The Five Reasons Why Men Report Barebacking
Unsafe Sex-Barebacking
There are very few expectations as an MSM. And if you’re a man of color there are even less expectations for you. You’re doing something that will resonate not only throughout your own life but the lives of those around you.
Expectations and Being Needed by Society
To that end, the world needs you around for as long as possible. If you’ve been infected with an STD then you have to maintain your health, take your medication, invest time in stress reducing exercise, immune system building foods and mental clarification with a therapist if need be, but make no mistake, your community, whether that’s the Black community, the Latino community, the human community needs you in it. We need your wisdom, your grace, your humor, your life testimony so doesn’t check out or reduce yourself to not caring. It’s wholly appropriate to tell a Good Man a few dates into a relationship about your infection, before you become sexual. Some will decide not to engage; some will engage further. That is their fundamental human right. Again we live on Earth, not Fair but exampling yourself as a Good Man means that you stand in integrity and give someone that option in the faithful knowing that all of the things about you are greater than a disease/infection and that the Good Man for you will accept that as one of the elements of your life, as he decides to merge your lives together.
STD Infected and Barebacking
If you’re not infected with anything, that’s a great thing. In fact, it’s not often said enough how good of a thing that is. With all of the non-profit organizations and programs and medicines and initiatives---a man can feel like there are only two categories for him as an MSM---infected and about to be infected. Infection, STD’s, weakened immune systems, medications, is not your sexualities birthright, expectation nor outcome. You, being conscious, listening to your intuition about sex partners, asking questions, using protection have maintained your physical integrity and should feel no shame in that nor pressure to “act wild”. It’s important though for you not to become susceptible to one of the factors that bring about unsafe sex.
Reason 1: Anger/Self-Destructive/Fatalism
Universally accepted, however you choose to perceive sexualities outside of homosexuality, there is a greater chance for depression. I have a whole series of blogs and YouTube videos and TV shows about it it's so prevalent with MSM
Shame, different from guilt, turned inward becomes depression and self-destructive behavior. Shame turned outward can manifest itself as destructive actions towards others. Essentially I don't like myself, I don't agree with my lot in life, I'm assuming that my sexual identity and "normal" society will never jive together, I'm alone, I'm hurting, I feel alienated and ostracized so why practice safe sex?
Reason 2: Pleasure seeking/Risk Taking/Escapism
Sex, around for hundreds of thousands of years for humans, is fun. It can be adventurous, stimulating, relaxing, intense, intimate and the prospect of having to stop for: THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX---(“Excuse me one second as I was nibbling your inner thigh we are at the pre-penetrative stage, let me lean over, bend down, roll over there, open the drawer, my pocket, your pocket, that box get the condom packet out, open it, get the lube, put the condom on, a little dab of lube within more lube within you anally, lube then onto the condom------okay, where were we?”)
Not easy, pleasant or romantic. It's easier to be wild with this incredibly passionate hottie (known or unknown) who you've had a crush on for a while or a night or who you've been dating for a week or a year and just be close, be free, be spontaneous! Because passion, the passion of touching you, being touched by me, the smell of you next to me and your lips, oh, God, your lips!!!!!!!----there's no time! Take me! Take me!!!! Reason be damned!!!!
Reason 3: Intimacy Needs/Rational Choice Making
Human beings, especially those who believe they are (infatuation, intense attraction, lust) or are in love, want and assume this is the Forever Love. Or this is the true love. This is the good love. Let's ratchet it back from love and say I tell you I'm negative, you promise me you are and you're trustworthy, right and so am I. We're not like those others. We're both employed, rational, respectable, employed, educated, loving people. We can be close without a condom. In fact, our love, or just our humanness needs to feel closer, no barriers, no artificiality between us.
I love you. I really, really do. I would never intentionally hurt you. I loves you, Porgy. I want to feel you. Don't you want to feel me?
Reason 4: Erroneous Perception of Risk
Look at what great shape he's in. Look at what great shape I'm in. You can tell when someone is infected. Their skin seems ashen or glistens or has less collagen. The meds do that to them. But you, you look like the perfect specimen of health. There's no possible way you could be HIV+ at your age, you're too young. I can tell just from sight. I didn't think some of the things we were doing, just rubbing that against this, just a little bit of insertion, just oral was risky.
Reason 5: Erectile Related Dysfunction.
- Condoms don't fit me right,
- Condoms are too tight.
- I'm allergic to condoms.
- I can't stay hard/maintain an erection with a condom on.
- I can't get hard in a condom.
I wrote a magazine cover story on AIDS, it was a big thing getting the cover to be in color, red, the AIDS ribbon as I was spinning off of an AIDS conference that was occurring in Buffalo. A year or so later a former girlfriend of a lover came up infected. Ok, she was a bit of an----------extremely sexually liberated, physically and sexually generous young woman with a lot of young men and older men that garnered her a with a very public and sexualized…...reputation. (Yeah, I could've worked that out with just one word like slut but let us not judge the past or people/women’s sexual activity.)
Around the same time my mother's close friend, Walter died of HIV related complications. They'd known each other close to a decade and it left a deep impression on her, even surrounding funerals and death. My mother was very vocal/engaging around safe sex, afraid that I would become infected, that I was infected, that infection was only a hairs breadth away. Suddenly from my teens through college years, HIV wasn't simply TV public service announcements,
Red Hot CD compilations, and free condoms in night clubs, it was really, really real. Then I started volunteering places in, seeing death upfront---a guy, a nice guy was here today, gone tomorrow and I thought about the future, my future. I thought about marriage and children. I thought about ok, I might meet a partner who was HIV+----would I maintain the relationship long-term or just find a way to fade to black within a date or two?
Logically, statistically, even if my sexual partners had reported as negative (or thought they were) I'd been sexual with someone who was HIV+ or they may've had the other multitude of STIs. Most importantly to me---children. How would I parent children if I was sexually negligent around risk? Biologically parent children first (yes, I know there are other options) but then what about child rearing? How long did I want and need my own parents in my life? How long would my children need me? If the outside range of HIV survival is 20+ years and I were to get infected in my 20s or 30s wasn’t I then also voluntarily perpetuating the usually social force of men of color dying early? Is unsafe sex a way of men of color being removed from the community, their community that needs them during their highest wage earning/educational/potentiality fulfillment years, regardless of their sexuality?
I know, a lot to think about, right?
Here I am, brown as the floor, safe sexing it, in LTRs because of the future. Because to some degree my family, my children, not wanting to impact my parents negatively, not wanting to be absent in my community, not be able to give of my skills over a long period of time.
When THE SCIENCE OF SAFE SEX moments happen for me---what flashes through my mind what makes me crack jokes and try to make what is the oddest commercial break on my personal passionate moments---are the above reasons.
Take safe sex in stride, it’s the norm for humans to have to deal with. Like the weather. But don’t allow the crushing weight of the 5 Reasons convince you that it’s not a normal part of the game or that you should drop out. I challenge you to be a Good Man and stay in the Game, stay in the fight, stay in the struggle of being conscious because, we, the world, need you.
Shame is “I am bad.”
Guilt is “I did something bad/wrong.”
#KylePhoenix
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