No Glove No Love

"No Glove, No Love!" was a slogan that came out in the 80's when the AIDS epidemic first took root.   It was an effort to encourage more condom use in the hope of reducing the number of HIV and ultimately AIDS cases.   Glove of course is slang for condom.

So since I was heading to Detroit, I reached out to Lansing Bae to see if he wanted to meet up once more.   My biggest concern from our last encounter was that there was no glove but there was still love.   See what I did there...LOL.

I suspected that Lansing Bae would not be happy with me requesting a condom and I was right.   He immediately argued back that he's not able to get hard with a condom.   He next said that he test regularly for STDs including HIV.    He also mentioned being on Truvada.  We both shared our status which was negative.

Needless to say when the day came for me to head to Detroit, I didn't hear a peep from Lansing Bae.   So I guess that little tryst is through.

Maybe I'm old school but I've always been a proponent of condoms and it seems like a lot of guys these days do not use them.   The biggest reason they don't want to is because they say they are on Prep.   Pre-exposure prophylaxis is the use of medications to prevent the spread of disease in people who have not yet been exposed to the said disease.    So the idea is that if you don't have the HIV virus in your system, Prep is supposed to prevent the virus from forming.   But the medicine says itself that it reduces (not eliminates) the chances of getting HIV.    So it's possible that a person on Prep could still get HIV.

According to this article, there was one patient who was part of the PREP study who did wind up contracting HIV despite being on PREP.    But the same article debunks any failings with the drug itself by saying folks who tested positive either didn't follow the rules for dosage or were already positive when starting the drug.

But aside from HIV, there are many other STDs that one can get from unprotected sex.    While most of those are treatable, there have been stories of STDS that have become resistant to antibiotics.   I did hear that they are trying to develop a Prep that works for other STDs as well.  Even if that's the case, I don't know how comfortable I would be in taking them.

Prep meds like Truvada also have various side effects like other medications do.   These include headaches, rash, nausea, vomiting, and weight loss.    More potentially harmful side effects include kidney or liver damage as well as bone density loss.    I guess you have to weigh the risks but for me the meds aren't worth the risk.

Plus I've already stated the challenges I have in hooking up with guys.  It's not like I'm having sex on the daily so taking a daily medicine that "reduces the chance" of contracting HIV is not something that I feel would benefit me.   Nonetheless it's one more obstacle that makes it difficult to find a hookup.    Maybe I should hang it up but the urge is still there.    So for now I just have to navigate my way through these choppy waters.   Fun...*LOL*.