Will we ever be truly equal?

Yesterday I decided to have a sauna after my gym workout. I'm suffering a bit from osteoarthritis in my left hand, and had read that dry saunas could offer relief. There was only one other person in the sauna, a very overweight Indian guy of indeterminate age, though, as he mentioned that his father was my age, I'm assuming he was in his 30s. We started chatting, just small talk, and then he asked me if had any children.

"No," I said.
"Married?" "No."
"Why you not married?" he asked.
"So far I never wanted to get married," I replied.
"You gay?"

And there it was, that moment when I considered briefly evading the issue, not telling the truth. Why? Because I was worried about his reaction? I've been out to friends and family for the best part of 40 years now. You'd think I wouldn't have a problem anymore, but still there was the briefest of pauses (and it really annoys me) before I replied,

"Yes".

He was a little taken aback.
"In my country you would be shot," he grunted.
"And if you did that in my country, the one you're in at the moment, you'd go to prison - for a very long time."

He accepted that with equanimity and oddly enough the conversation didn't end there. By his own admission he was pretty uneducated, and I ended up giving him a short history lesson about the Second World War. (He thought the Nazis were Jewish and American!) The question of my sexuality was soon forgotten. When my time was up and I headed for the shower, he wished me well and that was that.

However, afterwards I pondered my hesitance in telling him I was gay. It bothered me. Haven't we, haven't I, moved on from the attitudes of previous generations? After all, in this country, and quite a few others around the world now, we can even get married. Surely we've reached a stage in society where one can reveal one's sexuality without fear of reproval.

Well only recently, our new right wing, UKIP influenced, Tory government voted to block compulsory LGBT-inclusive sex education. Religious sensibilities, it seems, are more important than teaching children it's ok to be gay, more important than tackling the bullying so many LGBT children suffer on a daily basis. So we haven't come that far since Section 28 after all. It might be legal for us to get married now, but let's not talk about it, or at least if we do, only in the abstract. The fact that LGBT couples actually have sex is something we'd rather not think about.

As a hard Brexit becomes increasingly likely, as the UK isolates itself more and more from the rest of Europe, and as the UK removes itself from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, then we will need to be ever alert to the possibility that freedoms so recently won can be taken away. Look at what's happening in the USA. Trump isn't even in the White House yet, but already steps are being taken to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and millions who were given hope will now be left without any form of health insurance.

We are living in a different world now from the one I thought I lived in, a post truth world. Liberal is now a dirty word. Intellectuals and experts are mistrusted, education (in the old sense of acquiring knowledge) derided, and ignorance applauded, and, in this climate, maybe it isn't so strange that I should mark that slight pause before acknowledging my sexuality.

Authentic tantric massage

Since I started offering tantric erotic massage around five years ago now, there has been a proliferation of glossy ads on the internet offering what professes to be tantric massage, but I wonder how many of these are offering a genuine experience. How many are providing a straightforward massage with a quick hand job at the end, and how many are offering other sexual services that have little to do with tantra and the spiritual? I wonder because I used to offer such services myself, and because I know that what I do now is very different from what I used to do when I was escorting.

So what is tantric massage, and what might a new client expect? Well Tantra, in its purest form, goes back to at least the 8^th century. In its original form it is a mystical pathway, an accumulation of practices that have in common extensive use of ritual and of psycho-experiential techniques such as yoga, visualisation, and meditation. In its modern form, Tantra has a slightly different meaning, referring to both new age and modern western interpretations of traditional Tantra, brought forward by pioneers of the so-called Neo-tantra since the 1970s. These teachings consider sex as a sacred act which is capable of elevating its participants to a higher spiritual plane. They all show how sexual energy can be transformed into ecstatic experiences. To reach this aim, they offer a wide range of techniques, containing elements originating from fields such as bodywork, breath work, yoga, and meditation.

In short tantra is, or can be, the perfect fusion of spirituality and sexual energy. Recipients of tantric massage have been known to have full body orgasms without actually ejaculating (ejaculation and orgasm are not the same thing, though one usually accompanies the other). This is when each of the seven chakras in our body vibrates at the same time, and can only happen when the recipient totally commits to the experience they are being offered, not as easy as it sounds.

I can’t of course guarantee that this will happen to every single one of my clients, as, in essence, I act as a facilitator, but I can guarantee that you will feel nurtured, healed and rejuvenated. I create the environment and setting in which such circumstances are possible.

