Back in the beginning of January “Bubble Bottom Slut” started a blog about his sex life called “Staying Faithful and Being a Slut” where he tells all about the sex he’s having behind his boyfriend’s back. (He has an interesting definition of ‘faithful’)…
Anyway, since January 10th, he’s gotten fucked 90 times with a condom. In 43 of those encounters the guy came in his ass (in the rubber). It should be mentioned that most of those encounters were in sex clubs where he’d offer his ass to whoever he thought was hot… He also got fucked bareback 9 times by guys he was pretty sure were neg - getting 7 loads of cum in his ass in the process. Plus his boyfriend has fucked him bareback 8 times and shot in his ass 4 times (which explains why he’s looking elsewhere for sex).
If you read his blog he’s been a bit conflicted about barebacking with guys other than his boyfriend. He likes it, but he’s worried about the risk he’s taking. It should be mentioned that if he became poz he might have issues with his career - so becoming poz is a problem for him on many levels…
A lot of his readers are telling him to stay “safe” and always use rubbers. But my contention is that he’s safer when he’s barebacking… Why? For two reasons - 1) He doesn’t know anything about the guys who fuck him with condoms but he does a good job vetting the guys who bareback him - he makes them get tested before they can fuck him raw, and 2) Condoms fail 10% of the time…
In other words, having 90 strangers fuck you with a condom and taking “safe” loads from 42 of them is the equivalent of having backing your ass to a glory hole and having 9 guys fuck you bareback and getting anonymous loads from 4 of them. Mind you, he’s had a lot more fun over the past 5 months than he would have backing his ass up to a glory hole one or two nights (risk vs. reward), but my point is - there’s still some significant risk…
Let’s go into more detail… What I’m about say is based on an article in the January 2002 issue of Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, entitled “Reducing the Risk of Sexual HIV Transmission: Quantifying the Per-Act Risk for HIV on the Basis of Choice of Parnter, Sex Act, and Condom Use”. It was written by researchers from the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention-Surveillance and Epidemiology at the CDC in Atlanta. I encourage people to read the entire article. The article doesn’t have new findings, but it’s a compilation of what was known at that point…
IMHO, the most important part of the article is the table at the top of the second page. To figure out how much risk you’re taking you take a number from each of the three columns and multiply them together and then compare the results.
Let’s take the two scenarios for Bubble Bottom Slut…
Getting fucked “safely” by strangers has the following risk factors - 43 for gay sex with a person of unknown HIV status, 100 for receptive anal and 1 for using a condom.
Total score: 4,300 (though I’ll discuss the 43 below)…
Getting fucked bareback by someone you’ve vetted pretty well - 1 for gay sex with someone who has had a recent, negative HIV test, 100 for receptive anal, and 20 for not using a condom.
Total score: 2,000
So just looking at those numbers it seems he’s more than twice as safe when he barebacks than he is when he’s taking “safe” loads from strangers in sex clubs.
But it gets worse… If you read the article closely they discuss how they came up with the 43 number - it’s based on an assumption that 10% of the people you’re having sex with are positive. Having sex with a HIV+ person has a risk factor of 430 - 43 is 10% of 430. Bubble Bottom Slut is having anonymous encounters at a gay sex club in San Francisco. Mind you it’s not the rauchiest of sex clubs, but the percentage of poz guys is probably more like 30-40% (and that’s a conservative estimate).
That means his risk is 3-4 times higher than we thought, and instead of being about twice as safe when he barebacks, he’s actually 12 to 17 times safer barebacking than he is having “safe sex”.
But it gets even worse… If you read the article carefully you’ll see that they say the risk factor (20) for not using a condom is based on a 5% failure rate for condoms (1/20 = 5%), but they say you only achieve a 5% failure rate when the condom is used perfectly. The real failure rate is around 10% (some studies say as high as 13%). So that means in reality his risk level needs to be doubled again and he’s actually about 25 times safer getting fucked bareback than he is having safe sex.
If Bubble Bottom Slut tested HIV+ today, based on his activity since January 10th, it’s far more likely that he became positive from the “safe sex” he’s been having than the little bit of barebacking he’s been doing.
Put another way, he could have had his vetted bareback fuck buddies cum in his ass over 1,000 times and not taken the risk he’s taken getting fucked “safely” by the 43 strangers who’ve used rubbers when they shot their wads in his ass…
Even if you’re skeptical of the accuracy of those numbers, the point is that he’s a lot safer getting fucked bareback by negative guys than fucked “safely” by strangers. It’s the reason why the San Francisco Department of Health promotes the concept of serosorting.
The important part in this scenario is for Bubble Bottom Slut to really know and trust his tops… When I say ‘know’ what I mean is that he wants tops who are doing low risk activity (which can include being a bareback top with negative bottoms). My advice to him is to find 100% tops who never bottom…
The reason I say find 100% tops is because those of us who don’t bottom are at much lower risk. Insertive anal has a risk factor of 13 - compared to 100 for receptive anal - so it’s 7.7 times safer.
Frankly, ’serosorting’ will probably work better for him (as a bottom) than it will for me (as a top) because he’s so careful. I tend to trust what people put in their profiles or say something like “your neg, right?” He actually goes through a lengthy process where he makes them go get an HIV test. He is actually doing serosorting properly - I’m a bit lazy with it.
So, if you’re one of the people encouraging Bubble Bottom Slut to “be safe” and use rubbers, you’re actually telling him to engage in high risk activity. He’s actually a lot safer with his vetted bareback fuck buddies.
The question is whether he’d be as satisfied with a sex life where we was only getting fucked by a few, well vetted guys. He seems to like public sex with strangers. And if he’s going to be engaging in public sex with strangers, then he’s being as safe as he can be by using condoms when he does it.
Bottom line, he should stop worrying about the little bit of bareback sex he’s having - it’s low risk. If he wants to reduce his risk, he should start by cutting down on all the strangers who are fucking him with condoms…
