As I re-entered the world of singledom, after the South African, some things became disturbingly clear

I realized that I have a post break-up habit.  Some people get a drastic hair cut. Some people gain or even lose 15 lbs. For me, after a relationship ends I tend to become a true believer in free love.   During which I made good use of all of my gentleman’s socializing networks. I could be found chatting with guys at the gym, at work, at home.  I would even travel the length of Manhattan to partake in an extra long lunch break. Just to clarify, this was NOT my prior lunch date.  Within the midst of my newly rejuvenated spurt of free love, there were a couple observations that shocked and confused me. 

Way before the South African existed in my word, I chatted with this handsome Brooklyn Boy. We met on OkCupid and we tried to set up a really real date on a couple different occasions. Unfortunately it never really worked out, so we both just gave up. While on sowing my newly found wild oats, I came across the same Brooklyn Boy, on a slightly different website, Manhunt. We chatted again and this time we were determined finally to make our date happen. Since we were chatting on a site that had the byline of “Get on, Get off” I thought I should come clean with my status. He quickly became excited and he said, “So am I, now you can fuck me raw!” Clearly, I should’ve given him a different nickname with the initials B. B. I politely declined and then literally got off. 

There was another guy, who I chatted with for quite some time.  We talked about everyday random stuff and not just about a mutual love for our freedoms.  Finally, we decided to finally set up a time to meet. Again, because we didn’t meet on Manhunt and I wasn’t sure what his intentions were, I told him my status and lo-and-behold he said he was also poz. Ok, great. There should be no weirdness. Oh, was I wrong. I also told him that I always play safe and he proceeded to tell me that he never uses protection and he basically apologized saying that he hates “rubbers” and he would never have sex with someone who insisted on using them. 

I was baffled. I know I talk a lot about my disappointment and frustration with negative guys who turn me down because of my status, now I was turned down by a positive guy who didn’t date me because I always use a condom! I felt like I had just stepped into some bizzaro universe. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I completely understand the allure of this particular practice, especially with another positive person.  But forgeting  the personal risk factors involved, I think people tend to forget that there are other STDs out there. I have a hard enough time expressing my status to a prospective date; imagine adding Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Herpes, or Syphilis to the mix! 

Another thing that completely perplexed me was the amount of people that ask me if I "parTy". I am not that naïve that I am completely unaware of this practice and on prior occasions I have been asked if I "parTy and play". And I would be remiss not to mention I did try meth once. Luckily for me the only addictive substance my body will let me consume is chocolate.  But day after day, I found myself bombarded with that question, “Do you parTy?” No, “Hello.” No, “How are you?” Just “Do you parTy?”

I would respond: “Why yes I do! When my niece turned five, you should have seen me tearing up that Disney karaoke.” 

I love my oral fixations too much to give myself meth mouth and I love my penis way too much to swing it around at every Tom, Dick, and Harry without any protection. You can call me a fuddy-duddy, but I still head the advice given to me Mr. Jiminy Cricket and I always let my conscience by my guide.

Totally outRIGHT is a sexual health leadership program for young gay/bi/queer guys who are 18 – 26 years old.

The program is designed by young men and for young men who are from a diversity of ethno-specific backgrounds, trans identities or HIV statuses and interested in becoming healthy, smart and sexy trendsetters in Toronto.

If you’re older than 26 but younger than 30 and interested in coming give us a call! We might be able to fit you in! 

Totally outRIGHT is being organized by the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) over a series of four all-day sessions on Saturdays, June 2, 9, 16 and 23.

 Attendance is free!  

 Get on the list!  We take care of the rest!

 Register by Monday, May 14, 2012.

Contact: Rui Pires, Gay Men's Community Education Coordinator  

416-340-8484 ext. 264

For More Info on Totally outRIGHT:

Presentations: We might be able to go out and talk to your group! Drop Sean Uyeda our Peer Facilitator a line at his email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Our Web Site: http://www.actoronto.org/to 

What past participants are saying:

About the Program:

"I am so happy I have attended this program. I have felt so comfortable and accepted in this group." 

"I found it very hard to select an “issue in the community” for this project, as I didn’t feel like I was really part of the gay community (it’s hard to pick a community issue for a community you are unconnected to). But I feel more encouraged to stay connected to the community now, and working with a group helped me to come up with a topic I felt passionate about." 

"Gay men AMEN! Thank the highest heavens for giving us the courage to push boundaries and create our own unique, fascinating worlds that facilitates the creation of beautiful relationships of all kinds."

About the Speakers:

"Great community and excellent speakers." 

"LOVED this presentation. Great to know that something like this exists for the LGBT community." 

"His recount of the historic events was absolutely riveting and breathtaking! THANK YOU for such a wonderful opportunity to partake in learning such valuable history."  