For this reason, I only work from home, because atmosphere is extremely important, and that means a nurturing space that the client can walk into. I like to make sure that the room is properly prepared; warm enough to feel comfortable naked, with soft candlelight and my choice of music playing (music is a very important part of the massage).

Preparing the client for what is to follow is also very important, so you will not immediately be asked to take your clothes off and get on the table. We will have a brief chat about what and what not to expect. I will check on your personal boundaries, and get a better picture of what you are looking for. We will then, whilst still clothed, do a few simple breathing exercises together, which help to relax both of us, and also create a connection between us. We then undress each other before I invite you to get onto the massage table. From now on the key is to allow yourself to be taken care of. Nothing is expected of you, and though you may touch and hold me, you are not expected to reciprocate in any way. Just lie back and let me take care of you. Give in to the sensation of touch, wherever that touch may be. It is incredible how even the simple touch of hand on arm can have an erotic charge.

For premium customers I also offer digital internal prostate massage, which, aside from being very pleasurable, helps keep the prostate healthy and can help prevent prostate cancer.

So, yes, there is a world of difference between authentic tantric massage, and what many out there are offering. In the words of Joseph Kramer of Body Electric,

"The difference between a hand job and Taoist Erotic Massage is the difference between banging on a piano or playing Mozart."

Come and experience Mozart. More details on my website http://www.sensualself.co.uk.

You can also see some of my client testimonials on Rentmasseur and at http://www.masseurfinder.com/gregmitchell.

If you’d like to check out a movie of me giving a tantric massage then try the Sensual Massage Movies website.

David Bowie's Cat People

Back in 1982, I was in Zoo, the dance troupe which replaced Legs and Co (which in turn had replaced Pan's People) on Top of the Pops. We danced (or rather clambered around on a climbing frame) to David Bowie's Cat People. I loved the track (and still do). This is the Giorgio Moroder version. It was a different take from the one that appeared on his contemporaneous "Let's Dance" album.

There have been so many wonderfully eloquent tributes to Bowie over the last couple of days, that I feel anything I say will be superfluous. For me he is one the giants of the music world. His passing is an event of the magnitude of those of John Lennon, of Elvis Presley and of Maria Callas. A legend in his own lifetime, and now a legend for all time, he produced quality music for 50 years and his latest album, which can now only be seen as valedictory, is yet another classic.

Great artists do not die, and Bowie is no exception.

A lusciously sensual Under Milk Wood

My review of this film adaptation of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood first appeared in TheGayUK in October 2015.

I studied  Dylan Thomas’s “Under Milk Wood” for my English A Level, rather more years ago now than I choose to mention and it came as quite a surprise to me to realise that I still remembered, almost word for word the narrator’s first long speech, beautifully spoken here by Rhys Ifans.

“Under Milk Wood” is really an extended dramatic poem for voices. It was first conceived as a radio play, commissioned by the BBC in 1954, with Richard Burton voicing the narrator. Later it was turned into a stage play, and there is at least one previous film (1972) with Burton reprising his narrator role, and with such luminaries as Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O’Toole and Glynis Johns amongst the cast.

Whilst remaining absolutely true to Thomas’s original text, the screenplay of this new film, brings out more than any I’ve seen or heard, the sheer earthy, lascivious and hilariously funny filthiness of Thomas’s dreamscape, a true celebration of the joys of sex. Only most of the sex in this story takes place in people’s minds, their fantasies and desires brought out in full, luscious technicolour glory. 

The film looks superb, for which director of photography Andy Hollis deserves enormous credit.

Director Kevin Allen has at his disposal an excellent cast of Welsh actors, many of them faces well-known from TV, all perfect for their roles. Rhys Ifans, who also doubles as Captain Cat, is quite as effective as Richard Burton in his long opening speech, his accent, though perfectly intelligible, just that bit more Welsh, where Burton, targeting a 1950s audience, slightly Anglicised his tones.

Charlotte Church, making a very successful screen debut, is cast as Polly Garter. She has a plump, rounded, wholesome sexiness that is absolutely perfect for the fertile baby machine, that the rest of the village like to gossip about.

