Fridae

Clubbing music drones on, the beats thump as her hips grind against his, they drink, they snort, they leave and she soon gets pregnant.

Ok, so the above is for the wrong column. A straight friend once told me, "Know why you gay men manage to get away with so much sex? 'Cause you got no worries about getting girls pregnant. Damn I wish I was gay�"

You must admit, it is certainly easier for us to get laid than straight guys, for whom responsibility comes in BOLD FAT CAPITAL letters often written in damn fine small print. Gay men meet at a club, pick someone cute enough and hop into the nearest cab. If you stay long enough not to be kicked out the next morning, you wake up groggy eyed and stare into a stranger's face.

The club atmosphere and the alcohol (let's not even add drugs into the equation) all add up to making you one prime choice of meat ready to be picked, or for your picking, whichever type you are, the butch, or the butchered.

Even worse so if you go alone without a counsel of friends who in their objective state (hopefully), will pull you back and hiss: "He isn't even cute you doofus!" So when you enter the Wild Wild West alone or with friends, be prepared a wild ride. Or a hard fall.

The gay scene may be well known for its promiscuity, but that does not mean that we should condone it, nor should we support it. There are some very pressing reasons why we should avoid one-night stands.

Beside the obvious health risks, which I shall delve into later, by making promiscuity acceptable, the gay scene encourages one to substitute sex for our emotional needs. Sure it makes you feel good about yourself for a while, but you fall harder after. It's like an espresso shot. You get a caffeine high, but later become even more lethargic than before. Eventually you will seek more sex just to make up for the lost of effects as diminishing marginal utility of sex kicks in.

The second (and we are seeing the effects of this now already), is that many gay men would start to mistake sex for love and do not see the above stated connection. This is worse than comparing sex to espresso, it is treating espresso like a steroid or Prozac substitute. See how flawed that is? Well, the mind does this. So the next one-nighter you do, both of you will wake up as lovers. Or at least one of you will wake up thinking so.

Imagine a new comer to the scene, he who still keeps the idealism of a Kate and bloody Leopold fairytale romance. Ok, so those are delusional as well. But the first prince that comes along to kiss him and have sex with him, he will fall in love with. But then what happens thereafter is NOT that the prince falls in love with him but that the prince never calls him back, hell, he never sees the guy again!

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In all honesty guys, I really don't think my words above have really convinced those of you who are believers and patrons of the one night stand. Sex, as many of us know, is a human right. We all deserve it, that much I'm sure. Hot bloodied men and sex. They go hand in hand. But do exercise more selectivity concerning whom you sleep with, and if you think the guy is na�ve enough to think you LOVE him after sex, abstain please.

Emotions and touchy feelies aside, syphilis, gonorrhoea, the biggest mama of them all, AIDS, can be the occupational hazards of a one-nighter. The message here is simple. Be safe. Not sorry. Always insist on a condom. There is no going around it.

Of course, a message as simple as that is always plagued with complications. One being, that the condom, while being one of man's most ingenious contraceptive ever, makes the sensations 'blah'. Basically, the condom makes the normal pleasures of sex feel like a mere tickle on the back down there. Likewise for the receiving person, it sure as hell feels different bare back.

This is the biggest drawback of condoms, and if you ask me, the only reason why most gay men don't use it. Or why most men in general hate the damn thing. Sometimes I think a woman invented the condom. Which sane man would???

But guys, the possibility of getting something as incurable as AIDS is about as close as you can get to a guaranteed death certificate. The person you meet at the club would not tell you whether he is infected or not, and you would not even know if he was telling you to the truth if he did, even if you were the Oracle. That is if he even knows the truth. For the unknowing, as I call them, their ignorance will be their downfall.

Then there are the 'call your bluff' kinds. You may ask them to wear a condom for your own protection, but they say, "oh dear, I don't have one." Well they do have one. In fact, they probably stock them up and it's right now snuggled in the coin compartment of their wallet. But they really want it bareback because with a rubber, it just isn't the same. My advice? Call their bluff. Tell them point blank: "No condom and that pogo stick of yours isn't seeing the daylights of my tunnel." Or something to that effect.

If you don't practice safe sex, a one-night stand might leave you something more to remember than that enormous red hickey. Sex, I believe, takes more than one night to develop to its full potential. To get the most out of sex, one needs a bit more time to get to know the other party... No?