Cinco de Mayo (May 5^th) for most is a day of celebrating the anniversary of the Mexican army’s victory over France in 1862 during the Franco-Mexican War. Everyone gets together with all of their closest friends and consumes obscene amounts of Mexican food, margaritas, Corona beer (don’t forget the lime) and far, far too many tequila shots. It’s all fun and games till someone ends up with their face in the toilet with an Armageddon of vomiting, wondering "what the hell did I eat that had corn in it?” AHH yes, good times for sure!

For me, May 5^th is a whole different monster. It is a vicious reminder of loss and the most unbearable pain one could, not even in their most horrific nightmares, ever fathom. May 5^th is my late husband Kyle’s birthday. This year he would have been 45 years old. Kyle died almost 4 years ago and there is not a moment that goes by that I do not think of him and miss him terribly.

We had twelve amazing years together filled with lots of love, laughter, and friendship, and that is something I wouldn’t trade for the world. But know this: if it would bring him back, back to this world, back to his mother, his brothers, his nephews, I would gladly lay down my life and die for that to happen.

Over the last four years I have had un-yielding support from friends and family who are always there for me anytime I need them. But I know essentially, deep down in my heart I am alone in this.

I wake every morning knowing that I will never see his smiling face again, never hear his laugh, and most heart wrenching of all, never know his sweet kisses again. These truths haunt my dreams and every waking moment. They say time heals all wounds. Well  - either time has forsaken me or it has decided to take its sweet ass time, because everyday hurts just as much as the last.

The reality is people we love die without our permission, and we are left to muddle through life trying to figure out how we are going to live without them. How do we do that? We do the best we can with what we have.

Sometimes we move on, find someone else, as I have. But it’s not the same. I now find myself in a hopeless relationship that I know eventually will end badly (for him). He is a wonderful man, and I do love him, he treats me so well, and I think he realizes that he will always be second to Kyle and accepts it. Yes, I love him, BUT I am not now nor do I ever think I will be IN love with him. I wish I could, but alas no. My ability to be IN love with anyone died with Kyle. Besides, it’s so much easier to be in love with someone who’s dead; you make so few mistakes.

Now you ask, “If you’re not in love with this guy, why are you with him?” Well that’s an easy one to answer. I’m with him because he is comfortable and because I don’t know how to be alone. I never have. I have always been in a relationship. I just simply don’t have the skills to be single. And I know this is unfair to him, because he is truly in love with me. This probably makes me a bad person, but right now this is the only person I know how to be.

I keep myself busy, trying to do as many positive things as possible; I try to life a full and happy life because I know that is what Kyle, wherever he is, wants for me. And yes I have found some things that bring me a certain level of happiness, but they are few and far between and it seems to need too many anti-depressants to achieve them. But for Kyle… My love… My friend.. My husband  - I take it one day at a time, one step at a time until I see him again, and  I will see him again, I dunno where or how, but I have to believe it to be so. Happy birthday my love, I miss  you desperately.  Thank you for reading.

XXOO Danny 

You know that thing that ardent ornithologists do? You know, writing down their sightings of each different variety of bird they have laid eyes on, where and when. This post is not about that. It's not about looking, and it's not about birds.

No, when I was a fresh-faced young gay, just out of the closet, I briefly kept a little list of the men I had slept with. No euphemisms: I had had sex with them, usually with very little sleeping involved. My WASPy prudishness caught up with me a few months in and I stopped with the list after a few entries where I didn't have names, but only situations or the make and model of the car that picked me up… Who am I kidding?! It was probably only the colour of the car, which pretty much exhausts my knowledge of cars! 

Even with this abrupt end and the short experience of my list, I was already up to about fifty entries when I stopped. Such a shame I didn't keep it up, as it might have been a very interesting sociological artifact by now. This came to mind in a conversation recently, as I also discussed filling out an online "How gay are you?" quiz with a friend. My friend got to the question about how many different men he had had sex with and he said, "There were only three spaces, so I put 999." I, much more modestly, put 500 at the time.

Now are you seeing how my list might have been interesting to revisit after a lifetime of encounters? 

You might actually be wondering aloud why I should be so proud of being such a slut, whore, whatever, and thinking smugly that you now know why I turned out HIV-positive. I have two answers to share on that topic. First, it isn't that I'm necessarily proud; it's that I refuse to be ashamed. Second, as I frequently assert in meetings with public health types in the context of my work, it really doesn't matter how many partners you have, it matters what you do with them. So clearly, I am on the sex positive side of this debate. 

The other thing that I feel the need to express is about the source and timing of my HIV infection. I don't know, and I have a smidgen — but not really more — of intellectual curiosity about the answers to those questions. They do not preoccupy me. 

I am a gay man who started having sex before we knew about HIV. This is not in any way to suggest that I was or wasn't infected before we knew, or that that would really matter. I was as human afterward as anyone who might be infected today. We aren't machines making cold rational decisions based on available data, we are humans who sometimes don't think about what they are doing or just need some human contact at the moment, or don't always make decisions about our pleasure based on fear of risks. 