Ultimately, though, the film is also about loss; loss of community, loss of a way of life. Captain Cat is old and dying and his demise is symbolic of the death of the village Llareggub (Bugger All spelt backwards). There hangs over the film a purveying sense of nostalgia for a time that never waa. Gritty realism is swept away with a click of the camera, and for 85 minutes we can escape into a world of dreams and fantasy. I enjoyed it immensely.

4 stars

We Need PrEP And We Need It Now

This is a transcript of a speech I recently gave in Edinburgh to HIV Scotland. I am hoping that much of the slut shaming I had to deal with when I first went onto PrEP is dying out, but experience tells me that there is still quite a bit of it out there. It's time we just accepted that there is nothing shameful about wanting to have sex without condoms, and that we can do it without risking getting HIV.

Ok. I’m not a medical professional or a scientist. I am simply someone who is on the PROUD study in England, and I’m here because I believe passionately in PrEP.

I’m going to talk about what being on PrEP has meant to me personally, and also about how people – friends, family, and the community in general – have reacted to the news that I am on PrEP.

So first some background.  I had never even heard of PrEP until November of 2013, when one of the nurses at the WMP suggested it to me. I’ve always believed in total honesty about my sexual encounters when visiting a clinic, and, though I hadn’t realised it or admitted it to myself, it seemed my behaviour was becoming more risky, enough for me to fit into that at-risk group that would definitely benefit from taking PrEP.  I talked it through with my best friend, who has been on Truvada as part of anti-retroviral treatment for a few years now, and decided it was something I’d like to try. I then applied, was accepted and was delighted when I was put onto PrEP straight away, not into the deferred group that they had at that time. It was all very quick and I’ve now been on PrEP for almost two years. I can honestly say I had no side effects, apart from some vivid dreams the first week or so.

Physically then, the effect was minimal, or negligible. But how about the psychological effects?

 

Well at first nothing much changed, but, as it gradually began to dawn on me, that I was protected from HIV, a cloud started to lift. 

You see, I’m a product of the pre AIDS generation. When I came out there was no HIV, or at least we didn’t know about it. I’m one of the lucky ones. I didn’t die and I remained HIV negative, obviously or I wouldn’t be on PrEP. How I got here is no doubt down to a little judgement and a lot of luck, and I mean a lot of luck. Statistically I should be a statistic. 

Back in the 80s the fear of AIDS stopped me having sex completely for quite a while. Fear of death does that to you and those were scary times. But once I did start having sex again, for the first time in my life, I started using condoms. I hated them. Sex didn’t feel so good anymore, but if you wanted to stay alive, there was no alternative. Sex had become a dangerous business. I mean people I knew were dying. If you didn’t see someone for a while, you hardly dared ask what might have happened to them.

I didn’t get tested. In those days a positive diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence.  We were even told that the mere knowledge that one was positive could be enough to precipitate a downturn in one’s health. So I worried. I fretted.  I remember I panicked about it so much that at one point I even started suffering from night sweats. There was nothing wrong me.  And anyway, at that time, what was the point knowing?  But closing my mind off like that also meant that I remained ignorant of the advances in HIV treatments as they happened. Then, in 2001, a very close friend of mine died. He was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. He had never been tested for HIV and by the time pneumonia took hold he had no immune system left to fight the disease. He died soon after. If he’d only been tested and on treatment then he’d still be with us today. I got tested straight after my close friend’s funeral, and from that day on I became much more aware of my sexual health. 

However, even after this, my adherence to safer sex started to falter. Not straight away of course, but little by little I was slipping. At first it was just what they call dipping, you know  when you just put it in for a few minutes without a condom, and think, oh well that doesn’t count. I’m not actually fucking. But actually it does. Then there would be other occasions when I wouldn’t use a condom at all. There would be discussion, risk assessment if you like, and I would decide to take the risk. It may have been calculated, but it was still a risk. And I found every sexual encounter was beginning to become a minefield. I was finding it harder and harder to use condoms. I’d lose my erection. I’d become so fixated on the  business of getting the packet open, and the bloody thing on, that I could barely think of anything else. They say condoms don’t have any side effects. Well isn’t erectile dysfunction a side effect?  I was beginning to give up the idea of penetrative sex altogether. So PrEP seemed like a miracle, and it changed my sex life. 

