internet and pre-apps age, the best (not the only) way of meeting the 'new' guys used to be through the network of your buddies and friends - basically through your coterie.

Add to this equation the fact that being caught was really not an option. The necessary planning forced you to call your shots ahead of time.

So, Michael asked me if I was up to meeting a new bttm dude he had messed around with. Like every horny top, you'd say, 'yeah, sure.'

Michael went on to organize a meet up over coffees or something at one of the public places. Both the 'new guy' and I had the chance to opt out if we did not like each other... But that used to be the case very rarely. The default was that the 'new dude' already had that afternoon free, and I also made sure that my downtown flat was available. So, both he and you shrugged down with your shoulders, thought WTF, and went on with the business at hand

KD

Quote |