Keep It Safe

I'm always amazed how things seem to run in cycles and how some mornings I get up and there just seems to be a theme for the day that I had nothing to do with. This is one of those days.

Over the weekend the Houston Chronicle had an article about Syphilis. It stated that City of Houston Health Officials were concerned over the jump in the rate of Syphilis cases reported in the city. Most of the cases are centered in the homosexual and bisexual male community.

This morning, I received a letter from the wife of a bisexual man. Her husband had contracted Hepatitis B which is most commonly spread by sexual contact. Since he was sexually active with his wife, he had to tell her to get checked for the disease and fess up to his bisexuality. To say the least she was not amused. To her credit she has agreed to stay in the marriage on the condition that he not continue his sexual activity with other guys and subject her to the chance of contracting other sexually transmittable diseases.

In my bisexual life, the prevalence of sexually transmittable diseases has always been the source of my greatest fear. Unlike many guys, I never feared falling in love with my buddy. I came to love my very first buddy and 16 years later I still do. Loving him has caused me no problem at all. It has caused my wife no problem at all because I love him in a different way than I love her. The fact is, she loves him too like the brother she never had.

Loving someone is not inherently dangerous. STD's are very much inherently dangerous. Too many guys opt for promiscuous one time sex because the fear the ties that form when one has sex with a long time buddy. To me this is just crazy. Sex with a long term buddy has its up sides and its down sides but it has no fatal side. Promiscuous sex had a much greater chance of exposure to STD's and STD's DO have a fatal possibility.

We can't help being bisexual men. We can control how we choose to express our bisexuality. In a way, I guess I was always in a love hate relationship with STD's. I hated that one had to be aware of them and careful to avoid them, but the fact was the possibility of STD contraction helped to keep me sane, safe and constrained. My sexual fantasies were never constrained because my sexual fantasies were never subject to contract an STD. But I had the good sense to always separate the realities of my life from the fantasies of my life. I always recognized that I had too much going for me to ruin it all for a moment of unconstrained sex.

Too many guys THINK it just want happen to them. Believe me when I tell you, I talk to a lot of guys and their wives. It does happen. I once talked to a guy who contracted HIV during his first Male/Male sexual experience. It was the luck of the draw and his luck was lacking.

There is not much in our lives that does not have up and down sides. We all get into our automobiles every day knowing we could die in it. We mitigate that risk by following the rules and watching carefully for those who are NOT following the rules.

We simply must do the same thing in our sex lives. We must follow a set of rules designed to keep us safe and watch out for and avoid those who are not following those rules. In driving it is easy to see those who are not following the rules. In sex, not so. People often lie. One must get to know potential sexual partners and judge them on what they say, what they don't say and on gut instinct. If in doubt, don't get involved.

There are danger signs. If a person uses drugs, that's a signal. Certain life styles are more apt to be associated with unsafe sex. Unfortunately, certain racial groups are more associated with unsafe sex. That is not a racial statement, it is just a matter of fact. Demographics simply play a part statistically in the spread of STD's. One big NO signal to me was always the guy who wanted sex NOW. My motto was if you're in too much of a rush to talk to me and get to know something about each other, I want nothing to do with you.

One can contract an STD through both promiscuous sex and relational sex, but the odds stack up on the promiscuous encounters. Common sense should tell you to avoid them.

To drive your automobile you are expected to buckle up, drive soberly and obey the rules. To engage in sex, you should have a set of your own rules and abide by them every time.

It is an increasingly dangerous world out there. Be careful.

Jack Scott