Mainly, and importantly, because it has removed anxiety. Gone. That’s it! I know I can’t get HIV. I know I can’t pass it on. For the best part of 30 years now, there was a voice whispering in my ear every time I had sex. “Be careful. You could get HIV.” And, you know what? That voice has gone. I can’t tell you how liberating that is. After years of worry about HIV, suddenly I don’t have to worry anymore. To me it was a no brainer. Short of a vaccine, this seemed to me to be the most important advance in HIV research since the discovery of anti-retroviral treatments for HIV positive people.

And because I felt so liberated, because I felt it was such an amazing breakthrough, I decided  I wanted to get the message out there, be totally honest about what I was doing, and extol  the virtues of PrEP. I thought that it would be greeted with open arms, and this is when I was surprised.

Now I have always been totally open about what I did and do for a living, which has given me a small amount of notoriety within the gay scene, and it is no doubt this notoriety which has enabled me to speak out about PrEP in the gay media and at certain gay events I’ve been invited to. I’ve had articles in Qx and in TheGayUK, my Truvadawhore photo has been in Attitude and is about to be published in French music magazine Les Inrockuptibles. 

What actually got me involved and out there writing about PrEP was an article written by one of my co-writers at TheGayUK which condemned the use of PrEP. It was very negative and inaccurate on many points, and I decided I needed to retaliate with an article that got the facts right (Sheena McCormack was a great help here) and to shed a more positive light on PrEP. In my naivety, I expected people would be more open to it once they read the facts, but I actually ended up being on the receiving end of some pretty nasty comments. I’d worked in the sex industry for many years, but this was the first time I’d experienced real slut-shaming. I was called an irresponsible slut who didn’t give a damn about the sexual health of anyone else, which, considering the reason I was doing PrEP was precisely because I was concerned about my sexual health and that of those I was having sex with, was a little hurtful.

After I’d calmed down a bit from suffering those reactions, I started to look at the possible reasons for this negativity, for without understanding those reasons, we will  never be able to address them, or break down prejudices.

I questioned why the reactions of my family and straight friends were so positive, when those of some of my gay friends were not. Could it be that straight and gay people saw condom free sex in different ways?  For straight people, condom free sex was not just about pleasure, it was also about conceiving. It was about life. Whereas, for us, it had become associated with death. 

Now a few months ago, I saw a video of a speech by the magnificent Irish drag queen, Panty Bliss, which discusses the inherent homophobia that exists within our society, that homophobia which makes us ever alert, unable to make the slightest unconscious gesture of affection towards our partner without first checking our surroundings to see if it’s safe. He touches on the fact that we have become so used to this situation, that we have come to accept it as ok. He points out that this homophobia comes down to a basic distaste for what we do in bed, specifically anal sex, and that these homophobes, when they look at us don’t see a person, they just see a sex act. 

And I think our problem lies in an internalised homophobia, which makes us ashamed of who we are, and, more importantly, ashamed of what we do in bed, particularly if we enjoy anal sex. 

Let’s face it sex, any kind of sex, has long been about shame, unless it was to bring about a new life, which of course made gay sex more shameful still. I suppose we enjoyed a few years of relatively guilt-free fun when sex between two men was no longer illegal, as long as it was in private of course, and the only risk attached to it was the chance of an easily treatable STD. Then AIDS came along. We had to deal with the shame of realising that our pleasure was killing us, that anal sex was one of the main transmission routes for this terrible virus. Worse still, the Reagan administration in the US didn’t lift a finger to help us because it and a great swathe of America didn’t actually care that we were dying. That’s pretty hard to deal with.

Eventually, due to the efforts of campaigners like Peter Stalley, we came up with drugs to keep us alive and we discovered that we could save ourselves and our partners by wearing a condom, and the term safer sex was coined . And that’s when condom free sex became really shameful. 

Now, for all the advances that have been made in recent years, for all the new therapies, the fact that we now know positive people with an undetectable viral load can’t pass on the virus, that shame about condom free anal sex still persists.

We feel shame about that time we were drunk or high and threw caution to the wind. We woke up the next morning and felt shame.

We felt shame about that time we realised we didn’t have any condoms but went ahead with it anyway.

We felt shame about that time the condom split but we kept going because it felt so much better, and, here’s the thing, we felt really ashamed about admitting, even to ourselves, that one fact. Sex without condoms feels better. There I’ve said it. And apparently I’m not alone, as the majority of people on the PROUD study gave the reason that “it felt better” as the main one for having condom free sex. Not being high or drunk.

