It's absolutely normal to be curious about pornography and to explore your body and sexuality, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Exploring your sexuality can make you feel a whole host of emotions, including excitement and guilt - again, this is perfectly normal. Just because you like looking at gay porn doesn't necessarily mean you're gay. Seeing other people engaged in sexual acts is a turn-on for many, whether it's man/woman, woman/woman or man/man. Lots of straight men and women like looking at lesbian porn, for example. It's all part of discovering your sexual identity and learning what you like and don't like. Feeling guilty or ashamed about enjoying gay porn probably says more about society's attitudes than it does about you. Many of us are brought up to think of sex and particularly porn, as dirty and smutty.

AIDS AND DATING

AIDS, in my opinion, is the most terrible thing in the world!! Sex has become dangerous. I am HIV positive.

AIDS has provided new reasons for not having sex with someone you don't really know. If you are HIV positive or have AIDS, or are a widower who is only recently re-entering the dating arena, it is completely understandable that you might hesitate before sharing all this with someone you have just met. On the other hand, if you don't share your health status, have safer sex, and begin to date someone, it only gets more difficult to tell him any of these things as the relationship progresses. In addition, he may feel hurt, betrayed or distrustful of you if he learns about your health status after he has become emotionally and sexually involved with you.

My experience has been that men preferred to learn my HIV status before going to bed with me. Some men chose not to continue going out with me upon learning that I was HIV positive. As painful as that was at the time, I was glad that I hadn't slept with them and had the additional feelings that sex would have brought up since they were obviously not the kind of person I wanted to get seriously involved with.

Trust and intimacy have to be earned.

Many men have met someone in a sexual situation, gone home together without having done much talking, and had good sex. If that's what you're looking for, go ahead! But if you're looking for intimacy, take a look at this article.

If you are hoping to meet someone who will be a companion, or friend, as well as a lover, you will need to base the relationship on a lot more than the fact that the two of you put each other's hormones into an uproar. Therefore it's necessary to spend a lot of time talking early on. Does he encourage you to talk about yourself, or is every word out of his mouth "me-me-me?" Do you feel comfortable opening up to him, and becoming increasingly vulnerable? This is not just an intuitive process, but happens because he responds with sensitivity and empathy to concerns you share with him. These concerns may be your awkwardness about dating, health fears, body image or any other personal information. At the same time, does he talk about personal issues in a way

that results in your beginning to care about him? Getting to know another person and feeling safe with him is how genuine intimacy begins to develop; intimacy is linked to trust. Trust takes time, and this doesn't happen overnight. Trust and intimacy have to be earned.

THE 1990s

We are a community that must continue to encourage, be tolerant of and celebrate diversity of lifestyles. With that said, I'm going to focus  this little article on the 1990s.

So here we are in the 1990s -- in the midst of the second decade of a sexually transmitted plague that has been decimating our community. There is a lot more emphasis on coupling within the gay men's community. I have written and conducted workshops for gay men on sex, dating and intimacy. These workshops regularly attract up to a hundred men, no matter what part of the

country they are conducted in. I hear from friends, my psychotherapy patients and colleagues that concerns about intimacy, dating and how to find and sustain a relationship are very much on gay men's minds these days. One comment I hear very often is that prior to the onset of AIDS, for many men a date meant that they were going to have sex. Now a date doesn't necessarily mean that, even if both men find themselves attracted.

Of course there are men who are still not interested in having an ongoing, monogamous relationship and who are satisfied with having a series of partners. It's important that these men not be judged for this choice of life style, and that the gay men's community doesn't create a norm where coupling is the only state to aspire towards.

COMPARTMENTALIZING SEX

I am not trying to devalue the importance of the free wheeling nature of sexual exploration in those years before AIDS. I do not have any regrets about anything I did.

In hindsight I see that something important was missing from all of these discussions. There was little if any exploration of the fact that any of us might have feelings as a result of what we were learning to do sexually with other men. Thus, the separation of sex from feelings, and of sex from love was almost institutionalized for certain segments of the emerging gay men's community. Sexual freedom became synonymous with gay liberation, and a steady supply of "fast food sex" was taken as a right of passage for liberated urban gay men.

Of course there was a lot more than just sex going on in those days. People were coming out, making friends, forging a community with political agendas, having affairs and sometimes even beginning long term lover relationships that might or might not be sexually exclusive. Yet there was no denying the fact that erotic energy was one important fuel for much of what happened in those years.

Gay Male Sexuality: Exploring Intimacy in the Age of AIDS

Discussing gay sexuality is not an easy thing to do. However, it is very important. That subjest has been present in many web sites, and I intend to continue talking about this here!

Nothing has had more of an impact upon gay men's sexuality and upon our relationships with friends and lovers than AIDS. Living in the midst of this plague has caused many of us to reassess what is really important in life. AIDS has been the impetus for many in our community to examine themselves in terms of their needs for intimacy and love. Many men have begun to question their assumptions about what constitutes a gay male life-style as they never have before.

In the early 1970s I was a college student, just beginning to embrace my identity as a gay man. Luckily for me, this included a large dose of gay activism that centered around two organizations, the newly formed gay student group at State University of New York at Binghamton and (when I was not at school), the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA), in Manhattan. The periodicals Gay Sunshine, Body Politic and Fag Rag provided a constant supply of interesting and provocative articles to read, many of them equating various sex acts practiced by gay men with acts of revolution.

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