I am so sorry about all of this! But I’m glad to see one of your stories that I feel qualified to comment on. You’ve been hitting on topics lately that are a bit outside my experiences as a gay man, so I’ve just read and kept quiet. But this one is different!

We gay men have been having these condom conversations since the early 80 when condomless sex became a life or death issue because of HIV and AIDS.

“I can’t cum if I’m wearing a condom,” is a statement we’ve long learned to answer with, “Better figure it out, buddy, because as far as I’m concerned no condom equals no penetration.”

Granted, the popularity of PrEP (which HIV negative men can take to stay negative even if they have unprotected sex with a positive partner) has diluted that message a bit in recent years, but in general our culture is pretty dismissive of men who claim they can’t cum with a condom on.

“Practice makes perfect, darling,” we’ll say. “Keep trying and you’ll figure it out.”

While a certain bare-backing sub-element exists within our communities, we tend to be highly emotional about men who won’t respect our condom choices. I guess it’s a psychological thing left over from a time when a bare dick could literally mean death.

I mean, how can you love a man and be intimate with him if he’s going to insist on putting your life in danger? That puts a rather fine point on things.

But even without the existential element, is a man who refuses to respect your intimate sexual privacy worth your time? It’s your body, not his, and his treating it like it’s his property is as deeply disrespectful as anything could ever be.

I realize I can’t be distant from this discussion because of my formative experiences with AIDS, but any man who put his dick inside me without a condom when he knew I required condoms would be out of my life so fast his head would spin.

And as he walked out the door I’d be calling him a rapist.