Such is the shame about condom free sex, that we even coined a new word for it, a loaded word that carried with it a sense of risk. Barebacking. And more and more people were willing to take the risk. We might not actually want to get HIV, but at least we now weren’t going to die if we did. 

Now I wish we could get rid of that word “barebacking”, banish it from our vocabulary, because barebacking when you’re protected isn’t risky, or shameful, it’s just natural. 

That said, I understand why it’s going to take some time for that message to get through, and it’s only by people like me being up front and talking about it that the message will get through.

I think I’ve probably now heard every argument imaginable against PrEP, and most, to be honest,  are just side issues, but the one I hear most often is that it will encourage promiscuity, which was exactly the main objection to the birth control pill for women back in the 60s. Well we were able to get over that problem, and the birth control pill is now, in the west at least, the most commonly used form of contraception for the majority of women, mostly because they were able to take control of their own sex life.

And this is the point about PrEP. It puts me in control. I don’t have to worry about whether a partner is telling me the truth about their status. I take my pill every day and I know I’m protected. The problem with condoms for some is that they leave all the negotiating to the final moment, when we can do things against our better judgement. If we’re on PrEP, then we have taken care of that side of things beforehand, and it means we are still protected from HIV, should our judgement be impaired.

The other good thing about PrEP is that we don’t necessarily have to be on it for the rest of our lives. Circumstances change. When I started the PROUD study I was taking risks with multiple partners. In the last few months I have entered into a monogamous relationship and I am beginning to consider coming off it. The IperGay study in France suggests that people can also target their PrEP use, depending on their sexual activity. 

This is the good news we need to give MSM. That PrEP allows us to take control of our own sexual health. PrEP can eliminate the difference between positive and negative and we can become a community that is no longer split by our HIV status. 

Quite the opposite of being irresponsible, PrEP is taking responsibility for our own health, and those with whom we have sex. That’s why we need PrEP – and we need it now!

PROUD Film Premiere on July 1st

This is the trailer for the PROUD film by Nicholas Feustel, which will be premiered at the Cinema Museum, 2 Dugard Way, London SE 11 4TH on July 1st at 7.30pm. The full video will be available to view after that date. I was one of the participants and will be on the panel for a Q&A session after the premiere on July 1st.

TRAILER: The Proud Study from MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL on Vimeo.

I am absolutely convinced that PrEP is a major breakthrough in HIV prevention, and that the NHS should now be offering it to those who are most a risk. We now now that HIV positive people, who are on treatment, and who therefore have an undetectable viral load, cannot pass on the virus. If HIV negative people, who were at risjk were on PrEP, then we could bring down rates of HIV transmission down dramatically within a decade. We need to be proactve.

We need PrEP! And we need it now!

This is a transcript of the speech I gave at the EATG/AVAC conference on HIV Prevention in Brussels in January this year. There is a certain amount of overlap with my Qx article which I posted yesterday, but there are also some differences as the target audience was different. I thought it worth posting as I truly feel we need PrEP and we need it now. 

Speaking at the EATG/AVAC conference in Brussels

Good morning. First of all I should point out I am no expert, no scientist, no medical professional. I am just a participant in the PROUD study, and I’m here to talk initially about what being on PrEP has meant to me personally. I’ll then talk a bit about how people – friends, family, and the community in general – have reacted to the news that I am on PrEP.

I attend the Working Men’s Project at St Mary’s Hospital in London, which is a Sexual Health clinic for men who work in the sex industry. I suppose I should point out at this time that I was once an adult model and performer, and worked as an escort, and though I no longer do any of those things, I do, as a tantric masseur, still work on the peripheries of the industry, so I still go to the same clinic.

I tell you this to explain how I came to be offered the chance to become a participant in the PROUD study in the first place.  I had never even heard of PrEP until November of 2013, when one of the nurses at the WMP suggested it to me. I’ve always believed in total honesty about my sexual encounters when visiting a clinic, and, though I hadn’t realised it or admitted it to myself, it seemed my behaviour was becoming more risky, enough for me to fit into that at-risk group that would definitely benefit from taking PrEP.  After it was suggested to me, I first went away and discussed it with my best friend, who is positive, and on Truvada as one of his anti-retroviral drugs. I’d pretty much decided that I wanted to do the trial anyway, but it helped to talk it through with him. I then applied, was accepted and was delighted when I was put onto PrEP straight away, not into the deferred group that they had at that time. It was all very quick and I’ve now been on PrEP for over a year. I can honestly say I had no side effects, apart from some vivid dreams the first week or so.

