Once You Go Bare…

I feel like to talk about this issue I have to create a villain. I feel I have to create a “them” who bareback but that isn’t true. They aren’t villains because “they” are me. They’re you. They’re us. We’re all guilty of getting fucked up, fucking, and fucking up! However, this is no excuse and many of us become victims of the ones who never learn from mistakes.
Barebacking is associated with a stupid slut who has unprotected bathhouse sex jacked on Meth or G. We don’t get an image of a trusting long-term couple who stopped using condoms ages ago. And then one day, one of the partners learns the other has been cheating and suddenly they realize they’ve been engaging in risky sexual behaviour and didn’t even know it.

This situation recently happened to my friend Steve. Steve has been with Shean for almost a year and their relationship has come to a crossroads. It’s come to the point where he has to decide whether or not he is comfortable with losing the condom during anal sex. Being the bottom, well the bottom for 90 per cent of the time, he figures it’s been long enough that he can trust his partner and lose the glove. They make love that night and feel truly connected for the first time. The next morning Shean goes to work and Steve jumps on Shean’s computer to check his email. Steve, for whatever reason, feels the urge to start snooping.  Shean’s history is riddled with Craigslist and guys4men.com so Steve guesses a password and it works. Shean was trading cock pics and messaging other guys. This sparks Steve to try the password and on Shean’s Facebook, and lo and behold he finds more incriminating evidence. Shean had recently messaged his ex telling him how much he misses his kiss, and how he gets hard just thinking of the recent threesome they had. Steve’s mouth drops and he wished he had kept using a condom.
Steve comes to me crying.
"The way it’s promoted is ‘get to know your partner’ and I have, so I think I’m safe, but then this shit happens," Steve sobs to me.
"I know," I say, "those ads should read: 'It’s very likely your boyfriend is cheating on you. Keep using condoms.’"
"I think I’m OK, I trust that Shean used a condom. He wouldn’t risk my health," Steve says.
"You also trusted that he was being faithful to you. You should have never trusted him," I say.
I want to be sensitive, but I have to make my point and give Steve a reality check.
"We were together for a year," Steve says, "if you can’t let your guard down after that long, then when can you?"
He is desperately looking at me for an answer. I can’t give him one.
Steve raises a good point and it’s a choice we all have to make and everyone has their own bb schedules and reasons for doing it. I asked around to get some opinions and found some interesting responses.
Some don’t like using condoms because they can’t keep it hard.
John has never really had to use condoms because he’s always been in relationships, and when he’s not he doesn’t use them with casual partners either. 

"By the time I get a condom on, I lose my erection," he confesses. 

"Why don’t you practice?" I ask. 

"No, I’m not going to practice," he responds like the idea is ridiculous. 

"So you’d rather risk your life than practice putting on a condom?’"
"It’s not just that, I also go soft because I lose so much sensation when it’s on," John said.

I asked a young couple I know when they decided to stop using protection. Sam and his boyfriend started barebacking after only three months of dating. He claims they went to get tested together (how romantic) and that’s how they know it’s safe. 
"But that’s one place and time where you guys were both negative. It’s been a long time since then, things change," I say.
"I trust Kevin, or maybe I simply just want to continue to trust him because, take it from me, once you go bare, you never go back," Sam said. 
Stories like Steve’s make me never want to stop using a condom with a boyfriend even if they are long-term. Isn’t that when the cheating begins anyway? But in reality I won’t be such a rigid, jaded person to my partner. In time I will have to let my guard down and put faith into the man that I am with and hope I don’t end up in line at the Hassle Free Clinic because he turns out to be a total ditchpig.