happy vday!

first of all, happy valentine's day to all, whether you have someone to spend it with or not.

i personally do not. i haven't really done anything for valentine's for the past few years, which is cool with me. at work today i was looking forward to coming home and getting some productive things done and hitting the gym tonight. but seeing people with flowers and gifts on the way home kinda bummed me out and now i just feel like sitting in bed wallowing in self-pity for a few hours lol. haha nah i'm good, more power to anyone who's having a special 2/14. i however, will be spending it listening to sappy 80s love song off pandora. right now "promise" by when in rome is on lol.

so by now you've probably heard about the chris lee/craigslist debacle. if not, do a google search. short story even shorter, a middle-aged, married congressman fudged some details about himself and responded to some craigslist personal ad and sent the woman a shirtless pic of himself, all off his own personal email account. once the woman found out who he was and went public with what he did, he just about instantly resigned. i could get into my love-hate relationship with craigslist, but for the sake of my dignity i will refrain from going into much detail (for now) lol. but this story is all the more reason why i have done my best to avoid random hookups off that, or any other site now. thank god for the republicans he wasn't responding to gay personals. another self-loathing homo congressman is probably the last thing the GOP wants right now. anyway i'm not saying i'd do him, but chris lee has a pretty good body for 46. i definitely wouldn't mind having a body like that at 46 lol.

i can't decide if the internet has been a force of good or evil, at least in regards to closeted men. on one hand it's an invaluable escape valve for releasing male sexual energy, but at the same time it probably keeps guys from seriously confronting and coming to terms with their sexual orientation when they can just pop online and arrange a quick hook-up. but then again, i don't really know what closeted guys did before the internet--rest stops? backwood roads? i can't imagine that being a much better alternative.

OK, i could spend days pontificating on the morality of craigslist hooking up, but given that it is valentine's day and cl is generally a depressing place, i will save it for another day. make love, be happy, think positive thoughts, and believe in the power of love!

scared

yikes..just published this post and realized what a huge block of text this is. prepare yourself...


if this blog is going to be my confession to the world, i may as well start out with a controversial post. currently i am deathly scared i may be HIV positive. "wait what?" you're thinking. didn't i just start this blog in the last post and appear to be a fairly intelligent, seemingly rational normal guy, in the MEDICAL profession of all fields? how could i possibly be foolish enough to have exposed myself to HIV? well, doctors aren't perfect, and even armed with more knowledge about HIV than i care to know, i've still made mistakes and continue to keep making them. my hope is that my last possible exposure will not cost me my health for the rest of my life.

so the story is, i was feeling pretty down a few weeks ago for a variety of reasons. i decided to browse craigslist and found an ad from a guy about my age in a city next to me. description and pictures seemed to match my type so i sent a reply back to his ad. first of all, i usually never respond to ads and create my own if i am going the craigslist route at all, so that was kind of red flag #1. the guy responds and sounds decent and we exchange some emails. he emails me the next day saying he is free and i am unfortunately still interested in random sex so i email him back. then he replies back that he only wants to fuck around bareback. i am thinking, "fuck, this guy is being up front about having unsafe sex, and if he's willing to fuck bare, posted an ad on cl, this is probably not a good idea." clearly, that should have been red flag #2 and end of discussion, PERIOD. at the same time i am kind of excited at the idea of fucking bare. i mean let's be honest guys, condoms are not fun and the few times i've fucked bare have definitely been nice. somehow i rationalize to myself to give things a shot, and we continue to talk back and forth, me trying to push playing safe and him pretty much only wanting to go bare. finally, despite all the million alarm bells going off for this situation, i decide to meet him and see what happens.

i get to his place, and at least he looks like a normal guy. his place is a little dirty but i excuse that and we start fooling around. his bed sheets were pretty nasty with cumstains or something, which was red flag #3, but obviously i was color blind throughout this whole ordeal and continue to ignore the fact that this guy definitely has some hint of being a cum slut/man whore. i mean come on who likes to sleep on dirty ass bed sheets? have a little self-respect.

anyway i had come into this hookup with the intention of just swapping head at most and maybe fucking him (bare or not i don't really think i decided going into it). the foreplay was actually kind of hot and i was pretty hard with the thought of being able to fuck him bare. but somehow he ended up on top of me and wanted to fuck me. i wasn't planning to bottom at all this hookup. i don't like bottoming much at all and i only bottom for guys who i've been with a while and feel a good connection with, but my string of poor decision-making continued. 

i let him push into me, and the whole time i am thinking "am i really letting this guy, this stranger, fuck me bare". he was a decent top at least and wasn't too rough with me, and after awhile we flipped and he wanted me to fuck him. i was still kind of reeling from being fucked and my initial horniness to fuck him bare had since dissipated. i managed to achieve a decent boner and did fuck him bare for a little bit, but at this point my rational mind, my higher conscience, my superego, whatever, had taken over and really evaluated the situation as it is: a mistake. i pulled out and just told him being fucked takes a lot out of me and i didn't want to fuck anymore but we could just jerk off if he wanted to get off. he said yea, he understood, but that he enjoyed fucking me so much that he had already come in me earlier....

