Condoms: safer sex or safer psyche?
I had an interesting conversation with a potential fuckee recently, talking about safer sex and in what circumstances each of us requires condoms to be in play. Earlier in the evening, while comparing notes on previous experiences, he told me that he'd met up with a couple of men he met on CL and that in the case of the one who wanted to give him a blow job, he had insisted on a condom for that. This is well within the range of normal safer sex precautions, so it didn't stand out particularly until we were talking specifics about what we might do.
Naturally, I assumed that his expectation would be to use condoms for fellatio, so you can imagine my surprise when he told me, "Of course, I'd be happiest not using condoms for oral."
Whoa! What?
Now, this is also in the realm of what I consider normal safer sex precautions, but I was struck by the fact that he would insist upon it with one person and not with another, particularly because, if I may brag, I get around a bit, so it's not like I'm a no-risk lay. So what was going on there? Maybe this other fellow was also very slutty? I asked. No, he was more of a shut-in.
This left me with the most obvious (to me) conclusion that in this case, the condom would serve as a protective barrier not against potential STIs, but, rather, against potential psychological infection. I don't know if this was about limiting intimacy and vulnerability to emotional connection or fear or worry about the gayness of having his cock sucked by a man, but I was struck by his calm explanation that you can get STIs through oral sex (obviously true) and that's why he insisted on condoms in this case.
Why not with me? I asked, of course, and he said that it was because he knows I'm reasonable and cautious and get tested regularly. If I could cross my eyes, I'm sure that I would have been while trying to wrap my head around this explanation.
There are plenty of good reasons to use condoms, and if one of them is that it allows you protection against ideas or intimacy that you want to avoid, that's fine, but it's probably a good idea to acknowledge to yourself that that's what you're doing. And ditto the reverse.
Comments
I agree that using condoms for oral sex is well within the normal range of safer sex precautions.
I also agree that NOT using condoms for oral sex is well within the normal range of safer sex precautions.
It seems to me then that "using condoms with partners who don't get tested regularly but not using them with partners who do get tested regularly" must also be within the normal range, because it's somewhere in between the two points already mentioned.
Now you could argue perhaps that this fellow had no good reason to believe you get tested regularly, and perhaps that's why you rolled your eyes. But his POLICY seems to me to be every bit as reasonable and normal as always-use-them and never-use-them are.
Posted by: wotw | January 8, 2007 5:46 PM