Photo by www.mileselliotpictures.co.uk

Physically then, the effect was minimal, or negligible. But how about the psychological effects?

Well at first nothing much changed, but, as it gradually began to dawn on me, that I was protected from HIV, a cloud started to lift.

You see, I’m a product of the pre AIDS generation. When I came out there was no HIV, or at least we didn’t know about it. I’m one of the lucky ones. I didn’t die and I remained HIV negative, obviously or I wouldn’t be on PrEP. How I got here is no doubt down to a little judgement and a lot of luck, and I mean a lot of luck. Statistically I should be a statistic.

Back in the 80s the fear of AIDS stopped me having sex completely for quite a while. Fear of death does that to you and those were scary times. But once I did start having sex again, for the first time in my life, I started using condoms. I hated them. Sex didn’t feel so good anymore, but if you wanted to stay alive, there was no alternative. Sex had become a dangerous business. I mean people I knew were dying. If you didn’t see someone for a while, you hardly dared ask what might have happened to them.

I didn’t get tested. In those days a positive diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence.  We were even told that the mere knowledge that one was positive could be enough to precipitate a downturn in one’s health. So I worried. I fretted.  I remember I panicked about it so much that at one point I even started suffering from night sweats. There was nothing wrong me.  And anyway, at that time, what was the point knowing?  But closing my mind off like that also meant that I remained ignorant of the advances in HIV treatments as they happened. Then, in 2001, a very close friend of mine died. He was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. He had never been tested for HIV and by the time pneumonia took hold he had no immune system left to fight the disease. He died soon after. If he’d only been tested and on treatment then he’d still be with us today. I got tested straight after my close friend’s funeral, and from that day on I became much more aware of my sexual health.

However, even after this, my adherence to safer sex started to falter. Not straight away of course, but little by little I was slipping. At first it was just what they call dipping, you know  when you just put it in for a few minutes without a condom, and think, oh well that doesn’t count. I’m not actually fucking. But actually it does. Then there would be other occasions when I wouldn’t use a condom at all. There would be discussion, risk assessment if you like, and I would decide to take the risk. It may have been calculated, but it was still a risk. And I found every sexual encounter was beginning to become a minefield. I was finding it harder and harder to use condoms. I’d lose my erection. I’d become so fixated on the  business of getting the packet open, and the bloody thing on, that I could barely think of anything else. They say condoms don’t have any side effects. Well isn’t erectile dysfunction a side effect?  I was beginning to give up the idea of penetrative sex altogether. So PrEP seemed like a miracle, and it has changed my sex life.

Mainly, and importantly, because it has removed anxiety. Gone. That’s it! I know I can’t get HIV. I know I can’t pass it on. For the best part of 30 years now, there was a voice whispering in my ear every time I had sex. “Be careful. You could get HIV.” And, you know what? That voice has gone. I can’t tell you how liberating that is. After years of worry about HIV, suddenly I don’t have to worry anymore. To me it was a no brainer. Short of a vaccine, this seemed to me to be the most important advance in HIV research since the discovery of anti-retroviral treatments for HIV positive people.

And because I felt so liberated, because I felt it was such an amazing breakthrough, I decided  I wanted to get the message out there, be totally honest about what I was doing, and extol  the virtues of PrEP. I thought that it would be greeted with open arms, and this is when I was surprised.

Now I have always been totally open about what I did and do for a living, which has given me a small amount of notoriety within the gay scene, and it is no doubt this notoriety which has enabled me to speak out about PrEP in the gay media and at certain gay events I’ve been invited to. In fact I have an article in this week’s Qx, one of the weekly London scene mags that you can pick up in any gay venue in London.

Going back a bit to July last year, an article written by one of my co-writers, appeared in TheGayUK condemning the use of PrEP. It was very negative and inaccurate on many points, and I decided I needed to retaliate with an article that got the facts right (Sheena was a great help here) and to shed a more positive light on PrEP. In my naivety, I expected people would be more open to it once they read the facts, but I actually ended up being on the receiving end of some pretty nasty comments. I’d worked in the sex industry for many years, but this was the first time I’d experienced real slut-shaming. I was called an irresponsible slut who didn’t give a damn about the sexual health of anyone else, which, considering the reason I was doing PrEP was precisely because I was concerned about my sexual health and that of those I was having sex with, was a little hurtful.