whoa. what. in my mind i was flipping shit. this guy came in me bare? without asking or letting me know he was going to cum? i'm not an expert on anal sex manners, but isn't there a courtesy rule about saying where you're going to cum? especially if you're coming in someone bareback??? i couldn't believe he came in me and now i was pretty much trying to extricate myself from this hookup as diplomatically as possible. no one had ever blown a load in me before that day and this guy definitely had enough red flags and alarm bells for me to know this was not a great "first time" for that to happen. fuck. fuck. fuck. anyway, i just get myself outta there as politely as possible, to deal with the regret on the way home.

whenever i go through a craigslist hookup or something like that, except for the handful of times it actually goes well, i always go back home with a sense of regret or emptiness. i don't really know what i'm looking for in these hookups. a quick way to blow my load? an honest connection? pent-up sexual energy? a desire to fill some unspeakable empty void? i haven't figured it out but i keep going back down the same empty roads. i guess i just like the thrill of meeting the next unknown man, a man who might help me figure out all the confusion i've been dealing with since i started sleeping with men. i keep thinking the next hookup will be the last one, but it keeps happening.

anyway this time was no different and i went home with the usual sense of regret and anger at myself for going through another meaningless craigslist hookup, heightened by the fact that this was a very very unsafe hookup. i rationalized the risk this time because the guy was a young graduate student at a pretty respected university and probably wasn't that high-risk? fuck, just writing it i see how crazy it sounds. OF COURSE anytime you have unprotected sex, especially off fucking craigslist of all places, it is high-risk! fuckity fuck fuck. but i pushed the situation to the back of my mind, maybe putting higher priority to get my usual testing done sooner rather than later, but for the most part forgot about it.

that is, until this week, when exactly two weeks when this unfortunate encounter occurred, i began to have diarrhea. the first day i had it, i just put it off as the regular ol' runs, explainable by the fact that i had recently traveled by air and might have picked up something from the masses or ate something bad. but, i've continued to have the runs despite either not eating, or not eating much. it definitely rules out eating something bad, and as it is now day 5 and i've continued to have some pretty abnormal bowel movements, i am going out of mind scared that this is the manifestation of the acute HIV syndrome. you can google more about it yourself, but basically it's a bunch of non-specific flu-like symptoms that can occur as soon as 2 weeks to several weeks after exposure. the timing fits perfectly, and now i am sitting here as mr. hypochondriac. am i just a little warm or am i starting to break a fever? is that a real headache i have or just stress from the thought of being infected? was that just a twinge in my knee or am i starting to have joint pain? is that red spot on my chest a sign i'm about to break out into a full blown rash tomorrow? honestly, this diarrhea could be nothing, but i've never had something go on for this many days, and the timing of this is just so right and the guy had so many red flags of being a good candidate for being HIV+ that i am beside myself with worry. 

how could i have been so, so stupid? of course of course of course i know better, but why do i keep making these poor decisions? i am going to be a fucking doctor in a few months, and here i am engaging in the same unsafe behaviors we're supposed to deter our patients from. yes, i've fucked bare before, and every time i do, i go through this stage of paranoia until the proper time frame passes about whether i just exposed myself, and i vow never ever to fuck bare again. but here i am again, and now this is the first time i've had some very alarming symptoms and done it with a guy who really fits the profile of being an unknown and very likely carrier. 

i am trying to be realistic with myself and prepping myself for the worst. i've hooked up with enough men through craigslist and such that i truly deserve to pay for my indiscretion. but when i think of the ramifications of becoming HIV+, i just don't even want to go there. i'm only in my 20s, and the health insurance issues, doctor's visits, dealing with this bi/gay-closeted stuff on top of being HIV+, having no real confidants in reality to talk about this with, and all the normal young adult stuff like establishing my career and life..it's almost too much to handle. fuck. please let me be healthy.

my only plan now is to wait out these bowel issues, keep careful track of my health and symptoms, and plan to get tested in a few weeks. i know if i am truly infected the typical HIV test won't turn positive for at least 3 months, up to 6, but i don't really know how or if i'd want to go about trying to get an HIV viral load test before that. i've never used my health insurance, but it's under my parents still and i don't know exactly how much they'd be able to see. i guess i should find out. i will definitely get free testing in january, but even if that's negative i don't think i'd take it as a clean slate.

well, this is only my second entry and it's already reaching novel lengths so i guess i will wrap up. thanks for sticking through it if you read through all my paranoia and shit. literally. i imagine it must be somewhat disgusting to read about other's bowel habits and issues, but i guess being in healthcare has desensitized me to that kind of stuff so sorry if you were offended by that bit haha.

i think i read in another blog that closeted guys go through these stages in sexual maturity..one of them being the manwhore stage. i definitely have been in the manslut stage for too long...and it certainly may have cost me dearly this time. with 2010 ending, a bunch of changes in my life coming in 2011, and this very legitimate HIV scare looming very large in my life right now, i think 2011 will definitely be a different stage in my life. i won't go so far as to say i will open up to my family and friends about my sexuality completely, but i will definitely try to be more honest to myself at least about what i want instead of just trying to fulfill these primal urges. i'm still exploring the issues around being a guy who likes having sex with guys, and i know the other bi/gay/closeted/past closeted guys out there can understand it's not an easy road. i'm just not there yet to be completely open to the world about it, that's for sure. just please please please, let me still be HIV free and i can do a better job figuring this shit out!

this post is fucking ridiculous and long, but i'm glad to get it out there. i just had to get this immense fear off my chest now. thanks again for reading.