When we found out about HIV with my sex life already underway, there was some adaptation around the equipment or the acts, but not around the attitude. I think that changed for those coming of age and coming out post-HIV, at least until recently, which only makes it more of a shame that I didn't maintain my life list. 

I could have written my autobiography as a thesis.

Recently I found myself having to end an on again off again long distance connection.  Two years was a long time to remain uncertain, but we did try and it really was a more off than on situation.  Still such a time can leave feelings raw and emotions high.  I was sorry for my own indecisiveness and even more so to inflict that on another on an ongoing basis. 

Over the past seven years I have been an importer, if you will, of boyfriends and paramours from the GTA (Greater Toronto Area)  and beyond.  I don’t want to imply that the fair city of London does not offer up their own share of eligible bachelors … I’m sure they do, but for me importing importants and impromptus insured a certain distance that I felt necessary for both my own comfort as well as my denial. 

There is also the whole serosorting aspect of my thought process with regard to dating that quite honestly has me shopping in the big city in part because I see the stigma less then I do in my own backyard.  When you add that mind set, and for me it is the mind set that makes me most comfortable when dating, the fields narrow … but I digress.  I am talking in the more general sense with regard to long distance relationships. 

With the recent change in my personal life I spent the better part of Easter weekend spring cleaning and rearranging my home, my thoughts, and in some ways my life.  Part way through the extra long weekend I spent the Saturday evening with friends for a fabulously festive feast.  Two of the gents attending that evening had also recently embarked on a long distance connection and the coming together of friends and food were in part to celebrate the recent union of men and minds. 

Sadly, all good things must come to pass … distance being a factor. 

Are relationships that start from afar doomed to fail?  I pondered this thought throughout a sleepless night of late and I decided that yes; they are doomed! 

I can’t speak of course for my friends but I do mourn what I would have thought a good match of these two unique and wondrous worlds.  I can only bring my own thoughts to bear on the subject of love from afar.   

Relationships for me, when they start, are so often this explosion of feelings and dreams,and I statements … “I want to see you, I want to be with you, I want to hold you”.  When we are mere blocks away we can savour and soak up this blooming love fest; but when there is travel and waits and schedules we so often have to quell those initial thoughts with the mundane act of planning spontaneity. I can still recall asking a florist if roses and cheesecake will last for 2 hours in the back seat of a black car on a summer day as I navigated my way to the big city and my latest beau; she suggested keeping the air on.

Add to the initial distance aspect the weather, mode of transportation, and last minute changes and we then need to rethink the simple act of planning dinner and a movie.  Successful long distance relationships, I have come to believe, begin with two who live with or near one another. Then distance doesn’t become a factor.  Most I would think are more relaxed about a loved one who is far, but not far, for long.  To start off a relationship with needing to “understand” when all one wants to do is enjoy and share and simply snuggle is the beginning of a downward trajectory…this is at least what I have found to be true for me. 

That is not to say that if some handsome, passionate, compassionate, semi sane suitor from who-knows-where calls and asks me out that I would say no … but that’s a whole other story. 

This article first appeared in Sam’s blog - the life and times of a twenty-something living with HIV in the UK -  here.  

In my previous post I talked about my use of technology to aid my quest for love. Dating technology has evolved over time; from dating agencies and singles ads in newspapers, onto phone chat lines, texting services and onto dating/hook-up websites (such as gaydar, fitlads, manhunt etc). The latest technology to be adopted for this purpose is the smartphone – there are countless apps promising to help you find love, make friends or just get a little action.

The most popular one of these (amongst the gay community at least) is Grindr. For those of you who are unfamilar with Grindr – you create a profile with your stats, add a photograph and a short welcome message and in return Grindr shows you other guys logged in near your location by use of GPS. You can message the guys, swap pictures etc. All very cool. I’ve been on Grindr since it was launched. I’ve always been at the cutting edge, trying new apps and gadgets as soon as they come out. My profile has remained largely the same, my age has changed with the years and my photograph has been updated a few times.

I started wondering last weekend (25th Feb 2012) what kind of responses someone would get if their profile said that they were HIV+. So I created myself a second profile on Grindr, almost identical to mine in (but different enough to look like a different person), still looking for “Friends, fun and dates” – but this time I mentioned my HIV status in the profile text.

Over the course of the week (25 Feb – 03 Mar) my existing profile received messages from 74 users. On the other hand my (almost identical) profile that mentions my HIV status had 11 people message it. Four of those eleven messaged purely to ask me questions about HIV and one felt it necessary to send me foul mouthed abuse for seemingly no reason. Which leaves me with six people actually showing an interest in me.

Let’s look at that for a second shall we? That’s a 92% reduction in interest purely by mentioning my HIV status. It was this realisation that led to a few miserable tweets on Saturday night, sorry if you had to put up with those. I thought we were really making progress. The more things change eh?

 Best,

 Sam

You can find Sam on twitter at @UKPositiveLad