CRUISING for SEX

by Doug McClelland

(posted January, 2007)

Dear Friends and Readers:

The Guidance Counselor is going on hiatus after this new column below. It seems that I’ve answered all your questions to your satisfaction as your letters have stopped coming. Therefore this will be the last Guidance Counselor column.

It has been my pleasure to offer advice and information to you over the last few years. Perhaps we’ll have future opportunities to be in touch.

Warm Personal Regards,
Doug McClelland
The Guidance Counselor

From: Marky
Subject: Finding poz guys
Question: Hello, I'm a poz guy, healthy, and good-looking. Over time it's become my practice to pretty much only have sex with other pos guys. This takes a certain weird vibe out of the hook up situation I find. Plus we can skip the condoms. If my partner and I both know we are both positive we can just get on with the fun without dealing with the fears negative guys have.

In my online profiles and cruising I state up front that I am poz and healthy and looking for other poz guys so there is no confusion. But when I venture out into the real world things get way confusing. I find it hard to ask a guy I've just struck up a conversation with about his status. And I've never had anyone ask me about mine. It's like we need some nonverbal signal comparable to the fisting red hanky to signal status.

Any suggestions for discerning poz guys in the real world cruising situation?

Dear Marky: I long for the days when people would actually cruise each other in real life. It was a weird, funny ritual, but in a way it was more open. At least you could look at somebody, see how the person moved, and interact with them. But, as with any personal interaction with a stranger, there is always a lot left unknown. That is now pretty much gone. Now we have the Internet when you want to hook up. You can get sex within minutes.

There seems to be more and more self-sorting being done by poz guys. You used to only see adds saying ‘I’m negative UB2’. But now it is common to see online ads by poz guys looking for other poz guys. The ability to bluntly communicate what you are looking for is one of the great things about online cruising.

I think you are very right that there can be a weird vibe sometimes when guys with different status knowingly have sex. Both partners can have it in the back of their minds that there are do’s and don’t.
I’m afraid that I don’t know of anyway to discern the status of a stranger without asking. Maybe you could ask a less challenging question than ‘are you positive?’. I’ve had guys use the lines ‘I don’t use condoms’, or I’m into barebacking’ when we got down to talking about sex in a bar. To me, statements along these lines indicate a guy is subtlety telling me he is positive, and feeling out where I am at. This might also lead into a more frank discussion. You might also try seeking out events that might be more attracting to poz guys. For example bareback parties and sexclubs can be found in large cities.

I’d like to touch briefly on the health side of this subject. There is emerging evidence that positive guys whose viral load is undetectable due to successful antiretroviral therapy are very unlikely to transmit the virus during unprotected sex (although it still does happen sometimes). There is also strengthening anecdotal evidence that fears of infection by multiple strains of HIV are overblown. So your practice of unprotected sex with other poz guys may do you no harm. But remember there are lots of other sexually transmitted diseases that are prevented by condom use. So even if you are self sorting for HIV status you still need to protect yourself from Hepatitis, Syphilis, etc, etc.

Perhaps this is an indication of the developing ‘normalization’ of HIV now that it is a chronic disease rather than a fatal disease here in much of the first world. You might say this fits into the medicalization of our lives. Pharmaceuticals have become a basic part of the lives of millions of people, who routinely take pills for depression, cholesterol, and blood pressure, to help pay attention in class, to sleep, and to cure sexual dysfunction. The fact that tens of thousands of people are taking anti-HIV medications no longer seems unusual.

I believe that the gay community split in 1985, the moment a reliable HIV test was available. Before that day everyone was in it together. Nobody knew who had it and everyone acknowledged that it was a horror. Once we had the test we could sort ourselves into Positive and Negative, each with different survival concerns.

Finally, I have to say that personally this selfsorting seems to be a strange thing socially. It is my practice to have sex with anyone who interests me but to practice safer sex with all my partners.

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