What If You Can’t Or Won’t Use PreP
There are many of us who can’t take PreP (medical conditions that make taking it too dangerous or an inability to afford it) or won’t (many people don’t want to ingest such a powerful drug, leery of the long term effects).
Gay men who can’t or won’t take PreP have to make peace between their medical and emotional health. We have been living out a profound dilemma for decades and it all comes down to this: life isn’t worth living without sex, but sex isn’t worth dying over. Every gay man lives in relationship to the suffocating contradiction.
How do we steer through the enormous forces that play into our sexuality? How do we stay safe, not just from HIV but from every sexual harm, when biological drives emotional hunger and physical longing combines to overpower logical thought?
As a sex advice columnist, the letters I get on this subject fairly ache with the pain of the struggle. Every new infection is a gong that vibrates through the gay community, reminding us of our awful dilemma. Despite the existence of PreP, 40,000 people get infected each year in the U.S.
Unfortunately, we can’t seem to turn to safe-sex experts for guidance. Yes they’re bright, educated and well-informed. But have you ever noticed how unhelpful they are? They all sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Talk to one of them. Ten bucks says you end up more confused than when you started.
Most of the emails I get on the subject express mass confusion and exasperation about safe sex. I’m right there with them. I remember talking to a safe sex counselor after receiving my HIV test results. I couldn’t get a simple answer without him clear-cutting acres of the English language to build prefaces, qualifiers, disqualifiers caveat and conditions.
Say What?
The disconnect between sex experts and us civilians comes down to this: we want wisdom; they give data. We want advice, they give information. We want answers, they give serious.
In my column, for better or for worse, I give advice, not just information. The truth is, there is no way of keeping yourself absolutely safe except by locking yourself in the bedroom with an expensive porn collection. But the dialogue in these videos is so bad you’ll swing the door open in no time.
The most interesting questions about safe sex aren’t necessarily medical ones, but the ones that give us glimpses of the painfully real dilemmas we find ourselves in. Like the guy who was furious that his trick told him he was hiv-positive after he went down on it.
Or the guy seeking support for his “viral centrism.” He’s positive he won’t even consider dating someone negative because “I don’t want the emotional turmoil of wondering what their next HIV test will show.” It’s questions like these that’ll make you keep turning the pages over like a congressman and heat. Starting next week you’ll see a torrent of them.
Sex Resources