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amulYes, I angrily thought, today I will be the kind of savage who eats Grocery Store Sushi with my bare hands. I will apply wasabi with my fingers and lick them clean! I'll wash it all down with pre-bottled Horchata and have gulab jamins for desert!
I was in a discussion a few days ago with a strange assortment at Metropolis. An older gentleman, a cancer survivor, had finally begun dating, several years now after his hospitalized ordeal, and had just come from a very successful date. The woman had made some very interesting suggestions to him, and while they were appealing, he had to acknowledge that this was The New Millenium.
"How," he worried, "do I ask her about STDs?"
His friend, a married (and presumably monogamous) man had no real advice to offer, and a few people at the nearby tables, myself included, joined in the conversation. All of us were in our 20s to early 30s. Except for me, all of them confessed that they usually avoided that conversation.
The impression I was left with was that, in this respect, BDSM seems safer than the more common fare. It's such a well-understood subject that there's little fear of uncertainty. At FrolicCon, there were seminars on the subject, and I frequently saw people admit things like, "You're a smoker? You don't want to eat me out, then. I've got HPV."
I'm tempted to go all high and mighty, talk about how the community deals with this better because we're used to confronting our fears. But I suppose an equally likely theory would suggest that we simply are exposed to issue more often.
Still, we have other options. Tell the average American male, "You can tie me up, slap me around, and scream dirty names at me, but our underwear has to stay on," and he'll likely just turn on the sports channel. (Or at least, so common wisdom seems to imply). I, on the other hand, am surprised if a woman wants me to kiss her before I've given her at least a half-dozen orgasms in other ways.
But I disgress. I was talking about the surprisingly lack of risk awareness that was admitted to me a few days ago. Of the half-dozen yuppies we were talking to, all of them admitted to having had unprotected sex with at least three people they'd know less than two months during their 10-15 year sexual history. Most of them talked about preferring monogamous relationships because you can Just Use The Pill. Of the three girls, two of them admitted that, if a guy doesn't offer and she likes him enough, she'll usually let him slip it in without a sheath, even if they just met.
I was the only one who had any kind of regular habit of having the STD conversation, and yet my knowledge on the subject was severely lacking. There were several diseases discussed which I hadn't even heard of.
Plus, when I think about it, in the last five years, I've gone from one sexual partner in my entire life, to 12, and I've had unprotected sex with nearly a third of them! And while we did discuss all of the appropriate subjects first, it's not like I exactly asked for signed medical forms or anything.
*shudder* Just thinking about it makes me want to go get tested.
I was in a discussion a few days ago with a strange assortment at Metropolis. An older gentleman, a cancer survivor, had finally begun dating, several years now after his hospitalized ordeal, and had just come from a very successful date. The woman had made some very interesting suggestions to him, and while they were appealing, he had to acknowledge that this was The New Millenium.
"How," he worried, "do I ask her about STDs?"
His friend, a married (and presumably monogamous) man had no real advice to offer, and a few people at the nearby tables, myself included, joined in the conversation. All of us were in our 20s to early 30s. Except for me, all of them confessed that they usually avoided that conversation.
The impression I was left with was that, in this respect, BDSM seems safer than the more common fare. It's such a well-understood subject that there's little fear of uncertainty. At FrolicCon, there were seminars on the subject, and I frequently saw people admit things like, "You're a smoker? You don't want to eat me out, then. I've got HPV."
I'm tempted to go all high and mighty, talk about how the community deals with this better because we're used to confronting our fears. But I suppose an equally likely theory would suggest that we simply are exposed to issue more often.
Still, we have other options. Tell the average American male, "You can tie me up, slap me around, and scream dirty names at me, but our underwear has to stay on," and he'll likely just turn on the sports channel. (Or at least, so common wisdom seems to imply). I, on the other hand, am surprised if a woman wants me to kiss her before I've given her at least a half-dozen orgasms in other ways.
But I disgress. I was talking about the surprisingly lack of risk awareness that was admitted to me a few days ago. Of the half-dozen yuppies we were talking to, all of them admitted to having had unprotected sex with at least three people they'd know less than two months during their 10-15 year sexual history. Most of them talked about preferring monogamous relationships because you can Just Use The Pill. Of the three girls, two of them admitted that, if a guy doesn't offer and she likes him enough, she'll usually let him slip it in without a sheath, even if they just met.
I was the only one who had any kind of regular habit of having the STD conversation, and yet my knowledge on the subject was severely lacking. There were several diseases discussed which I hadn't even heard of.
Plus, when I think about it, in the last five years, I've gone from one sexual partner in my entire life, to 12, and I've had unprotected sex with nearly a third of them! And while we did discuss all of the appropriate subjects first, it's not like I exactly asked for signed medical forms or anything.
*shudder* Just thinking about it makes me want to go get tested.
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Here is what I have . . .
Date: 12 Sep 2006 01:40 (UTC)I don't have them all, but they are on flickr.