After I’d calmed down a bit from suffering those reactions, I started to look at the possible reasons for this negativity, for without understanding those reasons, we will  never be able to address them, or break down prejudices.

I questioned why the reactions of my family and straight friends were so positive, when those of some of my gay friends were not. Could it be that straight and gay people saw condom free sex in different ways?  For straight people, condom free sex was not just about pleasure, it was also about conceiving. It was about life. Whereas, for us, it had become associated with death.

Now a couple of weeks ago,  I saw a video of a speech by the magnificent Irish drag queen, Panty Bliss, which discusses the inherent homophobia that exists within our society, that homophobia which makes us ever alert, unable to make the slightest unconscious gesture of affection towards our partner without first checking our surroundings to see if it’s safe. He touches on the fact that we have become so used to this situation, that we have come to accept it as ok. He points out that this homophobia comes down to a basic distaste for what we do in bed, specifically anal sex, and that these homophobes, when they look at us don’t see a person, they just see a sex act.

And I think our problem lies in an internalised homophobia, which makes us ashamed of who we are, and, more importantly, ashamed of what we do in bed, particularly if we enjoy anal sex.

Let’s face it sex, any kind of sex, has long been about shame, unless it was to bring about a new life, which of course made gay sex more shameful still. There were those few hedonistic days when it finally became legal and the only risk gay sex carried was the possibility of picking up an easily treatable STD. Then AIDS came along. We had to deal with the shame of realising that our pleasure was killing us, that anal sex was one of the main transmission routes for this terrible virus. Worse still, the Reagan administration didn’t lift a finger to help us because it and a great swathe of America didn’t actually care that we were dying. That’s pretty hard to deal with.

Eventually, due to the efforts of campaigners like Peter Staley, we came up with drugs to keep us alive and  we discovered that we could save ourselves and our partners by wearing a condom, and the term safer sex was coined . And that’s when condom free sex became really shameful.

Now, for all the advances that have been made in recent years, for all the new therapies, the fact that we now know positive people with an undetectable viral load can’t pass on the virus, that shame about condom free anal sex still persists.

We feel shame about that time we were drunk or high and threw caution to the wind. We woke up the next morning and felt shame.

We felt shame about that time we realised we didn’t have any condoms but went ahead with it anyway.

We felt shame about that time the condom split but we kept going because it felt so much better, and, here’s the thing, we felt really ashamed about admitting, even to ourselves, that one fact. Sex without condoms feels better. There I’ve said it. And apparently I’m not alone, as the majority of people on the PROUD study gave the reason that “it felt better” as the main one for having condom free sex. Not being high or drunk.

Such is the shame about condom free sex, that we even coined a new word for it, a loaded word that carried with it a sense of risk. Barebacking. And more and more people were willing to take the risk. We might not actually want to get HIV, but at least we now weren’t going to die if we did.

Now I wish we could get rid of that word “barebacking”, banish it from our vocabulary, because barebacking when you’re protected isn’t risky, or shameful, it’s just natural.

That said, I understand why it’s going to take some time for that message to get through, and it’s only by people like me being up front and talking about it that the message will get through.

I think I’ve probably now heard every argument imaginable against PrEP, and most, to be honest,  are just side issues, but the one I hear most often is that it will encourage promiscuity, which was exactly the main objection to the birth control pill for women back in the 60s. Well we were able to get over that problem, and the birth control pill is now, in the west at least, the most commonly used form of contraception for the majority of women, mostly because they were able to take control of their own sex life.

And this is the point about PrEP. It puts me in control. I don’t have to worry about whether a partner is telling me the truth about their status. I take my pill every day and I know I’m protected. Just as women knew when they took their pill every day that they couldn’t become pregnant.

This is the good news we need to give MSM. That PrEP allows us to take control of our own sexual health. PrEP can eliminate the difference between positive and negative and we can become a community that is no longer split by our HIV status.

Quite the opposite of being irresponsible, PrEP is taking responsibility for our own health, and those with whom we have sex. That’s why we need PrEP – and we need it now!